Flight

The flight to Abu Dhabi was set to leave JFK at 10:40 p.m. on a Saturday night.  Etihad Airways, 13 hours overnight, on our way to a three month excursion into the unknown.  Neither of us had ever been to the Middle East nor even close.  But we had been too busy packing and arranging things for the last couple of weeks to get freaked out about it, or really study our guidebooks.  We were in a state of placid upheaval.

As we were seated I was curious about the passengers and the airline itself; wanted to see how they would compare to what I had already read and heard about the United Arab Emirates.  Most of the passengers seemed South Asian rather than Arab:  this did not surprise me as I knew that the working and middle classes in the UAE are dominated by immigrants from the Indian Subcontinent.  There was no one at all in the economy class (the "Pearl Zone" -- I think first class is "Gold Zone") in the national Emirati dress of dishdashas and burquas; the other Arabs aboard were in more conventional dress.

The music being piped into the cabin was a rather pleasant "world ambient" mix.  I wouldn't buy such toothless music for home consumption (I listen to a lot of ambient but I'm very picky about it), but I heartily approve of its use in public instead of the usual cheesy R&B.  At such times I feel we are living in a world for which Brian Eno fought hard. 

13 hours would be the second longest flight I'd ever been on.  I was curious to see how Etihad would stack up against Qantas.  I have pretty good memories of my two Qantas flights across the Pacific four years ago, especially compared to the state of things on the soul-sucking American carriers.  The main reasons for this:  food, free booze, Volcanix, and Qantas socks.

The food thing is simple.  Those Qantas flights four years ago are the last time I've gotten anything to eat on a plane.  It's amazing how much a thoughtful little meal or snack, however stale or bad tasting, can smooth out the rough parts of flying.  The free alcohol thing doesn't have to be explained either.  (On my Qantas flights I enjoyed a good amount of Aussie red wine to get me in the spirit of things.)  I also found out then, as if anyone would doubt it, that Tetris is a great way to kill time on a long flight.  The version of Tetris that Qantas had licensed for its in-flight entertainment system is called Volcanix -- it features blocks which occasionally explode and complicate things in a very fun way, but it's essentially the same game.  I played that thing for hours.  Better than any relaxing drug.  I played it so much that the films I tried to watch bored me (but Garden State and Collateral would have bored me anyway) and I turned them off to play more.

  

The socks were the mystery bonus.  They came bundled in a cloth bag with a sleeping mask and toothpaste.  They were Aussie navy blue, one-size-fits-all -- which on me made them ankle socks -- and oddly shapeless but soft and comfortable with a very loose weave, perhaps being very cheaply made.  I guess they were meant to be some comfy socks to put on and wander about the cabin in case you didn't want to scuff up your regular socks, or you were ashamed of your feet.  Whatever their original intent I kept them and wore them for many years.  (Amo gave me her pair too.)

Okay, so for this Etihad flight:   food -- check.  No chance of being denied a meal on a 13 hour flight.  We got two meals, and they were not horrible, though of course they initially messed up Amo's request for a vegetarian meal.  For the culturally curious there was seemingly not much in the way of Middle Eastern fare on the menu.  We got pasta, frozen vegetables, risotto, and salad.

The alcohol we were worried about.  Etihad is based in a Muslim nation, one that is for the most part dry except for a few hotels and specially licensed bars.  I don't know if this sounds bad, but I really don't like to fly without drinking.  Whatever you may think of alcohol's limitations as self-medication in everyday life, it sure does take the edge off the very real anxieties produced by hurtling in a metal machine five miles over the ocean.  Takes them off in a very real, very practical way.  Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised by having drinks offered to us.  Hell, they could have charged us considering a lot of their clients don't drink, kind of like a tax on being Christian or whatever, and I probably wouldn't have minded.  But it was free.  

The really charming thing was the surprising discovery of Etihad socks!  Yes, the stewardesses 

gave us each a cloth bag bundled with the same items as Qantas, including the weird socks.  Presumably made by the same supplier, but instead of navy, they were a buff or cream color, the same as the Etihad stewardesses' scarves which hang down from their caps in a strangely half-assed concession to Muslim veils.  I guess?  If I'm wrong about this and these half-veils are some great tradition someone please let me know.

(Note:  the synergy in the picture, with the Etihad stewardess in front of the Sydney Opera House, is entirely coincidental; it's the first pic of an Etihad stewardess I found on google.)  To complicate my judgment, all of the stewardesses were Filipina.  As I would soon come to discover, most of the hotels, fast food restaurants and retail stores of Abu Dhabi are staffed by immigrants from the Philippines.  Maybe the half-done look of the scarves had something to do with this bit of culture clash -- in fact I noticed a few of the Filipina stewardesses removed their scarves during bulk of the long flight.

