Читать книгу All Inclusive - Farzana Doctor - Страница 17

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Satiated by chicken korma and a rum and Coke, I dozed after the movie. Meena had dropped off half an hour before me, her head in her mother’s lap. There was little turbulence. I felt safe and lucky and on my way home.

A few hours later, I awoke to a breakfast tray sliding onto my table. My seatmate opened the blind to reveal a pink sunrise. I checked my watch, which I’d already corrected for London time, our next stop. It was just past 6:00 a.m. and I knew we were soaring above the Atlantic, though I couldn’t see anything through the blanket of clouds. I rubbed my eyes, relished the fresh pour of steaming chai, and dug into my eggs.

Meena was awake but groggy and picking through her meal at her mother’s insistence.

“We’ll land in London soon,” I told her.

“I know. I’m getting triangle chocolate at the airport.” There was a dot of strawberry jam on her chin.

“Triangle chocolate?

“Toblerone,” Meena’s mother clarified, and then wiped her daughter’s face with a cloth napkin.

“Will you share some with me when we board again?”

“You can buy your own there, too, you know,” she said earnestly.

Our trays were cleared and I opened A Passage to India, a novel my supervisor’s wife had pulled off her shelf when, after my defence, I’d joked that I didn’t want to think about chemistry for the rest of the summer. I laughed at the title and said it would make perfect airplane reading.

I was in the middle of page one when it happened. An enormous boom vibrated through my chest and skull. A Passage to India took flight and before I could catch it, I fell forward, my head knocking into the hard plastic of the seat in front of me. Everything turned sideways and I slid down into the aisle and against a man with terrified eyes. I lost control of my bladder, an embarrassing gush of urine soaking through my pants leg. There were yells and screams and prayers and curses. The smell of burning bananas and fear. I craned my neck to look for Meena, but couldn’t see her. I hoped she was wearing her seatbelt. Frigid sunshine cracked open the airplane and there was a deafening buzz that killed all other sound.

And then there was a black silence.

I cannot explain it, but the next thing that happened was that there were two of me. Or perhaps I split into two halves. One part drifted upward into the clouds while another fell headlong from the sky. From above, I watched the other body strike the water. Miraculously, I was still breathing, although very broken and numb. There was no pain, no fear, only a peaceful submission. I sank and then the frigid ocean swallowed me, filling my nose and mouth and lungs.

There was a sudden jolt and I knew the end had come. Some part of me left my drowned body and joined the piece that shepherded from above. As we integrated, I felt a floaty euphoric sensation enveloping me. The two of us were one again.

Nothing in my science training could help me comprehend what was happening. I tried to make sense of it, but my brain was anesthetized. Probably for the best.

I watched the others fall to the sea. I recognized the pretty stewardess who had brought me my meals. She’ d lost her sari and only her blouse and underskirt fluttered in the wind. There was a man with a bloody gash on his head and a piece of white plastic the size of a platter lodged in his thigh. A girl with arms twisted the wrong way. It was a sorrowful rain shower of bodies falling falling falling.

Dozens became hundreds. Most of us were brown, but some were white. I had a memory of that mattering five minutes earlier, and then the meaning faded. We were all the same in that moment, victims of a heinous calamity none of us yet understood.

Most of the others had left their bodies before they fell to the sea, and they congregated alongside me. We were a mostly subdued audience and together we observed the human wreckage before us. I was grateful for whatever it was that had paralyzed our minds.

I felt a hand in mine and turned to see Meena beside me. She frowned.

“I can’t find my Cabbage Patch kid,” she whispered.

“It’s all right. She’ll be fine.” I squeezed her hand and we waited for her mother to join us.