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8 July 1993
Dear Mom and Dad,
I'm sorry I missed your call last weekend, but I wasn't home. I just spent four days in a German hospital with Salmonella. It was quite a nice experience, apart from being sick, like being in a hotel with very friendly, constant room service. I shared a room with a chatty, Schwäbisch- speaking lady with some vague condition which the doctors blamed on the fact that she was very short and had to look up all the time. It took me a few days to be able to understand her dialect but I got pretty good at it. She told me about her life during WWII, when she was a member of the Hitler Youth Organization. She seemed to want me to tell her it was okay and to forgive her for WWII and all I wanted was to be sick in peace.
I got ill Saturday night, after returning from a humanitarian assistance mission into eastern Europe. I must have eaten something I wasn't supposed to, although I thought I was being very careful. Sunday morning I felt better but I became steadily worse as the day progressed. Finally I got so dizzy I could hardly stand, so I called my friends, Steve and Bess, to ask for help. Steve came right over and drove me to the German hospital. We don't have a US military facility here in Stuttgart because of the cutbacks in military spending.
Now I'm back home and feeling better. I'm taking it easy for a few days and thought I would catch up on my mail.
The trip to some of the former Soviet republics turned out to be quite exciting. It came about rather suddenly; I found out on Friday, the 25th of June, that I would be leaving on Monday, which wasn't too much of a problem since I hadn't totally unpacked from trip I made to Turkey the previous week. My job was to make sure that the planeload of medical supplies was delivered to the right places and signed for by the proper authorities. There were 18 463L pallets which were going to be delivered by commercial freight airline to various countries. Those are the big metal pallets that belong to the military, not the wooden ones you usually see. In fact, each 463L pallet was loaded with eight or twelve of the wooden ones, stacked with medications, syringes and other supplies. I was supposed to fly to Minsk Monday, meet up with the plane on Tuesday, see that everything got delivered to the right place and was signed for by the right people, then get dropped off on Wednesday and make my way back to Germany, for a proposed three-day trip.
The big problem with getting such short notice is I didn't have time to get any extra money or visas or even think much about it. Luckily, I had $100 in my purse, plus plenty of credit cards.
On Monday I went to the official travel office and picked up a plane ticket to Minsk, Belarus. I took the express train from Stuttgart to the Frankfurt Airport, which I managed to jump on just as it was leaving the station. In Frankfurt I had time to eat a late lunch and get passport size photos made for visas, hoping that all these countries would permit "plane-side" visas. I'd already been told by some of the other people who deal with these countries that they would never let me in because everything wasn't coordinated ahead of time, so I had some serious prayers lined up.
Air Ukraine was quite an experience. Apparently when the Soviet Union broke up, the country where the Aeroflot planes landed that day became the new owners. So most of the airlines are new, but the planes were definitely not. This one had not even been repainted and still said "Aeroflot." The inside of the plane was ragged and dirty, with broken seats, ripped up carpeting and not a single safety information card, let alone a glossy airline magazine. People were stuffing their luggage everywhere, and walking around even after we were taxiing for takeoff. I was sincerely hoping that the money they were saving on maintenance inside the aircraft had been used for keeping the engines in good repair. The crew seemed to be professional enough and did eventually make everyone sit down and belt up. Later, as the passengers began the customary applause when the plane touched down, I was so relieved to be safely on the ground again, I was ready to give them a standing ovation.
When I got to Minsk, it took me three hours to get through the visa process and customs, not to mention 30 of my rapidly dwindling dollars. I got a strange feeling while I was standing in the midst of a mad crush of about 200 people who were all shoving and pushing to get through the control gates. I looked all around me and discovered I was, at 5'7", the tallest person in the airport. I felt a little unusual. After a while, a lady near me looked at my passport and started letting everyone around me know I was American. Suddenly they stopped pushing and shoving me and starting smiling and saying friendly but unintelligible (to me) things, and, letting me go in front of them! I was amazed, and honored. When I got out of the airport finally, I was dismayed. It was the largest airport I've ever seen, particularly considering there were only two planes parked at the numerous gates, but it was in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There was not a hotel or any other structure for as far as I could see. Suddenly a worried looking man came up and asked me if I was Diana Smith. I was so happy, I gave him a big hug, and then he looked pretty happy, too. It turned out his name was Mischa and the embassy had sent him to drive me to the Hotel Belarus in Minsk, which was about 30 miles away. He had had five English lessons and gave them all a workout, throwing in such conversational starters as "I old 42." I did appreciate his efforts and even learned a few Russian words in the exchange.
When we got to the hotel, I paid out another $30 for my room and started working on meeting the freight plane the next day. I called the US embassy and got someone who said she would try to help me. Pretty soon there was a knock at the door and I opened up to an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as Arthur Smith. He had retired from civil service and decided he didn't like being retired and was doing some unspecified work for the embassy, who had called and asked him to look after me. Since I hadn't eaten since noon and it was now 10:00 pm, he took me to get a bite to eat. He also loaned me 5,000 rubles, as I hadn't been able to change any money yet. Needless to say, I was grateful; also for the tips he gave me on getting along in these new countries.
The next day, Mr. Smith met me for breakfast and gallantly refused let me repay the rubles, which turned out to be worth somewhat less than $5. So I bought us both breakfast, which cost 26 cents, including coffee. At 8:00, the US ambassador, David Swartz, came by in his flag-festooned sedan to pick me up and we went back out to the airport to meet the plane.
On the runway, I introduced myself to the air crew, who were flying a DC-8 for Air Transport International (ATI). There were four of them, the captain, Chris Evenrud; the first officer, Jim Kuzo; the flight engineer, Dale Webb; and a mechanic who also helped me with the cargo, Lee Thompson. Chris was the youngest, mid-thirties, very tall, blond, looking like he belonged up among the clouds. The other three looked as if they had led tougher lives as "Freight Dogs", but they had great personalities and superb professionalism, as I soon discovered. They welcomed me warmly and immediately pointed out to me that the only toilet on board was a Sears and Roebuck camping model, situated in the open under the toaster oven in the crew cabin. I could see we were going to get to know each other very well during the trip.
