MORE TURBULENCE? Another PIA Flight From Hell

Dear Readers,
I’ve recently realized that while I had promised to let you know exactly what went down during my vacation in Pakistan this past January, I haven’t exactly done so.
My bad. Truly.
I shall make amends by sharing one of my more interesting Pakistani moments with you today.
Now, the following all took place during our flight from Islamabad to Karachi. No, not that terribly terrifying flight from Karachi back to Islamabad that convulsed for what seemed like HOURS and successfully erased from my memory this almost equally unpleasant but somewhat funny earlier flight. So, here it is. I’m recreating the following from notes I jotted down in my diary.

The airplane is small.

I ask Shafaat why we’re on such a small airplane. As he puts his head back and closes his eyes, he says probably because a smaller airplane is easier to crash than a jumbo jet, which doesn’t really make sense to me but I gulp nervously anyway. I’m already clutching to the armrests and now I sink further down in my seat. Every muscle in my body is tense. It’s almost as if my body is practicing levitation just in case the plane does go down. I really don’t want to fly.

Our parents are seated a couple of rows behind us and my brother’s already asleep next to me. To my other side is a woman who reminds me of those Lee Press On Nails that were so big in the ‘80s. She’s wearing miles of foundation and her eyelashes are matted and clumpy. Tiny flower clips are scattered throughout her severely lightened hair, which is pulled back into a not so fancy chignon. Her jeans are a size too small and acid washed. Her torso area is one giant breast that she’s swathed in a light cotton material. Smelling like she’s recently submerged herself in a bath full of designer imposter perfume, she’s leaning away from me and talking to the three young men sitting across the aisle from her.

I start to wonder how they’re related but soon I stop giving a rat’s ass because I’m too preoccupied with thoughts of flying hundreds of thousands of feet in the air and coming down in a fiery crash. I’ve closed my eyes tightly and am praying to God for a safe and crash free flight when Lee Press On Nails lady says, “You nervous?”

Of course she’s snapping on gum and, as we start talking, I feel like she’s going to pull out peroxide any second and dye my hair.

“Yes. I don’t like flying very much.”

“Leave everything to Allah. I leave everything to Allah.” She stabs her chest with a very long and elaborately painted nail. “You no need worry. Okay?”

I smile. She’s right.

“You first time in Pakistan?”

I explain to her that this is my fourth trip to Pakistan, but my brother’s first trip to the country in 15 years.

“Oh! Long time! I go to Amrika three times in one year.” She stabs at her chest with her acrylic tip again. “I go there. I spend money. I come back.”

“Very good,” I say, thinking once again about the plane, which is getting ready to take off.

“My husband is elder than me. Very much elder,” she says smiling as the plane rushes down the runway. I wince when I see that her pink lipstick is lined with a purple liner. “He police officer. Chief. He give me lot of money for Amrika.”

I nod and close my eyes when the plane goes airborne but the Lee Press On Nails lady goes right on talking.

“He thinks money will make happiness. My sons make happiness. They are my sons. The boy by window and the boy by him. The other boy is my youngest brother.”

“Wow, great.”

“My eldest son marry five years ago. He 29. We have granddaughter who love me more than her mama.”

“That’s sweet,” I say once the airplane has become level in the air. My heart settles down a bit. “How old is she?” I’m still gripping to the armrests.

“Three,” Lee Press On Nails lady says and proceeds to tell me exactly how brilliant her granddaughter is.

“That’s very special,” I smile at her and rest my head against my chair, hoping to get some sleep.

“I want the wife for my other son now. I looking for him.”

Of course, I think to myself.

“Of course,” I can’t keep myself from saying out loud.

“He very good boy. Very smart. He studying for masters degree in (insert name of a Karachi institute of higher education here). He handsome too, see.”

She leans back so that I can sneak a peak past her bosom. I nod and smile.

“I look for girl like you. Young. Cute. Amrikan. Your family Pakistani, yes?”

