Fly Me to the Moon

More often than not, the purpose of a photo in a post is to augment or to further illustrate the words and thoughts of the author.
Not this time, however. Whatever words I come up with would fall pitifully short in keeping up with the beauty of this particular instant captured in bits and bites.
I was driving out for lunch with a friend on a Thursday afternoon heading to the village Kamsieh. Pulling out of a tight climbing curve to the left, my peripheral vision registered the vapor trails of a high flying jet. I have already written that this particular apparition magnetizes and takes hold of me. The moon, a rock I always dreamt of visiting but have accepted the futility of my dream, was up ahead in the path of the magnificent machine. I slowed down as I perfectly knew that I only had a few seconds to get my shot. I pulled over to the shoulder amid the questioning stares of my companion. I took out my digital camera from the cup hole stepping out of the car in the bright daylight and fired at the blue sky. It was too bright to decipher the outcome on the view screen of my Canon. I brought my arm down to take in the whole sky and the piercing white lance with my own eyes. My friend, too, disembarked from the car, took off his sunglasses and stared in awe.
I shouldn’t write anymore, there’s no point.


Click photo for 1280x960 resolution

Something About Me

I started blogging on April 24th, 2006. Since then, I have posted fifty eight diverse entries. First and foremost, I am happy to have had the opportunity to tell you stories about Tartous during these past five months. Some of my posts included glimpses of my personal life, but always in a vague sort of way. I was lacking in conviction that this aspect is of any interest to anyone who read my words. However, a few, a very few readers, asked me to write something about myself. As Ali the Expat puts it:
“… your writing style made me very curious about the education, life, and experiences you’ve had. Hence, I ask you to dedicate an entry to describe those sides.”
I need to be brief with this one from fear of boring everyone to death. So fasten your seatbelts, we’re cleared for takeoff…

I followed my heart when I made that decision to return home twenty years ago. I was in my prime with opportunities abound. My earliest childhood dream of flying had been fulfilled. I was working as a professional commercial pilot with my eyes set on the airlines. Two years prior, I have completed my Master’s Degree in Urban Planning and had already started on my PhD as a teaching assistant at the university. When I went for the flying job interview, my prospective employer asked me what was I to do with the doctoral program I had had already started. My answer was straight and flat. “You are offering me the opportunity to fly”, I said. “I wouldn’t let any title or degree takes that away from me.”

So I flew!

My little office was a cockpit in the air shuttling the airspace of the southern United States. New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami and many other smaller but no less wonderful American cities were my playground. In the evenings, with flying buddies over a cold beer, or with a girlfriend and a glass of wine, I would always express my amazement and disbelief that I was actually getting paid fulfilling my dream. I logged hundreds of hours of flying time, taught several students (most of whom are airline pilots today), delivered many shiny airplanes to small airstrips and flew countless corporate clients to business meetings and secluded cottages with favorite secretaries.



Then came that unforgettable flight with my mother as my copilot. I had to deliver a brand-new airplane to a client in Miami. My mother at the time was staying with me in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was leaving back to Syria in a a matter of weeks. First though, she wanted to visit with my sister in Florida. I was exuberant, thinking of flying her myself the next day. Although she had flown with me on numerous occasions before, I knew that this one would be a flight to remember.

Late in the evening, sitting side by side, watching television in my small bachelor apartment, she spoke softly as she sipped her tea:
“Why don’t you come back home?.. You’ve been away most of your life. I wouldn’t be living forever, you know... My dream is to have you near me… To see you married… To hold your children one day…”
“……………………….”
I didn’t offer an answer. She didn’t wait for any.

I tossed in bed for an hour or two. Deep inside, I knew that this is decision time. There was a right turn and there was a left turn. There wasn’t any straight road ahead. The last time I took a left turn was two years earlier, when I decided to stay in the United States and work there. Another left turn was much more complicated this time. I had no idea how many years would pass, if ever, before I would even consider asking the question again: “Why don’t I go back home?” I was making my way to the crest of the wave of my advancing career. The further I would climb the tougher it would be to stop, retrace my steps and make that right turn and head back to Tartous. Too much was at stake. Like an athlete contemplating an early retirement while still ahead, I made up my mind and slept very well after all.

I left alone to the airport early in the morning to meet with my boss. He was more of a friend and he listened very intently. “Should you change your mind”, he said, “you’re always welcome to return.” We shook hands, patted shoulders and hugged. It was the last time I saw him, rest his soul.

In the crisp and cool early afternoon air, at 11000 ft altitude, Air Traffic Control cleared me to make a right turn and follow an easterly heading. I told mom that I’m returning home with her. She was the happiest woman in the word. She laughed and cried. She silently prayed.