Out on the tarmac, a truckload of soldiers pulled up to offload the plane. There wasn't a big enough forklift available, so the pallets had to be broken down by hand and each small box passed from soldier to soldier within the plane, tossed down to the ground and then further passed along and up to the truckbed, where it was neatly stacked. Unloading the six pallets took about four hours using this method. It was strange to be standing next to, giving orders to, soldiers who a short while back had been the enemy. They were mostly very young, though, and likely hadn't been in the army before the breakup of the Soviet Union.
While we were unloading, I noticed that every ten minutes or so, a soldier would disappear forward and return again after about five minutes. They weren't leaving the plane, so it wasn't a cigarette break. I went into the cockpit to see what was up and discovered that these young capitalists already had the knowledge of what constitutes a market economy. Every soldier had his pockets stuffed with bartering material, Soviet equipment, medals, uniform items, souvenirs, handicrafts, etc., and were going up to trade them with the crew.
Later on I saw people on bicycles peddling across the runways, with bulging knapsacks, making their way to the cockpit with whatever they had to trade. A mobile shopping mall was set up and the five of us bought or traded for dozens of interesting items. Most of the soldiers wanted dollars but some wanted cigarettes or anything American. One specifically wanted a Susan B. Anthony dollar or a two-dollar bill, which no one had. Many gave us things for free, just pleased to be talking to Americans. My prize purchase was a sable winter uniform cap like Omar Sharif wore in Dr. Zhivago.
Midway through the offloading, the airport officials came out and invited us to lunch. We were driven to the terminal to a fancy restaurant. I had eaten breakfast there earlier by myself, served reluctantly by a surly young woman who clearly felt my whole purpose in life was to make her life drudgery. This same woman now served us graciously, smilingly, darting here and there to get anything it looked like we might need. We were joined by a lady who was on a local political committee, something like a chamber of commerce, maybe, and an airport official.
The three-course meal included numerous champagne toasts which the crew cautiously participated in, taking minimal sips or none at all. Next to us, another large table was set up, which we were informed was for Lech Walesa and his air crew, who would be dining there in half an hour, before they returned to Poland. We spent a few minutes walking around the airport afterwards and I noticed something that I came to see much of. Even though parts of this airport were still under construction, the completed sections were already beginning to deteriorate. Huge marble floors were riddled with hundreds of cracks. Ceilings leaked (it rained most of the trip) and nothing was being done to stop them. Plaster was falling in chunks from the walls and the facade of the building. I saw this in every city we were in: the infrastructure was falling apart and nothing was being done to repair anything.
After lunch we returned to the plane to find a stranger in the cockpit, who stated he would be traveling with us for the next two days. Although he turned out to have several names and passports to go with them, we ended up calling him "Al." Al said he had been hired by ATI to ensure that the flight went smoothly, as far as fueling, servicing overflight clearances, etc. He would also serve as our Russian navigator, which was required over the country of Georgia. He was a pilot himself, spoke Russian, Arabic, German, French, Swedish, Spanish, Korean, English, and at various other times, languages which I did not recognize.
He claimed that he had come with cash to pay for the fueling charges in Minsk, because the plane would require $15,000 worth of fuel and the airline had only $10,000 worth of credit there. The crew knew nothing about this and in fact, did not require fuel in Minsk. They were familiar with the airline's policy of hiring a "handler" who spoke the local language and could get visa and customs problems resolved as well as making hotel arrangements, so they accepted his presence and made room for him on board.
Al came to justify his presence in the next few days, although he did have an uncomfortable habit of leaning on me to look out of the cockpit windows or to reach something on the other side of the crew cabin. He never seemed to do it intentionally and the quarters were very close, so I ignored it most of the time. He told me he was from Syria but lived in Stockholm now with his Swedish wife, although temporarily he was working in Tashkent, getting his airline service business going. During later conversations he separately mentioned his German and then his Syrian wife. I was never sure of the time-sequence of these marriages, but later events made me believe he had a number of wives, perhaps one for each language he spoke.
After offloading six pallets, Lee and I shoved the remaining 12 pallets back and forth while Jim entered the various weights in the computer until he was satisfied that the load was properly balanced and the plane could safely take off again.
From there we flew on to Kiev, Ukraine, where we would offload another six pallets and remain overnight. Here again was a military unit to do the unloading, which worked well, soldier being used to these types of details. This groups had no forklift either, abut they had a conveyor-belt similar to those used for loading baggage. Again the pallets were broken down by hand and placed on the conveyor belt which carried the boxes to the waiting truck, where more soldiers stacked them.
There were a number of stickers affixed to the boxes which had an American flag and the words "US AID", and I saw the soldiers carefully peeling each one off and tucking them away somewhere for safekeeping. Unfortunately they also did this with all the special instruction sheets which were attached to the pallets and anything else with English writing on it. This offload took less than three hours and was accompanied by the same bartering of uniform items, watches, wooden boxes, caps, etc. Several people came from various parts of the environs just to look at the cockpit and at us, smile, shake our hands, and leave again. They seemed to be very fond of Americans, even though we couldn't communicate much beyond smiles.
When the offload was finished, Al bullied our way through customs and packed us into three cars driven by some mysterious associates of his that were waiting for us. He always seemed to be having some sort of argument with the customs officials, but we got through anyway, so I assumed he knew what he was doing. We drove the customary 30 miles into town to the "Sport" Hotel, which was a very nice, western-style hotel in Kiev. We had taken a circuitous route to get there in order to see some of the scenery. The most remarkable things were a huge statue of a woman (Liberty's sister, maybe) holding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, and a compound of ornate buildings with elaborate gold roofs. These tantalizing glimpses were just enough to make me want to come back again and visit someday. I read somewhere that Kiev is the father of all Russian cities, which I think is supposed to be ironic, since it is in the Ukraine, not Russia.
Anyway, at 10:00 pm, we had a nice three-course meal (this turned out to be how all the meals were) and I got ready to trundle off to bed. Before he left, Al alerted the crew that they would be receiving a phone call from a local lady after they retired, inviting them to come to some other room and be entertained. If they did not accept the invitation, they would receive a second call from a lady who would offer to come to their room. I made a wisecrack about gender inequity in the services provided and got two offers for calls, which I declined. We had a brief discussion on AIDS and the air crew left to see the sights and didn't make it back till 2:00 am.
