End of Manners by Francesca Marciano Page A

course.”
    She eyed my coat.
    “You haven’t got anything less bright than this, have you?”
    “No, this is the warmest thing I’ve—”
    “Hmm.” She gave a slight shake of the head. I could tell she wasn’t crazy about my thick green quilted jacket. The color was hideous and it didn’t suit me. I’d bought it on sale at the last minute, terrified by the polar temperatures in Kabul I’d seen online.
    “Why, what’s wrong with it?”
    “No, it’s just that in this color they’ll see you coming a mile off. Besides, only a Western woman would wear a Day-Glo green down jacket. The idea is to camouflage ourselves with the colors they wear up there, you know what I mean?”
    “Right. Unfortunately I’m not sure I brought any—”
    She grabbed me by the sleeve.
    “It’s okay, don’t worry, I’ll lend you something. Come on, let’s go buy some silly magazines. It’s an endless flight.”
    Just then her cell rang. She read the name on the display and did a graceful twirl on her toes, curving in on herself.
    “Hello?” Then she roared with laughter and started speaking very fast in Russian.
    She grabbed my arm and moved away in long strides, her expression becoming suddenly serious and attentive, asking one question after another of her interlocutor. She kept a strong hold on my elbow throughout the conversation and directed me towards the newsstand. Still talking and sounding a bit more concerned now, she pointed with her chin towards
Vogue, Harpers & Queen
and then moved to the next shelf and indicated
The New Yorker,
which I dutifully picked up along with the other two. She then proceeded to guide me to the cashier, where she made a gesture with her hand, holding her cell between ear and shoulder while fumbling in her bag, meaning that she wanted to pay, now listening to her caller’s monologue and interjecting a series of sparse
“Da…Da…Da”
as she pulled out her wallet. She paid and mouthed a silent thank-you to the cashier, still on her Russian conversation, then guided me to the gate. When they finally called the flight to Dubai, she was still pacing up and down a distance away, immersed in her phone call. I had to wave my arms wildly to attract her attention, gesturing to her that all the other passengers had boarded and we were the only ones left. She walked over, shut the phone and sighed.
    “Work, work, work. You know what it’s like.”
             
    On the plane, Imo slept almost the whole time, curled up in her shahtoosh with her Nano buds in her ears, wearing that very soft pair of cashmere socks she carried in her bag.
    I couldn’t close my eyes for one second. I spent most of the flight staring at the monitor that showed our progress. As we advanced, the names of the cities I read on the blue screen acquired an increasingly fabulous sound: first Baden, Budapest, then Tehran, Baku, Tashkent, Samarkand, Dushanbe. Enclosed as we were in the cocoon of the plane, cradled by the hum of the air-conditioning and the muted sounds in the cabin, it was mind-blowing to think that these two realities—the plane with the randomly assorted crowd it contained and the lands below—had actually merged into one. I looked at the sleek Arab businessmen working on their laptops, the noisy Pakistani children running up and down the aisle, the Eastern European stewardesses in their veiled Emirates uniform handing out juice from the trolley, the young Australian couple checking their Lonely Planet. If we’d had to make an emergency landing, would we have found ourselves surrounded by nomad tents? Or would it be the steppes? The desert? Or rather, wasn’t Mongolia the one with the desert and the nomad tents?
    By the light of dawn, the Hindu Kush suddenly opened out beneath the belly of the plane. Glinting in the first rays of the sun that tinged it with pink, this gigantic range of mountains was a herculean apparition that evoked blaring trumpets, a Wagnerian sound track. I wanted to wake Imo