flying

"What the hell am I doing?" I asked myself as I sat on a Heathrow-bound plane awaiting departure. As my second flight took off to Manama, Bahrain, an even bigger alarm went off in my head when the flight path was shown for the journey. Throughout eight sleep-filled hours, I intermittently watched us cross the English Channel, France, Germany, Turkey, Lebanon and finally Iraq, before the plane was shown just over the Perisan gulf on the little screen on the back of the chair in front of me.

When we were over Bahrain, just about to land, there was some sort of upper atmosphere sand storm. I looked out the window of the airplane and all I could see were pink, peach and purple swirls, which soon turned to the dark grey of dusk. And then we landed. And I thought... "Oh my god. I'm in the Middle East."

I definitely was freaking out in my head a little. So then I draped my pashmina over my shoulders, put a little eyeliner on and tried to look as "arab" (whatever that means) as possible.