48 HOURS IN PAKISTAN 2017 - 1 - ETIHAD AIRLINES AND HUMAN PANAROMA ON THE WAY TO ABU DHABI

I am heading to Pakistan to spend 48 hours on the ground! Four and a half days off of work will allow me only that, for my first trip to Pakistan including the 26-30 hours of cross-Atlantic flights. I know this is not fare to this at least once beautiful country, war-torn along multiple borders, on the west with Afghanis and on the east with Indians over Kashmir region. South-Asian child abuse conference is being held in Lahore. Although I was invited to go to Northern Pakistan after the conference under the protection of my hosts, unfortunately, time constraints in this busy season in the US, allow me only 48 hours and perhaps all the better, I may need to acclimate myself to an overwhelmingly Muslim society in small doses. As a result, most of my trip will entail people-watching rather than sightseeing and I must say this fits with my priorities in visiting places…

Lahore is only 20 km from Indian border in Eastern Pakistan, where I am heading

I can tell at the airport in Chicago that this will be quite a different trip compared to many others I have had in the past 2 decades: I am flying on Etihad Airlines via Abu Dhabi in Arab Emirates. This probably is the determining factor behind the human panorama that I will soon start noticing. As the gate gets more and more crowded, it becomes clear that about 10% of the travelers waiting at the gate are North-American-looking. About 10% is olive skinned in modern attire, hard to tell their ethnicity or country. 30-40% has darker skin in modern attire and listening to their conversations, some are Indian and some most likely Pakistani and some Arabs perhaps? After all we are heading to Arabian Peninsula and some Gulf countries do allow freedom of attire for women.

Traditional Muslim family at the airport

The rest of the crowd consists of couples or groups of men and women, the latter of which are in black burka. I suspect most of these are Arab Emirate citizens or citizens of other countries on the Peninsula and some Pakistanis perhaps. Once I land in Lahore and start cruising through the city, these assumptions will be verified, indeed, I will find representation of the entire spectrum of Islamic panorama in all settings from the university campus to restaurants, to airports, to bazaars…

Typical street view in Lahore with motorbikes and rickshaws

When I first arrive at the gate it seems to comfortably accommodate its guests. I choose to sit against one of the columns that will allow me to observe all my fellow passengers I will travel with for 13 hours. What catches my eye first is a group of some 6 to 8 men and women sitting on the floor just like me. What is different is that they have started a picnic spread on the floor and are offering one another food, I suspect they have brought from home. I smile, very similar to country people traveling in Turkey. Some 20-30 years ago, since money was scarce for the majority of families, to keep their on-the-road spending to a minimum, they used to pack lunchboxes with a variety of food items to cover both their lunch and dinner for long trips. I look at my little bag that contains the last two oranges and three tangerines that I packed for the road for myself with a smile. We are all the same, wherever we come from, aren’t we? A warm feeling flows through my chest toward the picnicking fellows…

The view from my gate in Chicago was very close to this one..

A slew of connecting flight passengers arrive tripling the number of people at the gate. Quite a commotion erupts at the counter; eastern people are not necessarily good at waiting behind a line! Ten people at once are leaning against the counter to get their boarding passes verified. I can’t say the three stewardesses at the counter are any more organized than the passengers. They haven’t even announced that connecting flight passengers should go through the verification process. Some seasoned travelers are in line. The rest finds out what they need to do by asking those in line: Welcome to Turkey or to the East.

One stewardess on the ground at the gate was just like this one...

Two of the stewardesses are in traditional attire, with a head scarf covering all of their hair, wearing pants and a jacket and they have the ornamental scarf around their neck over their head cover. The third one is either a Pakistani or African beauty with modern attire, in fact her eyebrows are almost drawn by an eye liner, so thin… Her eye lids are colored with a bright green. I almost feel closer to the covered ones with no make-up and purity on their faces. However, one of them, who is helping a male customer avoids eye contact with the customer. Is this a dismissive attitude toward him, or is it difficult for her to have eye contact and show interest in her male customers on religious grounds? I won’t be able to find that out since the made-up modern lady calls me to the counter when she is done with her task.

Other Etihad stewardesses were like this one.

As the commotion of the boarding pass verification clears, that of the boarding itself starts. I am in zone 5, it looks like. I wonder, if everybody is going to lump into a big crowd before the gate rather than lining up in separate rows of zones. I smile to myself when I see that in fact the zones are clearly defined and everybody is in line! What is interesting though is that, they let the crowd pass through the gate and make the disabled in wheel chairs wait until everybody is on board. Although especially the women in wheel chairs look like articulate people, some even with make-up, all with expensive jewelry of their own culture, nobody protests this until a woman comes along and loudly states the absurdity of the situation. I second under my breath so that just she can hear me; she smiles finding somebody who understands and agrees with her since the stewardesses are too busy with what they have planned… Nobody pays attention to the protesting lady.

Many women like this one flooded the gate before boarding

Once I get on the bridge as one of the last passengers, sure enough, there is a huge line extending toward the plane. Not surprisingly, they start boarding the wheel chairs, and the bridge turns into a market place. Crowded with all of us, the bridge is not wide enough to accommodate our line and the wheelchairs, but what can we do, the wheelchairs are there with elderly people with ailments, I recognize some of them having hemiplegia once they stand up: They have to walk the 5-6 yards from where the wheelchairs can approach to the plane and then all the way to their seats! I am glad I was right by the door at that point, Automatically I find myself being one of the helpers. Appreciation and gratefulness have no language across cultures. They all come through the eyes with the same tone and color of looks coupled with a beautiful smile…

I had never heard of Etihad Airlines until this trip: It is the United Arab Emirates Airlines.

Once all the wheelchair passengers are aboard, the last ten of us board as well. I am a bit worried that I don’t have an aisle seat so that I can move about as much as I would like on a 13-hour flight like this.  What can I do, I tried to change my seat to no avail. I come to my seat, 31E, in the four-seat middle zone. The row is occupied what seems to be a family. I ask the gentleman sitting at the aisle seat, whether this is row 31, he very humbly almost pleadingly tells me “Yes mam, do you have 31E?”. He asks me whether I would take his seat in row 22 so that he could be with his family. Why not? I find my way back to the front of the plane, and vola, 22G is an aisle seat! My motto in life blinks in my mind “Do good for no reason, good will come to you at unexpected times…”

Not a bad attitude at all.. Recommended to all