No w(h)ining allowed

3 June 2009

No w(h)ining allowed

Like sentinels guarding my plane seat, the two matronly Jordanian women looked up at me quizzically if not rather hostilely as I stood there in the aisle, studying my boarding pass, hoping that my seat was not 22E. One woman bounced a screaming, red-faced infant spewing saliva while the other rummaged through a diaper bag, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. Yes, it definitely says 22E. Three children ran in circles around the center aisle seats and around me, while an older girl, presumably their relative and appointed to keep watch over this zoo, shooed them away and laughed loudly into her trendy mobile phone while she covered her free ear to dampen the chaos:
“Oh, but Lila, do you know how we got the sleeping pills so Ahmed could sleep on the flight? We put those in with the shampoo in our bag, and they made us put it in the other bag that’s in the plane. So now Ahmed is not going to sleep – he can’t sleep on planes! Funny, right?”
At the mention of his name, the ringleader of the chaos paused his chase and leaned into the girl’s phone, triumphantly proclaiming, “I’m going to stay up all night!”
“La! Halas. Go away, Ahmad!” the girl protested, transferring her phone to the other ear. Meanwhile, the sentinels were using my seat as a diaper changing station, while I continued standing dejectedly in the aisle, kicking myself for choosing 22E on a 12 hour non-stop flight from JFK to Amman.
I turned toward the front of the plane; in both aisles as far as I could see, flight attendants frantically crammed overflowing carry-on luggage into the overhead bins, checked the bags which wouldn’t fit, and warded off protesting passengers refusing to be separated from their American souvenirs.
Accepting that 22E was indeed my seat, I was crushed – literally. I quickly regretted relinquishing my aisle seat so that one of the sentinels could stretch her legs in the aisle. This can’t be too bad once the plane takes off and everyone falls asleep; it is almost 10:30 P.M.. And then the two kids behind me began pounding their balled fists into my seat, shouting, “Yallah! Yallah!” (Let’s go! Let’s go!), and I wondered what sort of crime against humanity deserved this exceptional punishment that is 22E.
It was in this state that I gladly accepted a complementary mini-bottle of red wine when offered to me by the flight attendant. Anticipating the warmth in my arms and legs and welcome drowsiness, I poured a full cup for myself and placed it on the edge of my tray table, brushing away the thought that it was a precarious spot. A minute later, the infant arm shot out, and I saw myself in slow motion reaching for the cup, too late, as red wine spilled onto my legs, feet, pillow and book. The sentinels merely looked on, unphased (and perhaps unfamiliar with the smell of alcohol). Across the aisle a woman surveyed the mess and asked, “What it all that?”
“It’s wine,” I said.
Raising an eyebrow, she replied, “I thought I smelled something. You know why that happened to you, don’t you?”
I knew what she was going to say. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s haram (forbidden).” She smiled and nodded, satisfied by my answer, and I half-believed it myself. Finally, the flight attendant appeared. I sheepishly handed my purplish pillow over and apologized for the mess.
“Unfortunately we don’t have replacement pillows,” he said and I accepted grimly, knowing I wouldn’t need one anyhow since Ahmed and his tribe wouldn’t be sleeping.
“I’m awfully sorry for the mess,” I began again, but he smiled and disappeared into the flight attendant nook adjacent to my aisle, reemerging with a new bottle and cup. “Here, you can drink away your shame,” he said good-naturedly.
I didn’t drink away my shame, but I did drink away this flying island of Jordanians and too much Arabic too fast, the screaming infant and Ahmed and his posse – until an hour later a strong shaking of my shoulder awakened me and startled, I found myself accepting a request to switch seats with one of the sentinels. “Her legs are hurting,” explained the woman whose suspicions I earlier had confirmed about the dangers of alcohol (namely, falling fast asleep). Squeezing into 22D, I reclined my chair only to have the kids behind me renew their fist-pounding. I looked enviously at the sleeping baby next to me, now wrapped around her relative’s shoulder like one of those neck-pillows. The saying slept like a baby never seemed truer than in the following ten hours of bleary-eyed reading and dozing.
What happened after those some 24 hours of traveling until now, sitting in this café, is a bit foggy. In a zombie-state I staggered off the plane, procured my visa and my baggage, and searched in vain for an open mobile phone kiosk where I could purchase minutes for my Jordanian mobile phone. Realizing I wasn’t going to be able to use my phone, I borrowed one from a private-taxi driver, allowing him to think I would shortly thereafter be using his taxi. I called Lawrence, a fellow Sewanee student who is traveling through the Middle East this summer, to meet up near the apartment, and as soon as the driver heard the word bus, he grabbed his phone. I quickly headed for the yellow bus to Amman, the taxi driver harassing me all through the terminal and down the sidewalk. At the bus station I bought minutes, and called Lawrence back (only to find out he had called the taxi driver back thinking it was my phone; apparently the rejected driver answered in a devilish tone with a “Hello, Lawrence”). We met, I got a whirlwind tour of the rather spartan apartment, the friends and family. We headed to Hashem resturaunt and a spread of typical Jordanian food, especially some excellent falafel. It was their nostalgic last night of touring Amman; it was my starkly real first night of two months of research, not play. I felt displaced among sightseers. I lagged behind them through familiar streets until once again we were at the apartment, where I rolled onto, or rather into, a collapsing mattress and slept, almost as well as a baby.