I Have Iraq in My Shoe (5 page)

Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell was Fraud. My Eighth Circle of Hell was the Royal Jordanian Airlines counter at JFK’s international terminal. Royal Jordanian apparently only allowed two checked bags, at a maximum of seventy pounds each. That should not have been surprising to me, as it was similar to Delta’s policy, but those details were back in Portland, days ago, and it had been 5:00 a.m. then. The Royal Jordanian desk agent informed me that it was impossible for the airline to accommodate my two (agreeably colossal) hockey bags of now-ninety pounds apiece, two suitcases, and one small duffel bag. He explained that I could bring all one hundred eighty pounds of hockey-bag-what-have-you, but it had to be distributed among three bags, not just the two hockey bags. That was not logical. It was not efficient. It was not flier-friendly. But if I had to use various adjectives to describe Royal Jordanian Airlines, those adjectives would not include logical, efficient, or flier-friendly. Also not flier-friendly was the $850 in additional charges to get my luggage from JFK to Sulaimani, Iraq.

Wasn’t there some special loophole for people
moving
overseas? I was
moving
overseas. For two years. I wouldn’t bring all this stuff if I were just going for a week in Amsterdam, come on! Nope. No special loophole. I was forced to purchase another duffel bag, which was conveniently sold a mere eighty feet from the Royal Jordanian counter.

I assume these “evil pockets” are where Royal Jordanian keeps the money I pay them for the duffel bags.

I parted with still more money ($40 for my new duffel bag) and was then forced to use a vacant luggage scale to redistribute 180 pounds of stuff between the two hockey bags and the new duffel bag. By this time I was frustrated and hot and stressed and frantically zipping and unzipping bags, while yanking items out of one, then shoving them into another. Pillows, sheets, bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and Woolite, jeans, sweaters, DVDs, books, magazines. I was trying my very best not to pull out anything like the Costco monster-box of Tampax, or any other humiliating accoutrement, as there were roughly forty other Royal Jordanian passengers standing in line, waiting to check in and observing me. I so wished I were just having a nightmare and at any moment my alarm clock would begin its stuttered beeping, but no, there was my alarm clock, next to the monster-box of Tampax. Quiet as could be.

The rest of the procedure was a blur, but I know that I was eventually relieved of my two stupid hockey bags, two suitcases, two duffel bags, and $890. I was then ushered to the security line to enter the ticketed-passenger part of the terminal. After clearing security, and huffily re-dressing myself (shoes, belt, etc.), my mood shifted. I saw a bright light and could almost hear angels singing.

I pledged my undying gratitude to the gracious Korean masseuse at Xpress Spa, who prevented me from crying by guiding me to one of the leaning massage chairs and then prodding and kneading me into a state of “Now I don’t care about the $890 anymore” for thirty minutes. It was a half hour of Relaxy Time, in between the nightmare of flight check-in and the dreaded twelve-hour flight in the ever-shrinking economy class on the very unfamiliar, illogical, inefficient, flier-unfriendly Royal Jordanian Airlines. I almost stayed for another thirty minutes, but I would have missed my flight. I signed my credit card slip, and the gracious masseuse handed me an Xpress Spa pen, with a slight bow and a smile. She must have known there would be something to write about on my flight.

We all have friends and acquaintances who are one-upper downers.

You had the flu? I had swine flu. Your kitchen remodel cost two thousand dollars? Mine was forty thousand. You had reconstructive knee surgery? I had every single bone in my body replaced with titanium rods. Sometimes it’s fun to one-up down
yourself
. Yes, the flight check-in was bad, but it was nothing compared to the first half hour on the airplane.

I was seated across the aisle from an American guy, probably in his early thirties, with that scruffy, disheveled, “I do Bangkok, frequently” look. I called him “Dude,” but just in my head. He wasn’t the moderately entertaining kind of Dude who takes twenty minutes to make your coffee because he’s slightly stoned and subsequently engrossed in all those wavy lines that appear on the surface of the latte, but rather the more repellent kind of Dude who, while seated on a crowded airplane, pulls out a plastic cup for his chewing tobacco spit.

While most of us were patiently waiting for takeoff, on the ground at JFK, Dude used the wait time to make some phone calls. We waited, and he talked for about an hour.

(Pause for Babe responding.)

What? No, you’re not—you’re still at JFK. We’re sitting on the tarmac, but whatever, it’s not my phone call.

(Pause for Babe.)

We will stop calling her “Babe” now.

