marriage wouldn’t be quite complete until it was solemnized by a wedding in Sri Lanka. And we, as honorary brother and sister, were invited.
D ON’T BOTHER LOOKING for a direct flight to Colombo from anywhere else you might be because there isn’t one. Instead, Lisa and I took a flight to London, followed by a long layover in Heathrow’s Terminal 3. We then made a jump to the United Arab Emirates. The departure lounge for the flight to Abu Dhabi was, by far, the most boisterous I have ever encountered. It was a carnival of shouting—one passenger to another, through cellphones, and at the television screen broadcasting BBC One sports highlights. When the call came for passengers in the first three rows to board the plane, almost everyone rushed the gate.
Lisa and I couldn’t afford tickets in the Diamond Zone, or even the Pearl Zone. No precious or semi-precious stones for us; we were to be seated in the Coral Zone, but judging from the stampede of kittens that tried to get on the plane ahead of us, it was a misspelling of “Corral Zone.” The flight began with a prayer in Arabic. I was praying that the flight attendants would manage to keep the kittens in line without having to throw any of them out.
At Abu Dhabi International Airport, the gentleman attending the X-ray machine that scanned our luggage passed the time by burning his hand with a confiscated cigarette lighter. We faced a fourteen-hour layover. As pretty as the airport is—based on a blue desert-flower motif—no one would want to spend fourteen hours there, so a travel agent had arranged for us to spend the layover in a local hotel. Wewere rounded up and handed from agent to agent in a tentative way that suggested that this sort of arrangement had never been tried before. Eventually we found ourselves on a bus to the hotel.
At an intellectual level, I had always realized that the United Arab Emirates is in the desert. I have been to deserts before, but somehow I wasn’t ready for the full enormity of the desert that blankets this part of the planet. Once away from the well-watered, tree-lined avenue from the airport, the world was sand. Not scrubby vegetation clinging to the ground wherever it could find a bit of water, but sand. Great mounds of the stuff as far as the eye could see. We rolled past small communities composed of identical white houses in the style of Scottish castles. Each community had its own mosque, but not a lot of chlorophyll-based life forms.
Poor Lisa. As I caught some sleep, she came to terms with gathering nausea, probably the result of the inflight meal, which had contained a lot of garlic, which Lisa’s stomach doesn’t tolerate. Instead of sleeping, she stared up at the orange sign on the ceiling, which indicated the direction of most holy Mecca.
And so after my first, very brief, trip to the Middle East, we faced a jump across the Indian Ocean. As we approached Sri Lanka, we were told that “Health regulations require spraying of the air before landing. We will be doing this shortly.” There was no mention about what the spray contained. DDT? Arsenic? Lemon-scented furniture polish? We were advised that, should we wish, we could cover our mouths and noses with handkerchiefs. Who carries a handkerchief anymore? Lisa and I did our best with tissues but were the only ones to do so. Flight attendants marched up and down the cabin emptying aerosol spray cans, discharging what smelled like hair spray. Perhaps this was Sri Lanka’s contribution to ozone depletion. It all led to bouts of sniffing and coughing. I’ll bet the rich snobs in the Diamond Zone didn’t get that sort of treatment.
Airport arrivals always remind me of cattle ramps at livestock auctions, with each new arrival getting the undivided attention of the assembled throng. This applies to Colombo International more than most. Behind a barrier on the right as we passed customswere thirty-six eager chauffeurs, each holding a placard with one or more
D ON’T BOTHER LOOKING for a direct flight to Colombo from anywhere else you might be because there isn’t one. Instead, Lisa and I took a flight to London, followed by a long layover in Heathrow’s Terminal 3. We then made a jump to the United Arab Emirates. The departure lounge for the flight to Abu Dhabi was, by far, the most boisterous I have ever encountered. It was a carnival of shouting—one passenger to another, through cellphones, and at the television screen broadcasting BBC One sports highlights. When the call came for passengers in the first three rows to board the plane, almost everyone rushed the gate.
Lisa and I couldn’t afford tickets in the Diamond Zone, or even the Pearl Zone. No precious or semi-precious stones for us; we were to be seated in the Coral Zone, but judging from the stampede of kittens that tried to get on the plane ahead of us, it was a misspelling of “Corral Zone.” The flight began with a prayer in Arabic. I was praying that the flight attendants would manage to keep the kittens in line without having to throw any of them out.
At Abu Dhabi International Airport, the gentleman attending the X-ray machine that scanned our luggage passed the time by burning his hand with a confiscated cigarette lighter. We faced a fourteen-hour layover. As pretty as the airport is—based on a blue desert-flower motif—no one would want to spend fourteen hours there, so a travel agent had arranged for us to spend the layover in a local hotel. Wewere rounded up and handed from agent to agent in a tentative way that suggested that this sort of arrangement had never been tried before. Eventually we found ourselves on a bus to the hotel.
At an intellectual level, I had always realized that the United Arab Emirates is in the desert. I have been to deserts before, but somehow I wasn’t ready for the full enormity of the desert that blankets this part of the planet. Once away from the well-watered, tree-lined avenue from the airport, the world was sand. Not scrubby vegetation clinging to the ground wherever it could find a bit of water, but sand. Great mounds of the stuff as far as the eye could see. We rolled past small communities composed of identical white houses in the style of Scottish castles. Each community had its own mosque, but not a lot of chlorophyll-based life forms.
Poor Lisa. As I caught some sleep, she came to terms with gathering nausea, probably the result of the inflight meal, which had contained a lot of garlic, which Lisa’s stomach doesn’t tolerate. Instead of sleeping, she stared up at the orange sign on the ceiling, which indicated the direction of most holy Mecca.
And so after my first, very brief, trip to the Middle East, we faced a jump across the Indian Ocean. As we approached Sri Lanka, we were told that “Health regulations require spraying of the air before landing. We will be doing this shortly.” There was no mention about what the spray contained. DDT? Arsenic? Lemon-scented furniture polish? We were advised that, should we wish, we could cover our mouths and noses with handkerchiefs. Who carries a handkerchief anymore? Lisa and I did our best with tissues but were the only ones to do so. Flight attendants marched up and down the cabin emptying aerosol spray cans, discharging what smelled like hair spray. Perhaps this was Sri Lanka’s contribution to ozone depletion. It all led to bouts of sniffing and coughing. I’ll bet the rich snobs in the Diamond Zone didn’t get that sort of treatment.
Airport arrivals always remind me of cattle ramps at livestock auctions, with each new arrival getting the undivided attention of the assembled throng. This applies to Colombo International more than most. Behind a barrier on the right as we passed customswere thirty-six eager chauffeurs, each holding a placard with one or more
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