ABOARD THE AIRBUS 340 LUFTHANSA #417 AS A STANDBY-
WHEN THE LAST BECOME FIRST-
FIRST CLASS PASSAGE EARLY TO FRANKFURT
FOR "PASSAGE TO INDIA"
Sep. 17, 2001
I am in the classic "Last Shall Become First" position, having set out to do what I could do in picking up the locked up bags from DCA this morning the moment the airport opened and a helpful U/A agent named Jim Rogieri had left a message on my phone, whom I called from the cell phone on approach to DCA from the rental car, and he put the three bags on a trolley and came out to the outer traffic island, delivering them as the last unclaimed bags. He said he had checked with the police, who had found the legal rifle in the locked case was registered and inoperative, and the other bags were medicines for the masses. He helped me into the rental car and then added-
"You had best be moving on!"
The police were patrolling and I just got away in time to avoid being told I was loitering at the curb, posing a security risk in the empty airport. I drove to the Visitor's Lot at GWU ($12.75 for two hours) and drove the rental car from Enterprise in, and in the parking structure separated out the hunting gear and clothes with the exception of the cased rifle. I packaged up the clothes and put them in the cardboard box I had brought from home and mailed it to Gene Moore, whom I had called last night to ask if I could borrow a rifle in Colorado, since there was no way I would be able to check any weapon in any airport now, least of all DCA.
I mailed the Dictaphone that had been accidentally left in the rental car and the John Adams audiobook and sent it to Alden Harken. I sent the remarkable tapes of the events at the evacuating of DCA airport on Tuesday to Milly. I made a couple of calls, and found there was no answer in Lufthansa, that Krisbi Travel was unhelpful, and that Ravi's wife Carolyn had said only to call to keep her posted regarding my progress in getting to India, as yet totally unknown.
So, I drove to Enterprise at IAD and turned in the car, struggled with the big boxes of medicines and the half empty duffel bag, which I am also checking, and loaded the Smart Carte I found at the terminal. I had left three messages on the phone of Ziba Vali-Coleman, Lufthansa's IAD chief supervisor, who has helped me in the past, and she said to me when I came in that I should not stand in the queue for the oversold six o'clock flight to FRA, but go directly to the first class check in for the L/H #417 leaving at 4:05 pm. I found myself with the bags checked and holding seat 14H-and only when I made the quick calls to say I was on my way and got on board did I realize---I am in First Class.
THE TIMES, THEY ARE ACHANGIN'-
EVEN IN THE FIRST CLASS SECTION
As I unrolled the linen napkins for my four-course meal with several wines I realized the "tromp l'oeill" of the elegant service-inside the linen napkin were nestled a plastic flimsy fork, spoon and knife. The tenor of the times has hit.
This crew is the first to be in the air to American Airspace since the blow on September 11, and in the introduction and the standard "welcome on board", the purser said she wished to express her own, the company's, and all of Europe's sympathies to the American passengers who are boarding this Airbus 340. She then wished to assure us we would be the recipients of their best service to get us as quickly and safely to our destinations as far away as my own-round the world 11 ½ time zones East to begin my delayed Medical Mission-which, being humanitarian, is not at all like that of the terrorists who snuffed out 5,000 lives to bring attention to their cause in their self-immolation. May Allah judge them harshly for their mis-placed piety.
So, I am going to try to put this group together, both from the strandees in Europe and those who have gone on to India, who are awaiting three things that it seems only I can supply: 1) The medical license under which these students and others are practicing, 2) my supervision for the medical components of the mission in the remote Spiti Valley, 3) and the medicines I am packing with me, with the two additional boxes I could not reach Elizabeth Yellen to retrieve in time to carry those along for Nepal. But, I have an over abundance for India, and with the right restraints in their use, along with the purchases that Ravi has made in his two advance days in India, we should be able to help these poor and pacific peoples in Southwest Asia-right across the border from their very belligerent brethren in the high mountains-harboring a fugitive from World Justice on the Afghani side of the border near us along the Pir Punjal.
I may have been delayed, but they have not forced me to cancel-and "thus be it ever when good men shall stand between their loved ones and the war's desolation."
ARRIVAL IN A COOL FOGGY DAWN IN CENTRAL EUROPE
INTO A NEW SECURITY STATUS,
EVEN AMONG THE NO-NONSENSE GERMANS
As I left Washington through the crowds of GWU students going to class in their summer attire-i. e. short shorts and tank tops wearing shades-I realized that when I return it will be summertime no longer, but mid-fall. The students have already had more holidays than their luckiest dreams of a heavy snowstorm. Labor Day was compounded by the terrorist shutdown of last week, and next week, the IMF/World Bank conference was the planned target of demonstrators a la' Seattle and the last time in DC. So, the GWU president Trachtenberg, acting on advice of DC Police closed down the University during these conference dates. Due to the intervening disaster and terrorist strikes, it now appears that the IMF and World Bank are going to cancel their meeting, even as the DC Police are being helped by the National Guard and the Army, complete with Hummers, and Helicopters are patrolling the streets of DC focusing on GWU's campus. Today, GWU announced that regardless of the decisions of the IMF and World Bank, the University would be closed anyway-so education has taken a heavy hit for the month of September. I am not there taking full advantage of the extra holidays, since I am already out on this glorious vacation holiday in exotic wonderful resort locations!
