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STUDIES IN MOBILITIES,
LITERATURE, AND CULTURE

Air Travel
Fiction and Film:
Cloud People
Erica Durante
Foreword by
Rodrigo Fresán
Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture

Series Editors
Marian Aguiar
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Charlotte Mathieson
University of Surrey
Guildford, UK

Lynne Pearce
English Literature & Creative Writing
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
This series represents an exciting new publishing opportunity for scholars
working at the intersection of literary, cultural, and mobilities research.
The editors welcome proposals that engage with movement of all kinds
– ranging from the global and transnational to the local and the everyday.
The series is particularly concerned with examining the material means
and structures of movement, as well as the infrastructures that surround
such movement, with a focus on transport, travel, postcolonialism, and/or
embodiment. While we expect many titles from literary scholars who
draw upon research originating in cultural geography and/or sociology
in order to gain valuable new insights into literary and cultural texts,
proposals are equally welcome from scholars working in the social sciences
who make use of literary and cultural texts in their theorizing. The series
invites monographs that engage with textual materials of all kinds – i.e.,
film, photography, digital media, and the visual arts, as well as fiction,
poetry, and other literary forms – and projects engaging with non-western
literatures and cultures are especially welcome.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15385
 Erica Durante

Air Travel Fiction

and Film
Cloud People
Erica Durante
Brown University
Providence, RI, USA

Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture

ISBN 978-3-030-52650-4 ISBN 978-3-030-52651-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52651-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: MediaProduction/Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For Étienne, my angel, may he always fly higher.

For my father, Matteo, already an angel, in memoriam; may he see this

book from heights that no airplane can reach.

For my mother, Maria, whose strong wings carry us all.

 Foreword

Being in the Clouds

Flying is like being a little dead, and more alive than ever. It is an out-
of-body experience that allows us to see everything we have left behind
from thousands of feet in the air.1 It offers such a different perspective
(more vertical than horizontal) for the few, but always too many hours
during which we are rewarded/punished with the gift/stigma of such a
paradisiacal and infernal opportunity to be able to fly, once we have passed
through the purgatory that is every airport.
Indeed, flying is a privilege. But it is also a sentence, a reward that can
turn into punishment in a matter of seconds.
I always recall (I remember being on a plane reading it) that para-
graph in Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King in which the protago-
nist rejoiced over belonging to the first generation to see both sides of the
clouds, the top and bottom. He celebrated being able to experience the
understanding that people had only dreamt of “moving skyward” while
now they dream rising and falling, and that this new capacity would help
his contemporaries to accept the idea of death with greater ease and less
conflict.

1 (Im)pertinent confession: every time I am unsure what to do with a character in one

of my books, I just put him on a plane hoping that something will come to me and
happen, and that he will end up either sitting on cloud nine or heading straight into
stormy weather.

vii
viii FOREWORD

The other side of this—the nightmare to that dream—is best evoked in

that “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” anthology episode from the The Twilight
Zone TV series. In the third episode of the fifth season, the 1963 adapta-
tion of Richard Matheson’s already classic tale,2 passenger Robert Wilson,
who is more panicked about than afraid of flying,3 is the only one who
can see a destructive gremlin crawling up the wing of the plane. He ends
up saving everyone who thinks he is crazy from certain catastrophe.
Between these two extremes—marvel and terror—flies Erica Durante’s
Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People, a book that is as prudent as it
is adventurous and as delightful as it is academic.4
Its menu is, for once, irreproachable; its confident research does not fall
into the trap of excess baggage, and you will never have that uncomfort-
able feeling that you have been given the worst possible seatmate. You will
also be absolutely certain that it will reach the most precise conclusions.
This is the most perfect airplane reading, and Durante is the perfect
pilot. Her intriguing departures will always lead to the safest of arrivals
with her feet firmly on the ground. There is no risk of turbulence
beyond the bumps and jostling that occur one after the other when
we find ourselves thinking at a depth that we do not dare engage with
on the surface of the superficial. In this book, instead of being amidst
the distracted and nevertheless creative clouds, the reader can inhabit
that computer cloud to which we entrust (or abandon) our increasingly
amnesiac memory at sea level.

2 This episode was recently included in the very amusing and scary anthology of flight
terrors, Flight or Fright (Stephen King and Bev Vincent, eds.).
3 Ironically, and paradoxically, the actor who plays the character is none other than
William Shatner, who just a few years later would be the intrepid Captain James T. Kirk
at the helm of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek series.
4 And I allow myself to note here that—although I resist the temptation to consider it
a coincidence—the author’s last name can be translated into the English words ‘during’
or ‘meanwhile’: a key/decisive temporal state/condition when one flies wondering how
much time is left before we land, and if we will. Good news: Durante always gets there.
 FOREWORD ix

There where—statistically—it is easier to crash.

For now, and until then, sit back, relax and fasten your seatbelts.
Bon voyage.