Dude’s tone was becoming more aggressive, and I was becoming much more invested in this conversation.
Lisa was supposed to go with him! But she’s not here!

OH MY GOD!
“…
you fucking whore
…” I mean, we were on an international aircraft, not a Greyhound bus. (Also, my personal guess was Lisa had possibly been to Mexico. It’s just right there, below California.)

Ooooh, a love triangle. I like it.
(Here is where I deduce that Military Fuck takes the phone from Lisa.)

Hey! Sometimes my friends call ME G-Funk! Not the right time, though, I know, I know.

Here, Dude lowers his voice, slightly, and hisses “nigger!” into the phone while muttering threatening-sounding expletives.

OH MY EFFING GAWD! PEOPLE DO NOT SAY THAT!
I very badly wanted to move to another seat far, far away from Dude, but I was also dying to hear how this played out.

Lisa or Military Fuck must have disconnected because Dude began dialing again. He muttered something into the phone, then looked at the phone and dialed a bit more.

This kind of thing really only happens on
CSI
—you know, in those blurry flashback scenes.

Dude was dialing again.

Lisa, you needn’t have traveled outside of California and Mexico to have the common sense to answer no to this question.

There were a few more instances of Dude looking at his phone, then redialing. I had no idea if anyone was even answering on the other end anymore.

I must admit this was the best soap opera I had ever witnessed in my life.

Wait a minute. Is this Lisa, or someone new? These soaps are so hard to follow!

This couldn’t possibly still be Lisa. She’d never been anywhere other than California and Mexico. She would never agree to a Lebanese wedding. Who was this mystery fiancée?

I began wondering if this soap was on cable or just regular TV. Dude dialed again.

Dude dialed again.

(I am not making any of this up. I was so floored by Dude’s initial phone manner that I whipped out my tiny notebook and began documenting this verbatim with my new Xpress Spa pen. Some of the writing got pretty squiggly because I was writing so fast; for example, it took me several minutes to work out “Lebanon” as I was reading my notes. I was squinting and thinking:
That doesn’t say “Leinenkugel” does it? I don’t think you can get married in Leinenkugel
.)

We were finally given the announcement that requested we turn off all electronic equipment and cell phones. It was right about this time, while Dude was arguing with the flight attendant about his right to a spit cup during takeoff, when I remembered Warren saying something about a fellow teacher who would be on the Royal Jordanian flight with me. I blanched.
Please, please, PLEASE don’t let Dude be That Guy. PLEASE! That would just be unusually cruel. Oh, please.
All the hard work that masseuse had done on my clenched-up muscles was now wasted. I was all clenchy again.

I glanced over in Dude’s general direction. Another guy, sitting two empty seats away from Dude, had struck up a conversation with him about where they were going. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but I did happen to notice that Other Guy was black. I was dying to know if Other Guy had overheard Dude’s use of the N-bomb during his absurd cell phone tirade.

This soap is fantastic!

I opened a magazine in an effort to appear to be minding my own business while trying to hear if Iraq was mentioned. It was! And then Dude started to talk about being “picked up at the airport in the helicopter,” and I thought,
Hmmm, Warren didn’t mention a helicopter
. Then Dude said, “My name is Brandon,” and my brain started racing.
Brandon. Brandon? Was that the guy’s name? Brandon? DAMMIT! I can’t remember what Warren said! Oh God, oh God, oh God. This cannot be one of my coworkers. Please let the coworker guy’s name be Matt, or Dave, or Something Else That Is Not Brandon. I cannot fathom having to be within spitting distance (sorry, no pun) of this person on a regular basis. Please please please, NO!

If I had to land in Iraq, and then be introduced to Dude/Brandon as a coworker, I would have most likely lost my shit. My shit was partially lost already, as I had undoubtedly unpacked and repacked it into several different bags.

Twelve hours later, I had more or less forgotten about Dude when we landed at the Amman, Jordan, airport. I was to have a brief overnight at the airport hotel. When I spoke with a man at the arrivals counter to arrange transporting my luggage on the flight from Amman to Sulaimania, I was informed that I would have to pay another overweight baggage fee. The rotten liars at JFK had told me that the $850 (plus $40 for the duffel) would cover the fees all the way to Iraq. The man at the Amman airport apologized and said, no, I would have to pay another $500. Unbelievable. I had now spent a total of $2,920 on overweight luggage. Go ahead and add it to the $39,000, but Suze is going to be pissed.