I have a dose of that now in Europe, where the "first fog of the season" has delayed the dawn with a temperature that had to warm up to get to 40* F. I have seven hours to wait for the connecting flight to Delhi due to our early arrival, so I set up in a gate that was not open and where I could find an open electrical outlet, which I had carried an adapter and a step down transformer to charge up my laptop. I always arrive in any airport wandering suspiciously looking under things in corners and trying to hook up electronics-not a good way to avoid attention these days, but I have been a consistent "juice junkie" to keep my laptop functioning in the air. As soon as I had set up shop for the long haul a security agent came along in the humorless German huffiness they are famous for. I would have to leave, since this whole area is devoted to the later departure of some flights to (hushed tones---) "America."
"Yes, and thank you for that, since that is who I am and where I just came from," I answered in English. So, any flight to America now gets an extra going over, which means-as the announcement had it over the DCA PA during the crisis on Tuesday recorded on the tapes now sent to Milly-"This area is now sterilized!"
So, they debugged that whole section of the terminal by throwing out the only American there to make it safe for the American traffic. Life has made a few ironic twisting turns in recent events.
The headlines here are about the opening day on the NYSE and the plunge in the markets notwithstanding a surprise Fed ½ percent rate cut to stave off panic and avert a recession. But the interest rate might be zero or positive, and that still would not erase the losses to the airlines, insurance companies and hotels which look like they will shake out from a bad season to a worse future. My return flight onward from IAH at Houston to New Orleans is on Continental, which has cut flight s and laid off 12,000 employees, given their bath in red ink. USAir announced over 10,000 layoffs and the airlines are requesting 10 to 20 billion US treasury dollars to bail them out of collapse. They are also seeking protection from liability claims-for which they seem to have a good case, since everyone from the President on down has proclaimed this action an "Act of War" and not a civil dispute, and for that there would be no liability on the companies.
But the DJ seems to have fallen off over 700 points to day, despite the appearance of the US Secretary of the Treasury and the SEC and all the other stiff-upper-lip brass they could muster at the opening, including having the "heroes of the moment" the NYFD ring the opening bell. So, it is not just the airlines that have suffered, but coming after a series of losses mounting up to one third value evaporating, this further depressed the market's value over 7 % in the first day of trading after the longest suspension since the Great Depression. The rally should come along with the realization that America will have to rebuild in several areas, not only where the buildings were dissolved, but also in building and beefing up a special defense system against the foggy attacks of terrorism. A world coalition is being built by a resurgent popularity for the solidarity Americans behind the president, which is saving George Bush to make him as undefeatable as his father was when he put together the Gulf War coalition-but it may take longer to do so, and at least longer than I will be sitting next to the Afghan border to see low-flying cruise missiles streaking overhead if the Pakistani delegation to visit the Taliban today did not convince them to hand over Osama bin Laden. But a jihad in which a number of the hard scrabble Afghans are sent straight to the Gardens of Paradise by the Great Satan's capitalist missiles will likely spawn a whole school of bin Laden wannabes, since direct access to such glorious entry into Paradise is denied to most and so few are spectacularly successful as the crew standing at attention in the prow of a rubber raft motoring up to the USS Cole, or at embassies or on board four wide-bodied airliners with Koranic red head bands identifying their remains for Allah to sort out of the fragments of the faithful in the pyre they created..
I am going to be moved again as soon as they open this gate and "sterilize" this area. I am only glad, that, for the moment, I would hardly fit any profile of high suspicion, since I do not have the name Muhammad (the single most common male name on earth) Abdul Rashid or any of the other of Allah's 99 names. I know Islam well enough to know that many clerics are probably cringing any time that the terrorists use that name in vain to justify their political pogroms-rather like the good people of the world in the Christian camp must feel when a righteous brother bombs an abortion clinic and kills doctors since he has a divinely inspired revelation as to what is right that supercedes a few of the crystal clear ten commandments that might indicate unambiguously otherwise. For now, I would hope that they might judge not, that they be not judged, and that those who have their own higher standards are brought down to the level of the rather common law to be called to account for their deeds-in which case they can answer to the higher standards they have imposed upon others a la' Timothy Mc Veigh. It will not be long (about twelve hours actually,) before I am "profiled rather easily as not being "one of them" since my name and countenance stand out as easily where I am going as a Muhammad Abdullah might here wearing a full kafta and headdress.
And, so, in rather unusual circumstances, off to work I go, as soon as I was able to get out in the long commute that brings me here again-half way along, where I am now perched in my European origins, but headed into my Asian workplace.