Daily Times

December last year was quite staid in Pakistan. The cold lacked bite and was hardly noticeable. Indeed, climate is changing in our part of the world rather irreversibly: winter rains normally due in November have just begun to pour in fits and starts. Our wheat crop is largely dependent on these rains for the seed to sprout. With this delay and despite bright looking forecasts, the size of the yield is not difficult to guess. Wrinkles on the farmers’ withered faces have already deepened and their gaze is beginning to drift away more frequently. Customary happy abandon and a sense of anticipation of a good crop are difficult to detect among our steadfast rural folks.

We were in Karachi on our way to Mecca for umrah recently, a task one had promised to the family since a long time. It was December 29 and a gentle nippy breeze was blowing, adding a pleasant tinge to the port city’s balmy weather. The palms were joyfully swinging with the wind as if trying to reach out to each other. We were to board an Emirates airline flight that afternoon for Dubai and on to Jeddah. I have been a regular passenger on Emirates flights for the last few years and have always admired the quality of their service, efficiency and comfort.

EK 607’s brand new and spacious A 380 airbus took off majestically from Karachi runway on the dot. The ambience inside was glorious. We were to catch the next flight from Dubai, scheduled to leave within an hour and 10 minutes of our arrival. This thin timeline did raise some doubt in my mind, which I dismissed knowing how meticulous Emirates is. Our flight was late touching down and passengers had to hurry across the sprawling Dubai terminal. That was not the only indignity. Somewhere midway we were intercepted by Emirates ground staff and raked into a corner in order to gather all the Jeddah bound passengers. One thought a different flight had been arranged as the scheduled one might have had to leave without us. Not quite. We were again herded to the same departure gate, having been delayed en route, quite inexplicably and barely made it to the plane. The natural upshot of this helter skelter and mindless marshalling was that many of us found our checked-in baggage missing on arrival at Jeddah. The lost baggage counter was crowded with fellow passengers registering their agitated complaints. As should have been expected, our baggage had been left behind in Dubai just as we were being impolitely hustled around like schoolchildren by the chattering staff. Dubai International is becoming notorious for the loss of checked-in baggage in transit. The last time this happened to me was when I travelled from Islamabad to Istanbul via Dubai on May 12, 2014.

Friends in Jeddah collected our missing baggage the next day and delivered it to us in Mecca. Not a word of regret from Emirates airline was heard. By then, however, our minds had switched to pilgrimage mode, therefore one put off expecting mundane civilities of the like. Pilgrimage in any religion is designed to test one’s power of uncomplaining endurance. Pain adds value to the pursuit of spirituality and if one has a nine-year-old child, a daughter and a wife with a lingering knee injury accompanying, then expect to be rewarded more in the hereafter.

On January 7, 2015, we boarded EK 806 from Jeddah to Dubai. Once again, it was luxury on wings. After landing in Dubai, another six hours of rummaging through Dubai duty free and we should have been on our flight to Islamabad but that was not to be. Within hours rumours began to float that our flight might be delayed. During peak pilgrimage season, one can expect anything. Airlines rush to make money through all sorts of monkey tricks, convenience of the passengers notwithstanding. One noticed an otherwise placid PIA too having requisitioned all kinds of aircraft from weird airlines to pick up its share of the air bonanza. That evening, it is said, three flights to Pakistan were cancelled due to heavy fog around Islamabad, Sialkot and Lahore airports. Just why has the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) left these international airports to the elements for such a long time, causing huge difficulties to the passengers, carriers and the air traffic controllers? Incompetence may be a mild description. Back to Emirates: close to 1,000 Pakistan-bound passengers were estimated to be stranded at Dubai International because of the tyranny of our weather that night.

Meanwhile, Emirates slid down to a new level of insensitivity that night, which was not only surprising but also made one seriously rethink one’s loyalty towards them. They thought it was enough to dole out food vouchers to these wretched Pakistanis and then let them figure out how to spend the next 18 hours in the terminal. They seemed to have no feelings for the utter discomfort and special needs of women, children, the old and infirm among the passengers. Dubai International may be a glittering place with all the fascinating shops, restaurants, designer displays and its famous duty free, but for how long can one let one’s self be entertained hopping around shops? People need rest too, which was nowhere to be had.

During my tenure of duty in Saudi Arabia (1998-2002), besides learning about how Saudis regarded various nationalities, one also discovered the uncharitable sentiment where, after Yemenis, Egyptians were held in the lowest esteem by the Arab world. Because of the nature of duty and a very privileged position one could not really find out why so, but the lesson stood out in all its stark reality that dreadful night in Dubai airport. Popular regard about nationalities and peoples are formed after years, maybe centuries, of interaction, business and coexistence. At the Emirates connections counter, responsible to facilitate passengers on connecting flights, were two Egyptian officials, possibly the ones just above blue-collar workmen; at least their rough mannerism and uncouth body language betrayed that sense: typically evasive, inconsistent and talkative. They wore unconcerned faces before inquiring passengers of the cancelled flights, who were worried about their families and friends. Most annoyingly, these fellows kept contemptuously throwing up their hands saying, “The airline is not at fault; weather is in God’s hands.” They had to be told that nobody was faulting the airline for the cancellation but were merely asking for facilitation as Emirates passengers, particularly for the weaker passengers. These two obdurate men did not even have the moral courage to indicate that there was a hotel somewhere in the terminal itself, about which we found out very late. It was obvious that these deskmen could not gather enough strength to talk to their cloistered Emirates bosses about the agitation and discomfort of the stranded passengers, and kept manufacturing false responses.

Only last year Emirates posted a net profit of one billion dollars. Spending a few thousand dollars on their stranded passengers that miserable night would not have caused them a huge loss of revenue. Raking up money at the cost of moral obligation to others and courtesy is exceedingly bad business. Perhaps heaps of wealth and success by default generate isolative apathy, which normally foretells a looming disaster.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com