From Ababa Addis to Kuwait

Soon I was immersed in the memoir written by Azar Nafisi about her life as a literature professor, and later a former literature professor, in the Islamic Republic of Iran--and about the small group of women who came to her apartment, shed their veils, and talked about books every Thursday morning.  When I finally looked up, the woman beside me shared the information that she was only going as far as Dubai.  She made the trip often, she said.  The Ethiopian Airlines flight would be late because it was “always late.”  I would find the Dubai airport “amazing.” 

She was right on both counts.

Even at 4 a.m., Dubai airport bedazzled.  In fact, it was lit up like a Christmas tree.  To my bleary eyes, duty free shops held no appeal, but escalators and moving sidewalks that worked, clean bathrooms, and a quiet KLM lounge did.  First, though, I must stand in line to get my boarding pass for Kuwait Airlines.  In the queue next to me, a tall man was complaining.  “I take this flight regularly,” he told the woman behind the counter, her hair well covered by a scarf, “and I request the exit row every time.  You see my size.  I never, never, never, never get the exit row. How can this happen?”

I could not tell whether the woman was sympathetic to the tall man’s plight because by now I was hearing my own bad news.  Too early to check in. Come back at 5:00. 

My pre-dawn hours became blur of up and down escalators, lines, x-ray machines, multiple passport showings, and several shouts by guards when I tried to take the wrong passageway.  At 7 a.m., though, I was on my way to Kuwait, too tired to care that I now appeared to be the only American woman on the airplane.  By this point in the journey, reading of the women shedding their veils once they were safely inside Azar Nafisi’s apartment and mourning the lost choices their mothers and grandmothers had enjoyed, I was inclined to be rebellious, anyway. 

The instrumental music being piped over the airplane’s system was from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”  Since I’d heard first-hand reports of inflatable globes that arrived at these international schools with Israel having been carefully removed via Exacto knife by Kuwati censors, I thought perhaps someone had slipped up with the music.

The post-landing tune was “You Were Always On My Mind.”  One of the three Near East School Association representatives in Kuwait had faxed Leonard and me copies of our visas, warning us not to lose them.  If we did, we wouldn’t even get on a flight into Kuwait.  The first task, then, after I swept down into the tan, flat land, was to exchange the copy for the real thing.  One of the women behind the counter hulked behind her black covering in a bullying way, slapping the counter to get our attention.  I was intimidated.  Everyone else seemed to be as well.  But once we finally had our visas in hand, we were waved through passport control, and our waiting suitcases were simply x-rayed on the way out of the airport.  No customs questions.  No confiscated books.

(continued)