Hanley thought, perhaps, his expression caused the young man to pause and smile. The inspector looked to Hanley to be about thirty years old, was slim and fastidious in his dress and grooming. The young customs agent continued, “I don’t mean to confuse you. They know, as an American, you will be unfamiliar with how their system works, but, as an American, they will expect you to be capable of paying more respect to them and their position; more than others. And, I am ashamed to say, because you are American, they may want to punish you in some manner. I am not that way. As one man to another, I will allow you the benefit of already knowing what type of respect you should give these men. My wife’s cousin, an older cousin, works for the customs inspection unit in Port Sudan.”
Hanley explained that he was unaccustomed to such matters and asked the young man just how much respect a Sudanese customs inspector deserves. The young customs inspector said he was not certain, but once had been told one hundred thousand dinars was customary. Hanley was stunned. Riyadh reminded Hanley these would be Sudanese dinars. The young man appeared to be uncomfortable discussing money.
The American turned and went to the general aviation terminal where he exchanged all his dollars and euros for Sudanese dinars. Afterward, he completed filing a flight plan for Port Sudan and returned to his plane.
He looked at the young Egyptian customs inspector and said, “I will carry one hundred thousand dinars with me to Port Sudan.”
“Good,” the young man said. “Everyone needs companions when they travel.”
2
The stench of the open sewer sat in his nose all morning. Hanley thought it smelled like cabbage and carrion, stewed together in the sewer by the brutal Sudanese sun. He now faced the smell and the heat. It was a bad cycle, the smell seemingly making the day hotter, the heat making the smell worse. The sewer, with its brackish water, looked oil-slicked, trickling some thirty feet behind the low building that served as the general aviation terminal in Port Sudan. A cloud of flies hovered over the stream, their buzz like heavy traffic in the distance.
The terminal, an aging pen of cement blocks, was painted desert tan, sloppily trimmed in red along the top and over the doorframes and the doors themselves. One story high, it was sixty feet long, maybe thirty deep. The terminal could have been one hundred feet high and a mile wide and still not kept the horrid odor of the sewer from reaching his nostrils. With no breeze and that smell making every minute torturous, Hanley wished he had chosen Khartoum as his point of entry and not Port Sudan.
The Beech was parked to the right and slightly behind the terminal, with the American sitting against the frame of its open door, its aluminum skin reflecting the burnt brown of the earth and the brilliant blue of the Sudanese sky.
After his arrival and check-in, Hanley sat for ten minutes in the terminal lounge, then returned to the plane. The odor of sweat, onions and dirty feet, mixed with the stares of the others, drove him back to the heat and the sewer. He found the sounds of the lounge maddening, the voices like that of a tightly packed, foul-smelling sports bar, people talking to each other, to themselves, often over their companions, always, it seemed, while staring at him. So, he left. He realized the comments of the others were probably about the weather, jobs, children and all the same inane subjects he would hear in a terminal lounge back in America. Hanley could not get out of his head the idea they weren’t. He was tired. The weeks of flying wore him down. He waited in the plane, the heat and the smell preferable to his imagination in the terminal.
Hanley left behind a daughter and granddaughter, Elizabeth and Carrie, left good friends, and Rocky. Rocky was keeping Weed. Hanley Martin left his life, left everything behind, sold his businesses, boarded his old plane and set off for Africa. It wasn’t as simple as that, but not far from it.
When he thought about his past good fortune, the only word that explained it was luck. The word hung suspended inside his head like a seed glued to a string. It was in there for years. He thought it haunted him, but that sounded too dramatic. Thirty years went by, he was very successful and he was damned if he really knew why. Certainly he worked hard, but so did others. The want of an explanation nagged him for years. Luck and fate were too simple. Life was too complex. Why the millions upon millions of daily occurrences surrounding each of us come together to push one life toward success and one to ruin. This was the question. Why Hanley Martin and not someone sleeping on the street? Hanley needed to find an answer, but thought the only real answer was to find a way to give back what he owed for his luck. How exactly to make the payment had been the real question. That was driving him crazy, had been driving him crazy for many years. Then, when attending the Paris Air Show, a chance meeting with a French priest who mentioned the need for pilots to aid mission work in Sudan, it felt right. He had no idea why, but it did.
The trip went smoothly, for the most part. There were some annoyances and a great deal of satisfaction. He was flying. Flying the Beech around the world was a trip he dreamt of for years. He was halfway there. Four more hours,
