Fire U

Chapter 1             FIRE U

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is a great place to start the healing for my long tortured mind about Africa. I had left Nigeria under fire. I want my existing Africa images of guns in my face and my malarial ravaged body replaced with images of colorful insects and big game.

I had elected to make a three day layover in Dubai since a direct flight to Johannesburg was approximately 27 hours counting layovers and switching planes.  The last time I had been in the area of the UAE was 1972, where it was a bit of a mud hole with low cinderblock buildings and corrugated iron roofs.  A few wooden dhows lined the river bank.  Now, by all accounts, it was a magnificent modern metropolis.  I wanted to see it for myself.  

Feeling that this might be my last chance to see that part of the world, I elected to go big. It was like the hungry ghosts of desire swallowed up any common sense and I went for it. What started as an economy class trip became a business class trip so I could stretch out and sleep.  I had an injured leg from a recent body surfing incident. Stretching out in Business class seemed justified. I elected to stay in the tallest hotel in the world, the Gevora. The 77^thtop floor resonated with my handle, Bud Abbott 777. Grandiosity can do strange things to the point of view.  It was only $105 a night.  Deal!  A room on the 48^thfloor sounded OK.  Fate dealt me a tempting card. I did not feel anything but fun on the horizon. The real game was to come.

I went all in.  The Dubai Golf and Country Club was next.  A bit pricey, but this was a one and only chance. The day time temperature the day I signed up was in the low 90 F at its peak,   The humidity was low. The air was clear.  I got an 8:30 tee time. A bit later than I wanted but I went for it. The clubhouse was elegant, almost opulent for a golf course.  The fairways were a rich green from tons of dechlorinated sea water and a soil nutrient treatment impossible anywhere else. 

The next morning the golf cart manager gave me a nice set of slightly used Pings and a small ice chest with two bottles of water. Sweat started to pore off me on the driving range at 7:30. The temperature and humidity had shot up compared to the previous day. A trickle of sweat came down my forehead as I practiced putting.  I boogied the first two holes but was more than satisfied with my play.  Long straight drives.  Serviceable irons to the fringe of some very challenging undulating greens. The third hole I pared after a great shot out of a bunker to within in a yard of the pin. By the  fifth hole I was chugging water.  I started to fell apart.  The temperature was going up fast. A blue face cloth came with the cart. A few ice cubes wrapped in the face cloth placed in my wide brimmed safari hat cooled off my head. The next tee shot was wild and into a steep sided sand trap.  I had to climb down into the sinuous canyon of a trap to hit the ball out.  The next shot went into a water feature.  A lovely water fall of a water feature, but it was a lost ball on the score card. Climbing up out of the bunker was challenging. Frustration clanged in my mind. My left leg hurt. I slumped in the golf cart. The next hole was just 175 yards. I pulled out the black Ping fairway wood. I could hardly hold it. The club flew out of my hands as I swung.  I was shaking.   The temperature had shot up to over 105 in two hours.  I bid my group good by and dashed for the clubhouse. I was done.  Over done.   Heat exhaustion was obvious. In the air conditioned club house I poured water over my head and shirt. An hour passed before I could do anything more than sit.

The taxis in Dubai are all Prius type hybrids station wagons with good air conditioning. The driver was friendly chatting about going home for two months a year for the last 10 years. His children were in good schools now. I talked about chilling the rest of the day. The joke was on me. Sleep in a cold room was all that was on my mind. My left leg was bothering me a lot from the accident a week earlier. The bruises were the entire length of my left thigh. Sleeping on my back was the only way to stay comfortable.  Napping in the afternoon was easy.  CNN told of a Russian plane crashing and burning.  A Cuban plan went off the runway. Stephen Curry, the basket ball generous missed an easy dunk. A bit of a sense of the ominous was creeping into my jet lagged brain.  I regretted not buying travel insurance for the first time in my life. The golf debacle had not helped my leg at all. 

