Night Flight to Pakistan - Part One

Lorraine and I flew to Pakistan in the fall of 1993. It was the first time we'd been to Asia and the first time we'd been to a true "Third World" country. This was a bit like never going to an amusement park and then hopping straight onto the Drop of Doom, followed by the Zipper and then the Ejection Seat. This is a longer story, so I'll break into several more easily digestible chunks.

At first it was all very exciting. We were the only Westerners on the Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Karachi, Pakistan. The plane was full and every other passenger was a Pakistani man wearing a white shalwaar kameez (long loose tunic over baggy pants). I should correct the previous statement though, we were the only Western passengers, the stewardesses were all tall blonde Nordic women. It looked like the aircraft had been hijacked by the Swedish women's Olympic volleyball team. That is, the Swedish women's Olympic volleyball team dressed in gauzy pastel "I Dream Of Jeannie" harem outfits. The effect was as striking as it was ridiculous.

The view out the window was fabulous though. The Persian Gulf slid below us like a sheet of polished black obsidian, gleaming in the full moon and punctuated by bright orange natural gas flairs from the otherwise unseen oil drilling platforms. Iran was to the north and Saudi Arabia was to the south. Pakistan was straight ahead in the east. I looked out the window for a good long while and then, as it was approaching midnight and we had a long day behind us flying from Cyprus, I dozed off. Lorraine was already asleep.

At 2:00 a.m. the shouting began. And I am here to tell you that there are few things in life that get your attention as quickly as being woken to loud shouting by exotic strangers in an aircraft dangling 30,000 feet in the air over the Middle East. My eyes popped open like a cartoon character's and were greeted by the extraordinary site of an old man walking down the aisle, hollering and waving his arms. His pupils were wide and bone-white with cataracts, but his voice was strong. Perhaps even more extraordinary, nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. Lorraine and I looked at each other and then I fingered the stewardess call button for a moment while casting nervous glances at the emergency exits. But neither of these seemed to be particularly intelligent options.

I don't recall exactly how long the shouting went on. Studies have demonstrated that the perception of time slows down drastically when our mind registers a serious threat. And my mind registered a serious threat. In any case, after a few seconds or a few minutes or however long it was, people started handing the old guy money. Crumpled bills were handed up the aisle and across the rows to him while he continued to shout and wave and then just as suddenly as he began, he stopped. Without saying a further word he turned around, found his seat and sat down.

Were they paying him to shut up? Was this a freakish performance of some sort? Was he begging for alms? It's hard to think of an explanation that isn't bizarre, especially in the context of an international airliner. Now we were wide awake and the coast of Pakistan was approaching out of the night.

Bull

Although this blog will mostly feature travel stories I do intend to occasionally write short essays about other items of interest. Well, of interest to me at least. 

The following carries both "dullness" and "obscurity" warnings.

            755 years ago on this very day Pope Alexander IV issued a papal bull forming the Augustinian order of monks. This otherwise entirely dull and irrelevant factoid caught my attention this morning because my mind was still on the leader’s debate last night. The coincidental juxtaposition of politicians and “bull” struck me as curious.

            A papal bull was a proclamation by the pope that was sealed with wax, lead or gold. This seal was rounded and knob-like and called a “bulla”. Fans of anatomy will recognize this word in a variety of non pope related contexts. Apparently similar words from the same root mean “buttocks” in some Eastern European languages, so that does take us a little closer to the modern usage of the word “bull”, but unfortunately not all the way there.

            It turns out that bull as it relates to last night’s debate is not, as I assumed, simply a contraction of bullshit. Instead, bull derives from the old French bole, meaning deception and scheming, and has been used that way since the Middle Ages. For example: “Sais christ to ypocrites ... yee ar ... all ful with wickednes, tresun and bull.” (c.1300). On the other hand, bullshit (also bullplop, bulldust or bullbutter, depending on where you live or on your tolerance for ridicule) has only been used this way for about a hundred years. So bull came first. Go figure.

            I can picture a group of bushy eye-browed Medieval historians sitting around discussing some pope’s controversial bull and one of them blurting out “That bull was bull!” to a round of good-natured but weary chuckles, but otherwise there is no connection between last night’s bull and the Augustinian bull of 1256.

            As a side note though, the Augustinians make excellent beer, so I am grateful for the bull.

Yes, You Climb Volcano!

As my focus has been on my other blogs this blog has been snoozing since our return from the around the world trip. I'll re-post a few old favorites in the meantime until I am able to properly shake it awake.

A number of years ago Lorraine and I were traveling in Southeast Asia when we ended up in a little flyspeck cluster of isles in eastern Indonesia named the Bandas. The Banda islands are each quite small and low and are arranged in a kind of loose bracelet around Gunung Api, an active volcano that rises in a perfect cone out of the sea in Banda harbour like a child's naive drawing of a South Sea's volcano. There is little to do in the Bandas other than snorkel and stroll and fully exercise one's passion for sloth, but after a week or so of staring up at that magnificent volcano I could sloth no more and began to think about climbing it.

The idea was, evidently, not original. Our host smiled and nodded vigorously - "Yes, you climb volcano!!" - and arranged for Bapa Saleh, the guide, to meet me at five the next morning. I say "me" and not "us" as Lorraine has an uncanny intuition for detecting when I'm being an idiot.

So Bapa Saleh and I set off across Banda harbour in a dugout canoe at five the next morning, with me in splendid anticipation of the magnificent view from the peak of Gunung Api that would be had of dawn breaking over the glittering Banda Sea.

This anticipation was almost immediately replaced by bewilderment and then ever-higher states of anxiety as it became painfully clear that this thing was actually going to be bloody difficult to ascend. The volcano was entirely covered by loose sharp rocks on a slope as utterly steep as gravity and the established principles of physics would allow a slope of loose sharp rocks to be. Consequently I was reduced to scrabbling up on all fours with three slips down for every four scrabbles up. In short order, despite the pre-dawn coolness, I was completely saturated in sweat, coated in grime (albeit exotic volcanic grime) and both my knees were bleeding.

At this point it probably bears mentioning that I am a (relatively) young and healthy man. Bapa Saleh was sixtyish, wearing only bathing shorts and a Kentucky Fried Chicken t-shirt and was in bare feet. Bare feet! Moreover, the man could move at an incredible clip and, perversely, his only English was "Slowly, slowly!" which he would periodically shout down to where I lay gasping and panting as he continued to skip up the mountain.

Then it began to rain. Hard.

I have few recollections of the rest of that climb other than that of a strong smell of sulphur and a hazy photo taken by the hugely smiling Bapa Saleh with me looking like something that might have been found in the trenches at the Somme, clutching an Indonesian phrasebook and sitting at the utterly socked-in summit.