Barcelona, Spain Rodrigo Fresán

[trans. from Spanish by Kate Goldman]
 Foreword [Original Spanish Version]

Estar en las nubes

Volar es como estar un poco muerto, pero también más vivo que nunca.
Una out-of-body experience que permite ver todo lo que ha quedado a
miles de metros desde las alturas1 ; con una perspectiva tan diferente
(vertical más que horizontal) por las pocas pero siempre demasiadas horas
en las que se nos premia/castiga con el don/estigma del tan paradisíaco
como infernal poder volar previo paso por ese purgatorio que es todo
aeropuerto.
Volar es, sí, un privilegio pero también una condena, un premio que
siempre puede mutar a castigo en cuestión de segundos.
Y siempre recuerdo (me recuerdo en un avión leyéndolo) ese párrafo
en Henderson the Rain King de Saul Bellow en el que el protagonista se
regocijaba por pertenecer a la primera generación que había visto ambos
lados de las nubes: la parte de arriba y la parte de abajo; y de poder
experimentar la comprensión de que antes la gente sólo soñaba “hacia lo
alto” mientras que ahora se soñaba subiendo y bajando; y que esta nueva
capacidad ayudaría a sus contemporáneos a aceptar la idea de la muerte
con mayor facilidad y menor conflicto.

1 Confesión (im)pertinente: cada vez que en mis libros no sé muy bien qué hacer con
un personaje no tengo más que subirlo a un avión para que algo se me ocurra y ocurra y
que éste se sienta on cloud nine o adentrándose en stormy wheater.

xi
xii FOREWORD [ORIGINAL SPANISH VERSION ]

La contracara del asunto—la pesadilla a ese sueño—está mejor que

nunca representada en ese episodio de antología de la serie de televisión
The Twilight Zone: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Allí—tercer episodio de
la quinta temporada, año 1963 adaptación de Richard Matheson de su
propio y ya clásico relato2 —el pasajero Robert Wilson con más pánico que
miedo a volar3 es el único que puede ver por su ventanilla al destructor
gremlin paseándose por el ala del avión y quien acaba salvando a todos
aquellos que lo creen loco de una catástrofe segura.
Entre ambos extremos—la maravilla y el espanto—vuela este tan
confortable como arriesgado y tan ameno como académico Air Travel
Fiction and Film: Cloud People de Erica Durante.4
Su menú es—por una vez—irreprochable, su segura investigación no
cae nunca en el exceso de equipaje y, al leerlo, uno jamás tiene esa incó-
moda sensación de que le ha tocado el asiento junto a las más equivocada
de las personas a la vez que tiene la más absoluta de las certezas en cuanto
a que llegará puntual a las más puntuales de las conclusiones.
He aquí la más perfecta de las airplane readings —Durante es la
perfecta piloto y sus intrigantes departures siempre van a dar a los más
seguros arrivals —pero con sus pies bien firmes en la tierra y sin pronós-
tico de turbulencias más allá de aquellas que se suceden cuando nos
descubrimos pensando en todo lo profundo que no nos atrevemos en
la superficie de lo superficial. Donde apenas se puede estar ya no en
las distraídas pero tan creativas nubes sino en esa cloud informática a la
que hemos confiado el (des)cuidado de nuestra cada vez más amnésica
memoria a nivel del mar.

2 Recientemente recuperado por la muy divertida y temblorosa antología de terrores

aéreos Flight or Fright (Stephen King y Bev Vincent, eds.).
3 Irónica y paradójicamente, el actor quien lo interpreta no es otro que William Shatner
quien pocos años después sería el intrépido capitán James T. Kirk al mando de la nave
USS Enterprise en la serie Star Trek.
4 Y me permito señalar aquí que—me resisto a considerarlo una casualidad—el apellido
de la autora bien puede traducirse al inglés como During o Meanwhile: estado/condición
temporal clave/decisiva cuando se vuela preguntándose cuánto tiempo falta para llegar y
si se llegará. Buenas noticias: Durante llega siempre.
 FOREWORD [ORIGINAL SPANISH VERSION ] xiii

Allí donde—estadísticamente—es tanto más fácil estrellarse.

Mientras tanto y hasta entonces, embarcar y relax and fasten seat belts.
Buen viaje.

Barcelona, España Rodrigo Fresán

 Preface

This book explores how, over the past four decades, fiction and film
have transformed our perception and representation of contemporary air
travel. It provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of interna-
tional cultural productions including novels, short stories, films, poetry,
songs, TV series, and commercials, and elucidates the paradigms and
narratives that constitute our current imaginary of air mobility. The book
hypothesizes that fiction and film have converted the Airworld—the world
of airplanes and airport infrastructures—into a pivotal anthropological
place endowed with social significance and identity. Moreover, it suggests
that the assimilation of the sky into our cultural imaginary and lifestyle
has metamorphosed human society into “Cloud People.”
The introductory chapter sets the primary objectives of the book: the
study of the central role of the imaginary of air travel in contemporary
cultural productions, and the effect of these cultural productions on our
perception of the Airworld. The chapter presents the research method-
ology that guides the analyses, drawing on insights generated over decades
of scholarship on air mobility in cultural and literary studies. It introduces
the vast and heterogeneous corpus of works studied in the book, proposes
the emergence of a “fictionscape” as an additional global cultural flow at
the intersection of narratives, characters, and places connected through air
travel, and underscores the poetic function of the Airworld as inspiration
for international fiction and as a creative platform for writers, filmmakers,
and artists.

