I asked for a window seat (am always keen to see where I am going, or have something other than my neighbour to lean on if the snoring starts). And of course I end up with the most heavily scratched, scored and sandblasted semi opaque window I have seen in a long time. At least since I was in India methinks. I made the airport and checked in, worried less about what might be ahead and more about what was happening inside – I had been up all night with Montezuma’s Revenge and I suspect that goat head rice dish had something to do with it. Fortunately no embarrassments on the plane. I now have everything squared away and am going to try and catch up on the sleep handed over to Montezuma.
Despite the window here is a photo of us on an understandable “short finals” profile into the Baghdad International Airport. For all the obvious reasons there are a couple of tight turning spirals down to the ground from what looked like about 10-12,000′, the turns being carried out directly over the airport – hence this grubby view.
Thanks for reading. This blog is an opportunity for me to capture some of the diversity of my writing interests. My muse tend to appear on my shoulder as I board an international flight although not all of my writing is inspired by travel and foreign places. These blogs have been the basis of a novel (Flowers of Baghdad) but there are a few other writing projects in progress besides. Please feel free to leave a comment. Or two.