I went back after a couple of days to Louisiana, celebrated my last New Year Eve with friends and bid them farewell. After eight years and eight days in America, I packed my stuff and left. Up until then, I had spent more than fourteen years away from home. I have been several times since to the United States but always as a visitor. Most of my friends are there and we never severed the rope of friendship that tied us together.

Here I am in Tartous, twenty years later, sitting in my own private office, an architectural & consultancy practice, reminiscing over my wonderful days in Lafayette, remembering my late mother who had passed away seven years ago. I still fly to Europe regularly on business, but only in a back seat, I’m afraid. I got married, and my mother had her chance to hold my two daughters. My boy, Fares, she had never met. He was born one year after her departure. I look back into the past as much as I look forward into the future. Could I have done it differently? Possibly! Do I have regrets? Not really!

People who know me always express their surprise on how easy I fitted back in again. Myself, I was never surprised. “With your background, with your potential, with your dreams… How could you have ever taken that decision?” they would ask. As Bugs Bunny would have said: How come you didn’t take that left turn at Albuquerque?

In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard. That one flight in the crisp and cool early afternoon air at 11000ft with my mother by my side was worth it all… and much more.

The Blue Max

As I was growing up in the 70’s, the once-a-week excursion to the movies was a special treat. Tartous didn’t offer much in terms of entertainment then (or even now), especially in the winter. My friends and I would arrange to meet near the theater after or during school hours. We would go in raucously and act like the asshole teenagers we were. Besides watching the movies, making everybody else in the theater uncomfortable was our cruel delight.

So it came about one day that a movie came to town. It was titled “The Blue Max”, 1966. From word of mouth, we heard that Ursula Andress had her voluptuous body on display, and that her tits “almost” showed. Well of course her towel scene became an all-time classic and is a pinnacle in the delicate art of teasing. More importantly though, The Blue Max is probably one of the greatest aviation movies in the history of film making and it features some spectacular arial combat sequences. Little did I know, however, that this movie would change my life forever.

It was a movie about flying during the First World War. George Peppard plays the character of Bruno Stachel, a flyer from a middle class background, as opposed to the aristocracy, which formed most of the German Officer Corp at the time. He had to prove himself, first as a worthy officer and then, and more importantly, as an ace pilot. His nemesis, Willie von Klugermann, played by Jeremey Kemp, was an accomplished pilot, a German aristocrat and an arrogant son-of-a-bitch. The feud between Willie (pronounced Villy of course) and Stachel was purely about flying; although screwing Kaeti (Ursula Andress), Count von Klugermann’s wife, was a welcomed bonus. James Mason starred as the Count.

I shouldn’t go into the details of this great motion picture. I have so many favorite lines, however. When the commanding officer Heiderman, played by Karl Michael Vogler, asks Stachel: “Are you a good flyer?”, he simply answers: “I’m comfortable in the air.” Over the years, I must’ve seen The Blue Max over 30 times. My best friend Rick and I have memorized most of the lines, and would naturally flaunt this knowledge to each other and to whoever happens to be watching with us and suffering.

When I exited that theater in Tartous almost 30 years ago, I knew once and for all that there’s nothing else I ever wanted to do besides flying. I dreamt about it for years until it became a reality, a profession and an obsession. Rick and I flew over the bayous of Louisiana like Bruno and Willie did. Interstate 10 from Lafayette to Baton Rouge was our favorite battle field. We played between the east and west-bound bridges in the little Acrobat, and I really mean it when I say between the bridges. I still remember that gorgeous blonde in the convertible blue Corvette driving fast in the heat of the day. We approached her from the southwest and descended as low as our perverse minds allowed, then flew along. Her short tight black skirt exposed a beautiful shiny sweaty pair of legs, her hair flying in the wind, her nipples hard against the silky blouse (it could be that I’ve imagined this part), her eyes transfixed on us, less than a couple of hundred feet off to her right, her million dollar smile… boy, she was our Kaeti that afternoon. We skimmed the murky waters near Henderson and we landed that tail-dragger in places that may seem (and are) impossible. We redefined the term “short field landing” out of necessity and for simple showmanship. There’s even an aerial maneuver named after me, although I couldn’t and still can’t perform it. We didn’t shoot down any enemy but we did it all. We were both very “comfortable in the air”.

It ought to happen one day, you’re going to find yourself bored and looking through the titles at your local video store for some DVD to rent for the evening. Check out “The Blue Max”. And, if you don’t agree with me that this is one of the greatest productions, you will at least find the towel scene much more interesting and crafty than anything Hollywood has made since, silicone or not.