xv
xvi PREFACE

Chapter 2, “The Airworld as an In-Between Space,” explores the topo-

graphic location of air transport infrastructures. It argues that airports are
perceived as in-between places, situated neither inside nor outside the
adjacent city, and that airplanes constitute a self-referential space with
respect to the ground. The distance of airports from the city, and of
airplanes from earth, becomes a pivotal juncture for fiction and film. The
chapter discusses how writers, directors, and artists design their narra-
tives around the exclusion of the Airworld from the parallel outside
world. It focuses on cultural productions that depict arrivals and depar-
tures, layovers, stopovers and flights as representative of the problematic
spatiotemporal relation of the city to airports and airplanes. It further
investigates the role of mobile phones in mitigating the exclusion of
the Airworld, allowing travelers to prolong their connections to the
contingencies of life in the city and on the ground.
Chapter 3, “Time Out of Control,” examines time as a complex aspect
of air mobility. It suggests that the demand for punctuality, the agonizing
delays, and the phenomenon of jet lag associated with traveling across
multiple time zones characterize the disordered perception of time in the
Airworld. It also examines the unique outcomes of the chaotic represen-
tations of time in contemporary air travel fiction. Writers, artists, and film-
makers juggle multiple layers of time, which they compress, expand, and
suspend, producing distinctive configurations and temporal experiences
for their characters.
Chapter 4, “Luxury in the Sky with More than Diamonds,” focuses
on the process by which architecture and design have increasingly trans-
formed airports and airplanes into luxurious environments, catering to
voyagers’ need for a cocooning shelter that alleviates the fears associated
with air travel. It analyzes the association between air mobility, opulence,
and consumption of luxury goods as a prevailing pattern of our imaginary
since the pioneering years of commercial aviation. It further explores the
semiotics of luxury in the Airworld setting, highlighting the exposure of
passengers to commercials and airline magazines, and their forced circula-
tion through duty-free areas, shedding light on the osmotic link between
fashion trends and air travel culture. Furthermore, it examines numerous
clichés in which air hostesses metaphorically represent the triad of beauty,
elegance, and comfort, while pilots, endowed with a vibrant masculinity,
equally fuel the dream of luxury and aerial style.
Chapter 5, “Cloud People: Identities and Paradoxes,” distinguishes
three main categories of identities in contemporary air travel: the Airworld
 PREFACE xvii

employee, the fluid passenger, and the vulnerable traveler. The first refers
to air transport professionals who suspend their identities and adopt those
dictated by their uniform and occupation. The second is composed of
ordinary individuals who experience a transformation of their everyday
identities into those of passengers, operating within a regime of fluidity,
barcodes, and security procedures. The last category consists of vulnerable
passengers who are discriminated against because of racial and national
prejudices; travelers who are condemned to prolonged isolation, deten-
tion, deportation, and authoritarian acts that transform the Airworld into
a sordid infrastructure of human ignominy.
Chapter 6, “Connections, Disconnections, and Reconnections,”
studies various representations of the emotional dimension of the
Airworld as an environment of sociability and coexistence. It portrays
airport terminals as a setting for passionate encounters and separations, as
well as for greetings and farewells. The chapter discusses the overflow of
feelings that characterizes the experience of travelers who, due to geopo-
litical circumstances, return from a prolonged exile or forced migration. It
analyzes numerous works of fiction, mainly films, in which the Airworld
is a significant relational space for ordinary passengers whose accidental
encounters may transform their lives, resurrect former love relationships,
and occasionally trigger the emergence of intensely passionate ones. These
narratives suggest that the recurrence and the significance of these human
interactions establish the Airworld as an anthropological place invested
with identity, relationships, and memory.
This book has greatly benefited from my collaboration with members
of the research group “Les Territoires de l’attente,” created by Laurent
Vidal and Mycéala Symington of the University of La Rochelle in France.
Within the context of this group, Jean Bessière and Amaury Dehoux
played pivotal roles in the design and completion of this work from its very
inception. Moreover, the brilliant and inspiring theory of the contempo-
rary novel introduced by Jean Bessière has nourished my critical reflec-
tion on contemporary fiction over the past ten years. Amaury Dehoux’s
views and scholarly contributions to the study of contemporary world
fiction have been instrumental for the development of my analyses and
hypotheses. I am also indebted to members of the research group on Latin
American literature in the context of globalization—Gersende Camenen,
Moira Fradinger, Aníbal González, Gustavo Guerrero, Héctor Hoyos,
Vicente Luis Mora, Jesús Montoya, and Catalina Quesada Gómez—for
xviii PREFACE

