Blog Entry- August 26

We were all on the plane from Doha, slowly descending towards Islamabad. For whatever reason, it appears that foreigners and expats had seats towards the front of the plane.  The man beside me is a German Pakistani who had come back to visit his family in Gujrat. He immediately appears to be full of sarcastic humor, muttering darkly to himself about the Pakistanis on board.

Two or three journalists are on board- two from the States, and one from the UK (how do I know this? Sources cannot be revealed J). It is weird being on board with them; the mood in the plane is charged. You can feel the tension in the air as people worry about the future of Pakistan. But the journalists remain at a detached distance. One of them, I see, as I peek over the seats, is reading a Tom Clancy Splinter Cell novel. And we wonder why journalistic reporting can get a bit melodramatic.

A few seats in front of us, an Emirati sheikh is with his wife, and has clearly imbibed imperialist tendencies. While most of the flight crew speak Arabic and English fluently, he makes it a point to imperiously summon and then interrogate a Thai hostess about her place of origin. Unfortunately, neither his English nor her English were very good. This is one of the conversations I got to overhear.

ACT I, SCENE 1: THE PLANE.

EMIRATI SHEIKH, lounging backwards into chair: Are you from China?

HOSTESS: No…

EMIRATI SHEIKH: Are you from Japan?

MUSTAFA, in his chair, looks up from his laptop. This conversation has caught his attention, and he is now eavesdropping without reserve.

EMIRATI SHEIKH: Are you from India?

HOSTESS, embarrassed and starting to get a bit heated: No! Do I look like I’m from India?

EMIRATI SHEIKH, silent for a few moments. Then: I cannot guess where you are from.

HOSTESS: I’m from Thailand.

EMIRATI SHEIKH: Ohh, I see. Why can you not speak Arabic?

HOSTESS: Uhhh…

EMIRATI SHEIKH: Malish, Malish. The plane is landing, and the seat belt sign is now on. Fasten my daughter’s seat belt.

HOSTESS, clearly weirded out by the conversation and by the fact that he isn’t buckling his daughter’s seat belt, fastens seat belt, then walks away.

Suddenly, through the window, I can see the lights of Islamabad. Sunrise has almost begun; I quickly eat a handful of M&Ms (this, by the way, is a bad idea. It leaves a strange chocolaty taste in your mouth. I remember now why I don’t like chocolate. I also am not fond of dentists.).

The German Pakistani beside me is listening to (judging from the high pitched female voice emanating from his headsets) Urdu love songs. Every so often he shakes his head in wonder. The American journalist is still reading the Clancy novel. Every other passenger, myself included, is glued to the window. And the reason is whispered like a poison throughout the cabin, “Barish.”

Barish means rain. Rain. As we land smoothly on the runway, the pours heavily onto the tarmac. Huge puddles are forming in the indentations of the runway. The thought is in all of our heads- if there is this much rain pooling onto the roads of the well-built, well-groomed Benazir Bhutto International airport, what must the situation be like in villages already drowning from the floods? I hear an older lady behind me say a prayer. The German Pakistani uncle has now taken off his headsets, and is staring glumly through the window. Two seats away from me, totally oblivious, the UK journalist is filling out his immigration card, a slight frown on his face.

Motivated, I think, by the rain, we climb off the staircase from the plane into the pouring rain. A random Pakistani uncle holds the Emirati Sheikh’s bags as the Sheikh holds his daughter’s hand tightly. The German Pakistani man holds a large plastic bag for an elderly woman. As the rain pours down, I look around us, and realize that there is still mercy in the rain.

Islamabad airport has become an aid Ground-Zero zone. I hurry into the line marked for foreigners and diplomats. A large sign reads, “WELCOME GENEROUS DONORS”. Immigration literally takes a few minutes.

There is an elderly British woman standing beside me at the conveyor belt. I’m not sure what she is doing here; she looks too kind to be a journalist, too relaxed to be a businesswoman, and too self-conscious to hide that this is clearly her first time in Pakistan. The porter beside her has a slightly smug expression curling beneath his mustache as he packets away fresh UK pounds. I shake my head at him; he surreptitiously winks back and presses the money to his lips.

Fifteen minutes later, more luggage is still coming, but neither my luggage nor the elderly lady’s luggage has showed up yet. The lady’s hands are shaking a bit. I try to comfort her, shocking her with my English (I say shocked because her eyes bugged out slightly behind her horn-rimmed glasses), “Don’t worry ma’am. The luggage will come soon, God willing.”

She laughs nervously, “We need to pray hard for that, don’t we?”

As she finishes her sentence, she lets out a little yelp of excitement as her bag suddenly comes into view on the conveyor belt. The porter wades in and fishes it out for her. As they are about to leave, she suddenly turns around fully and very deliberately states, “Alhamdoo-lillah”.

“Hallelujah,” I say weakly back. She gives a cheery wave and vanishes with the porter. I turn back to the conveyor belt.

I start to feel increasingly worried. Why hasn’t my duffle bag come yet? As this thought flashes through my mind, a thick wad of blankets wrapped in ropes suddenly appear on the belt. Beside me, a man reaches over and grabs it, and then quickly opens it to check that his clothes are inside. I feel a bit queasy inside. While I worry about my bags, he doesn’t have a bag to worry about.

I suddenly laugh, almost aloud. I guess I realized something as I walked over to the Lost Baggage section and filled out a form: The less you have, the less you have to lose. There is a reason that people who realized their true Adamic potential, like Socrates, Galileo, and Malcolm X, died in relative poverty. The less you have, the less you have to lose.