Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Golden memories
By Aditha Dissanayake
Flying isn’t expen-sive anymore. I found out by traversing the clouds from Colombo to Dubai one rainy night on a ‘frill-less’ flight. “Better go early. If all the seats are full you’ll have to stand all the way to Dubai,” cautioned Brother Rad. Someone had told my mother that no meals are served on the flight. She insisted I take a box of rice and curry, a spoon to eat it with and a bottle of water. I managed to convince her that there was only room for the bottle of water in my cloth hold-all brimming with books, pens and note books. I was flying to Dubai the cheap way, class-less and frill-less.

My flight was surprisingly empty. I had an entire row of seats on the plane all to myself. I sat near the window for a while, then moved to the middle seat, and finally to the one near the aisle when the air-hostess began to push the food cart. There had been no warm face towels to freshen me up as on other flights, but I was given a complimentary cup of water. I bartered the voucher I had of 15dhrms and got myself the package breakfast and a cappuccino. “Have a pleasant trip,” said the chief air-hostess on behalf of Captain Abraham and his crew. This meant sleep. Sans the frills, newspapers, magazines, movies, music, up in the clouds there was nothing else to do but snooze. The landing was smooth and by seven-thirty I found myself walking out of the airport, but, to my chagrin not into the open arms of Nirosh, my friend and the one with whom I’ll be spending my vacation in the land of deserts, dates, camels and oil rigs.

I was glad of the 200dhrms in my wallet with which I bought a phone card and called Nirosh on her mobile.
“Where are you?” both of us asked at the same time.
“At home/At the airport.” We answered together.

“You promised to pick me up,” I accused Nirosh with justifiable anger.
Anybody who has been stranded at an airport in a strange country would agree about the agonies of watching all the other passengers on the flight being whisked away by friends and family who greet them with hugs while you search the faces realising with increasing alarm that there is no one to meet you. “I am on my way. Stay where you are,” said Nirosh after apologising for getting the times muddled.

Back at Nirosh’s place, I brandished a broom along the ceiling of Nirosh’s two bedroom apartment in Ajman to destroy imaginary cobwebs. Imaginary because there were no familiar spiders, cockroaches, ants, mosquitoes or geckos in these immaculate surroundings.

My mother had packed fifty kavum and fifty mungkeraly for us. “Twenty-five for you. Twenty-five for me,” I calculated. Figure conscious Nirosh generously offered me twenty-four each of her share. This was too much even for my homesick palate. We distributed the sweetmeats among our Sri Lankan friends who exclaimed at our generosity as if we had given them gifts of gold.

Gold. Off to ‘gold land’ in Dubai where I learnt the art of buying gold. The moment you walk into a shop the first question to ask was, “What is the selling price of gold today?” Next Nirosh will point to a row of bracelets and ask, “Are they 22 carat or 18 carat?”

“Twenty-two”
“How much does this weigh?” asks Nirosh picking one. The salesman places it on a scale and states the weight.
“How much does it cost?”
The salesman begins a series of calculations on his calculator and comes up with “340 dhrms.”
Nirosh raises her eyebrows. “For this? Too much,” says Nirosh and begins to walk out of the shop. “O.K. for you, I reduce,” calls the salesman.
Nirosh mutters under her breath to me, “Ganan vedi.” The salesman grins and says in perfect Sinhala, “Labai.”

After finally deciding on a bracelet which was ‘the thing’ for 135 drhms, we crossed the Dubai creek in a boat and entered the biggest fish market I have seen. There were warnings everywhere commanding ‘undersized’ fish should not be sold at any price.

After an exciting day at Aqua Park where, sliding down the spiraling water tubes, I had a premonition of death, a trip to Snoopy Island for snorkeling, a stint at the CineStar Cinema watching The Passion of the Christ, and an uncountable number of shawarmas and Mecca Colas later, my sojourn in the Middle East came to an end. I board once more, my ‘frill-less’ flight to Colombo. I am looking forward to the dust, the heaps of garbage, the flies, the mosquitoes, the familiar weather, my mother’s cooking and above all the lush greenery… distance sure makes the heart grow fonder.

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