A TURBULENT TIME

A   TURBULENT TIME

It must have been the loud noise that woke me from my nap barely thirty minutes after take-off. I struggled to stand to my feet, but somehow couldn’t. I was weighed down, held in place, kept in check by something I couldn’t fathom as of yet. Then I heard it again! It was the same sound. A scream by a woman. Very loud and shrill. It echoed several times inside my head as if trapped in a void, the scream rebounding from one brain cell to the next. It was painful and jarring. I opened my eyes again. There was a glint. Something shiny. It was a seat belt knuckle! That was my jailer all this while, keeping me locked down in my seat.

I remembered I was on an Air flight. Sat on the aisle, seat 7D to be exact. I had been sleeping, the sleep of a traveler, tired yet light on the feet. Prone to sudden jerks of awakening, drowsy eyes adorning an alert mind. It must have been the scream. It had crashed into my dream. My unremarkable dream, like that of any wayfarer. A dream of fits and starts, having neither depth nor colour, neither length nor significance.

My senses gradually returned, as my eyes began to focus once more. The last I remembered was the Pilot announcing that we were 35,000 feet above land, before my eyes closed in sleep. The lady had stopped screaming but was now praying loudly. Sweating profusely inside the air-conditioned cabin. She kept making references to the ‘God of Elisha’, the ‘God of miracles’, the stopper of ‘untimely death’ as she prayed in that shrill voice.

The Aircraft made a big sudden swerve. Shouts of ‘My God’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Allah’, rent the air. There were many voices praying at the same time. Prayers were being uttered in different voices and tongues, in diverse supplicating postures. A nun in seat 7F was going haywire. She held her rosary tightly and kept chanting. The volume of her chanting strangely was proportional to the balance of the Airplane. Going up with every slight tilt of the Aircraft’s wings, and going down with any brief stabilization experienced.

The upheaval had wrought havoc inside the Aircraft. There were dozens of small suitcases freed from the luggage-hold above. One had fallen quite next to me on the aisle. The Air-hostesses were doing their best to calm the passengers and clear the aisle of the fallen suitcases. As one came to pick a suitcase close to me on the aisle, the Airplane shook and tilted steeply to the right. The sharp movement threw the long stockinged hostess across me into the empty seat 7E, hitching her skirt up in the process.

The hostess became quite animated, rushing to seat herself up and pulling down her garments that had ridden upwards. Her eyes glared wildly at me, questioning, seeking answers on what I had seen, if I had seen. I returned her stare with a disinterested parsing of the lips. I was not a voyeur by any means nor did I salivate at such exposures, but it was hard to miss the big tear at the upper limit of the right stocking, hitherto hidden away beneath the upper reaches of her garments.

I wondered if it was her modesty or ego that was wounded and how such should matter when there was chaos on board. Why she would stress over an unsolicited peek when there was no guarantee that we would make it out alive. She began saying ‘Excuse me Sir……’, it was never finished. A sudden downward plunge of a few feet by the Airplane had her grabbing on to the seat in front. There were shrieks all around. In the melee, her perfect hair got stuck on some protruding button on the seat in the 6^th row. She was left devoid of her ‘hair’, the ugly patchy scalp revealed. She was now beyond caring over such trivialities like looks, when there were no certainties over surviving the current situation.

A child began crying. Her mother tried ceaselessly to placate her. She wouldn’t be soothed and began wailing loudly. She couldn’t have been more than 7years old and I remembered meeting her earlier looking lovely and resplendent in a yellow satin dress, her hair tied in 2 corresponding yellow ribbons. She had lost one of the ribbons and her dress was stained with vomit. I felt children would have been more comfortable in the crisis, as the yo-yo movement of the plane resembled many a roller-coaster ride popular at resorts and parks. Must be the wild screams and loud prayers, I thought to myself.

Then I wondered what would happen to us, to me. Would I survive if the plane failed to hold it together? Or would I be condemned to an unmarked watery grave? Would I make it to the ocean underneath or would I give up midair? I wasn’t the best of swimmers either and records show the earth being covered by more water bodies than land. Did I have a chance if I fell into some ocean along with my co-travellers or if our troubled plane plunged into the depths of some foreign sea, pulled in by unforgiving gravitational forces?

If I lost the battle, would I be sent to rest in ‘the bossom of the lord’, like advertised in the obituary announcement for my Uncle Damian. Uncle Damian, impulsive liar and land grabber who had reduced many a widow in the village to penury. Same one. I had told Mama, that it was unlikely for Uncle Damian to end up anywhere close to the Lord’s bossom when he had been so mean in his lifetime, besides having died from a stroke suffered while clasped to the ‘bossom’ of his married lover. His long suffering wife was still in shock and try as the family did to hush it up, the story was now common knowledge even in the local parish where Uncle Damian had been a Deacon. I told Mama, Uncle Damian was more likely in Hades suffering, but she had scolded me, saying ‘we are not allowed to speak ill of the dead’.

I wished I had listened during the demonstration by the hostesses prior to the flight, on the procedure for emergency landing. They had demonstrated how to strap on the life jacket in accordance with some aviation rule. They had even shown how to blow some whistle but I had been having trouble remembering much these days when I even bothered to listen attentively. There had been some talk too of a mask to be worn in event of sudden loss in air pressure. I knew it was meant to drop down from somewhere, but where?