At about 7:30 P.M. I was awoken by loud noises in the hall outside my room.  Initially I took it as a wedding party or some noisy Russian tourist carrying on. There was even loud pounding on my hotel room door.  I went to the door the second time there was incessant pounding. 

I shouted at a big man dressed in a black uniform that was pounding on the door next to my room. 

                  “What the Fuck!” I shouted. “I am trying to sleep here.”

The big man strode over to me, speaking in a heavy Indian accent, “Fire sir. You must leave immediately”

Smoke filled the hallway. Gray wafts of swirling clouds of smoke from ceiling to the orange and gold carpeted floor had my total attention. A smaller man with a yellow vest marked “Security” joined the big man. 

“Come now Mister. You must run down stairs!” 

Standing in the door way in my skivvies, I resolved to get dressed.  They may find my charged body but it will be clothed I thought.  It was one of those mad scramble moments you are never quite ready for. With the two men holding the door and alternatively shouting and pounding on other doors in the hallway,  I pulled on my new REI safari pants, and my sweat soaked aloha golf shirt.  Of course I was aware enough to grab the traveler essentials; passport, wallet and cellphone.  With only my black flip flops on my feet, I was directed to the door of the 48^thfloor stairwell. The big man handed me a white face cloth and a small bottle of water out of the abandoned room service cart.  The stairwell was dense with grey smoke. I started down in the on again off again dimly lit stairwell, holding the wash cloth to my mouth and nose and holding on to the rail in the dark sections.  A few floors down I paused and poured water onto the face cloth.  My legs were starting to hurt. Each step down was a measured, cautious effort in the semi darkness.  

The magnitude of 48 floors was dawning on me as each flight down took a tole on my thigh muscles.  My left leg, the one with the collision bruise, hurt the most.  There was screaming and crying in the floors above and below me. An Asian couple passed me chattering and coughing. A trio of young women speaking, and shouting in an East European language pushed by me, almost careening down the steps. 

“I groaned, then said out loud to myself,  “I am 78 years old. I am too old for this shit.”  

 Half way between floors I would huddle in a corner and let others pass.  A glacé through a window in a side door showed the cleaning staff supply cart turned on its side as if the crew had fled in haste. A bronze piece of furniture blocked an elevator door.  A slab of decorative rock blocked another door.  

A big man with a West African accent was encouraging an African woman to keep going.  She was crying and screaming with leg pain.  They had come down from the 60^thfloor. My challenge of coming down with the 48^thfloor paled in comparison. The man had a big suitcase and little patience.  He left the woman with me and charged down the stairs with his suitcase.  I told her to breath to get more oxygen. Two Eurasian men with hotel uniforms, coming up the stairwell appearing out of the smoke like magic.   They wore soft paper masks to cover the mouth and nose, fumbled in their pockets, spilling masks on the steps and handed some to the woman and myself. One man gave me another bottle. They offered to try to carry the poor woman who weighed more than their combined wight. My eyes were burning.  I was coughing more.  With one man under each of her shoulders, the crying woman was being slowly helped down the stairs. I later learned that many of the staff at that hotel were from Nepal. The many flights of stairs were all in a normal days trek for them.  

A man passed me saying that I had to get to the 12 floor and everything would be OK. He was very encouraging.  Just 20 more to go. My thigh muscles were screaming with lactic acid burn.  My ankles were like painful nobs. The flip flops were still intact. Out of the haze a man with a yellow vest was waving at me to go to a side door.  Somehow I was at the 12^thfloor.  The smoke was less prominent. I had made it to the causeway that connected the hotel to the parking garage and swimming pool deck.  Another man beckoned me forward to a service elevator filled with construction material.  The lights of fire rescue and ambulance flashed across the parking area at the foot of the building. With small painful, tentative steps, this white haired old man walked out into a crowd of milling guests and staff.  