“Of course,” I say, rubbing my eyes and yawning. On some level, I know I stayed awake the previous night for nothing, that I won’t be getting any sleep on this flight.

“You looking for husband?” she asks.

“Not at the moment,” I tell her.

“You’re pretty. I like you,” she comments.

I worriedly wonder if this giant bosomed woman is, in fact, hitting on me as she proceeds to tell me again how much she likes me and how she wants me to call her once we’ve settled in Karachi.

“I want to show you good time,” Lee Press On Nails lady tells me earnestly. She follows this rather disturbing desire with “You marry my son?”

“Oh!” I’m awake now. “Oh! I mean no!” I follow my outburst with a quick and mumbled apology, that I’m afraid I don’t know her son well enough to marry him.

“His name (insert Pakistani name here—I can’t recall his name). He handsome, see,” she leans back again.

“What is he getting his masters in?” I ask, trying to be polite. No matter what subject Lee Press On Nails lady tells me her son is studying, I will nod and say that he’ll have a line of girls waiting for him at his door when he gets his degree.

“Ah,” she looks confused. “He’s studying…I always forget this subject. I will ask.” And with that she leans across the aisle and demands in Punjabi, “What are you getting your masters in? She’s single. Hurry.”

The boys are smiling. Her son tells her something and Lee Press On Nails lady comes back to me and tells me “Engineering.”

“Excellent. He’ll surely have a mob of girls clamoring for him outside his window once he graduates.” I feel that this particular image has more umph than the line of girls I was going to tell her about initially.

“Will you marry him?” she asks, ignoring the clamoring mob.

I mumble something.

She’s drawing something out on the palm of her hand now with the tip of her very long nail. It’s as if she’s listing her son’s positive qualities. “He very smart and handsome and I want modern Amrikan girl for him. Modern. And Amrikan. He twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two what?” I’m thinking that she’s going to tell me that he has twenty-two cars or twenty-two credits or twenty-two luft balloons or something.

“His age. Twenty-two,” she says, beaming. “Right age for the marriage. Twenty-two.”

I’m too tired to argue so I just nod and smile again.

“I want you marry my son. Then I take you around Karachi in my car. I have my car. I drive everywhere! I talk to your mama. Gimme her number. How old you are?” she asks.

I ask her to guess and for the following five minutes she massages my ego by guessing twenty, then twenty-one, then twenty-two. When I shake my head at twenty-two, she exclaims, twenty-three then!

I’m beginning to like Lee Press On Nails lady.

“I’m going to be twenty-seven this year,” I break the news to her.

“Oh! Why you single?” she asks, her eyebrows knotted with concern.

Part of me wants to give her a lecture about her son being too damned young to get hitched and that marriage isn’t one’s primary, lifelong goal. Another part of me wants to give her a Sabila “UGH!” and promptly fall asleep with my back to her. Instead, I settle with telling her “I don’t know. I’m more concerned with other things, I guess.”

I’m tired of this flight and this painfully long conversation. I want the plane to land already.

Lee Press On Nails lady has now given me her name and number on a slip of paper and made me promise that I’ll spend several days with her and her family (don’t worry. I didn’t call her). She will drive me to the hottest shopping spots in Karachi and will show me tons of clothes that will look perfect on me. She has an eye for fashion, she tells me.

I eye her acid washed jeans.

And, for the remainder of the flight, Lee Press On Nails lady keeps yapping.

I have a pounding headache by the time the plane lands. Lee Press On Lady turns to me and says, “See, you no scare in flight. Because you talk too much to me.” She stabs herself with her nail again and again.

I guess she’s right. I almost forgot that I was in the air. Lee Press On Lady’s annoyingly long conversation kept me distracted enough to forget that I feared flying. Miracle of miracles!

Suddenly, the giant bosomed lady looks like a saint, the Madonna, an angel sent from heaven!

And then she says, “I think about this and I think it all right if you marry my son. Five year not so much.”

I give her the most obnoxious, wide-eyed look I can manage and say “UGH!” as I push past her to get the hell off the plane.