A man who had been trapped in the loo all this while just maneuvered his way back to his seat. He had returned clad only in a singlet and a pair of shorts. He must have been caught up during the worst period of the flight, poor man! Whatever he was running from, taking off his other clothes, still accompanied him as he returned. Striding a-pace with him were smells of ammonia and fecal matter. The air in the cabin became charged and the little girl started crying again.

There were quite a few murmurs over the returning man and the accompanying odours. The nun by the window was highly upset at the man and the subsequent change he had brought. She began muttering many an unprintable swear word at the man. She suddenly realised I was watching and resumed praying once more, rosary in hand. I was shocked at her conduct as she was a nun. Also her blouse had a badge that read ‘I am Jesus’s bride’. I felt it strange that any bride, especially that of the Lord Jesus would speak thus. It also seemed out of place for all her chanting and incessant prayers if she was the “Lord’s bride”. One would have thought she would be keen to return to the groom. Tut, tut, tut.

The thing is as a child, I did have a vivid imagination. Sometimes I imagined things further along than where they were at present. ‘A turbulent mind’, Mama had called it when I asked her not to leave Sister Lisa alone with the Landlord, as his wife wasn’t home. The Landlord had assured Mama that the wife had only gone on a swift errand, with her return imminent. ‘Go away with your turbulent mind’, she screamed at me when I, worrying over Sis. Lisa, pointed out the funny way the landlord had been staring at Lisa when Mama wasn’t looking. Then as we walked to the bus stop, she remembered she had forgotten to leave Lisa the house keys. I was to wait for her swift return. Her return had been anything but swift and she had returned with Lisa in tow! Lisa’s top was newly torn at the collar and her wrists had marks like they had been forcefully held together. I never got to know what happened to this day, but I remember Lisa crying all the way home and mama continually thanking all our village gods that she had returned just in time. A week after, we changed residence.

My thoughts returned to my immediate family, the missus and the kids. There were two kids, the girl who was older and the boy. The girl seemed to have been hewn out of my own ribs while the boy was a photo match of the mother. The girl had all my good qualities and also inherited my turbulent mind. She cared not for money and the rest fripperies that often got her mother unduly excited. She was the one that bonded best with the dog and nursed a little rose garden. She had asked me last night, in that thoughtful way of her’s as the heavy wind blew the curtains about, if the flight wouldn’t be affected. I shouldn’t have merely dismissed her worries with a wave of the hand! I should have listened.

Now here I was, condemned to die ‘intestate’; having penned neither will nor last testament. The missus was my registered next of kin and would get the little that was due me as terminal benefits. Would she be glad? Yes, I thought. The marriage had been convenient for her in the beginning but one could sense things were so adrift, she could barely stand the last throes. I could see her in my turbulent mind’s eye as the casualty list is read out on the radio, caught between acting the pained wife for the girl and her brother, and locking herself behind the bedroom door, laughing in that hysterical way she does, reveling in her new found freedom.

Act 1 Scene 2, enter the grieving wife being severally consoled as she entertained guests on the “untimely” exeunt of the husband. Clad in dull attires, sparse with words, hands in laps, eyes intermittently shut in adhoc prayers. And then the interment. I wondered if she would wear black. If she would shave her hair as custom demanded of widows. She would tell all those who asked of course, that I was always against such hideous customs, which was true; yet there she was, all shaven to please the land and the gods, so they allow me continued rest in the bossom of……..

There was a sudden cackle on the announcer. It was the Pilot! “Good day once more, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to announce that we are now past the extreme turbulence and should be landing within the next 20 minutes at our destination. The weather there is currently 28 degrees and windy with chance of light rain much later in the evening. Once again, accept our wholesome apologies on the extreme turbulence”.

The Fasten Seat belt sign that had been on for what seemed forever, quickly went off, and as if plucked from the air, hostesses once more appeared and began picking up fallen luggage and other debris cluttering the aisle. The hostess beside me stood awkwardly, her hair and ego in tatters. She stopped briefly beside me, and I nodded reassuringly to her. Her secret was safe with me.

The passengers as if on cue began applauding the pilot as the plane taxied to a simple touch down devoid of the drama experienced in the air. There were people simply shedding tears at getting another chance to see family members again or in the case of the nun on seat 7F, not getting to see her groom as of yet.

I made a mental note to myself to see my lawyer upon my return from this trip. Maybe to draft a will, maybe to discuss separation. For I had been embarrassed, when the rest passengers were scrambling to place urgent calls to loved ones upon the successful landing after a near mishap, that I also followed suit and tried calling the missus. Her response had been harsh as per course, ‘what is it again’? ‘Please I am watching my favorite soap’. It wasn’t so much the harshness, but the way the receiver went cold upon my dialing once she spoke. Felt like watching a window frost over as it snowed outside. It was in turns painful for i had still held that impossible hope. i had been a man reborn, saved from the ire of the air elements by the kind gods, given another shot at life that i had reached out again.

The newsmagazine I glimpsed in the arrival lounge, had the screaming headline, ‘A Turbulent Time’! There was no method to the current madness in the land, it claimed. A little known team had recently won the English Football Premiership on incredible odds. Against all the polls and knowledgeable predictions, the British had voted to leave Europe and the Prime Minister had resigned! Also in the USA, after a mud-ridden campaign, a startling result had emerged. Pollsters over there too were running around confused, analysts bewildered. These are no ordinary times, the magazine warned. I hailed a cab as I stepped outside the lounge. Reclining in the back seat, I thought to myself, ‘Turbulence on land just as it is in the air’. Indeed, a turbulent time.




Nnamdi Wabara, 2016.