Prayer at 35,000 Feet

After we level off at 35,000 feet, and establish our course eastbound from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim captain I'm flying with slides his seat back and says, "You have the controls, okay? I'm going to pray." A moment later he is standing with his arms crossed, hands on his wrists, facing aft toward the flight deck door. I hear him quietly reciting the Koran while he bends down with his hands on his knees, and then stands back up again. A minute later he is kneeling with his forehead on the floor, ...and then he is back up again. He does this full ritual twice while continuously reciting the Koran. The air is smooth. The sunset has left a faint glow on the horizon behind us. Mecca is less then 100 miles behind my right shoulder. I feel so lucky to be here.

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.

Respect

Three memories come to mind that I think relate. One was quite a while ago. We were boarding a flight that was to take people from Dammam (our home airport) to Riyadh (the capital city of Saudi Arabia). The rest of the flights we do in my airplane only have men as passengers. This is due to the fact that all the oil wells and pump stations we serve are only staffed by men, and transporting these men is primarily what we use the Dash-8 for. Riyadh is a different kind of flight. I’m not sure what department pays for it, but we usually carry a mixture of men and women on these flights. The women are often going to Riyadh to shop and the younger ones are going to college there and coming back home every weekend. I’m not sure why the men go. Maybe it’s for similar reasons. None of it seems to be actual company business, but I could be wrong on that. What is interesting is that the men and women are segregated in the terminal waiting room. Then they come out to the plane in separate buses and all end up intermingling in the plane. I don’t think they actually sit next to each other in adjoining seats, but there isn’t much more than an aisle separating them much of the time and I’m sure this intermingling is viewed as a sort of necessary evil.

I’ve said all this to create a bit of a background for my actual story. As the boarding process was nearing its conclusion my Saudi first officer, and I were wrapping up our preflight procedures and checklist and had settled into a very relaxed and amiable “catching up” of each others’ lives. Suddenly our very senior Saudi flight attendant came up to us and rather agitatedly told us he had asked an elderly lady to change seats out of an exit row, and she had refused. The exit row she was sitting at had an exit door that had no stairs and a 4 foot drop, so the flight attendant felt it was necessary to put her closer to the door with the stairs attached to it. My first officer immediately took it upon himself to try to calm our flight attendant down. He suggested that maybe we should just let this lady have her way, as she was old and was obviously not trying to rebel. We could all plan on doing our best to help her out of the plane if we had need for an evacuation, instead of embarrassing her in front of the passengers. This discussion, by the way, was mostly in Arabic, so I was only getting bits and pieces of it and relying largely on body language. Every once in a while I would get a brief synopsis, but what I saw in the body language was that the calming intention of my first officer was ineffective. Our flight attendant remained passionately incensed and demanded a resolution. Apparently he had gotten in trouble for the very same thing on another occasion, and wasn’t going to have it again. We were already about a half hour delayed due to a maintenance issue that required us to change airplanes so I was feeling a bit of a time constraint. I was also struggling internally with my feelings of obligation to both follow the rules, and support my flight attendant. When I noticed nothing was being resolved I felt it was time to step in and blunder my way through some sort of resolution. I asked the flight attendant if he wanted me to go and talk to the lady myself. He said yes, so I did. Since she was in the front row it wasn’t far for me to go. I went up to her and squatted down in front of her so I would be at her eye level and so as to minimize the attention I was creating. All that I could see of her were her hands and her eyes. Everything else was covered in black (as it was for the rest of the women on the flight). When I looked at her eyes, I could tell she was crying and quite shaken. I tried to explain to her why she needed to move, and that it was necessary for her to follow the orders of the flight attendant. As I was saying all this I made probably my worst cultural (and religious) blunder. My hand was open and facing upward as would be natural in the middle of an explanation, but then I instinctively rested the back of my open hand on her knee. I’m not exactly sure why I did it. I think it was partly to comfort her, and partly to get her attention, but looking back I’m surprised I lived to tell about it. Talking to non-relative women here is very taboo and must be strictly business related and in the company of others. Touching a non-relative woman here is downright obscene. Somehow I got away with it. I asked her politely to change seats with another gentleman close to her but she continued to refuse. Her crying, however, seemed to stop. I told her we wouldn’t be able to go until she moved. After a bit of a pause she finally did move, but very slowly and reluctantly. This involved the moving of four people, actually, to avoid anyone sitting next to someone of the opposite sex. When it was finally done, I got back into my seat, and I could tell that my first officer wasn’t completely happy with what I had done. In his view I had disrespected an elder and this was more of a wrong than disobeying our rules or supporting our flight attendant. We sort of agreed to disagree and got back to regrouping ourselves for the flight …but it wasn’t over. It wasn’t a minute later, and the flight attendant came back up to the flight deck even more agitated than before. He declared that he was quitting right then and there, and that we would have to find a replacement for him. The lady had continued disrespecting him and he was not going to have any more of it. My head was swimming. Was I going to have to kick this lady off of the flight? As my mind groped unsuccessfully for a solution, the first officer came to my rescue. Like talking someone out of a suicide attempt at the edge of a bridge or tall building, he smoothly but definitively gathered up all the charm and persuasiveness he could muster, and successfully dismantled the emotional bomb that was just beginning to blow in front of us. I was in awe. Despite the fact that I couldn’t understand a word he said, I watched as in a matter of less than a minute the flight attendant rescinded his intentions to leave and went back to his duties with nothing but a bit of residual muttering.

