I am flying over East Africa
with a sack of letters in the seat directly behind me. My engine is working
smoothly, there’s no turbulence, it is a delightful day and a luxury to be
aloft, a pleasure to be so high over the world. Yet my business is official. I
must deliver the mail on time. The sun has started to decline in the west. The
light is softer. I seem to be gliding rather than powering my way towards the
mountains. I will cross them soon and adjust my course as necessary. Before
midnight I’ll be in Lamu and the mechanics will be swarming over my craft. Then
I will stroll along the waterfront to my home, to a bed as deep as a cloudbank.
I
set off from Kampala in a light rain shower. My goggles misted over and before
wiping them clean I drew an asymmetrical heart in the condensation of each lens
with my gloved finger. One for you, one for me. I knew I would be with you
again before the next dawn, unless mischance interfered. I take nothing for
granted. There is a ring in my pocket. At last I have decided to ask you to
marry me. The time is right, it has probably been right for months but it is
even more right now. The clarity of the view is extraordinary. My mind is clear
too. My clothes have dried fully, the rain is only a memory. Now I must pull
back on the stick.
Climbing
gently, I nonetheless rapidly rise above the altitude of the highest peak. For
the first time the engine splutters a little. The air’s thin up here, but I
remain calm, breathing deeply and slowly. The DH.60M is certainly an
improvement on the earlier Gipsy Moth model I flew last year. The fuselage is
metal, heavier than plywood, but more sturdy and easier to maintain. It cools
rapidly at this altitude, true, but I never stay very high longer than is
absolutely essential. And here on the equator it is simple to warm oneself back
up by losing a few hundred feet or even just by banking toward the sun. African
sunbeams are molten gold.
Now
I have levelled out. A small amount of vibration as I pass over the range but I
am tempted to take my hands off the controls so I can turn in my seat and peer
down at Batian, that magnificent tower of rock and ice, and Nelion, almost as
high. As they glitter, I am reminded of your smile, then I remember that I am a
pilot, not a poet, and I return my attention to the flight, my mission. Letters
and parcels must be delivered. This is always of vital importance! Words
scrawled in ink on paper are worth the rush and risk, it appears. Who am I to
disagree?
When
I arrive in Lamu, the mail will be transferred to another plane and flown to
Aden. The pilot for that flight is already waiting, sitting in the mess,
looking out onto the airfield. The waterfront of Lamu is across a narrow
channel from the island where the runway is located. The dhows catch the soft
breeze in their lateen sails, the sailors work the rudders, and spices in sacks
are conveyed up and down the coast, across the ocean, part of the vast trading
networks that radiate from this part of the world. Then I will be able to relax
for a few blissful days.
The
hours pass in a haze of anticipation mixed with nostalgia. It is rather
idyllic. I picture the magical times of the past and project them into the
future and observe how they are transformed. Now the sun is very low. I am far
past the mountains, they have receded over the horizon behind me, and I note
something intriguing below. A sparkle and shimmer on the edge of a village. I
am near a point where the culture of the coast, which is quite different from
the cultures inland, has finally spread like spilled coffee to overlap this
thinly populated region. As my altitude decreases and my speed slows, I
understand that I am witnessing a wedding.
The
white canopy of the marquee ripples and the celebrants flow out around it. At
last the drone of my engine attracts their attention. I am in a position to
make a noble and chivalrous gesture. I move the stick from side to side,
dipping my wings as I pass in order to acknowledge them, to wish them health
and prosperity. I’m low enough to observe many details of the occasion, and I
am surprised, just a little, when I see that the bride and her family are
African while the groom and his family are Indian. There are more mixed
marriages these days and that is a good thing. They wave up at me. I salute
them as I pass and then I smile fondly.
It
has occurred to me that in one respect at least there will be a clash of
traditions down there. It is the African custom for the groom’s side to provide
the dowry and the Indian custom for the bride’s family to do so. What will
happen when the time comes for the transaction to take place? The woman will
expect the man to pay but the man will be waiting for the woman to provide the
gold, silver, bronze or whatever is used for money in the village. The end result?
Nobody will pay anything and maybe they’ll be all the happier for it, as they
will be on equal terms, neither obligated to the other. My fond smile turns
into a boisterous laugh.
