The day began at 4 am. I finished packing up the apartment and was out the door by 5. It was the usual travel day: the suitcase weighed too much; I spent a panicked hour thinking I'd lost my second mobile phone with my US number (it reappeared by itself, right where I thought it was, just underneath the Vic's vapor rub in my fanny pack); I had to make an emergency stop for $3 of gas on the way to the barn (spent my last 10 qatari reals...), as I hadn't noticed last night the tank was about dry. Five minutes out the door I was sweating like a pig, the temperature already 40C (over100F). I sped north to Jas's stable, coming across a typical Friday morning livestock shipment in Qatar, camels in a flatbed:
I arrived at the barn. Ten minutes into stuffing nets full of hay and packing the carrots into Jas's suitcase, the driver of the horses' truck calls. He showed up an hour early. Brilliant. That's not like here. Thank goodness. I go to meet him at the petrol station and escort him back to the farm. That's the air conditioned horse box in the review mirror:
After schlepping halfway around Qatar to get Avril's mare and foal, and a thankfully uneventful loading process, the three horses arrived at the airport. The horse box went through the entry gate in less than half an hour, another small administrative miracle by Qatari standards. I went around to passport control and immigration, to check in for the flight and meet the flight groom, Tim. After some confusion over the phone about whether he's at Costa Coffee or check-in gate 27, he appears around the corner, standing out with his yellow vest and blond hair. When I walk up to introduce myself, he insists he's not Tim, and that Tim has a different haircut, or something weird like that I didn't quite understand through his British accent. He asks me if I use foul language. Huh? He has "Equitrans," the company I've hired to execute this, written across the back of his yellow vest.
Dazed and confused, I just stand there, holding the dirty horse feed bucket I forgot to leave with the horse in the box, still sweating, being starred at by every passenger coming and going. Finally he shakes my dirty, sweaty hand, introduces himself as Tim, and asks if my parents were hippies when they gave me my name. It doesn't help he knows the horse is going to Colorado. There's some discussion about the parents/hippies/under-a-tree business, as if its not the thousandth time I've been through this with my name. I'm sure my facial expression was brilliantly cheerful at his point, so amused I was to be having this conversation on this day. Still not getting any laughs at his jokes, he asks me if I've had a long day, it being 9 am. I respond with "Yes, and I think it just got a lot longer."
He responds to the challenge by cursing, in really foul language, at my suitcase. I've had these precise feelings towards this overstuffed menace for the last 24 hours, so I sigh: "I would have sent it, but Aramex and DHL are closed on Friday mornings in the Gulf." He understands, and begins to earn his fees by getting the heavy monster past four objecting airport officials and onto the bus platform to go to the cargo terminal. He even carries it. Maybe my day just got shorter. But after the security check he comes out of the men's room from a pit stop, looks at me with grave seriousness, and says, "how on earth could you not have told me how bad my hair looks today? What were you thinking?" I stare, uncomprehending. Maybe the day did just get longer.
We arrive at the pallet, where the horses are parked in their AC limo waiting for us. Tim inspects the pallet and starts scurrying about, moving dividers and directing the show. I exhale slowly. He knows what he's doing.
A few minutes later, the horses come out of their limo, and we stuff them into the pallet. Its economy class. Jas isn't terribly amused going in first, but as soon as the mare arrives next to him---right next to him--and decides to pee in the shavings, he snorts and bellows loudly, remembering he's a stallion, the instincts of smell overcoming inexperience. I smear his nose with another layer of Vics vapor rub, which he begrudging endures. His pallet space has a sun roof, which is really useful in this weather. Ventilation, I guess.
Once the horses and gear are loaded, I bid farewell to Anton and Avril with hugs and near tears, as most of our anxiety was about this morning, dealing with all this in Qatar, the place being what it is. Once on the pallet, we know now that all three horses are a huge step closer to being much safer in Europe and America.
Crinkling his nose and making fun of our gooeyness, Tim announces to me that he will ride out to the plane in the pallet with the horses, but that he has arranged an air conditioned bus for me. Since its a long ride ride around the end of the runway to the other side where the plane is parked, he explains, if I'm in the pallet for 30 minutes with him, I "surely won't be able to keep my hands off him for that long." We stare at him in silence, trying to crack a smile awkwardly, and Anton asks me if I'd like some ear plugs. There indeed has not been a moment of silence from him yet. A shrug, another hug, and then off to the bus I go. Half an hour later, after a long solitary trip to the other side of the runway, the bus approaches our plane. Here it is:
A little while later, the horse pallet is parked outside the plane, sitting on the scorching hot runway. And there it sits. And sits. A pallet of fresh flowers going into the cargo plane seems to have toppled over, and the conveyor lineup reverses. My blood pressure rises, cursing Qatar airways, and the driver won't let me off the bus to go see the horses. I don't have a yellow vest, he says. No yellow vest, no wandering around the loading area. Right. Got it. I twiddle thumbs, starring out at the box:
Then out of the little door on the front of the box emerges Tim, in his yellow vest, seeking out the air conditioning on the bus. He deftly avoids my question about how much the horses were sweating by going on to twenty questions: am I married, where do I work, where's my family, how did I come to be able to afford this, what I'm doing in Qatar, where did I grow up, how did I learn about horses. Me: one word answers, and "how much are the horses sweating?" The day is getting longer. He tells a story about a trip out of Qatar many years ago, a six hour delay where he sent the horses back to the stables, and another story about how the laws in Dubai are strict enough that horses aren't allowed more than 30 minutes outside of air conditioning when its over 20 C. By the laws of Dubai, we were already in violation; they've been out 45 minutes and it was 45 degrees C. Great. 15 minutes more of eternity passed, and they'd sorted out the flowers and the conveyor was moving. Thank god twenty questions was over, too, at least for a few minutes. (There was still a seven hour flight ahead for the rest of that!) The horses were lifted up to the plane, going on last so they'd be at the front. We walked up the stairs and found our jump seats bolted to the wall behind the cockpit. We passed our hand-written boarding passes directly to the pilot.
Once everything was bolted down for departure, Tim explained to me it was my job to flirt with the pilots in the cockpit and distract them, so he could be with the horses during take-off, rather than in his seat, where the pilots told us to be during take-off. My eyebrows stayed raised for more than a few seconds, then I looked down at my dirty sweat-soaked hay-covered clothing with a question mark. And distracted pilots, really?! It was clear he was earning his fees, though, as the goal was to mind the horses first. And sitting in the cockpit was good fun, anyway, and the pilots told me the only rule was that I wasn't allowed to talk. I enjoyed a few minutes of silence, and had a very good view of Doha receding into the distance, getting very far away, very fast. And thanks be to God! Alhumdulila...shukran...
After 10,000 feet the pilots released me to go back to the horses. Tim was shocked to see me grinning and giggling. "It laughs?" I could see him thinking. Goodbye, Doha! It laughs. We gave the horses some water, the co-pilot served us drinks and lunch, we chatted about how Tim got the horses to Hong Kong for the 2008 Olympics, and how he was organizing the 900 horses flying into Kentucky for the World Equestrian Games in September. I passed him the cherry cheesecake dessert off my meal tray, endured a rant about women who think they're too fat to eat puddings, and a few minutes later I curled up in the corner on the floor and fell fast asleep.
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