Daughter of the sky

by Jr. Paul L. Briand

As they approached Khartoum, Amelia was struck by the orderly way in which the city was laid out. She learned later that Kitchener had used the Union Jack for the blueprint. The city was situated on the banks of the Nile, 1,350 miles south of Cairo and several hundred miles west of the Red Sea. They remained in Khartoum for only two hours, time enough to refuel but not time enough for any sight-seeing.

From Khartoum they set out for Massaua, in Italy’s Eritrea. From above AE noticed an occasional grouping of colorfully striped tents; they marked stopping places along the endless camel trails across the desert. The blowing wind wrinkled and scalloped the waste of land.

Two hundred miles out the Electra bisected the Atbara River. Across the river sandy plains gently rose to foothills, the foothills to lush green mountains. As it approached the foothills, the plane hit bumpy, contrary air currents. The flow of air coursing down the slopes of the mountains tangled with the strong convection currents rising from the ground. Amelia fought to hold her plane steady, but it pitched and tossed. She added throttle and climbed to 10,000 feet, but the buffeting continued. To the left and about 3,000 feet below her wing she caught sight of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea; to the right, a range of peaks that towered to 14,000 feet. She weaved in and out and across to the other side. The eastern slopes came suddenly; sharp and abrupt, they angled quickly down into a broad, flat, sweeping valley. For the next 30 miles the land continued flat all the way to the Red Sea.

As she had found the Blue Nile and the White Nile to be neither blue nor white, but green, so now Amelia discovered the Red Sea not to be red, but blue. She was gradually seeing the world, or at least its rivers, in its true colors. She lowered flaps and landing gear and began her letdown.

Standing at the end of a bay formed by two coral islands and the mainland was Massaua. Late-afternoon shadows lengthened over the port. Mounds of salt about the town, like sand dunes she had seen at Cape Cod, glittered in the slanting rays of the sun. Two small clipper ships, some freighters, and countless other smaller craft rode the tide in the harbor.

After she had landed, Amelia soon discovered why Massaua was one of the world’s great exporters of salt. The blistering sun, causing temperatures often in excess of 120°, could evaporate hundreds of gallons of salt water in pans set out along the shore and leave thick layers of salt.

Amelia had forgotten to eat, as she had done so often before during these daily flights. She was starved for food; she felt “as hollow as a bamboo horse,” she said to one of the Italian officers who had greeted her when she arrived. The officer did not know how to translate the remark for his bewildered colleagues, but he understood her meaning, laughed, and nodded. Food had been prepared for them.

To prepare for the long flight across Arabia—it was a distance equal to the one she had flown over the South Atlantic—Amelia now flew the Electra 335 miles south and east down the coast of Eritrea to Assab, where the runways were longer and where a large number of gasoline drums had been stored for her.

The next morning, and well before daybreak from across the Red Sea in Arabia, they left Assab. It was June 15. Their destination, Karachi, India, lay 1,920 miles away. The flight would have to be non-stop, as the Arabian authorities had forbidden the Electra to land in their country; in fact, they had even refused the right to fly over their country. And, Amelia reflected, from what little she saw of it, their country was as forbidding as their refusals.

One hour and fifteen minutes after take-off they had passed over the southern entry to the Red Sea and had reached the English possession of Aden. From Aden, Amelia snaked a course along the southern Arabian coast. Flying at an altitude of 8,000 feet, she could see the blue of the Arabian Sea and the abomination of desolation which was the shore. Beyond the coastal mountains stretched the bare and endless sands of the desert. Of all places to make an emergency landing, Amelia thought, this was the worst. She reached into the cubbyhole to the right and behind her, and pulled out her Arabian credentials. “To Whom It May Concern” they began. Amelia hoped they would never have to concern anyone, because among other things the credentials begged for clemency for the fliers in the event they went down. AE wondered what would happen if she and Fred encountered the wrong nomadic tribe.