I
am obliquely reminded of a ghost story that I was told a few years ago by a
pilot based in Dar es Salaam. He had responsibility for the route between
Madagascar and the mainland with a stopover at Comoros on the way. In the town
of Moroni he was given a room in a hotel one night and he climbed his way up
the creaking stairs of the old building. There were no lights because the
electricity had gone off again and even candles were in short supply. He was so
weary that he went straight to bed, pulled the one thin sheet up about his
neck. A cool wind was blowing from the sea and it wasn’t as warm as it ought to
be. Then he fell asleep.
In
the middle of the night he felt the sheet slipping down his body. He reached
out to grip it but the sheet kept moving. Some force was tugging it off him. It
was dark in the room but not quite silent. A faint moaning was audible. With
strength boosted by panic, he applied both hands and yanked the sheet back up
to his chin. The moaning stopped. But only for a minute. And once again the
sheet began slipping down. What followed lasted an hour or two and before long
he was moaning too. It was a fight for possession of that sheet and he had the
unreasonable feeling that if it came right off his body, something appalling
would happen.
His
arms were aching, his hands were cramped, and finally the first light of dawn
seeped through the windows. The room turned from black to grey and it was
possible to see the force he had been battling with. It was another man in the
same bed, a man stretched out next to him but aligned in the opposite
direction, with his head near the footboard. They were parallel but offset.
This is why the sheet wasn’t long enough to cover both of them adequately,
hence the tussle. Neither of them had suspected the presence of the other. They
had assumed a phantom was responsible for the moaning and sheet pulling. A case
of mistaken identity.
The
other man turned out to be an airmail pilot heading in the opposite direction,
from Dar es Salaam to Madagascar. The room in the hotel had been doubled booked
and the management had failed to inform either guest. In the darkness the
exhausted men had climbed into bed without checking whether the room was
already occupied. Once in bed they had felt cold and the tussle with the
bedsheet began. This tale was told to me as a humorous anecdote, a ghost story
that isn’t one, but it bears a relation to the wedding below. Listen. This is a
short report, the exact same number of words as the year in which those events
took place.
Both
men had regarded the bedsheet as rightfully theirs. As for the couple I had
flown over, both partners had considered the dowry to belong to them. There
must have been a similar pulling of expectations during the wedding celebration
as in that hotel room in Moroni, as if hopes were sheets too, with a final
equilibrium achieved when it had dawned on them, literally or metaphorically,
that everything was fine and right. Neither side had relented or relaxed but it
worked out well nonetheless. This is a comforting thought as I near the end of
my flight, as Lamu island comes into sight like a purple jewel in the
slumberous ocean.
I
reduce my altitude yet again, turning to orient my plane with the runway of the
airfield. I know you are standing now to observe my approach, your wait over. I
land with no fuss at all, switch off the engine, unstrap myself and spring out
of the cockpit before the mechanics can reach me. Time is short and I
desperately want to see you. I enter the administration building, push open the
door to the mess, and you are there and you receive me in your arms. I dip my
hand into my pocket for the ring and drop to one knee. There is no hesitation.
You are my true sweetheart and you are also the next pilot, who must carry the
mail to Aden.
But
there has been a mistake, you tell me. A clerical error. You have brought mail from Aden. You landed a few hours ago.
You were told that it would be transferred to a fresh plane for the journey to
Kampala. So both of us have carried cargoes that are going nowhere unless we
exchange all the sacks of letters and parcels and I return the way I have come.
We both are required to give something to the other, something of equivalent
value, for the weight of your airmail sacks and mine are identical. Instead of
two people pulling a sheet in opposing directions, we are throwing our own sheets
over each other. There is no ghost anywhere.
No
one should be surprised that you are a woman. There have been female pilots
almost since the dawn of aviation. No one should be surprised that you are
Indian and I am African, and when we marry you will attempt to give a dowry to
me and I will attempt to give a dowry to you. Our situation will be ultimately
the same as that other couple I flew over. Equilibrium. I thought I would only
have a few minutes with you before you took off in your own plane. But the
error will take a long time to resolve, and it’s no longer our responsibility.
Thus we can stroll along the waterfront together, to our home, to a bed as deep
as a cloudbank.
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