“It was booked through our usual travel agent. He did not tell me that we would land at Gatwick and take off from Heathrow.”
“Sir, I understand. Maybe he forgot to tell you,” the staffer said sympathetically.
“No problem”, I told the staffer and turned to my son and said, “Let us go to Heathrow.”
He looked at me incredulously.
“Dad, Heathrow is 45 miles away. It will take a good two and a half hours to get there.”
I looked at my watch. The time was 1:45 p.m. The flight take-off time at Heathrow was 2:45 p.m. If we left Gatwick immediately, we would reach Heathrow around 5:00 p.m. Even if we flew in a helicopter, we would not catch our flight.
I was unfazed. I did not know what my wife was thinking. She was talking to our son. I thought, ‘what the heck! If we had to stay in London for a day or two more, that was fine. We were on holiday and we did not have any pressing engagements. I turned to the staffer and asked, ‘Can you check if we can reschedule our flight from London to Dubai by the next available flight and from there to our final destination?’ The staffer did not raise his eyes from his computer screen or not even showed any sign of having heard me. He seemed immersed in what he was looking at.
My wife and I lived in Dar es Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania. It was one of our annual ‘pilgrimages’ to London to spend a couple of days with our son who was living there and continue our journey to our hometown for annual holidays. We had a pleasant flight to London with a stopover in Dubai and we landed at Gatwick. We passed through the immigration and customs, collected our luggage and came out of the terminal. Our son was waiting for us. We were excited to meet after a long break. We set out to our son’s flat.
In July, the weather in London was most agreeable to me. The days were sunny and warm. The nights were pleasant. We spent most of the time outdoors, visiting the usual places. We spent a considerable amount of time on Oxford Street. When we were in London, visiting Oxford Street was a must for two reasons.
First, when our son was a young boy, he was very particular and insistent that we pass through London whenever we visited any place in Europe. No one else had any interest in going to London that often even though all of us enjoyed an occasional visit. However, during every trip, we passed through London and we all went to Oxford Street at least once. Therefore, it was as a commemoration of his ‘weakness’ for London and Oxford Street that we religiously made those travels to London.
The second reason was facetious. One day, we were shopping along Oxford Street. All of us enjoyed window shopping, small purchases and the frenzy all around. Hundreds of people of different nationalities speaking different languages milled around, moving in and out of those magnificent shops, examining the merchandise on the roadside, sightseeing, window-shopping and at any time, there prevailed an atmosphere of a carnival and festivity. We were walking from Marble Arch in the direction of Bond Street when our infant son demanded a watch. He insisted that he should have one because his father, mother and brother were wearing watches. We bought a watch for him from a small shop near Primark opposite Marks & Spencer. The watch fitted well on his thin wrist.
We passed Selfridges and came in front of the British Department Store near Bond Street. We were thinking of paying a visit to BDS when my wife noticed that the watch purchased a few minutes back was missing from our son’s wrist. She asked him where it was. He said, as a matter of fact, that he had safely left the watch by the side of the road and pointed out to a spot somewhere between Primark and BDS. We went back all the way to Primark checking every inch of the side of the street, but the watch could not be found. Thus, for our family, it became another ritual to pass between Primark and BDS whenever we were in London ‘searching’ for the lost watch.
The staffer was still studying the computer screen, and he had not responded to my query yet. I was irritated. I was about to confront the staffer when our son reminded me ‘Dad, the check-in staff at the airport cannot make any change to the itinerary in the ticket. It has to be done by the airlines or their agents.’ This was only partly true since in those days the check-in counter was manned by the airline employees and they could assist in making normal changes after consulting their office.
The young man at the counter slowly raised his head. He had a smug smile on his face,
“I have good news for you.”
He said and paused. We waited, holding our breath. The staffer continued.
“In about 40 minutes, an Emirates flight is taking off from here. You are lucky that there are two seats vacant on this flight.”
He added, “The flight will land at Dubai ten minutes before your original flight, so you will be landing earlier than your original schedule.”
Our mood of desolation was now completely replaced by a feeling of relief and elation. We thanked the young clerk profusely. We placed the luggage back on the conveyor belt. The staffer issued us with our boarding passes and luggage tags. We bid farewell to our son and proceeded to board the flight.
4 Trapped in a Coup d’Etat
I switched off the air-conditioner and opened a window. The sound of gunfire and the roar of heavy trucks hit me hard. It was around 5:00 in the morning, when the night security guard had rung the bell and the musical sound had woken me up. I strained my ears to pick up any further sounds which would give me some clue of what was happening outside. Seeing me at the window, the security guard called me out from his post below and told me that there was trouble in the city.
Sleep suddenly abandoned me. I stood there gripped with fear. A minute before, my wife and I together with our children were blissfully ensconced in our bedroom and in deep sleep. Now my mind was reeling under the fear of some impending danger. My wife woke up sensing the tension. We sat huddled together on our bed with our sons in our laps, a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, who were sleeping without a care in the world. Fear of the unknown gripped us like an evil spirit.
I switched on the radio. In the place of usual entertainments, we heard several announcements that were being broadcast continuously. Commander Peter Quiwonkpa had seized power from Commander-In-Chief Samuel Doe in a midnight coup. This was followed by an announcement that several ministers and senior government functionaries had been arrested and detained. After that came the announcement of the appointment of new ministers and other officers.
At about 5.45 am we saw army trucks turning from Tubman Avenue into the enclave in which we were living. We had no idea what their aim was. It could be us. Gripped with fear, we waited. The convoy turned into our lane and passed our house and continued to the end of the lane. We breathed a sigh of relief when the convoy did not stop at our house. It continued to the end of the lane where the country’s Vice President lived. It stopped in front of his house. A few minutes later we saw the convoy returning. At that time, we had no clue what transpired there. Later, we learned from the radio announcement that it was a group of rebels who had come to arrest the Vice President.
Our house faced a large open space extending up to Tubman Avenue. At the other end of the open space, diagonally opposite our house, was the house of Vice President Harry Moniba. This house was protected by the state security guards. There was just one more house in our lane in which a wealthy Liberian lived. Immediately behind our house was the official residence of the Swiss ambassador, which was separated from our house by a compound wall.
Monrovia is the capital city of Liberia on the Atlantic coast at Cape Mesurado in West Africa. My family and I arrived in Monrovia in August 1984. My assignment was to establish an operation
