Robbed Blind

I’d taken leave of my job--or my senses, some might say--and, unemployed for the first time, set forth for a prolonged stay in Bhutan, the tiny Asian kingdom that was my second home. It was a flight I had made dozens of times without incident.

But this time it even starts off badly: Unusual queasiness sets in before the plane boards in San Francisco--and remains for the better part of the 17 hours to my first stop, Bangkok. The post-midnight immigration line moves languidly as scores of Korean newlyweds, the women still in traditional wedding dress, inch their way through. Considerably less opulent in traditional T-shirt and jeans, I am set free at last to retrieve luggage and settle in on the fourth-floor observation deck for a six-hour layover. (Because of the bureaucratic complexities of my next flight, the oh-so-easy transit lounge is not an option.)

Once on the familiar observation deck, I pick a choice spot near--but not too near--other sleeping lumps, erect a fortress of suitcases, store my glasses carefully in my purse and wedge the purse between head and wall. It’s 1 a.m. Though exhausted, I am still restless at 2, thanks to the unyielding floor, bright lights and overactive air-conditioning. A fond squeeze of the purse reveals it’s still there.

Eventually, sleep. At 4 a.m. I awake, happy to start the final phase of the journey. And the first thing my myopic, blurred eyes discern is . . . the purse, containing $5,000 in cash, and a nearby tote bag, are gone. Someone has stood right over me and made off with all the cash, travelers’ checks, credit cards, passport and airline tickets--plus my glasses and their spare.

None of the sleeping lumps proves helpful, but a Japanese man just stepping off the escalator onto the fourth floor offers hope. “Black bag?” he says. “Hold on, I get police.”

Within minutes, we are barging into the third-floor men’s room. There is the tote bag, dumped in a stall, with everything intact: books, language tapes, the detritus of travel of no interest to a thief.

There is, however, no sign of the purse.

In frustration I pound my fists against the wall, which I can at least see. Then I lift a heavy chrome ashcan from the floor and overturn it, scattering its kilos of sand the way my possessions are now scattered across Bangkok.

*

The next 11 hours are spent filling out forms and dealing with credit-card companies, giving me ample time to consider how integral glasses have always been to my life. My first pair, a striking gold cat’s-eye shape, had been fitted at age 7, in the early 1960s, after I had been able to pick out only the big “E” at the top of the eye chart.

Now, as I sit in the airport police office, I’ve been reduced to a mewling infant, imploring the indistinct gray-brown uniformed blobs to buy me a Coke because I don’t have even $1. Yes, they commiserate, those “gangsters” who are operating in the airport--10 had been arrested just a week earlier--have really been doing bad things to travelers.

One cop, probably unused to seeing a Westerner beg for money, fills with sympathy and hands over the equivalent of $40.

“I think,” he says solemnly, “you have big problem.”

For a while, the biggest problem is getting real money, more than the cop can provide: cash advances on replacement credit cards. Because it is a Sunday morning (Saturday night in the United States), no banks are open, and contacting the U.S. Embassy for help is out of the question.

I’ll spare you the full story of the American Express travelers’ checks representative, a decidedly bovine woman who accuses me of fabricating my plight. Instead, let’s examine the collect call to Visa International. Antoinette at Visa has good news, she says: We can get you a card tomorrow. But--she speaks very gently now--your bank has refused a cash advance.

I don’t take this well. My voice rises to a wail: “What? I’m a preferred customer with them.” I pay my credit card bills on time--in fact, almost always in full. I don’t bounce checks. I have a better portfolio than most people. I’m not a deadbeat. I’m preferred, dammit.

Sensing barely concealed hysteria, Antoinette says she’ll get the bank on the line again. Please hold.

If you wait too long in silence, you get cut off, so I start talking into the dead air: “Please come back, please come back, pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease come back.” Over and over. Twenty-two minutes into the call, Antoinette is back: “We’re trying. Keep holding.”

Pleaseohpleaseohplease. Thirty-seven minutes. “We got them to approve the advance. You can get cash and a card tomorrow.” (After my return to the United States some months later--and a blistering letter about the experience--the bank concedes a wee error of judgment and apologizes, in the form of several hundred dollars.)

An immediate cash advance also is forthcoming on my new American Express card, which arrives thanks to a more competent representative of the company than the insulting travelers’ check woman. But it takes police intervention with the airport bank to actually get the money because, of course, I still have no ID.

Besides, someone has to take me to the bank counter, because--also of course--I can’t see where it is. Even the type on the gigantic electronic flight departure boards is unreadable. And these letters are far bigger than the “E” on the eye chart.

*

It is after 3 p.m. before the sanctuary of a hotel is possible. I spend the evening in my room, alternately reminding myself of the law of karma--which is definitely going to extract a toll on the thief--and wishing I had just one chance at him myself.

Being called Karen all day--my given name, but one that only my family addresses me by--has added to the feeling of being a scared child here in Bangkok. Sleep is impossible. Instead, I crawl on top of the bedsheets and begin rocking back and forth like when I was small. And I find myself repeatedly singing a couplet from a favorite childhood church song (never mind that I’m a Buddhist now):

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me . . .

*

Monday dawns somewhat better, because at least the embassy is open. Dealing with my diplomatic countrymen is a new experience, but with luck they’ll take me in hand.

They don’t. They’re concerned, even worried, but office rules are office rules. The combination of over-the-top stress and dehydration from the intense Bangkok heat nearly makes me faint when they suggest casually that there are “lots of optical shops in the World Trade Center,” a psychedelic shopping-center nightmare. Clearly, I’m on my own.

It is then that the Angel appears. He turns out to be the Angel of Axles. “Would you like a lift?” he inquires. “I’m going to the World Trade Center myself.”

In what has become characteristic fashion over the last 24 hours, I burst into tears.

On the way to the mall, we exchange life information: The Angel and his family have just moved to Bangkok after several years in Tokyo; he is managing director of a company that manufactures axles for the pickup truck market. Thailand, I learn, is the second-largest such market in the world. The Angel also is a fellow Midwesterner, he originally from Indiana, I from Nebraska.

Amid the infernal maze of shops, he leads me to a monolithic Japanese department store that has an optical department. I’m given a sophisticated eye exam, and then the moment of truth: How soon can I get my new glasses?

I nearly weep again, in relief, when the answer is one hour.

My spirits are starting to rise, and I insist on taking the Angel, a.k.a. Kent Mueller, to lunch, where we engage in a fascinating conversation about faith, engineering and the general superiority of Midwesterners.

In exactly one hour my eyes are restored. The sensation of having real vision again is almost physically overwhelming: Everything seems so vivid, so clear, so . . . normal. As I blink repeatedly amid the glare of the department store, the trauma starts to recede in a rush.

*

Back at the embassy the next day, Tuesday, I get the new passport, which seems distinctly anticlimactic, then head for Thai immigration for my formalities there. A half-dozen of us, all robbed at the airport, swap stories. Now that I have perspective again literally and figuratively, I am able to remind myself that others have had it bad too. I could be, for example, the Costa Rican executive whose “passport” currently consists of a suspicious-looking stamp on the back of an ordinary piece of paper (Costa Rica has no diplomatic ties with Thailand).

The numbing paperwork finished, I run into an Australian woman thumbing through her new documents. She seems to read my mind.

“It’s so good,” she sighs, “to feel like a real person again.”

As I step outside into the blistering Thai sun, I feel pretty real myself, to the extent that passersby are startled when I unexpectedly start to sing--my old favorite again. But this time there is delicious pleasure in the entire first verse:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost but now l’m found,

Was blind, but now I see.