their generous suggestions shared during two international workshops at

Yale University and the University of Berne.
In addition, scholars and doctoral and undergraduate students of
the Department of Hispanic Studies, the Center for Latin Amer-
ican and Caribbean Studies, the Watson Institute for International
and Public Affairs, and the Art@Watson committee at Brown Univer-
sity have provided me with an indispensable research environment
over the course of the past three years. I am particularly thankful
to Stuart Burrows, Raquel Cabral, Nicolás Campisi, Michelle Clayton,
Berta García Faet, Túlio Ferreira, Elizabeth Gray, Chloe Hill, Verónica
Ingham, Jessaca Leinaweaver, Fernanda Martinelli, Felipe Martínez-
Pinzón, Jeremy Mumford, Julio Ortega, Iria Puyosa, Ramiro Segura,
Ethan Shire, and Vicente Lecuna.
I am grateful to the artists, filmmakers, and writers who have enthusi-
astically agreed to have their art and creations reproduced in this book:
Maarten Baas, Oded Binnun, Mihal Brezis, Matthieu Gafsou, Jérôme
Game, John Gardner, Adrian Paci, Daan Roosegaarde, Kerem Şanlıman,
and Ally Zhu, and José Ángel Cilleruelo and Alberto Torres Blandina,
who have generously provided access to their work.
Special acknowledgment goes to Juan Fernando Ramos Toro, an
Avianca Airlines pilot, for engaging in extensive conversations with me
and providing his unique perspective as a member of an aircrew and expert
on air travel history and technology.
This book has benefitted from enriching discussions with Guillame
Bellon, Franck Bouchard, Graciela Goldchluk, Rana Dasgupta, and Tim
Mammen. It likewise owes much to several friends who have kindly
shared their expertise or references to films and literary texts related
to Airworld fiction, in particular Antonio Antonazzo, Felipe Bonacina,
Ruben Durante, Romuald Fonkoua, Diego Ramos Toro, Massimo Scotti,
Alfonso Sebastián Alegre, Arturo Tamer Vasques, Gary Urton, Parker
VanValkenburgh, and Natasha Wimmer.
Special thanks go to Jules Blyth for her thoughtful translations from
German to English of literary excerpts cited in this book, and to Cindy
Chopoidalo, Kate Goldman, and Maya Judd for their invaluable assistance
in proofreading and improving the final version of this manuscript.
Finally, I am deeply grateful for Rodrigo Fresán’s readiness to write the
foreword of this book in the midst of many flights and novels. He is the
 PREFACE xix

perfect Mr. Trip and a member of the Cloud People community to which
we all belong.

Providence, RI, USA Erica Durante

November 2019
 Praise for Air Travel Fiction and Film

“By looking at the literature and film of air-worlds, this remarkable book
reinvents the scope and signifying potential of travel narratives, and sheds
light on urgent questions of hypermobility and displacement. Duran-
te’s masterful close reading of the gestures, rituals, affective gaps, and
socio-economic relations that give symbolic substance to airports, hotels,
airplanes, and their many in-between spaces gives rise to an insightful and
original reflection on the role of fiction in the making and unmaking of
the cultural imaginaries that shape the lived experience of globalization,
as privileged or vulnerable passengers try and fail to form the dislocated
communities where they might inscribe their contingent subjectivities.”
—Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and
of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA

“Under globalization airports and their surrounding infrastructures, no

longer seen as ‘non-places,’ have become instead sites where cultural,
political, and identity flows come together in unexpected and inspiring
forms. After reading Erica Durante’s brilliant and surprising interdisci-
plinary account of the Airworld, with its own spaces, politics, culture,
fashions, codes of behavior, and affects; its own grandeur and miseries, a
trip to the airport—on business or vacation—will never quite be the same
again!”
—Aníbal González, Professor of Spanish, Yale University, USA

xxi
xxii PRAISE FOR AIR TRAVEL FICTION AND FILM

“We travel, fly, transit through airports, and often live in the air. Airports,
airplanes, and the aerial environment are part of a phenomenology: they
appear in different fashions and make things, such as the time that
St. Augustine considered invisible, appear. Literary works and films are
contemporary means of exposing this traveler phenomenology, which
does not refer to a travel imaginary but to fascinating dynamic images.
This is the brilliant argument that Erica Durante proposes in her impres-
sive book.”
—Jean Bessière, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Sorbonne
Nouvelle University, France

“It takes a keen eye and much attention to detail to see our present in its
transience. In this learned book, Durante historicizes air travel, making its
invisible scaffolding visible to the eye. A trove of examples from various
national literatures underpins this thoughtful contribution to what, para-
phrasing Gayatri Spivak, one could call ‘the frequent flying intellectual
condition.’”
—Héctor Hoyos, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and
Culture, Stanford University, USA

“Erica Durante’s Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People is as prudent
as it is adventurous and it is as delightful as it is academic. … This is the
perfect airplane reading, and Durante is the perfect pilot.”
—Rodrigo Fresán, novelist
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
1 Skyward 1
2 From Aeromobilities to Airportness 4
3 From Airborne to Air-born: Cloud People 7
4 The Airworld as a Methodology 10
References 14