Since our wake-up call was for 5:00 am, they were none too chipper the next day. I was rested and happy, because I'd discovered a $50 bill I'd hidden away in my wallet sometime in the past, so my finances were looking okay again. Since Al had paid for my hotel room as part of his "handler" duties, and had also offered to buy me a ticket back to Stuttgart when the mission was over, I now felt confident that I had enough money to get by the rest of the trip. One of my big mistakes was to plan on using my credit cards. None of these countries accepted any credit cards, except occasionally American Express, which I had left home without. They did all take dollars, in fact, preferred them to the local currency.
Wednesday was supposed to be the last day of the mission. We would make two more drops and the air crew would leave me in Tbilisi, Georgia, to get back to Germany, while they headed on to Hong Kong. Al, however, put a kink in the plans. There was a problem with the clearance to fly over one particular country because, according to him, the airline had put the wrong tail number on the request, and it was not the plane we were currently in. Consequently he changed the scheduled flight plan so that we would continue on to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The air crew would stay there three days instead of heading on to Hong Kong, because there was insufficient parking in Hong Kong. And, he assured me, there were no flights from Tbilisi back to Stuttgart, however, he could get me a ticket back the next afternoon from Tashkent.
So, we flew on to Chisinau, Moldova, where we offloaded five pallets and a couple dozen loose boxes from the belly of the plane. Here the workers were six little men, past retirement age but with good attitudes. Fortunately a big enough forklift was available to take the metal pallets off. Then they were broken down to the wooden pallets (as opposed to individual boxes) and loaded onto trucks, and the metal pallets, which actually belong to the US Air Force, were loaded back onto the plane. These pallets were supposed to go with the cargo, but since no one before had had equipment to take them off the plane, we still had the first 12, complete with cargo nets. We decided to keep them all together and drop them in one place, so someday the Air Force could find them again. Offloading these five pallets took about an hour, thanks to having the proper equipment, and we were off again. The pilot had not shut all the engines down because this airport had no starting equipment, which the pilots must physically see before they can turn everything off. So it didn't take us long to get airborne again.
Next we flew to Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia was having a bit of a civil war, although Tbilisi itself was supposed to be reasonably safe. The first thing we noticed was that the runway appeared to have been hit by mortars. It had incredible craters in it, about eight feet across and a foot deep. The landing was very rough and bumpy. The pilot said later it, as well as the other landings this trip, probably shortened the life of the plane by 250 landings.
After we landed, we were directed into a parking spot between two other planes. There was a man on the ground who was making sort of encouraging gestures at the plane, but they were not the same universally accepted signals we had seen at every other airfield, and the captain was very unhappy. Finally he stopped the plane and told the tower he was not moving until he had two people on the ground as wing walkers. The controller in the tower was less than sympathetic, or maybe his English didn't stretch to cover problem situations, so we opened the cabin door and Lee and Dale slid down the escape rope to the tarmac and acted as wing walkers to guide us into the spot. My job was to re-shut the cabin door after they were down and I nearly ended up joining them because Al came and leaned on me while I was pulling on the door and I almost went over the side. The whole thing was apparently not a usual procedure, because everyone was hot and bothered by now, including the tower folks.
Once the door was re-opened and the stairs had been wheeled up to the plane, we had another surprise. No one met us. The coordination by fax from Wash, DC, to the other three embassies involved on this trip had gone fine, but things now fell apart. Al went down and tried to find out what was going on. Eventually he decided to just get the plane unloaded, and started trying to bully truck drivers and people standing around into coming over to the plane.
He finally got some guy driving a piece of equipment like a golf cart with a flat space to come over to the plane. As he was searching around in his various pockets for something, Al came out with a stack of $100 bills. This was the $5000 he had been carrying around this trip, supposedly to pay for the fuel in Minsk. While I watched, he smacked his hand into another guy who walked up, and fifty $100-bills flew all over the runway. The Georgians all stood there transfixed as Al haphazardly picked it all up, still ranting and raving, and still going through all his pockets trying to find something.
Eventually he ran up the stairs and went into the cargo hold and started throwing down boxes to the driver. After about six boxes, a black man and woman began walking up to the plane. Since these were the first blacks I'd seen this trip, I knew they must be Americans. And they were. The embassy had called them and asked them to meet the plane, which they were doing. However, they knew nothing about any cargo needing to be offloaded. They went off to make some calls and another man, a Georgian, came up. He knew who I was, had reservations for me at the Metucky Palace and said there was an Air Force flight coming in on Saturday that I could probably catch to get back to Frankfurt. So communications were not totally messed up. I thanked him and told him it would not be necessary, because at this point I still had faith in Al and I wanted to get back home before Sunday, because I had company coming for the 4th of July celebration at Patch Barracks.
Finally a truck showed up and backed up to the plane. The driver raised the bed of the truck until it was even with the cargo door opening. Ten people came on board and formed two fire lines and the boxes were quickly transferred from the pallet to the truck. This took an hour, from initial confusion to finish.
In the meantime, Al had gone into the airport to do whatever handlers are supposed to do. For whatever reasons, instead of choosing to exempt the flight from charges because it was providing humanitarian assistance, the Tbilisi airport decided to charge us full fees, plus 40% surcharge for lateness, or general annoyance, so something like that. This came to $5,306.00, as I saw from the receipt Al showed me later. And they wanted it in US dollars cash, and they wanted it before we would be given clearance to leave again. Fortunately, Al still had his wad of $100 bills, so he paid the bill and we were able to leave. He told us the airport people said there was a German plane that had been there four days so far, because the crew couldn't come up with the necessary cash. At this point, I was telling the pilot it was a good thing we had Al with us, but he informed me ATI crews always carry enough cash to cover these sorts of problems, sometimes as much as $30,000.
From Tbilisi we flew on to Tashkent, arriving about 8:00 pm. A van was waiting to take us to our hotel, Al bullied and bribed our way through customs, and we drove to the Hotel Tashkent. Lee had been here the week before and was concerned that we had air conditioning in our room. The rest of us soon realized he was right. So far the weather had been cool and rainy, but now we were clearly in a different region, and even at 9:00 pm, it was oppressively hot. Al assured us that there were only two hotels in the town and this was the best one, which didn't address the air conditioning question, but was obviously his best effort.
