{"id":344,"date":"2016-10-11T20:27:49","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T00:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/?p=344"},"modified":"2016-10-11T20:43:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T00:43:10","slug":"flight-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/flight-delays\/","title":{"rendered":"Flight Delays"},"content":{"rendered":"

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,\u00a0I heard the announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.\u00a0An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHelp,” said the flight service person. “Talk to her. What is her\u00a0problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she\u00a0did this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. “Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee?”\u00a0The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used – she stopped crying.\u00a0She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.\u00a0She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day.<\/span><\/p>\n

I said, “No, no, we’re fine. You’ll get there, just late.\u00a0Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.”<\/span><\/p>\n

We called her son and I spoke with him in English.\u00a0I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her.\u00a0She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.\u00a0Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and\u00a0found out of course they had ten shared friends.\u00a0Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian\u00a0poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.\u00a0She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered\u00a0sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag —\u00a0and was offering them to all the women at the gate.\u00a0To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a\u00a0sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers — non-alcoholic — and the two little girls for our flight, one African\u00a0American, one Mexican American — ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world.\u00a0Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped\u00a0— has seemed apprehensive about any other person.\u00a0They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.<\/span><\/p>\n

This can still happen anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not everything is lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Image Credit: Stuart Miles \u2013\u00a0 freedigitalphotos.net<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,\u00a0I heard the announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.\u00a0An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}