Planes and Trains and Cars

I have watched planes take off since I first arrived in Doha many months ago. Their path goes directly out over the water above the skyline before veering off into the Gulf. For a while this was all perfectly visable from my waterfront view. Later I lived next to the runway, hearing planes and an occasional military jet let off steam at all hours of the night. There are some things in life you never get tired of seeing and tons of welded metal flying through the air at high speeds in a way all rationale says should not be possible is one of those things to me.

I confess that more than once I wished I was on one of those planes. Part of that is a natural human grass-is-greener inclination to imagine other places as better: other people off galavanting somewhere having more fun or doing something more efficient in the long-term plan for their lives. Part of that is simply Qatar as Qatar. But given so many highs and lows scattered across the past few months, I forgive myself for a little bit of harmless longing. These feelings are complicated and grey and do not have an easy solution.

The night before Turkish Airlines Flight 783 was not extravagant, like many of my final nights of nationalistic fervor have been. I did nothing in particular, perhaps something symbolic of my time in Qatar. The night itself was long only due to the unpopular hour of my flight. At 3am I sat in a McDonald's drivethrough watching Ramadan fasters of all nationalities load up on all the sugar and fat missed during the day. When my turn came, I asked for a cheeseburger, fries, and a drink. The Philipino attendant informed me that to do a meal, I needed to get two cheeseburgers. Out of apparent convenience, my pre-flight calorie intake doubled and I thought about how America is killing the world over and it has nothing to do with wars or foreign policy.

When Turkish Airlines Flight 783 took off at 5:45am, I suddenly realized I was on it. I felt good about that, and it put me comfortably to sleep nestled up against the window. Hours later a breath of cool air in Brussels, coupled with a blonde haired girl in short shorts, signaled I had returned to my old self in a free place: the self not suppressed by the miles and miles of flowing desert, the self excited by the prospect of ten hour bus rides alone, and the self able to become immersed in a good Hemingway that touches on bullfights, true love, and hard drinking. You don't lose those things about yourself I discovered; they are just put on hold awhile. So it is very much with pleasure that I go into the next three weeks, doing the sorts of vagabond things I think I was born to do.