The plane had an in-flight system similar to that on Qantas.  (I've never flown Virgin, so its fantastic in-flight systems are only rumor and legend for me.)  And sure enough it had a serviceable version of Tetris.  No exploding blocks though.  I dove right in.  Amo was a little miffed that I didn't want to watch a film with her.  Her idea was to start the same film on our personal systems at the same moment.  I wasn't sure if watching the same film on two separate tiny screens on the back of others' chairs while wearing headphones would constitute quality time.  (Though maybe it'd be cool to do this type of thing on a proper soundsystem, play several copies of the same film at once with slight delays to see if one can get dialogue in a film to do a Reichian pulse?)

This flight became a really weird non-ordeal.  The seats have much less legroom than Qantas and I was of course pinned behind a guy who leaned back all the way.  I'm very tall and this left me with almost nothing.  But for some reason I was chilling.  One very poorly made rum drink, and some pasta and frozen veggies, and I was good to go.  In fact I can't believe how few games of Tetris I actually played before I was ready to pass out.  Note that I do not use the term "sleep" for that state which overcomes me on an airplane.  It's more a mere lack of consciousness.  And then comes the inevitable time warp.  You're zooming toward Asia, toward tomorrow.  They turn the lights out in the cabin after dinner.  You don't know how long the lights are out.  You wake up seemingly every five minutes to shift your legs.  You pass out again, sort of wake up again, have hours passed?  You hear clinking off in some murky distance which indicates a meal is on its way.  Ah, breakfast!  Wait a minute, it's going to be 8pm in Abu Dhabi when our flight lands.  Hmmm.  Sure enough, it's more pasta and frozen veggies and a salad.  I'll have to wait until afterwards for coffee.  Should I have a drink or not?  (A Bloody Mary perhaps?)  

I realized we were across the terminator line and the sun was up.  I could see very bright

sunlight peeking in through some of the closed window-shades.  We were in the middle and therefore had no control over the shades.  I wondered where we were.  For the entire flight, the animated map of our journey on the entertainment system had not been working correctly.  But I figured we must have been somewhere over Africa.  I got up to wait in line for the bathroom and kill some time.  I looked out over the forward part of the Pearl Zone cabin as I waited.  More passengers were awake than asleep; most of them were on their little entertainment systems, and most of them were watching Bollywood films.  What's funny is that every little monitor had a different Bollywood film playing, but most of them had the same cast.  I think I saw Shahrukh Khan about a dozen times at different stages of his career, sometimes dancing, sometimes shooting a pistol on a motorcycle with a girl clutching him, in a weird colorful video collage in the dark Pearl Zone.  Folks, if you didn't already know, it's a Bollywood world, and we Westerners with our action films and cheesy R&B just live in it.  My time in Abu Dhabi has only reinforced that truth.  

Amo had watched a Shahrukh Khan film too; I can't remember the title, and I wouldn't know how to spell or pronounce it if I could.  But peeking over her shoulder it was obviously a somewhat sophisticated film-within-a-film, a kind of late-career satire of his own fame.  Later I asked her if it was good and she said it was.  I remarked on how good looking he is.  She agreed wholeheartedly.  I asked her if she would dump me for him.  She said he's too short.

The head became available and I went in.  Instantly I gasped.  Outside the porthole, there below me, was Africa.  It was astonishing.  Brown and yellow mountains, valleys and plains stretched away endlessly under a perfect blue.  Little puffs of perfect white clouds cartoonishly, almost joyously raced past in the miles of air below us from time to time.  I could see rivers reflecting the sun like veins of light.  I was so captivated I just stood there for a while.  Then I did my business and looked again out the porthole.  Everything had changed.  The vista was even more breathtaking.  We were over an enormous crystalline body of water, the horizon curving to remind me that indeed this is a planet, with a vast peninsula receding into a distance.  I'm not sure which one.  I wondered at the time if it was the Sinai, but my perspective may have been overwrought by my amazement -- can one see the entire Sinai peninsula from a jetliner's toilet window?  I don't really care; I'll always remember it anyway.  And I love puzzling over things like that, love living with mysteries.  Spending time looking at maps and trying to work them out.  And I will be just as delighted if I find out one day.

Reluctantly I left the head and returned to my cramped seat.  It was dark as ever in the Pearl Zone.  Everyone was awake, but everyone was staring at their videos.  I had the melancholy realization that even with the chance beckoning to look at this world on a brilliant day from five miles up, most people would rather watch TV.