When we got to the hotel, Al got us signed in and gave us our room keys and went off to his own apartment, having assured us he would be back at 11:00 am tomorrow, to arrange for the pallets to be taken off the plane, to take us on a city tour, and to bring me my plane ticket for a flight to Stuttgart at 4:00 pm. We took our suitcases upstairs, discovered we had no air conditioning and the rooms were steaming hot, and headed for the bar in the basement, which was cool and cheap.
At 1:00 pm the next day, I realized Al was not coming. Since he said there was also a flight to Frankfurt on Friday, I was not overly worried. I was a little concerned that we didn't have any way to reach Al, nor did we know his real name or the name of the company he supposedly represented. The crew was still in bed, so they were not at all worried.
It seemed like a good opportunity to walk around and take my own city tour and maybe do a little souvenir shopping. I took a city map with me but it quickly turned out to be useless. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan has declared Uzbek to be the national language instead of Russian and had renamed everything, including streets, that had a Russian name previously. So I tried to do a block at a time and stay within the area of the hotel.
The first thing I noticed was the number of empty buildings. For every ten buildings, only one was occupied. The rest were sitting, vacant, unmaintained and deteriorating. The businesses that existed were mainly cafes and small restaurants, and miniature department stores selling imported goods from the US, Germany and France. I also saw about eight large, modern hotels which appeared to cater to westerners. There were some stands set up along the sidewalks selling locally made items, mostly breads, pastries and drinks. Since I hadn't had breakfast, I bought a round, flattish, seeded loaf of bread that seemed to be a standard offering. It cost 30 rubles, about three cents, and was very good.
Tashkent had a lot of tall trees and many water fountains, which I realized they very much needed. The temperature was 42 degrees Celsius, which is over 100 Fahrenheit, and people stayed in the shade of the trees. There were many parks, including one with a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round and other such rides. I watched the children and the people walking through. This country, more than the other four we visited, had a larger variety of peoples. Later, Al told me there were nine separate main nationalities within the country, from Uzbek to Korean, who all seemed to get along.
I heard a band playing across the park and I went to see what was up, and found myself in the middle of a wedding reception. The guests were dancing a very graceful, smooth dance involving holding their arms at shoulder level and swaying parts of their bodies in different directions. It was lovely to see and I watched for quite a while and then walked on. I saw a number of memorials which looked either out of proportion or consisted of empty pedestals, which I guessed, correctly, as it turned out, were previously communist memorials that had been altered or replaced.
The city was dusty but not filthy, although the water system ran through open sewage pipes. I didn't see many animals. If fact, the whole trip I only saw one cat and three or four dogs. Around 4:00 I returned to the hotel and found the crew was just getting up. We went and ate and moved into rooms which had air conditioning, and in the meantime, Al called and said he would be there at 7:00 pm to give us a tour of the city.
As we sat in the lobby at 7:05, he called again and cancelled, without any explanation. We decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant, except for Lee, who said he had a strict policy of not eating anything he didn't recognize and went to the bar instead. The four of us had a fantastic three-course meal (of course) with an amazing variety of things to eat, as well as soft drinks, bottled water, vodka and coffee for 22,000 rubles, for which the waiter was thrilled to take a $20 bill instead.
I brought up my concern to the crew about Al not living up to his promise of getting me a ticket home and they agreed I should come along with them to Hong Kong, or even on to New York, to make a complete trip around the world. I really wanted to be back in Stuttgart to meet my guests on the 4th of July, but I was less worried now about getting back. I definitely didn't have enough cash for a commercial plane ticket and my credit cards were doing me no good at all.
The next day I did some souvenir shopping in the hotel. There were shops on several floors. Some took only foreign currency and some took only rubles, but everything was really inexpensive. I also bought a hand-made wool Uzbek rug, paying for it by writing a check to Chris, who cashed it out of his emergency airline funds. The rug fit in the empty suitcase I had brought for just such a contingency. At 11:00, I called Al and told him I wanted to leave that day. He was extremely upset that I was in such a hurry to leave. He also said there were no flights at all to Germany until Sunday and I should stay until then. He would be happy to show me around Tashkent in the meantime and I would have a lovely time. Tashkent, he claimed, was especially beautiful at night.
I was really disturbed to hear this (about the flights, not Tashkent.) I had no intentions of staying on two days after the air crew left, totally dependent on Al or whoever he was. I told him I would go on to Hong Kong with the crew then, and he said there was another alternative, a flight to London leaving that afternoon at 4:00. He would send someone at noon to take us on a tour of the city that would last two hours. After the tour, we should pick him up at his office and he would have my tickets and go with me to the airport to get me through customs.
I ran upstairs and packed my bags, turned in my key (Al had prepaid the bill) and met up with the air crew. An air-conditioned van came and picked us up, carrying three of Al's henchmen, plus a lovely woman who apologized for not being a tour guide but hoped we would enjoy seeing the city with her. She did provide a great tour -- she had grown up in the city and knew much of its history. We visited a mosque and the home of the Mufti, who is the Muslim leader there. At first they refused to let us in, but on hearing we were Americans, allowed us come into the garden to take pictures.
We visited the domed bazaar, with everything imaginable on sale, from pungent spices of every type to hot kimchee, of which we all were given samples by the smiling Korean vender. There were also live chickens, baked goods, hand-made items, flowers, bolts of colorful silk material which is used to make up what is sort of the national costume for women. We went to the Earthquake Memorial, which is built at the epicenter of the 1966 earthquake that leveled much of the city. When we asked how many people were killed, the lady told us that information had never been published.
We also went to Friendship Square, which had a wonderful statue group of a family. It was dedicated to a couple who took in 13 children during WWII. Since Uzbekistan was away from the main battles, people in the other republics bundled up their children and sent them to Uzbekistan for safekeeping. As the trains arrived, families who were willing to take in a child would show up and take one home. They kept them safe during the war and then they were sent back afterwards, if it was known where they belonged. Many ended up staying in Uzbekistan. This particular family took in 13 children, including one German child, all of whom were still living and had held a reunion recently. The parents were now deceased, but, the lady told us, "They lived to the deep of their ages," which I thought was a lovely way of expressing the fullness of their lives.