2 The Airworld as an In-between Space 19

1 Urban Center Versus Airport Periphery 19
2 The Traveler and the Absent City 21
3 Globalizing the Local 28
4 Crossing(s) from the Micro-world to the Meta-world 32
5 The Telephone as a Cable Between the City
and the Airworld 43
References 48

3 Time Out of Control 51

1 The Ever-Present and Unrelenting Burden of Time 51
2 Crystallized Waiting Time 63
3 The Compressed Time of Jet Lag 75
References 85

xxiii
xxiv CONTENTS

4 Luxury in the Sky with More Than Diamonds 89

1 Luxury as an Air Travel Brand 89
2 Semiotics of Luxury 102
3 Fashion and the Eroticization of the Air Cabin Crew 111
References 123

5 Cloud People: Identities and Paradoxes 129

1 Airworld Personnel 130
2 The Fluid Passenger 135
3 The Vulnerable Passenger 145
References 156

6 Connections, Disconnections, and Reconnections 161

1 Airborne Families and Relationships 161
2 Chance Encounters and Existential Turning Points 168
3 Love Out of the Blue 178
References 188

7 Coda: Flying Over 193

References 196

Index 199
 List of Figures

Chapter 1
Fig. 1 Matthieu Gafsou, Galerie C.: Photograph from the Ether
series (Courtesy of the artist) 2
Fig. 2 John Gardner: Cloud People [2019] (Courtesy of the artist) 9

Chapter 2
Fig. 1 John Gardner: South West—National Airport [2018]
(Courtesy of the artist) 22

Chapter 3
Fig. 1 Maarten Baas: Real Time|Schiphol clock (www.maartenbaas.
com) 58
Fig. 2 Erica Durante: Transparent vivarium of passengers. Frankfurt
am Main Airport 70

Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Kerem Şanlıman: Autoban Cocoons. Baku Heydar Aliyev
International Airport 100
Fig. 2 Studio Roosegaarde. Press Room: Beyond (http://
pressroom.studioroosegaarde.net, Creative Commons
Non-Commercial applies to all material) 103

xxv
xxvi LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Jérôme Game: Selection of Iata Airline Codes in Salle
d’embarquement [page 55] [2017] (Courtesy of the author) 138
Fig. 2 Adrian Paci: Centro di Permanenza Temporanea [2007],
still from video (Courtesy of the artist, kaufmann repetto,
Milano and New York, and Peter Kilchmann, Zurich) 147

Chapter 6
Fig. 1 Ally Zhu: Reunion [2019] 164
Fig. 2 Ally Zhu: Papa! [2019] 167
Fig. 3 Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun: Frame from the short film
Aya [2012] (Courtesy of the directors) 176
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1 Skyward
In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville explores and questions the hypnotic
and mysterious attraction of the human gaze and mind to the capti-
vating forces of the ocean. From the beginning of the story, the narrator,
Ishmael, is astounded by the number of people willing to travel long
distances to contemplate the sea from close proximity:

[H]ere come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly
bound for a dive. […] They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly
can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. In-
landers all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north,
east, south and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic
virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them
thither? (Melville 1952, 2)

Ishmael would today, two hundred years after Moby-Dick, ascribe a

similar “magnetic virtue” to the sky. Thus, if Melville were to write a
novel about the individual’s relationship to an element other than the
water, he would most likely choose the air. He would describe our glance
skyward, pondering the destinations of thousands of airplanes that cruise
above us daily. The descriptions of whaling ships would be replaced by
equally monumental portrayals of airplanes hovering across the blue sky,
sketching white lines with their turbines (Fig. 1). Mutatis mutandis,

© The Author(s) 2020 1

E. Durante, Air Travel Fiction and Film,
Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52651-1_1
2 E. DURANTE

Fig. 1 Matthieu Gafsou, Galerie C.: Photograph from the Ether series (Cour-
tesy of the artist)

Captain Ahab’s obsession with the enormous white sperm whale could
remain at the heart of Moby-Dick, if Melville were to draw inspira-
tion from the protagonist of the Argentinean novel in which an “air
harpooner” confuses airplanes for giant white whales (Costagliola 2016).
Similarly, rather than depicting sailors at work aboard the Pequod, he
would describe the protocols of flight crews and passengers circumnav-
igating the globe in just over fifty hours.
The reference to Melville’s novel highlights the gap between two major
moments in human history. Having remained empty of any vehicle for
thousands of years, the sky has gradually been populated by an exorbi-
tant number of airplanes, particularly over the course of the last seventy
years with the rise of commercial aviation. Under the virgin skies of the
nineteenth century, in the absence of any event that could anticipate the
future of aircraft, Melville could hardly have envisioned the existence of
the Airworld. Even the unbounded imagination of Jules Verne, author
of adventure novels such as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a
Balloon, 1863), falters in describing the aerial views of the East African
lands over which his characters fly in a hydrogen balloon. Based on the
knowledge and representations of the time, Melville and Verne were more
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

