It was Monday morning July 20th, I was leaving NJ the homeland of Durbah the awesome Qabeela after the end of the second weekend of an amazing experience “Divine Link” Fiqh of Salat class. We already boarded the airplane; as usual, I was sitting in an exit row to enjoy the extra space for my legs and my carryon bag. The middle seat was till empty and I was hoping for it to stay like that to gain even extra space, but suddenly a lady carrying a cup of coffee and speaking on the cell phone shows up and takes that seat. Trying to recognize the language she speaks, I realized it was Russian.

The airplane moves away from the main gate and heads towards the runway. Everybody is getting ready for takeoff and cell phones were supposed to be off and stowed away but suddenly the lady next to me gets nervous and checks her cell phone for a text message she received. She starts crying and presses the orange button to call the flight attendant. She even moved out of her seat to look for her, and when she came back she told her in English that she needed to return back to the gate because her father was in critical condition. She sat back in her seat and the airplane stops on the runway, and then started heading back to the gate. You can see many passengers were unhappy with this new development.

The lady next to me called her mom who sent her the message and spoke Russian with her. Because I speak Bosnian or Serbo-Croatian I was able to figure out what she was saying, and what a situation mom had put her in. It appeared that her father was not that sick after all and her mom was just telling her that her father was still sick just as much as he was when she left him at home. She was crying and rebuking her mom loudly for causing her this embarrassment. She even spoke with her father who made sure she understood well he was alright after all. Now that she was stuck in this scene after the pilot had already announced our return to the gate for a passenger’s emergency, she was unable to abort this return and felt so embarrassed to ask to stay on the airplane. She deplaned the airplane leaving her luggage for her husband to pick it up from Dallas, gave me an extra space and a 50 minutes delay from our original flight schedule.

Ok, I wasn’t trying to spy on her, but naturally knowing some of the words spoken I was curious to see how much I could understand from a language that have never even learned in the first place and I was wondering how many passengers understood her situation as much as I did. So, I don’t know if I should call this a virtue, or what?

July 23, 2009