About 2:00 we headed back to the hotel and I told the henchmen we needed to stop and pick up Al because he had my plane ticket. This brought about immense confusion, partly because the lady didn't know who Al was. It turned out she knew him as "Dr. Karadja," another name to add to the list. His henchmen knew him as Alexandre Alawaya. I had seen his Syrian passport in the name of Mohammed Zaid and he had another that appeared to be a European Community passport. He also informed me that he had a US green card and traveled to the states every six months to keep it current. So the confusion was normal.
We drove up to a building near the hotel and his two associates asked me to come up with them. We walked up four flights of stairs, while I developed greater and greater misgivings. When we got to the top, there was a wooden door covered by a barred door like one on a prison cell. They unlocked the two doors and we walked in, with me hanging back because I was not happy about this. They walked into a room and told Al we were here. When he found out that the air crew was still in the van, he became infuriated and began shouting at them in German.
I moved into the room and was amazed to see him standing there in a pair of briefs, or something much like briefs. This was clearly not his office, but his living quarters. He immediately switched to a language I didn't recognize when he saw me and became affable and smiling. He put a robe on and asked me to sit down while his people drove the air crew back to the hotel and then they would return for us, so he and I could continue on to the airport. I started to turn to go back downstairs and he became agitated and acted as if he were going to stop me. I told him I wanted to say goodbye to the air crew as I would not get a chance to see them again. He said that was fine, and I went downstairs, accompanied by the henchmen, and got back in the van and told the air crew what had gone on.
They immediately came to the conclusion, which seemed totally reasonable to me at the time, that Al was a white slave trader and was trying to kidnap me. This may have been an overwrought explanation, but he was clearly acting in ways that didn't make sense to us. They decided they would stick with me until I got on the plane, or else I would continue on to Hong Kong with them.
The lady who was not a tour guide was terribly confused by the entire matter; however, we convinced her to tell the driver to return all of us to the hotel. When we arrived, I got my luggage out of the van and we all went back in the hotel and told the henchmen to go back and pick up Al and bring him to the hotel with the plane ticket. We sat in the lobby and got something to eat. Jim wanted a cup of coffee, but the lady at that booth was on break for another 30 minutes. She was there in the booth, doing nothing, but wold not make coffee for him. Finally, after the rest of us bought cokes in the next booth, he offered her a dollar to make him a cup of coffee, and a dollar for the cup of coffee itself. This brought him results, and we settled down to wait for Al.
Al showed up 15 minutes later, at about 2:30, suave and cool in his suit and tie which was his normal attire. He waved a notebook in which he claimed my ticket was and said we needed to hurry to get to the airport because it was difficult to get out of the country on such short notice. I got my bags and we all headed out for the van. However, Al had discharged the van and gone back to one of his mini-sedans, so not all of us could go to the airport. In fact, with the driver and one henchman taking up the front two seats, and Al in the back, there was really only room for me. I was getting nervous again, but Chris said, "I'm going along," and we squeezed into the back with Al.
The first time Al had filled out our customs forms, he had misunderstood Chris's name. Instead of hearing "Evenrud" and understanding it as a last name, he wrote down "Heaven" as being Chris's first name. We had made a joke out of it, calling Chris "Heaven" occasionally. Now as I sat scrunched in the back seat of this sedan, all I could think was that I was between Heaven and a white slave trader and hadn't a clue where I was going or what would happen.
The route we took seemed familiar as the way to the airport and in about 30 minutes, we actually pulled up in front of it. Al and Chris and I went in and were joined by a short, fat man who looked like a Mexican Chief of Police, walrus moustache and all. He took my passport and Al gave him the alleged ticket and he moved along and gave them to some other people. My bags got x-rayed and checked and disappeared. Al made a little farewell speech and gave me three cheek-kisses, in the Russian style, he said. I gave Chris an American-style hug and crossed beyond the control point, leaving them on the other side. As I walked toward the gate, I kept looking back, half-fearing Al would appear with some other complication. I made it to the gate and heard British accents all around me and felt a lot better. Apparently I was really on my way to London.
When I finally got on the plane, I looked at my ticket. I was amazed to see it showed I was flying from Karachi, Pakistan, to London, with a change of planes in Tashkent. In order to get me out of the country on short notice, Al needed to show that I was just transiting and had not actually been in Uzbekistan three days. I was greatly relieved to be on my way somewhere else.
Uzbekistan Airways was a vast improvement over Air Ukraine. The plane was tidy and clean inside, with one safety card for every six seats. There were six flight attendants, with uniforms in the colors of the Uzbekistan flag, aqua, white and green. They were professional, friendly, made the proper safety announcements as well as information ones all through the flight. There were lots of interesting things to eat. The chicken was cold and not cooked through enough, but I ate it anyway.
After my (mis)adventures, it's nice to be home again. I'll be expecting to hear from you next weekend. Give Dennis my love.
21 October 1995
Hello, Smitty!
How are things in the North Country? Get any snow yet? It is still pretty warm here in Egypt (80s) during the day but we have started turning the tent heaters on at night (50s).
The exercise is going slowly - no Egyptians have shown up, so we’ve been unable to do the two weeks of Affiliation Training that were scheduled. Not much else is happening on the US side either.
I’ve been able to get some time off and tour the area. I’ve been to see the Pyramids at Giza and at Sakkara. They were awesome. The Sphinx was a little sad and very much smaller than I expected. It’s missing so many pieces from what it was intended to look like. Supposedly Napoleon shot the nose off. The pyramids are absolutely massive and amazing to see. I went inside, to the middle, where the burial chambers are. They are very small and narrow inside, and dark. Everywhere you go, you are pestered by venders, trying to sell you postcards, trinkets, camel rides or anything they can get you to buy. Many are school-age boys, clearly not in school. I waited until I saw what other people paid for their souvenirs and then I offered half that. If you bargain a little, then walk away, they come down to your price.
