The Wake of a Prince

The Saud royal family is fairly extensive and apparently there are hundreds of princes. One of the princes needed a ride from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Beirut, Lebanon, and I was asked to do it in our little Dash-8. This particular prince is the governor of the eastern province (where I live) and I’m sure would be in a much nicer airplane if he were more important, but the way people acted around him made me realize he was no ordinary guy.

They took out most of the 37 seats in our little Dash 8 and put 12 first class seats in and a nicer looking carpet. I’ve never seen such an ordinary airplane look so comfortable inside. As we got ready for him and his 10 companions we had a little snag that was starting to turn into a pretty big deal. Catering had not provided any cups or coffee and said it would take them an hour to go get; an hour we didn’t have. So after a bit of heated argument we finally chose to buy the stuff ourselves from a coffee shop in the building. We were way overcharged, but there was nothing we could really do about it. The mechanic we had with us was extremely helpful and volunteered to go get the cups and coffee for us while we continued to get ready. Pretty soon a few members of the entourage came and scoped out the scene. Then the prince came out with the rest of his traveling companions and about 10 other people that came to say goodbye to him. They all took turns bowing and kissing him out on the tarmac, while I stood next to the door of the plane with the main ramp coordinator next to me. The prince shook each of our hands and paused long enough to graciously thank each of us with a genuine look of gratitude. I was surprised how genuine he seemed. I guess I was expecting a sort of political showiness, but none of that seemed to emanate from him. He and a few of the older passengers had on a dark robe over their white thobes with shiny gold lining along the edges which added to the regal look. Otherwise everyone had the same white thobe and checkered cloth (“gutra”) on their heads secured with the usual black chord that almost every male wears in Saudi. It wasn’t long and we were starting engines, only 9 minutes late!

We made one fuel stop in north-central Saudi Arabia on our way up. It was interesting to watch the varying topography along our journey. North-central Saudi has about the most amount of agriculture that I’ve seen out here in the desert, with hundreds of crop circles. The mechanic explained that there were lots of underground springs in the northern area that allowed it to produce much of Saudi’s domestic food. Eventually we were flying over bare sand that, from our altitude, seemed to have large ripples in it, all facing the same direction. Once we got into eastern Jordan, the sand was very dark with much more rough and random patterns. I don’t remember seeing any sign of civilization in this area. Next we crossed over southern Syria and the sand got lighter again but quickly turned into a pretty steep mountain range. The highest mountains served as the border between Syria and Lebanon, and, believe it or not, had patches of snow on them. Once we crossed these mountains I couldn’t believe the beauty before us. Like a huge grandstand with the Mediterranean Sea as the stage, the terrain naturally sloped down to the water for more than a hundred miles. There were a lot of buildings on these slopes, each with an unobstructed view of the sea. There were trees everywhere (we don’t see too many trees in Saudi) and the visibility was much clearer than we had had the rest of our trip. The city of Beirut sticks out into the Mediterranean on a sort of peninsula, with the airport just south of it. We made a wide circle over the sea around the western side of the airport from north to south and landed to the northeast.

Once we landed we slowly made our way to the General Aviation ramp and were parked right in front of a private terminal. A bunch of stout Lebanese men dressed in Western suits came up to our plane and greeted us, as our passengers proudly deplaned in their flowing white robes, checkered head cloths and trademark Saudi goatees. Despite the fact everyone was speaking Arabic, there was an obvious contrast in cultures. Everyone seemed happy to see each other, and it was nice to know we had been a large part of making it happen.

After the mechanic and flight attendant had their cigarettes and catering had refilled our plane with enough food to feed a small village we took off for our 4 hour journey back home. We had enough of a tailwind to make it all the way back without a fuel stop, so we reluctantly left the beauty of Lebanon and retraced our flight path over the mountains, across southern Syrian and eastern Jordan avoiding Iraqi airspace sometimes by only about 20 miles. The food was incredible; shrimp, lobster, raw salmon, crab, fruits of every kind etc. What a feast! We had so much food in the plane after we landed that everyone we met, including customs officials, mechanics, ground handlers, etc got trays and trays of food from us. Everyone was happy and eagerly received everything we gave them.