Oliver Benjamin
personally didn’t find them very distracting. With eyes fixed on the
deeply unsettled pilots, we watched them try an assortment of keys
before finally creating minor hysteria among the passengers when
they commenced to break the door down. Obviously fearing a total
panic, the captain grumbled something to the stewardess in Bengali,
after which she smiled graciously at the horrified passengers, then
stood in front of the two pilots in an attempt to hide their bumbling
attempts to get the door open. Her embarrassed smile was one of a
clumsy vaudeville showgirl on the night of her first big break. The
captain barked at her again, after which she nervously pulled a blue
curtain that turned out to be only slightly more effective at disguising
their efforts, as it only came down to about waist level.
Frantic legs scurried around beneath the curtain before finally
retrieving what appeared to be a hatchet from a wall compartment.
The frayed blue cloth did nothing to disguise the sound of chopping
wood. Finally, the noise stopped and it appeared that the pilots had
made their way back into the cockpit. We began to applaud, and then
wondered what it was that we were applauding. When it was all over,
I secretly rejoiced that the quality of the Bangladeshi cabin doors had
remained on par with the rest of the chitty-chitty bang-bang plane,
not to mention the clumsy crew.
I mentioned to Oscar all the crises I seemed to be encountering
on my trip, from the Irish Airlines fiasco, to the Cairo earthquake, to
the Pakistan airlines plane crash, to getting shot at by FBI agents,
and now this. I didn’t even mention to him my near-suicide in Israel,
nor my near-death experience on mushrooms, nor most importantly,
the fact that I had become infected with HIV. It was as if I was a
marked man—or was the world really just a dangerous place?
“You certainly seem to be skimming on top of the probabilities,
mate. A regular Wizard of Odds you are,” he laughed. “Truth is,
traveling is a very dangerous occupation. It’s really just like any
physical motion, and it’s always much safer in physics to remain
perfectly still. The more you move the more likely it is you’ll have a
collision. But on the other hand, if you don’t move you’ll never touch
anything.” He winked, grinning wryly, “What we must do is try to
touch as much as possible without getting hit.”
With one obvious exception, I had always had exceptionally
good luck in avoiding calamities. I felt there was a reasonable
explanation for this—ever since I started wearing them, I had
considered my Rollens boots somewhat of a lucky charm, and
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