I got a chance to ride on one of the helicopter training flights, which fly over the pyramids, so I got to see them from above, too, and that was great. This desert seems to go on forever when you’re in a helicopter. I’ve also been to the Cairo Museum to see the mummies and all the fantastic treasures that were found inside the pyramid of King Tut and several others. I’m not a big jewelry fan, but I fell in love with some of the things I saw. The ancient Egyptians were exquisite craftsmen. The museum is full of various mummies, about 50 or so in the room I visited. The rooms are filled with people sketching, mostly young women.
The modern Egyptian people are not quite a modern civilization, although they make claims to be. This is a very poor country and they are desperately greedy for money, so much so that they almost ruin your visit to the sights with their pushing and shoving and trying to cheat you out of your money. Even the ones who seem very nice and sophistocated will cheat you in a heartbeat. They don’t understand the concept of repeat business, so they don’t care how you feel about they way you are treated. It is really sad to see the small children out on the streets at 10 o’clock at night, begging for money. And the abject poverty is depressing, especially when you can see that nothing’s being done about it. The other thing which really disturbed me was their condoning the mutilation of the genitals of female children. I discussed it with several of the Egyptian drivers and tour operators, who said it was a common, accepted practice. They estimated 90 percent of Egyptian women have had their genitals mutilated. One of the taxi drivers had three teenage daughters. He said his youngest daughter, age 13, had just had the operation done and he would not think of any other course of action for his children. I was appalled, and so depressed.
Last night I went downtown shopping and had to step over a mother and her three babies who were all asleep on the sidewalk. Two had their heads on the woman’s lap, but the third one, around two or three years old, was sleeping with her face right on the dirty concrete. I can’t get the image out of my mind today. I’m haunted by the picture and feel as if I should be doing something to help, but the government seems to be so corrupt, I don’t think there is anything an individual can do to help.
Even the military folks we deal with are clearly in it for the money they can get from the US. Not that I blame them. A private in the US Army makes more per month than even their high-ranking officers. Housing is very expensive here, so people who can’t afford it are living in the cemeteries. It is their custom to build a small , roofless house, and put their family caskets in them. The poor move into these ready-made “houses” along with the caskets and make a home. They call it the “City of the Dead.” So far, the owners of the cemetery plots have been unable to get them evicted. The air base where we are camped out is in the middle of the desert, about 20 miles from Cairo. It is hot, dry and windy every day. There is absolutely no vegetation and the only wildlife I’ve seen are rats, beetles and wild dogs. It is strange not to hear birds in the morning, or anytime of the day. The wind blows the sand around constantly, so everything is sandy. Luckily we have nice, air-conditioned tents to live in, courtesy of the Air Force. The Army needs to get some of these. We have a little library, a chapel, some recreational activities, a small PX, post office and laundry. I’ve never been to the field under such luxurious conditions before. We even have flushable toilets!
I’ve eaten more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches since I’ve been here than I’ve eaten in the last 10 years. The mess hall isn’t bad, but it’s tiresome to eat the same thing all the time. Even when it’s different food, it looks the same. And once you put hot sauce all over it, it tastes the same.
I took a short dinner cruise on the Nile last week, mostly just to get away from the camp. It was very nice. The best thing was being able to eat with real flatware and china plates. I’m real tired of paper and plastic. We make so much garbage here on the compound. The only saving grace is that we know all our garbage is thoroughly gone over by the Egyptians who collect it, and anything usable gets recycled into their homes.
They have an incredibly exotic bazaar downtown, which is mainly for tourists. We've been allowed to go down there a couple of times, on organized tours with security forces accompanying us. I bought a couple dozen blown glass perfume bottles, some prayers beads and incense. The bazaar is a hodge-podge of tiny shops and narrow alleys winding all over. Some shops are up three flights of stairs and some are down in dark cellars. The perfume shops are the nicest to visit. I got some wonderfully smelling perfume oils. I also went through the spice market, which was incredible in the colors and smells and variety of spices arrayed in burlap bags. I bought some myrrh, one of the gifts of the Magi. I also bought some beautiful headdresses, like those worn by the Islamic women to cover their hair. About half the women cover their hair and the other half dress no differently from any western country.
The Egyptians have a small bazaar set up which is run by civilians, and has a KFC, a Pizza Hut and a Baskin-Robbins. It is funny to see, way out here in the desert. Last week we (me and the two ladies I hang around with, an Air Force public affairs major and an Army Signal Corps captain) went to the Bazaar, which is a little ways outside of our compound, but still on the Egyptian Air Base of Cairo West. We’re required to wear shirts with collars in order to leave the compound, which none of us brought because they didn’t tell us this until after we got here. So we decided to sneak across the back of the compound to avoid the MP at the gate.
It was pitch black and we had to use our flashlights to get across about a quarter mile of desert. As we climbed down a hill next to a concrete hangar which is across the road from the bazaar, we were suddenly surrounded by Egyptian soldiers, pointing their loaded rifles with fixed bayonets at the three of us and yelling something in Arabic. I could see they were quite young, and even more scared than us and I was hoping we could explain who we were before we accidentally got shot. Especially since the other two women were carrying big pieces of two by fours and rocks, because they were afraid we would run into some wild dogs. We whipped out our ID cards and showed them to the soldiers. Once they saw it was three women, they calmed down and even apologized and then escorted us to the road. We had some diet Pepsi at the bazaar and then decided to go back to the tent. Of course, this time we stayed on the road and went thru the MP gate. Then we got stopped and scolded (politely) for not having collars on our shirts. We jokingly told the MP the Egyptians stole them at the bazaar. At least he didn’t take our names and turn us in.
Yesterday about two hundred of us were hosted by the Egyptian government at a special dinner and show on an Egyptian military compound on the other side of Cairo. I was in charge of getting the buses scheduled and getting the people on the buses. That turned out to be quite a challenge. I finally got all the buses loaded, and with the generals in limousines, we formed a long caravan. The Egyptian security forces were in vehicles which traveled alongside us until we got into Cairo, where the traffic is always maddening. We had to stop every few blocks, and each time we did, the security troops would jump out of their vehicles and post themselves around each bus and limousine, aiming their machine guns at the driver of the nearest civilian vehicle. It was like a scene from a movie, but what was absolutely incredible to me was that the Egyptians civilians in their cars were totally unflustered and hardly paid attention, as if it were an everyday occurrence to have a machine gun pointed at your head. Perhaps it is.
