The Guilt of Fortune

Eight months now and I’m taking a look back. I feel very fortunate to be where I am, despite the 120 degree temperature outside and the geographical rift between myself and my favorite two people. The economic climate in the U.S. looks pretty grim especially in the airlines. Many airlines have announced upcoming furloughs. Others are doing the same, or going under. My employer has recently hired at least three ex-Aloha pilots after they closed for business. I suspect the rate of pilots knocking on their door will only increase in the next coming months.

Another fortunate thing for me is the hierarchy here. As with the U.S. it all comes down to seats – what seat you drive the airplane from (left or right) and how many seats are behind you when you do. The natural order of things in the U.S. is that one starts off as a first officer for a regional airline, then “upgrades” to a captain position in that same regional airline (the position I was in when I left). In a few years that captain might find himself with enough experience to interview for a major airline where he starts over as a first officer in a bigger airplane. Finally, after 10 years or so he might find himself eligible for a captain position that same airline where he ends his career slowly improving his pay and lifestyle by means of his longevity with the company and/or advancement to ever larger airplanes. Let’s call these levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. Here things operate a bit differently. A first officer in the small airplane finds that his next opportunity for advancement is as a first officer in a big airplane (the Boeing 737 – which is the same airplane many major airlines use) instead of as captain of the small plane. After he has proved himself there, he can finally advance to being a captain of the small airplane he started in. As with the U.S. his final step will more than likely be the captain position of the big airplane. So in effect the order, as compared with the U.S., is 1,3,2,4. What that means for me is that since I am in level 2, I have unwittingly skipped a step, and find myself ahead of the guys that came over from the American system as level 3 pilots. Unfortunately for them, they have to retrace some of their steps. A few guys I know, were actually captains in the big airplane back home, and came here as first officers in that plane, which in effect bumped them down two “levels”.

Despite this reshuffling of our career advancement plans all the ex-pats here are pretty mature, and we all treat each other as equals. What continues to be harder for me to rectify, however, is the disparity of the South Asian workers here. I can see it in their eyes as they watch me and notice how easy my life is. I wonder what goes on in their minds. They are all really polite and friendly to me and many of them I know by name and interact with on a daily basis, but, I can’t help but think about the tinge of jealousy they must feel. For whatever reason God wrapped me in white skin, gave me a pointy nose and large ears. He also chose to give me access to American citizenship and English as a first language. Coincidentally this little “starter package” put me well ahead of most of the rest of the world in terms of opportunity. None of this would be anything I could logically boast about, as I really had nothing to do with it, yet here I am in Saudi Arabia with slightly darker fellow humans begging to serve my every need for pennies.

It’s hard for me to enjoy my affluence. Part of me would rather not have it, as it comes with a good share of what Khaled Hosseini calls the “guilt of fortune.” Hosseini is an Afghan doctor - turned author in San Francisco, who wrote two of my favorite books: “Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. I heard him once on an interview where he talked about a feeling he shared with the main character of his first book. The character was a Sunni boy in Afghanistan who was part of a wealthy and prestigious family and was served by a lower class Shi’a boy who became his best friend. The class difference was always unsettling for this Sunni boy and became all the more unsettling the more eager his friend was to serve him. Without ruining the story, I’ll just say that the Sunni boy turns out to have the lower character of the two, and lives the rest of his life bearing the guilt of the realization that the consequences of his moral ineptitude were suffered more by his much more “righteous” childhood friend. The very lack of external consequence he himself experiences does more to aggravate his inner turmoil leading to drastic efforts made in his adult life to appease his guilt. It’s a powerful book, and if you haven’t read it, I would strongly recommend it. Don’t watch the movie though. The acting wasn’t that great.

I wonder how life would be if social hierarchy were actually determined by personal character. In some ways it seems like it actually is. Everyone seems to be constantly evaluating each other on moral grounds, and despite their economic and political disadvantages, they appease themselves with the idea that they have a higher standing on this invisible moral scale. The more unsure a person is about this, however, the more effort they seems to make to point out the moral flaws of the more “well heeled” among them. Out here, the name “Ali Baba” is synonymous with “corruption”, and is frequently credited as the ultimate reason for all discomfort. (My bus driver friend, Anur, emphasizes his disgust with an over-dramatic mime of a person putting money in his front pocket whenever he speaks of the “Ali Baba” of his superiors. Somehow, highlighting the moral failure of others makes one’s discomfort (long hours, low pay, lack of appreciation etc.) seem more tolerable. Because of this, those of us that are more comfortable are watched like a hawk. Every reluctance we might display to share our “wealth,” is a moral point against us, and the more sensitive we are to this sense of guilt, the more chance we have of getting fleeced.

I wonder how much of my behavior is motivated by this guilt. I find myself smiling at and giving eye contact to as many of these disenfranchised workers as I can. Usually they smile back, and are eager to shake my hand when I offer it. If I get to know their name or a bit of their language they seem overly grateful … and it makes me feel good. The fact that it makes me feel good … and less guilty makes me question my altruism. Do I do all this for myself or for them? Oh, to not be plagued by this constant over-analysis. I long to not even think about myself; to operate out of a pure desire to help others, oblivious to any emotional benefit I might receive in the process. This will never be true in any pure sense, this side of heaven, but I can at least hope for true love to slowly replace my guilt as a means of motivation … love that I am only at the mercy of receiving from God, and am completely incapable of conjuring up on my own.

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.