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Night Crash

Excerpt from West Africa (Death)

I spend all day in Bamako watching the Malians make their way to the crowded polls. I try to sleep but find it impossible, through the night and into morning before I catch a taxi to the airport, where I wait some more for my 3:30am flight to Casablanca. In the terminal, everyone sleeps sprawled out on the benches. The departure board holds doors that could some day be opened: Nairobi, Freetown, Conakry, Lagos. The voice echoes through the stark room at 2:30 that it is time for passengers to board. We horde together in a long line, me between a French couple and a procession of fatigued Malians. A few people behind me stands a lovely girl with high cheekbones, probably South American.

At the front of the line, the two Malian guards, not without their own special brand of corruption, are harassing a jittery little man, who is screaming hoarsely, raising nerves all around. I walk through the metal detector and the bigger of the two guards checks my passport, smiles a smile I do not trust, and beckons me to come forth. Behind him, the tiny gibbering man is in the throes of struggle with the other guard, who promptly picks up his suitcase and kicks it against the wall.

The guard in front of me leans in and whispers deeply, "Your passport is invalid. It has expired."

"No," I say. "You are lying. Let me pass."

He smiles again. I am happily prepared to stand my ground and stare into his fraudulent eyes all night if necessary.

"Cadeau." I give him my cruddy Bic pen and pass. These bureaucrats. 'Til the bitter end.

The passengers wait in another holding area before being led out onto the tarmac. The, somewhat dilapidated, Royal Air Maroc jet hums quietly as we file up its steps. It is difficult to think lucidly about the events leading up to take-off, because I am falling asleep in my hands. There is a beauty of a flight attendant who runs through the safety protocol with glazed-over disinterest, and I watch with an equal lack of luster. She puts the mask over her mouth and shows us how to click a seatbelt. If this plane goes down, we'll all be vaporized, regardless if we know how to fasten ourselves. A plane crash is all or nothing. You are either dead or dashed between shredded metal, clinging to breath. I try to read Shakespeare, but the words bleed together.

A vague discomfort enters my stomach, because there is a Muslim man with a tremendous beard sitting next to me, thumbing his prayer beads. After all this time traveling through Islamic Africa, my mind still goes on feeble alert.

I had briefly read about some more isolated "terrorist" attacks around Casablanca, next to a Yahoo! News pop-up listing all the ways I can make myself appear skinnier in photographs. I took note and vow to turn 45 degrees the next time someone raised a camera, catching the light on my good side.

The man quietly and peacefully stares ahead and nods off. My heavy eyes stare out the window at the left engine as it fires up and jolts the plane to a taxi. We arrive at the mouth of the runway and slowly begin to accelerate.

Earlier that day in Bamako, I had returned to some old Buddhist texts concerning death and dying, most of which proclaimed that most people are in denial of their own mortality. They encourage the practitioner to look at the certainty of his own death, to not shy away from the thought of it, so he can make the best use of his short time here. The notion is to familiarize oneself with death's imminence so that its coming is something that is handled skillfully, even "blissfully."

The jet picks up speed while I think on these thoughts, though they seem to sit too nice in my brain, and remain very far off. I have always taken faith that death would come quick, half a century away, without giving me much time to witness it, without having to feel the experience of it courting my life away. The plane soars down the runway and reaches the critical moment of acceleration just before lifting into the air. The nose picks off the ground and my steady gaze is interrupted by the sight of the engine outside my window bursting into flames.

There's a secret I'm a part of that's being revealed too quickly for me to announce to anyone no one else knows. They don't see the engine. It's black and nullified and wrenching and taken over by deep fire. We take off, then smash down to the ground, leap up again, and crunch back down a can of refried beans being violently bludgeoned against the tarmac. We are 200 kilometers an hour now we are crashing through the rocky field.

I see nothing.

Across the aisle a woman's eyes are

Out my window

Closed she's holding on to her

My window a whirlwind of dirt mixing with the growing fireball.

I'm next to the engine.

Now the passengers are screaming for their lives there's so much

"Ahhh ahhhhhhh" low

"Dieu!" – behind me crying wailing

"*******"

-plane bounces across the rising and falling ground beneath us. Violent bursts all over the plane. A man behind me, "Oh no! Oh no!" because he sees it coming and now I do too.