A group of men cleared a space for me to sit on a low wall. I was exhausted.  Slack jawed, dropping eyes staring straight ahead, I sat on the wall still clutching my white face cloth and small bottle of water. Minutes passed and I slowly came to myself bit by bit.  Fumbling hands confirmed I had my passport, wallet and cellphone. A young Arab woman in a white wedding gown sat on the ground surrounded by her female friends in black Arab gowns. Russian, Albanian, Middle Eastern men and woman milled about chattering in small groups. Hotel staff, cooks, room service, door men clustered by employment status standing and watching. Bottles of water were offered to everyone.   Several late middle aged English women wearing only white hotel accommodation bathrobes with only their swimsuits underneath clustered near a security tape.  They had been at the pool when the fire broke out. They laughed and did little catwalk model displays with their white calf length bathrobes.  The big African woman came over and sat down beside me.  Her boyfriend joined laughing.  We all made it OK.  She was ecstatic to see the man that had abandoned her to save the big suitcase, but all was well. The suitcase had their passports.  It was OK.  We all laughed together.  He was OK. They were OK.  I was OK. 

A big buss transported us to another hotel. I showered and then collapsed. My things on the 48^thfloor of the tallest hotel in the world and the trip to South Africa were past and future.  The now was I could comprehend. I was profoundly fatigued and gingerly walking on very sore legs. A short email to friends and family to let them know I was Ok was sent off around midnight.  

The next morning the sounds of the call to prayer woke me on my new 36th floor bedroom. A large mosque was across the street from the hotel. It was still dark but just enough light for the chanters to see a thin black thread held at arms length. There was just enough light in the sky for an old man that longed to be spiritually awake could resonate with the reminder that every thing and every moment is sacred. Another brush with near disaster and the sacredness of life seemed to ask to be remembered.  The need to do a gratefulness mediation swept over me. Sixty long deep breaths, held at the top and the bottom of the cycle, long enough to feel the act of breathing and flow of the blessings of the life force pulsing through me. 

Especially, “Thank you knees. Thank you ankles. Thank you black flip flops. Thank you for the men that climbed up the stairs. Thank you Devine Presence. Thoughts of the Buddhist teaching about the fire that consumes lives with dissatisfaction. Thank you to the life force that pushes me on. Reflections on an adventurous life.  If I will or can not walk into danger, the force will bring it to me.  Thanks for the reminder that I am to live to tell the story of the power of the Law of Attraction played out in a rich tapestry of worldly experiences of an adventurous life.”

After a sumptuous breakfast in the new hotel, I got the word that I could collect my things at the Gevora. The hotel smelled of smoke and big fans pushed a strong wind out the front door.  A harried, very tired looking woman did the paper work to get me checked out.  I was given a one day refund.  A Bhutanese man came up with me to the 41^stfloor on the working staff only elevator. The walk up to the 48^thfloor was slow.  

“Come on legs.”   I kept talking to my exhausted limbs. A rest stop at each of the last few flights of 12 breaths and we were there.  In a rush I changed cloths, packed up my things and the strong legged man got my bags down quickly as I talked about the need to hurry to get to the airport.  A bit of conversation in the elevator down indicated the sauna on the top floor had caught on fire.  It was mostly a wood fire of all things. More thoughts about getting travel insurance. 

As a general rule, do not tell an Egyptian taxi driver to drive fast. Did I hear him softly say. “Allah Akbar.” 

“If the fire did not kill me, this mad man surely will.”  At the airport on time.  On the plane on time.  Thoughts about the problems with the 737 Max dissolved when the announcer seemed to deliberately say and repeat, that it was a Boeing 780.  The half empty plane lifted easily into the air.  Wheels up and I relaxed and chatted with the statuesque African woman that worked for the American national Basket Ball Association. The plane was OK.  I was Ok. Every single thing, event, person were all super OK in the maelstrom of the full expression of the fieryLawsof the Life Force.  Come on lions.  Let’s dance.