Fading Desert Footprints (Complete)

'The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.' Leo Tolstoy

The room is cool from the rattling air conditioner. It is also dusty. Everything has a light coating of fine sand, like a donut powdered with icing sugar.

I am in the Plaza Hotel in Khartoum. I will fly to Geneina in two days, but am waiting for Donna's email confirmation.

Yesterday, on the Amsterdam to Nairobi leg, an artificially friendly American tried to rob me of precious time. They appeared to be a benign elderly couple that sat together; therefore, I got my coveted aisle seat. The woman was in her late sixties, with large stones on her rings, and a solid coif of hair spray, which would have been a beehive in her teens.

I am terrified of these cordial travellers; they are fishermen trolling for attention. The first step is to entice you with a lure of kindness and friendship.

She glanced my way and cast the rod,

"So where are you from?" I am an experienced fish, and so I could see the bait: the innocuous feigned interest in me. She expected me to politely reciprocate with the same question, to which she will set the hook, reel me in, and then monopolize my time while incessantly talking  about herself.

"I'm from Canada." I offered coldly as I grabbed the magazine from the seat pocket to hide behind. I did not take the bait.

She recasted with a better lure.

"That's a nice country isn't it? We've never been. What's it like?"

I was still trying to avoid the hook.

"It's the same as any other really," I said absently, dodging it.

She is persistent, and then dangled a similar lure.

"We're Alabamians," she laughed, enhancing her bait with pleasantness and humor.

"Ah, too bad, I've never been there." I said, intentionally being ambiguous with the 'too bad', that can mean I felt sympathy for her, or that I'm sorry I've never been there.

She is experienced, and likely has a tackle box full of 'what brings you to Africa?' and 'what line of work are you in?'. I needed to get away from the barrage.

To seal my escape, I put the tiny airline cotton-ball pillow behind my head, and closed my eyes. I sensed that she was staring at me, so I forcefully kept them sealed, and remained motionless as the rest of the passengers boarded.

I heard her turn to her husband, to tell him about the one that got away,

"He says he's from Canada," she said loudly, as her husband nodded. He was trapped in the window seat, which is a very poor fishing spot.

***

My first impression of Khartoum was from the air, and it looked exactly as I would have expected; a large sprawling city in the sand with a large river.
As we taxied in, one corner of the airport was like an airplane museum. The first one that caught my attention was a B707; an old long airframe with four noisy gas guzzling engines. I had never seen one; they were already old when I was young.

I spied a Russian Antonov-72 with jet engines mounted on top of the wing as if they had been installed upside down. They were designed to operate in the Arctic and Antarctic, so that with the engines on top, they could avoid sucking in Siberian snow and ice. I imagine it has the same advantage operating on sub-Saharan sand and dirt.

In another corner was the huge Mi-14, the world's largest single rotor helicopter, also Russian. It was designed as an anti-submarine aircraft, but also convenient for transporting nuclear bombs to whichever cold war front was colder.

After passing the flying antiques, we parked beside a new KLM Boeing 747 and an Emirates double decker A380; it is ironic, the world's oldest flying commercial airliners beside the newest. I had hoped to see an operational MIG, which is in the Sudan Air Force. There were none, visible.