Another bus trip I took was to Sakara, where there are some more pyramids of a different sort, built like steps. On the way there, we stopped at a carpet school and watched young children weaving carpets. Supposedly it is a trade school. We were told they attend regular classes in the morning and have time to play and work on perfecting their carpet-making skills in the afternoon, but I didn't see any areas where children could play, or any classrooms, nothing but rooms with looms and scores of children, all weaving. I had wanted to purchase a carpet, but I couldn't after seeing that. On the way back from Sakara, it was dark as we traveled along the Nile. The far bank was lined with miles and miles of mud huts and we could see small fires and families gathered on the dirt in front of their huts, watching the traffic go by. With no electricity and only the Nile for running water, I suppose we were the only entertainment they had.
I hope everything is going well. I sure miss being home and am looking forward to leaving this desert. It’s an interesting place, but now that I’ve seen the Pyramids, I’m ready to come home.
Happy Halloween!
16 Dec 91
Dear Robert,
It was wonderful to get your letters. I mean that literally. Sometimes the best part is pulling them out of the mailbox. They aren't always easy to read; that part often turns out to be painful. I’m sorry things are working out well for you with Mary.
It’s always fun to get Dennis’ letters, too. He writes hysterically funny letters, without obvious intention, many of which have to do with his day-to-day relationship with Mom and Dad. His reactions are so calm, it amazes me. For example, Dad sprayed the yard with a herbicide that killed Dennis' hives of bees. This is the second year he has done this. They both know this is what killed the bees, but Dad refuses to admit it, and gives Dennis hilarious explanations of where his bees went and why. And Dennis only says, I guess I'm out of the honey business. I would be utterly furious and probably never forgive Dad, like I've never forgiven Mom for taking all my cats to the animal shelter while I was sick in the hospital, back in June, 1971. I used to have visions of some day plunking her down in the driveway of the Home for Old Farts and saying, “this is what you did to my cats.” Well, I did forgive her eventually, but they still drive me crazy sometimes. I wish they would quit being parents and just be people now that we’ve all grown up.
But Dennis just moves on to something else and this barely ruffles his gentle, dreamy contentment with life. I not only agree with you that he was raised in a totally different family, I think he was raised in a parallel universe.
A few weeks after I got that letter from Dennis, I called home while Mom was out shopping and Dad answered. He mentioned to me that it had rained so much this past summer that Dennis' bees had flown south to find some sunshine. I guess he was looking for an ally.
My birthday was awful (apropos of nothing.) I hate being 40. It sounds so old. And it made it even worse to think I have a brother who's going to be 50. How did this happen? I had a lot of plans; I want to learn to scuba dive and jump out of an airplane and ride in a hot air balloon and next week I'll be using a walker or in a wheelchair, probably. Maybe my mother will be dropping me off in the old folks' home. I found myself sitting in the beauty parlor last week, waiting to get my hair cut, reading an article on menopause. I've always just skipped by those kinds of articles before. And now I'm getting old. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of getting old.
I have some friends here at school in Rhode Island, who are a married Army couple, who kept their own last names, Andy Chmar and Gayle Watkins. They have no kids but they have a female Golden Retriever. Last week Gayle flew the dog to Denver to have it bred to another G.R. with flawless lineage and yesterday, it flew back into Boston and they picked it up. I thought this was a pretty amazing thing to do; Dennis and I used to just let Chris (our beagle) slip out the door while Mom and Dad were gone and she managed to get puppies on her own.
I guess I need to move on to finishing my Christmas cards. I heard George Bush sent out 106,000 cards to his closest friends and supporters. That's a lot of stamps to lick.
Have a happy holiday, wherever you end up. You are welcome to come to New York and spend Christmas with us. I tend to think of home as the place I change my clothes on my way to somewhere else. But I am going home to Adams for Christmas this year. I can't imagine doing anything else but to go home for Christmas, wherever it happens to be.
25 Mar 92
Dear Robert,
How is everything going? I managed to get to Chris’ wedding. It was an interesting group. The groom was a skinhead and the best man had hair down to his waist.
I got home about midnight, only to find the snow in the driveway entrance was up to the headlights of the car, thanks to the efforts of the snowplows. So I had to blow out the driveway at midnight in -40 degree weather. I'm sure my neighbors think I’m insane.
I had to drive down to Virginia last weekend, with a complete set of free weights, a 6-component stereo set and cabinet, a sax, a trombone, assorted clothing and tons of groceries, not to mention various papers for my sons and their two roommates. Smitty needs a passport, Michael needs a driver's license and all four boys needed their taxes done. Michael lost his wallet, with his military ID, his license and his social security card. He went to get a new license and they wouldn't give him one because he couldn't show his social security card. He went to the Social Security office, and they wouldn't help him because he has no identification. Welcome to Catch 22.
Brian has a new job. His hands got so cracked from dishwashing that he couldn't pick up anything, so he told them he was going to quit. And they said, no problem, we'll make you a cook. So now he is a cook, this man who has never cooked anything more serious than a hotdog in a microwave oven. Not that Western Sizzler is known for its haute cuisine.
I bought them some milk and Brian said he hadn't had any for two months and it really tasted good. Michael said he drank milk every day, since he is allowed to go into the restaurant kitchen cooler whenever he needs something. I asked him if he wasn't concerned the manager would notice him taking a glass into the cooler, and he said it was not a problem, he just drinks out of the cartons. Needless to say, we went to other restaurants for our meals.
Michael has a new girlfriend, a lovely Cherokee with an interesting Grateful Dead tattoo. She left her husband for Michael, but he (the husband) comes around once a week and threatens to shoot them both. She also has a 2-year old, but the toddler does not live in the trailer with the rest of them and I decided not to ask too many questions. I keep finding out things I never wanted to know.
Smitty graduates Thursday and returns to NY but I think I will stay in Newport this weekend and catch up on all those things I've been putting off. I'm teaching a computer course and it has turned out to be more work than I anticipated. I'm also taking a German course in the evenings. I'm starting to dream in German.
Well, I have a lot of reading to do. This last trimester is on economics, international relations and force planning. It has been a very interesting course and I'm glad I came to the Naval War College instead of Ft Leavenworth.