Sit up straight, surfing, crash waiting for our wing to be ripped off cut a rut in the crash ground flip like a volcanic pinwheel and boil us. My life is not passing in front of me. Everything is so slow when are we going to hit? When will the ceiling begin to come at me? I'm going to feel it.

Plane sliding through the middle of rocky field, fire burning outside. Stops. Ding.

Woman over there, her head bobs.

We are stopped

Moans as its turbines try to start back up Ding,

an animal that doesn't know it's been shot. The stench of earth and fuel fills the cabin. Ding Panicking people up from their seats Ding, go right for their luggage. Ding man pulls his suitcase down on young woman's head.

Up on my feet aware of smears of other people in plane.

Cross aisle see door people yelling at me, "Don't open the door!"

Look out the window fire is growing. Explosion is imminent. Glass around the handle to the emergency exit is already shattered I rip the door off and step out onto the right wing. Other passengers follow me fling themselves off enormous drop into the black bush below.

I stand out on the edge of the wing, not ready to jump.

See behind the plane a long trail of scorched, burning earth under the near-full moon.

A Malian man pushes aside an elderly Malian women so he can escape.

"No!" screams the bearded man that was sitting next to me pulls the man back into the cabin while muscular men help matriarch onto wing.

I fall now.

Jump and the wind slams out of my throat.

Malian helps me up we look up at the wing old woman stands still above us.

Shock, petrified, ground men and the wing men negotiate drop. Fifteen feet up, they lift her body tenses up they lower her over edge until she must go.

She freefalls into our arms.

We right her Malian looks into her eyes snips quick assurance and three of us walk away towards the burning runway, holding onto each other.

Everyone makes it off and we are shuttled back to the airport I have a shaky conversation with a musician from New York both saying we had just almost died.

Word spreads that the pilot had steered us into the field to avoid hitting a cement wall at the end of the runway.

They pass out bottles of water in terminal. It feels cruel to be alone here. I scan the room. An Italian man with his Malian friend. The big-bearded man sits talking quietly alone. A spooked Frenchman holds his infant daughter in his arms, rocking her gently, wanting very much to be done with the night.

I see the South American girl sitting alone. "I need to talk to you," I say.

LORENA

"I am Argentinian" Lorena says, "but I've lived in Belgium for ten years." Has traveled through Mali for a month by herself. I like her.

The Royal Air Maroc apologists cycle through aisles, asking if there is anything we need.

Lorena is the only one who says anything. "Yes, a croissant and a café au lait would be nice."

As the flight attendant hurries away to see what can be done, I suggest that, when the woman returns, Lorena should put on a strong face and say, "I've changed my mind. Deux croissants" and then list off a series of absurd demands she could make through the night.

Lorena, laughing for half a minute, mouth wide open, rocking back and forth, trying to keep back the squealing sound that escapes from her throat. She has a will of steel and a sweetness. Why is she not shaken?

Royal Air Maroc puts all of us into a luxury hotel. In my room I cannot sleep. These frozen fears, paranoias, holy half-thoughts. I need them now. Your life! You don't have to hang on so nervously. I want this glorious pounding never to stop.

We are all woken up a few hours later and fed handsome breakfasts and they shuttle us back to the airport. The frightened French father and his daughter have disappeared. In the same terminal we wait, all of us, for Take Two. While before there was a feeling of joy and relief at our survival, dread and fear have begun to creep back in. The New York musician sits in stoic silence, shaking his head at the thoughts that are springing up.

"Man, if thatta been LaGuardia, we'd a been in the river, man."

Next to him, the Italian man leans in and says, "Don't think. You think, you die."

All around us hangs hushed expectation.

In the distance we see our dead plane still wrecked in the field.

Lorena takes out a notebook and shows me quotes she collected on the African road. The first one leaps off the page and holds us up above our nerves, like it was written just for this. It was a gift from an aged matriarch outside of Bamako:

We must not dance faster than the music.

The plane rolls to a taxi and a jovial flight attendant roams through the aisles, telling jokes to all of us, promising champagne once in the air, to celebrate our lives. We accelerate at the mouth of the runway and all passengers rest in each other's warm and comfortable gazes. I sit next to Lorena.

Lorena stares out the window, then turns to me. Her lips form a beautiful smile.

Tears are rolling down her cheeks.