Me, Myself and Mom - Ongoing

Story 2

An hour after takeoff I had Coconut Woman mentally amplified to thunderous levels as the flight attendant made her way up the aisle with the drink cart. Suspiciously absent was the familiar sound of clinking bottles as it rolled forward. This sent my alcohol-radar pinging off the charts. All I saw were two cardboard boxes on top of the tray, and seriously, what kind of soothing liquid could possibly be flowing from a cardboard box?

This combined with the re-filtered air, which reeked of cheap Egyptian musk (traced back to the complimentary bottle attached to the lavatory counter by a small chain, as if someone would actually want to steal that putrified liquid), tobacco lingering on the clothes of the man seated next to me, and of course, the faithful airplane fart, was not in any way helping my anxiety. In fact, it was only a very pungent reminder of my growing discomfort.

Never mind that I was strapped to a seat in a metal tube, thirty-five thousand feet above ground, being driven by someone I had never met. A reality, which at the best of times, would have me slugging back a steady stream of Bloody Mary's while I hyperventilated into a paper bag. No, never mind that. This time I was strapped to a seat, encased in a musky Egyptian fart, following through with one of the boldest and most spontaneous decisions I had ever made in all of my thirty three years. A decision that, I think, prompted my family and friends back home in the States to start drafting my obituary early. And a decision that almost had me clinging to the leg of the bus driver who dropped me off at JFK airport, imagining myself begging him not to leave me and my backpack alone on the curb.

“Welcome. Which refreshment may I serve you? the attendant asked, her North African accent molding the otherwise ordinary sentence into an exotic sounding melody. 

“I'll have a glass of red wine please,” I said, even though I already knew what her grim response would be. For the previous twenty minutes, ever since the cart had emerged from behind the curtains, my eyes had been fixated on her hands. Her hands which were filling little plastic cups with only three liquids, none of which looked fermented or distilled. But I still had to try.

“Oh I apologize. We do not serve alcohol on Egypt Air flights. We are a Muslim carrier. May I offer you some orange or apple juice instead? Perhaps some water?” Her accent had suddenly lost most of its initial melodic splendor.

A Muslim carrier? What? I had never heard of such a thing. Wasn't it illegal not to serve liquor on a really long and turbulent flight? I could maybe see the issues with handing out complimentary Valium to nervous passengers and every single screaming toddler, but a harmless, little innocent glass of red wine?

Of all the times to be flying on a dry plane, this one, at the very inauguration of a monumental, utterly nerve-racking, restructuring of my entire life, would certainly not have been my first choice. I kicked myself for not booking with a more hedonistic carrier, ordered an orange juice on the rocks and took only a very small comfort in reasoning that the pilot probably hadn't liquored up before take-off.

“Ahlan wa Sahlan. Welcome to Cairo,”the plane's loudspeaker announced as we landed.

In earnest, I tried it back, “Aloha wallay Salami.”

I couldn't even remotely slither my tongue around those seductive Arabic words yet, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter because at least I was there. I had done it. I mean I had actually done it.