January 25th: Las Palmas to Marrakesh to Algiers
We fly into the rising sun towards Marrakesh. The last landmarks we see are the blasted black volcanic craters pockmarking the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote before we
are swallowed by the sprawling blue of the Atlantic. I feel melancholy and homesick and tired. I think of my family, that I haven’t seen in a month, and I play Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” in my headset:
"Oh, I’m sailing away my own true love
I’m sailing away in the morning
Is there something I can send you from
across the sea,
From the place that I’ll be landing?
No there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love
There’s nothin’ I’m wishin’ to be ownin’ Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled From across that lonesome ocean."
It is a bittersweet song of restlessness and longing.
Is there a difference between running towards something and running away from something? If Ahab had caught his whale could he have stopped? I’m looking towards the horizon, the next country, the next demo, the reunion with my family in two weeks. Flying around the world in a Twin Otter over the last five years has shown me the enormity of this planet, even as it has shrunk. It doesn’t take very long to run out of horizons and end up back where you started.
The coastline of Morocco is low and green as it materializes. We have left the Sahara behind. Tracking further eastwards towards Marrakesh we see the Atlas Mountains rise from the plains of farms and palms. Of all the places on the tour that I would have liked to spend some time, Marrakesh tops the list. Instead, we make a short stop for fuel and only get glimpses of the blocks of squat Arabic buildings and palm courtyards on approach. The chimerical abode of Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs eludes me.
The temperatures at altitude have dropped. Instead of the ten or twelve degrees that we are used to, it is now well below freezing up at thirteen-thousand feet as we cross high
terrain into Algeria. We plow through some moderate rime ice crossing the border into the final country on the African leg of the tour. When we emerge from the weather, the aircraft nacreous with ice, we see the coastline of Algeria -a carpet of fields and hills rolling out of the Mediterranean, high cliffs facing the water.
The towns and cities down the coastline are sandwiched between the water and the folds of mountains that rise fluted and green to over six thousand feet, their broken spine running parallel to the sea. These mountains stand like a massive bulwark, sheltering the idyllic plains and hills and cities along the coast from the sands of the Sahara, its dunes lapping at the feet of the mountains on their far perimeter with the silence of slow-motion waves, the slow sound of patient annihilation.
In places snow is scrubbed white across the highest peaks. Below, dense white apartment blocks crowd the sea.
Out in the wasteland of the Sahara, south of the mountains, Algeria is pumping oil. As we fly down the shoreline at nine thousand feet, we see refineries in serried ranks along the shore, their flares smoking like rotten feathers above the sea.
When we land at Algiers International Airport we are vaguely directed to an apron and parking stall and before we have the engines shut down police vehicles come wheeling from the terminal and down the taxiway to our apron to park arrayed around us with lights flashing. Despite the dramatic entrance, it is just more of the usual routine: they check passports and search the aircraft. The difference is that normally a handler would meet us to translate and assist with getting fuel and getting us through the terminal. There is no handler here. Fortunately, Christophe can communicate in French with the police and the process goes smoothly.
We are informed that the handler will meet us in the terminal and that we need a police escort to get there. This is a first.
We have also received several emails from our trip support company while enroute. The first includes a statement from the Algerian handler about payment for the hotel:
“Kindly advise crew to pay our supervisor cash upon arrival as there is no way except cash payment. If they do not have cash, advise crew to have visa card so they can withdraw money from the ATM machine at the airport and pay us cash for the hotel on arrival.”
Considering that we are staying at the Hyatt, it seems suspicious at best that they wouldn’t accept credit cards.
This message was followed by another:
“There is no ATM at the airport. The crew is advised to bring $2100 USD cash.”
This is the first intimation of the undercurrent of corruption upon which all things in Algeria seem to be buoyed.
The police escort us through the labyrinth of security and immigration checks at the terminal. They also take our passports, holding them hostage until we leave the country. Although this would normally be alarming, we have already had to do the same in Asmara and Abuja.
In the arrivals area we meet our handler, Samir. After paying off our police escort, Samir greets us and doles out business cards with spidery fingers, speaking English to me, French to Christophe, German to Norbert, and Arabic to the police. He is ingratiating and repeatedly asks me, “Captain, everything ok, Captain?” and now says not to worry about the cash for the hotel as he has paid for the rooms. He will also give us US dollars to pay the airport landing and parking fees. “Not to worry, not to worry,” he croons, as he flashes a wad of crisp US currency.
“You know Baksheesh, Captain?” he says with a surreptitious wink and a grin. “Samir knows how to make things happen, not to worry. In Algiers there is Baksheesh for everything.”
He is in his fifties with a long face and sunken olive skin stretched across his stubbled jaw. His dark eyes are framed by dark brows and the dark pools of skin below them.
He tells us that he left the main handling company at the airport to start his own business. So we have some sort of freelance bottom-feeder navigating our way through the byzantine channels of Algerian airport bureaucracy.
He ushers us out of the terminal to the parking lot where we meet his sidekick. Said is in his early twenties, slick, and dressed like he’s going to a club. Gelled hair is curled on his head above designer glasses with thick black rims. His beard and mustache are immaculately manicured. He’s wearing an expensive watch and a long black jacket.
We have to split up into their two small cars, distributing our luggage so that everything will fit into Samir’s rat-bagged Peugeot and Said’s tricked-out Honda for the three minute drive out of the parking lot and across the street to the Hyatt, which looms brand new and glittering next to the airport.
At the Hyatt I ask if they accept credit cards for payment and of course they do. Samir protests that he has already paid and there is no recourse. Arguing with him evokes images of spice stalls, snake charmers, and wafting incense in the shade of a canvas-covered bazaar. He will clearly bill this back to our trip support company at highly inflated prices.
We have the next day off. Originally, we were hoping to do the demonstration flight tomorrow, but the Algerian Air Force wants to do it the following day. I make plans with Samir to go back to the airplane to fuel it in the morning and Said offers to take us into the city afterwards to see the sights of Algiers.
The sleek new hotel is empty and overstaffed. Despite this it is still difficult to get service. A gin and tonic costs the equivalent of $22 Canadian.
Comments