Not knowing what else to do I asked my first officer if we were now good to go, and he said yes. Without saying a word about what had just happened we started up the engines and took off toward Riyadh. Once we were in the climb I thanked him for what he did and said I was indebted to him. I admitted that I had been at a loss as to what to do and he had done exactly what was necessary. After we had been flying for a while he called the flight attendant on the inter phone to check up on him. Apparently he was okay. There was even some laughter in the conversation as he joked about now having to stare at this lady for the rest of the flight, who was sitting face to face with him. When we got to Riyadh, I helped the lady down the stairs of the plane and into her wheelchair, after the other passengers had gotten off, and she thanked me. The flight attendant was calm now and in good spirits, but was still bothered by what he had endured.

I realized that the tension in this situation was largely a result of a disrespect of status and position, rather than just being ethnically based. Other tensions I’ve observed, however, have been across ethnic lines. We had an Indian flight attendant yesterday as we flew what we call the “pump run”. This is a long day of flying where we cross most of Saudi Arabia along the east-west pipe line, hopping from pump station to pump station to transport workers in and out of each one. We were briefly pausing at Pump Station #6 to pick up a few folks and take on some fuel. The flight attendant stepped off briefly to talk to the ground staff, and when he did so, a passenger sneaked off the plane to have a smoke. He at least went out to a designated smoking area, but when he came back, the flight attendant reprimanded him and asked for his badge number. The man refused, and once again I was brought into the picture. The flight attendant explained everything to me, and I eventually realized I needed to do something about it immediately. I asked if he wanted me to talk to the offender right then, and he said yes. I went to the guy’s seat and explained to him that I needed him to obey the instructions of the flight attendant. He didn’t say much. Then I asked him for his badge number. He mumbled it, and I had to ask him to repeat himself a few times. After I got it, I thanked him and went back to my seat while the flight attendant looked his number up on the manifest and filled out his report. I was a bit nervous at this point as I knew we now had a somewhat agitated and defiant passenger on board, but since he had obeyed me and seemed to somewhat understand a bit more of the gravity of his offence we pressed on. What complicated the matter was that my first officer had taken advantage of the short break as well to do the very same thing, and he and the offending passenger had actually enjoyed the smoke break together. In his defense he had thought that the passenger had been given permission to do this, but he was, however, obviously agitated once he realized our flight attendant had been disrespected. He brought it up multiple times during the course of the next flight, saying that this is a problem with uneducated Arabs. He said that he has observed them disrespecting people of other ethnic groups many times before, and didn’t like it. He claimed that you don’t see this so much among the more affluent and educated Arab population.

My last memory that relates to this theme of respect, but a little more loosely this time, happened this week as well. We arrived at Haradh in the middle of a sand storm. The visibility had dropped from seven miles to half a mile in just the short hour it took to get there, and the wind increased from 10 knots to a 27 knot direct crosswind. This was all within our limitations, so my first officer expertly wrestled the plane to the runway and did a nice job of landing it as well. We pulled up to the pump and were asked how much fuel we wanted. Before answering we asked how many passengers we were to expect, and they said 30. Our next flight was only going to take a half an hour so we calculated how much fuel we would need to be able to land there under our max landing weight and then decided that since we didn’t have a full load of passengers (37) we could add another 600 lbs of fuel to give ourselves an extra safety margin, due to the rapidly changing weather conditions. All was well until the boarding was done and we were told that we in fact now had 37 passengers. Now we were faced with a tough decision. We would have to either off-load 4 passengers, or plan to circle over our destination and burn fuel for about half an hour before we landed. We presented these choices to the dispatcher at Haradh and he mulled it over for a bit. After talking to the dispatch team at our home airport, they elected to let the choice be mine. I talked it over with my first officer, and we decided the best thing would be to remove 4 of the late passengers. Well, the decision wasn’t going to be completely mine as this wasn’t completely satisfactory to the dispatcher and he began to negotiate with me. He said that there were 3 passengers on board who were contractors (which usually means they are South-Asian expats that are notoriously treated pretty poorly here), and he would rather ask them to get off, than the Arab passengers who had been late. It was explained to me that the Arab passengers were returning to their families and the expats were just being relocated to their quarters in Dammam. Not knowing the full situation, I reluctantly agreed, but said that we would still have about 200 extra pounds of fuel to burn before we landed. This was finally the resolution we all agreed on and we took off about half and hour late. While on the way to our destination we creatively came up with all the inefficient ways we could fly there, the final choice being to fly the complete approach with the gear down (which would require more power and therefore higher fuel burn for the same airspeed). This worked, but I kept thinking how absurd this would be to do in the US with the current cost of fuel. On the flight, my very sensitive Saudi Arabian first officer mentioned multiple times how bad he felt for the contractors that got kicked off. We both agreed that it would have been better to kick off the late arriving Arabic passengers.

This issue of respect is obviously not just a Saudi Arabian issue. We deal with it all around the world. We all carry biases whether we realize it or not, and even our attempts to not be biased often serve only to reveal other biases (as was the case with my second story). The statement “those people are usually racist” is itself a biased statement. I have long been aware of the disrespect that goes on here and I’ve tried my best to give all people I interact with all the dignity I feel they deserve just for being fellow members of the human race, but I never imagined that my job as a pilot would require me to intervene in the biased based conflict of others. It’s going to take a while to get used to this. I hope I can keep my social and cultural blunders to a minimum in the process.