Damascus
The first ghetto blaster I ever had was a purchase made by mother at the Duty Free Kiosk of Damascus airport circa 1981. This was during the wilderness period when my Dad was flitting around and frequently banished to the spare room. When she finally got exasperated enough, my mother would call her friend who worked in a cupboard of a bucket shop travel agent off the Edgware Road and book us tickets to India, supposedly on an aeroplane, but I am convinced we might have got there quicker on a cargo boat. Perhaps it is her adventurous spirit (this is a woman who has moved entire continents not once, but twice in her life), perhaps a deeply ingrained sense of thrift, or smart realisation that only an airline that allowed people to take chickens on board would allow her the overweight baggage filled with Marks and Spencer’s soap and knickers for her family; whatever, but Ma and I became fully paid up members of the Syrian Arab frequent flyers club. Hey, we probably even shared some of our home made sandwiches with Osama on one of those trips and didn’t realise.
Rules were this: we eat before we get on the plane, and there were to be no trips to the toilet more than 3 hours after take-off. (I won’t go into the details, but any veterans of cheap travel to Asia and the Middle East in the 1970s and 80s will nod their heads knowingly. Flying Syrian Arab or Biman qualifies you for a badge of honour, and blatant disregard for life.) My mother would case the bathrooms at the various airport stops along the way (Frankfurt – the Ritz, Muscat – stay on the plane!, Dubai – not too long, mummy wants to go to the shops, Damascus – close your eyes and don’t touch anything.) Now, when folks moan about an 8 hour non-stop flight on Virgin, with those dinky little tellies and free ear plugs and slippers, I can’t help but think them ungrateful gits. They should try an internal Indian Airlines flight where the entire over head compartment came crashing down on landing, nearly decapitating fifty percent of the passengers; or being told upon entry to Tehran airport that ‘our landing gear may not have come down...um, you might want to lean forward with your hands over your head....’
After a few of these trips, I came to see them as an adventure. It is a tribute to my mother who never yelled or looked downtrodden like most parents at airports, and, once I was spread-eagled occupying both her seat and mine, would see if the new young mum in the row ahead might need a hand with her little ones too. She is the lady who always has a spare change of clothing, would never let her mascara run, even in a monsoon, and whose bottomless pit of a handbag somehow always has something yummy on which to nibble. She has done all this, and in heels, not Birkenstocks. I do not believe she has ever owned a rucksack, either. Insisting that I keep a travel journal at all times, she became my part time histiographer, geographer and Michael Palin, all at the same time.
I had a dim recollection of Saul and his trip to the dustbowl I could see beneath me from the window, but I had yet to grasp the concept of conversion. Precocious I may have been, but this was beyond a kid still in kindergarten, even if that kid was me. I especially liked the bit about the flash of light, and being blinded, and then waking up and changing everything from his name to his occupation.
‘Mummy, what’s a conversion?’
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