accustomed to imagining life at sea than human movement through the

sky. At the antipodes of the ocean and of the earth, the sky belonged to
the sphere of the divine, transcendence, and immateriality, rather than to
progress and technology.
It was only in the early twentieth century that the introduction and
increasing flow of airplanes (airmail, military, and commercial) changed
the direction and perception of our gaze and our way of conceiving
ourselves as humans that can fulfill the dream of takeoff and flight. This
two-directional verticalization has affected the contemporary imaginary
of air voyage and our relationship with gravity, altitude, and even falling,
as revealed in an extreme fashion during the 9/11 attacks.1 As natural
environments domesticated by humans, the sky and the earth are now
entwined in our visual and spatial representations of the planet. Due to
the condition of elevation (and of levitation) that air travel permits, our
view has evolved and has gradually detached from the ground.2
Despite their small windows, airplanes allow travelers to enjoy the
once-unthinkable experience of being above and amidst the clouds, no
longer feeling the earth below. As much as our perception has been
reshaped by the novel view of the horizon that the aerial environment
offers, our condition as humans and travelers has been reconfigured by
this specific setting. The flight paradoxically exposes us to an inevitable
distance from the external aerial landscape that envelops us. Nevertheless,
the visual experience of the sky through the aircraft window necessarily
implies the presence of an irremovable transparent filter that impedes our
immersion and direct interaction with the sky. Unlike land or sea travel,
where photography allows us to insert our bodies into the landscape and
transform it into a scenery (Crawshaw and Urry 1997, 194), we cannot
modify or appropriate the atmosphere in the context of air travel.
Air mobility reveals the air landscape and excludes us from being air
tourists. Our attitude in the aerial environment is comparable to that of
Verne’s character Phileas Fogg, who is predominantly driven by his quest

1 For a systematic study of the changes in representation that the attacks on the Twin
Towers have produced in our imaginary of human flight, gravitation, and falling, see,
especially, Dawes (2011).
2 See Nathalie Roseau (2012, 2013a) for an insightful analysis of the major historical
changes resulting from the introduction of airplanes in the evolution of our gaze and
perception of the modern city as seen from above. See also Dorrian’s (2013) study of the
implications of satellite imagery and, in particular, of Google Earth in our understanding
of space on a planetary and cosmic scale.
4 E. DURANTE

to demonstrate that it is feasible to travel around the world in eighty

days. Similarly, our air journey is not driven by the desire to visit the
place we are traveling through, but by our impatient wish to reach our
destination and thus the end of the journey. In reality, we have only one
option to appropriate the air landscape and transform it into a scenery:
include ourselves as creators or characters of the stories that we place or
experience in the Airworld. Air Travel Fiction and Film: Cloud People
explores the cultural influences of international contemporary fiction,
both literature and film, on our perception of the Airworld and on air
travel.

2 From Aeromobilities to Airportness

This book is based on a comprehensive exploration of a wide range of
literary and cinematic sources across different languages, cultures, and
regions. It studies the central role of the imaginary of air travel in contem-
porary cultural productions, and the effects of these cultural productions
on our perception of the Airworld. Its analysis does not disregard the
anthropological ties that have bound fiction to the aerial environment
since the emergence of mythological narratives and throughout the
pioneering age of aviation; it focuses on literary and cinematic creations
that have transformed our representations of the Airworld in the past four
decades, since the rise of globalization.
Air Travel Fiction and Film goes beyond the apparent superficial and
operational aspects of the functioning of the Airworld. Fiction unveils
the human side (humanized and humanist) of this space, which is usually
perceived as the prototype of anonymity and optimization. In engaging
with the many heterogeneous narratives that take place in the Airworld
or contain references to its annexes, this book affirms our identity as
“Cloud People.” It analyzes how our relationship with ourselves, others,
and the world is shaped by air mobility and its constant hybridization of
travel in the sky and life on earth. This book examines the complexity
of this phenomenon from a literary and cultural studies perspective. It
adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines fundamental insights
on the study of air travel from a wide range of disciplines, including the
anthropology of globalization, architecture, contemporary philosophy,
geography, mobility studies, and communication and media studies.
Scholars of mobility studies have played a particularly important role
in shaping our understanding of the intricate “practices, spaces, and
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

