PAKISTANDARDS

PIA is the most fabulously bizarre airlines I've ever flown in my life.
When we flew PIA two years ago, my mother and I started running into people we knew at the flight gate.
We met another mother and daughter traveling duo, who happened to be family friends. The daughter, a year older than me, was getting married in the spring (...of all the lousy people we could've run into...) and was going to Pakistan to shop for her impending nuptials. I knew that, with my luck, I wouldn't hear the end of it on the flight--unless my mother was distracted. And, with my luck, this distraction came in the form of a Pakistani bachelor who took a seat to my mom's left.
As he was settling into his seat, my mom turned to me:
"He's CUTE! I don't think I see a wedding band."
I cowered in my seat, feeling slightly queasy at the thought of not only being 35000 feet in he air but of also attempting to deflect my mother's efforts at matchmaking for the duration of the 20 hour flight.
A good 20 minutes into the flight, I was still green with nerves, too busy gripping onto the armrests of my seat and willing the plane to stay in the air to actually talk to the bachelor. Thankfully, my mother was doing all the talking for me.
He had just invited us to his brother's wedding in Lahore (here I was tormented by the thought of the plane plunging into the murky miles of the Atlantic below us and all this kid could do was invite us to his bloody brother's bloody wedding that I gave two bloody rat's asses about!!!!! I was SO on the verge) and my mother had just finished relaying to me the very same fact with wide-eyed giddiness when a woman seemed to materialize in the aisle.
She greeted us.
In my panicked delirium, I wondered if she was the angel of death.
Were we Naila S.'s aunt and cousin, she wanted to know.
Naila S. of Michigan?
The one and only!
She'd recognized us from my cousin's (you guessed it) wedding photos and had been eagerly awaiting for the seat belt lights to turn off so that she could say hello.
The bachelor gave up his seat and paced the aisle for ten minutes, during which time she chattered with my mother about our plans in Pakistan.
I tried to press my eyes closed against the fact that there were 30 + thousand feet of nothing but air below the plane in which we were all riding.
"Wasn't that nice?" my mother asked after she got up, giving the bachelor back his seat. "She said she recognized you as we got onto the plane. How funny! She's one of Naila's closest friends in Michigan!"
And, for the sake of smooth story telling, let's say this is when the turbulence began (the turbulence, in fact, actually started once we took off from our layover at Heathrow). Our plane convulsed in an air pocket for what seemed to be hours and hours. We dropped, we moved side to side; we were a giant salt shaker hovering above the ocen. I was practically chewing on my heart as my numb fingers continued to grip on the arm rests. I cried like a baby.
"She's crying because she's afraid of flying. It's a post-9/11 fear," my mother explained to the bachelor.
"I'm crying because we're all going to die! (sob, cry, sob, weep)" I told her, not worried about who could hear me. "We're all going to die (hiccup, sob, sob) and that woman--" I nodded towards the flight attendant who was working her way towards us, pushing a silver cart up the aisle, "--(sob, blow my nose, sniffle) doesn't seem to care enough to stop serving dinner!"
The bachelor mumbled something to my mom; the half a dozen kids in our section of the plane chortled downright delightfully, as if they were enjoying the airplane's death throes. "He's right," my mother said. "Draw some strength from these children. They're not afraid! Why should you be!"
"They're too bloody stupid to realize what's going on! Never again, NEVER AGAIN am I flying this airline. How the HELL do they expect us to eat?!!!!! And how did you talk me into taking this endless flight in the first place?!!" I demanded, conveniently forgetting that the trip happened to be my idea (ahem).
Thankfully, the plane fought it's way out of that bastard air pocket and when it was safe enough for us to get up out of our seats again, my mother left me and the bachelor to use the restroom. An awkward silence settled in between us as I dabbed at my red and swollen eyes and mumbled prayers of thanks for escaping that close brush with death.
And then, out of nowhere, he stated:
"You don't strike me as the adventurous type."
What I really wanted to say was "No effin' shit, asshole," but I was still feeling unsteady and strange so that all that managed to escape past my gritted teeth was an end-of-conversation "No."
He seemed relieved when my mother, smiling brightly as usual, inserted herself between us.
After the flight attendant went around collecting the remnants of our dinners (my nervous stomach had inspired me only enough to push the food around in interesting patterns that worked magically in distracting making my eyelids heavy with sleep, albeit briefly), the speed walking began. Several older women brisk walked up and down the aisle, dead set on digesting the food they had just consumed, perhaps even hoping that they'd burn some additional calories before landing in Pakistan. Some little kids ran up and down the aisle behind them. I saw one sneak into the kitchen area and emerge with two cups of water and crackers--he seemed to have helped himself. Pretty soon, there were circles of people near the emergency exits of the plane. They were sipping on plastic cups, laughing and talking as if they were at a cocktail party instead of on a trans-Atlantic flight.
I shook my mom awake and pointed out the scene to her. For the first time since we'd gotten to the airport, we shared a laugh at how bizarre the scene before us was. And as we were taking it all in, I noticed a giant rock of a man, waving to us from the opposite side of the plane. I recognized him as one of my father's friends and pretty soon, he'd unfolded himself from his seat and was bulldozing his way past the restless passengers. He was followed by the engaged acquaintance we'd met at the flight gate. The poor bachelor awoke only to feel obligated to offer his seat once again and paced the aisle as we chatted. And, for a while, I forgot that I was in the air at all.
Don't get me wrong. My fears certainly weren't alleviated by the assortment of personalities on the plane but I'd be lying if I said that the strangely homey feel of the flight didn't put me at ease for long enough to remember what it was like to just sit back and just let the plane do what it did 99.999999% of the time: fly.
The next time those jerk pilots found an air pocket for us to fly directly into, I didn't cry QUITE as hard.