Take care.
December 1994
Merry Christmas!
We hope you have had a good year and are enjoying the holidays. We are spending Christmas with the boys and their families in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It will be a new experience for us, but we all needed to get away from every day stuff.
You may have noticed I said "families." Yes, we got another one of those phone calls, "Oh, by the way, Mom, I got married last week." Michael took the big step in April of this year, and married a young lady who has a son, Douglas (AKA Pee Wee), who is about 20 months. Michele is from a military family and seems very nice. She has a brother who is a Neo Nazi skinhead, but it doesn't seem to be an inherited thing, so we aren't too concerned yet.
Brian has a skinhead haircut at the moment, but it is totally job related, as he joined the Army in October and went off to basic training at Fort Jackson, SC. He is going to be a helicopter mechanic when he finishes training at Fort Eustis, VA, followed by airborne school at Fort Benning, GA. I'm not sure why a helicopter mechanic needs to know how to skydive. I would think it would be better incentive for aircraft mechanics to do a good job if they don't know how to use a parachute.
Smitty took command of a reserve Supply and Services battalion in September, at Schenectady, NY. That is keeping him busy, traveling around to the various companies which belong to the battalion. He's also still traveling around giving speeches to Lions Clubs, and eating all those buffet dinners. I went to visit him in October, when we celebrated our 25th anniversary.
I'm still doing International Logistics for J4 at European Command, in Stuttgart, Germany. I do a lot of traveling, too, but most of it was back to the States this year. I also had an interesting trip to Israel the week the bus was bombed. Jerusalem was wonderful, as was the Dead Sea, and traveling through the desert was incredible. I had an odd adventure, which started with a photo taking attempt involving a herd of camels and ended up with my being invited to have tea with the son of a Bedouin chieftain in his raggedy tent on the edge of the desert, along with my taxi driver, who was as astonished as I by the whole event.
Smitty came over to Germany for ten days in November and we spent Thanksgiving in Budapest, Hungary, seeing the sights, and enjoying the sunshine, which doesn't come to Germany very often. We took a double decker bus tour, which I don't recommend. The upper level is shorter than usual, and we all kept smacking our heads on various objects. Smitty did win the prize for the most lumps, though, which was some consolation.
We hope you have a very happy holiday and a wonderful new year.
5 Jan 95
Hi, Anne,
It was nice to hear from you. Smitty said he got a card, too. We've just gotten back to our respective "homes" and are catching up on things like mail, bills, etc.
Christmas in Virginia was quite unusual. We had a dryer catch on fire, a flood from a main water line break, two trips to the emergency room, numerous trips to lawyers, JAG and the courthouse, plus my daughter-in-law called the cops to have us arrested for kidnapping. It was an interesting two weeks. I think everything has been resolved, and, no, we didn't have to go to jail. We have all the right paperwork now, so Brian has legal custody of his son, Smitty has legal guardianship, and Brian and Terri are legally separated. It's very difficult when a family breaks up, but I can't say I'm sorry about Terri leaving Brian. She’s about to have her third child, all of whom have different fathers. Brian is hurting, but more from losing his stepson than losing his wife, although he's sad about her, too.
It’s nice to be back in Germany where things are relatively calm. I'd love to have you come visit and you're welcome to stay with me. I have an extra double bed, a couch and a maid's room upstairs. I think one of the neighbors is storing a bed up there but I haven't looked to see what size it is. Anyway, there's room for all six of you. I know you want to show your kids Germany, but some of the newly opened countries are really neat, like Hungary. I really liked Hungary. And just about any other country is cheaper than Germany, which you will find to be outrageously expensive.
Let me know when you decide to come.
10 May 1992
Dear Dennis:
Well, I have just come from a grand family reunion and in the midst, we determined that we missed you, so it wasn't quite as grand. But very interesting.
I'm answering this right away because I am esoterically offended. I grow my own fresh herbs, coriander, basil, thyme, sage and bergamot mostly and I certainly cook with them. I'm offended that you would think I wouldn't know what to do with them. Maybe you meant it would be superfluous to send me dried herbs in the sense that Dan Quayle would find a MENSA application superfluous.
I don't think my life is any different from the average person's. We're a tad uncommon, that's all. Robert bought champagne (it came with muzettes) and gave a toast to our "uncommon family" at the restaurant. That's when I missed you.
Anyway, I think its insane to run 26 miles when you can take a taxi and avoid the crowd. Seventeen years of you must be quite stressful. Even Smitty at his worst can only cause me to run 4 miles to get rid of my stress. Tell Judi I wish her much success and I'm quite impressed, really. I occasionally have the desire to once in my life complete a marathon, but if I lie down a while, it goes away.
Robert was awesome looking, massive with big, sculptured hair and well-groomed beard and moustache. He just looks important, wherever he goes. And he thinks so, too, which is all part of the appearances. It was nice to see him. He actually seemed relaxed most of the time, although he appeared to disapprove of much of what Carol and all of what Mrs Giboney had to say. It was quite a pleasure to watch him sample the wine he selected for all of us. A real konnasewer--a subtle, but exquisite performance. Just when I thought to myself, if he sniffs the cork, I'm going to burst out laughing, he sniffed the cork. But he looked so proper and so important doing it, it turned out okay, so I didn't laugh after all. You could tell he really believed what he was doing, it wasn't just to impress the waiter, or show off. He obviously got all the class in the family.
I'm sure you know by now that I'm a mother-in-law. What a shock that was. Brian called me up last Friday and said, Mom, I got married 10 days ago. It was nice of him to let us know. Also we have a 15-month old grandson, Scotty. Brian plans to adopt him. His wife's name is Terri.
Well, my contact lenses are fogging over and I think I need a nap. I'm impressed about Ben being gifted and talented, but then, aren't we all? You could only expect our offspring to be the same way. Mostly, anyway. Mine did have the counter-balancing effect of being fathered by Smitty. Smitty's the only reason my feet are still anchored on this planet and he gets sweeter and sweeter every year, but sometimes I really have to wonder what he is using as a brain-substitute. He still makes me laugh, and that gets more important the older I get, so I guess I'll stick with him another 25 years or so.
Take care.