subjects” of today’s air voyages (Cresswell and Merriman 2011) and

their sociopolitical and cultural implications. The field of mobility studies,
which examines contemporary air travel through a broad lens that
exceeds the primary transportation function of airplanes, airports, and
the Airworld as a whole, has progressively generated innovative socio-
logical and anthropological insights about actors and infrastructures of
contemporary air travel. The groundbreaking contributions of prominent
scholars from the field, notably John Urry (1990, 1995, 2000, 2003,
2007), John Urry and Mimi Sheller (2006), Peter Adey (2004, 2006,
2008, 2009, 2010a, b, 2014, 2016, 2017a, b, Adey et al. 2007), Tim
Cresswell (2006), Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman (2011), and Peter
Merriman (2012), as well as the contributors to the edited volume Aero-
mobilities (Cwerner et al. 2009) and the authors of articles published in
the international journal Mobilities (Urry et al. 2006–2019) have consis-
tently refined our knowledge of air transportation in the context of the
“global and hypermobile age” (Cwerner et al. 2009, 10). Mobility studies
focus on the spatial and social experience of mobility, as derived from
empirical observations of behaviors, “social patterning” (Urry 1995, 63),
and lived relations (Adey 2010b, 3), and in doing so has significantly
furthered research on the social, cultural, environmental, and political
aspects of contemporary (air) mobility. In particular, these scholars have
addressed factors such as affectivity, emotions, sociability, and surveillance,
expanding the theoretical and analytical framework of the field in response
to the major “‘mobility’ turn” experienced since the early 1980s (Urry
2007).
The field of mobility studies has further shown the need for a truly
“transdisciplinary (or post-disciplinary)” approach to the phenomenon
of present-day air travel (Cwerner et al. 2009, 9). In this respect, the
work of human geographer Peter Adey, at the intersection of humanities,
social sciences, and mobility studies, is emblematic of the methodological
and conceptual challenges of mobility research today. His perspective is
central for this book because of its rich content, analytical finesse, and
transdisciplinary approach. Adey has helped not only to grasp the notion
and imaginary of mobility through the history of science, mentalities, and
societies (Adey 2010b), but offered a critical overview of our relationship
with air as a natural and cultural element whose imaginary has constantly
nourished philosophy, poetry, and art (Adey 2014, 2017b). Just as impor-
tantly, his work provides a comprehensive overview of the technological
6 E. DURANTE

