How I got to Baghdad (cont.)

I'll back up a bit.  I know, Dear Roomate, I hear you scream "Get on with it!" but Dear Reader is a kinder, gentler audience and I want to paint the full picture.

Although the flight to Heathrow was uneventful, that is not to say that it was restful, or even particularly pleasant.  Your Darn Skippy is not a small man and was larger at his time of departure than he has been for quite some time (larger than he is now, seven weeks on, truth be told).  Economy class seats are not kind to my frame.  The knees and my low back are the special targets for physical discomfort inflicted by long periods in a cramped and uncomfortable chair.  But thankfully, there are no tales of equally huge people sitting next to me, no snoring, and for this leg of the trip at least, no real issues of crying babies.  In fact, I had an aisle seat, and so could control my own access to my seat and to the restroom and had a relatively small British woman sitting next to me who slept much of the flight.  Compared to the possibilities, not unpleasant.

I watched Star Trek (YDS rates it "Fun! but not a classic") and part of Taken (forgettable) and one other movie that escapes me at the moment (apparently even more forgettable).  I read and listened to music.  I even dozed a bit, but I do not generally sleep on airplanes, an unfortunate shortcoming of mine.  So on arriving at Heathrow, while not the horrible place of my imagination, I was still quite tired and disoriented getting there in the morning of the next day (August 15 for those of you scoring at home).

The lounges were all quite bright and loud and commercially oriented, so even though the seats might have otherwise been very suitable for a nap, the ambiance was not.  I eventually ate, not so much because I was hungry (I wasn't) but because I figured I need to keep my strength up for another long flight.  This time from London to Amman.  The layover was not all that long, under five hours, so my memories of Heathrow are not horrific, just ordinary.

Boarding for the plane to Amman was less auspicious.  There was a large contingent of families with small children and as I boarded, I worried that this flight would not be as tranquil as my transatlantic journey.  The odds seemed to favor some, if not all, of those small children crying at one time or another.

Now understand, Dear Reader, lest you think that I am an intolerant baby hater that YDS made serveral transatlantic flights with Skippy Jr. when Skippy Jr. was quite young.  Virtually all of them were disastrous including the last one.  That memorable flight featured just the two of us traveling together. The highlight was YDS nearly having a nervous breakdown saved only by the providence of a flight attendant willing to let Skippy Jr. sit in the galley with the rest of the attendants for a while so that his father could close his eyes for just a few minutes before they popped out of his head.  Therefore, part of me is quite compassionate when it comes to parents traveling with small children.

That part of me, however, must battle stiffly with the increasingly grumpy middle aged man in me, who would like to have a peaceful flight and isthattoomuchtoask, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD???  Pun intended, but not appreciated by YDS while in that situation.  So across the aisle and one row behind was a Middle Eastern man traveling with three small children without any apparent adult female assistance.  And quite predictably, his babe in arms cried.  Not so predictably, however, the baby cried for approximately four hours out of the five hour and fifteen minute flight.  This baby was not the only one crying on the flight, but certainly took honors for the most persistant wailer.

I tried to offer the poor man with the babe in arms sympathetic looks on a frequent basis, as I truly was sympathetic, but those glances became more and more infrequent as the grumpy middle aged man battled against the compassionate parent who had walked a mile in those very uncomfortable shoes.  Time passed, of course, but slowly and the five plus hours between London and Amman seemed much longer than the seven plus between DC and London.

It was deep in the night of August the Fifteenth when we arrived in Amman.  My first landing in the Middle East; my second trip to Asia.  I was tired, somewhat hungry, definitely thirsty, and nursing a vague headache that lurked at the base of my skull, but threatened to jump behind my eye with the full force of a migraine at any moment.  And to be honest, I was a little scared.  I'd like to say I was only nervous, but that wouldn't be true to my real emotion on setting down in the Middle East for the first time.

The Middle East, in my hopelessly American mind, was a land of conflict, a land of strife, of suicide bombers and religious intolerance.  A place of violence and hatred, where the clumsy overtures of American diplomacy (not to mention the clumsier attempts at covert influence) only serve to muddy already troubled waters.  OK, I'll give you the Camp David Accords, but what have we done for us lately?

But my rational mind won out as I gathered my bags.  This was Jordan.  Jordan is okay; it's not all that dangerous here, right?  That hard won confidence shattered quickly as I passed the first bank of drivers with their placards welcoming tired travelers and promising an experienced hand (and an Arabic tongue) in clearing immigration and customs.  There was no placard reading "SKIPPY." 

"That's okay," I told myself, "He's probably on the other side of immigration."  But that voice was small and not confident.  I felt a little better to find that there were other Americans headed to Baghdad whose drivers were apparently similarly missing.  We conspired as to how to find alternative arrangements as we stood in line for immigration and hoped collectively that our drivers were waiting on the other side.  The immigration officer typed for a moment in his computer, studied my state of the art passport, stamped it and waved me through.  I forgot entirely the Arabic word for "thank you" (shakrun, by the way) and so mumbled my gratitude in English and pushed through the gate, hoping against hope that my driver was waiting on the other side.

He was.  As were drivers for every American headed to Baghdad through Amman on that flight (probably a dozen of us).  We made our way out to black Mercedes (Mercedeses?) in pairs, driver and diplomat, and slipped out of the airport and onto the highway into Amman.  My driver was exceedingly pleasant and friendly.  We chatted about his family and mine.  About how long he'd been driving and how long I'd been a diplomat.  We traded stories of our sons.  I breathed easier and tried to take in as much of Jordan as I could at night and along a highway, which was not a lot, but some. 

It's hilly, and people like to hang out by campfires along the side of the highway.  That's mostly what I got.  We arrived at my hotel, in a line with all the other Mercedi and I was whisked inside the 1980s splendor of the Hotel Kempinski.  I overtipped my driver and soon I was in a very nice and comfortable room.

I took an overlong and overhot shower (flooding the bathroom in the process) and slipped between crisp, clean, luxurious sheets of my king sized bed and wondered sleepily if they were Egyptian cotton.  (ba dump bump).  My head spun slightly as my soul unwound from the travel and the excitement and I sunk into the pillows under my head finally relaxing the muscles in my neck.

The second day of travel had concluded and so has this installment of the blog entry.  More to come ...