"Lock your hands together. Lock them and hold on tight to your dad, do you understand?" I said to two little boys perched on their fathers' shoulders next to me. With all the pushing and shoving, I was afraid they would fall and be trampled, especially the little one, who was wailing by now and reaching for his mother, who stood behind me.
"Don't push. Please don't push. She's pregnant," shouted a distressed woman standing in front of a female relative, guarding her womb. It seemed an impossible task.
By this time, a strong push had dislodged one boy's leg. He nearly fell. His father started shouting in panic.
Leaning against the wall on the other side, looking distressed and dehydrated, was a white woman with a child in her arms. She was in tears, and her hair was wet with sweat on this hot, sunny day. She looked like she could collapse at any time.
Right ahead of me, a fight broke out. One man punched another who was trying to push ahead. The second man started crying.
"It's OK. You're OK," people said, trying to calm him.
"No, I'm not OK," he cried.
Meanwhile, the woman standing ahead of me began having a panic attack. "Water, water," she shouted. Someone threw a water bottle at her, and she doused herself with it.
I wondered how three innovative kids, a young girl and two boys, had managed to climb onto the turnstile barrier. Someone had pushed back the barbed wire just enough to make space for them to sit. Every few minutes they would gesture to someone on the other side, and a water bottle would come flying at them. They would catch it and throw it to someone in the crowd who needed water.
This was my third attempt to get inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. My first two attempts were blocked by unruly crowds of hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying desperately to get through the closed gates.
All civilian flights had been temporarily canceled after hundreds of Afghan civilians had rushed onto the tarmac, making landing and taking off difficult.
Monday evening, I learned that a back gate normally closed to the public would be opened for foreigners at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The gate would allow access to the side of the airport guarded by the U.S. military.
As I drove to the airport early the next day, I got a glimpse of life slowly returning to normal in the city. The municipal workers were out, cleaning the main street and picking up trash in their orange uniforms. A few traffic policemen in uniform crossed the street ahead of my car.
Many people, however, were obviously still hiding because of the uncertainty.
"Well, the thing is from previous experiences, whenever they (the Taliban) take over, they're quite calm until they settle. And when they settle in, things change," said a man who did not wish to be named.
After nearly two hours of pushing and shoving, I was finally inside the airport. Now it is just a long wait to see when I can get on a flight out of Kabul.