evolution of the airplane across time, highlighting its military use and role
in the two World Wars (Adey 2010a).
In its study of representations of air travel in the era of globalization,
this book also draws upon the theories of several sociologists and anthro-
pologists. In particular, the contributions of Marc Augé (1995), Arjun
Appadurai (1996), Zygmunt Bauman (2000), Manuel Castells (2010),
Michel Agier (2016), and Néstor García Canclini (2014) have been essen-
tial for the understanding of the “new mobilities paradigm” (Urry and
Sheller 2006) within the context of the central cultural and social patterns
of our globalized society and lifestyles. Certain concepts that these
scholars have introduced, notably “non-places” (Augé), “global cultural
flows,” (Appadurai), “liquid modernity” (Bauman), and “cosmopolitan
condition” (Agier), have facilitated the framing of representations of air
mobility in the context of the novel physical and imaginary geographies
that have emerged since the last quarter of the twentieth century. This
book’s analyses of literary works, films, and cultural productions have
also been enriched by insights from other disciplines in the humani-
ties, including contemporary philosophy, architecture, contemporary art,
and literary and cultural studies, in particular Jochen Eisenbrand and
Alexander von Vegesack (2004), Alastair Gordon (2004), Hugh Pearman
(2004), Brian Edwards (2005), Gillian Fuller and Ross Harley (2005),
David Bissell and Gillian Fuller (2011), and Nathalie Roseau (2012,
2013b). These studies have highlighted the aesthetic and artistic dimen-
sions of the Airworld. In particular, the air-inspired projects of Tomás
Saraceno have provided visionary representations of air as an inhabitable
environment of the future.
The philosophical considerations of Michel Serres (1995) on the new
identity of contemporary homo viator, together with the fictionalized
reports and travel testimonies of James Kaplan (1994), Mark Gott-
diener (2001), Pico Iyer (2001), Alain de Botton (2009), Alexandre
Friedrich (2014), and Bruce Bégout (2019), have deepened the inter-
pretation of Airworld fiction. Within the domain of cultural studies,
David Pascoe’s monograph (2001) has also been an important reference
because of its historical completeness, remarkable interdisciplinary dimen-
sion, and detailed literary and film analyses of airport representations in
the twentieth century.
Christopher Schaberg (2011, 2016, 2017) has produced an impres-
sive trilogy of essays on the Airworld as a space of production and
consumption of the contemporary imaginary of air mobility, particularly
Another random document with
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 “You need not discharge your mules, and will start to-morrow.
Good morning to you.”
Mr. P⸺ was equal to the occasion; he walked out of the place
without a word, and he did start the next day (on his march of sixteen
stages).
So much for discipline.
Pierson, who played the concertina, cornet, and piano, suggested
to me as a pastime that he should teach me the cornet. To this I
assented; and the first thing was to learn to blow. This is not so easy
as it seems, and as the noises I produced were not pleasant,
Pierson only allowed my practising in the house when he was not at
home. The flat roof at sunset was my place to practise, and here I
blew to my heart’s content. I only blew one note of various loudness,
and to my astonishment found I had a rival, whose lungs were
stronger than mine; he, too, blew one note in rapid succession. I
blew—he blew—but his were decidedly the stronger sounds, and he
blew longer. I kept up my blowing, but soon came down, feeling my
inferiority.
The next night I was alone, my rival absent. I blew my one note in
rapid succession till I could blow no more. Suddenly I heard cries,
and sounds of beating, and shouts of men and women—a row
evidently. I blew on.
Next morning the British Agent, Syud Houssein (these native
agents are appointed by the English Legation in lieu of consuls
throughout Persia at the great cities; they are really news-writers, but
act as consuls, and look after English interests), came to Pierson,
with a long face, saying that a complaint had been made to him by
the Governor, of the conduct of the sahibs in his (Pierson’s) house.
It appears that when the bath is full of men, and the time allotted to
them expires, the bath is cleared, and the bath-man, on its being
empty, blows on a buffalo horn for a few minutes a succession of
notes. This is the signal to the expectant women, and so on, when
the time for the ladies expires, for the men. The bath-man was my
unknown rival.
 The day before, the bath being full of women, I proceeded to our
roof to indulge in cornet practice. My efforts, alas! were so like the
solos of the bath-man, that the Hamadan men of our quarter rushed
to, and into the sacred precincts of, the bath. The women who were
inside were furious at the unexpected intrusion, and called on their
male relatives for protection. A fight ensued, which only ceased on
both parties uniting to give the innocent bath-man a sound thrashing;
which having thoroughly accomplished to their satisfaction, and
broken his buffalo horn, they retired, hinc illæ lachrymæ. The matter
was soon explained, and a small present consoled the beaten bath-
man, and I gave up the cornet.
Syud Houssein was a dignified little man, with the dark complexion
and scanty black beard that is supposed to characterise the true
descendants of the prophet. I fancy myself that while his duties
consisted merely in looking after the few Persians who were British
subjects in Hamadan, and writing a monthly news-letter to the
Legation at Teheran, he was quite happy; but that the actual
presence of the unbeliever in the city itself was not very palatable to
him. However, we ever found him kind and courteous, though he
avoided breaking bread with us, save in secret and when there was
no escape.
There are a great many Armenians in Hamadan, and there are
villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the place inhabited only
by them. They have mostly adopted the Persian dress and language,
Armenian being in disuse as a language among those living in
Hamadan, and there being no distinctive mark by which one can tell
them in either indoor or outdoor dress; unlike the Armenian of
Teheran, who adopts the dress of those of his nation who are
Russian subjects, or the Julfa (Ispahan) Armenians, who affect the
fez to simulate the Turkish subject, or at times pretend an ignorance
of Persian, and disguise themselves as sahibs. A ludicrous instance
of this occurred once when I was coming into Shiraz chupparee. In
the distance I saw under some trees, by a running brook, where
generally travellers from Shiraz bid their friends farewell, what
appeared to me an officer in the full-dress uniform of the English (?)
army. I was intrigued, and as the trees were off the road I cantered
up to the group.
I found one of our Armenian signallers in an engineer officer’s full-
dress scarlet mess jacket, jack-boots, a full-dress uniform cap,
lambswool drawers (sewn up in front) to simulate buckskins, a huge
cavalry sabre, and three revolvers. The fact was that he had
assumed what he supposed to be the correct get-up of an English
officer of rank, in order that if any highway robbers met him (the
country was very disturbed at the time) on his seven days’ march to
Abadeh, they might refrain from attacking him. He arrived safely.
Unfortunately these assumptions of the appearance of the European
by Armenians does not add to the respect which the real sahib
receives.
Some of the tales these people tell to increase their own
importance in the eyes of their oppressors, the Persians, are
ingenious and amusing. When I was living in Julfa, an Armenian
village close to Ispahan, which had been for divers reasons made
the headquarters of the Persian Telegraph Department in that place,
I was called upon by a great personage, the farmer of the taxes, a
Persian, one Rahim Khan.
After the usual compliments, he remarked, in conversation, that “I
must be very glad to live in so holy a place as Julfa. Full, too, of
churches.”
I demurred.
“But amidst your co-religionists, men whom you so much revere.”
This was too much. I told him that “we could not respect the
Armenians, but that we pitied them for the many years of oppression
they had undergone, which probably had brought out the bad points
in their characters.”
He would not be denied. “But you revere them?” he persisted.
“Quite the contrary.”
He burst into a laugh. “Ah! dogs, and sons of dogs as they are,” he
replied; “only the other day one of them told me, on my
congratulating him on the presence of their protectors, the English—
for you know, sahib, before the Feringhis came, they were as are
now the Jews—that they were not complimented, but rather the
Europeans; for, said the dog, ‘we are to them what your Syuds
(descendants of the prophet) are to you, noble sir’—in fact, holy
men.”
This anecdote is characteristic of the Armenian.
The Hamadan Armenian is brighter and more civilised than his
Ispahan confrère, his frequent journeyings to Russia having
sharpened him, while, there being only two priests in the place, he is
not bigoted. He has adopted the manners and dress of the Persian,
also his language, and is so far less exposed to annoyance by the
reigning people; in fact, in Hamadan he is not looked on or treated
as an outcast; while in Julfa the national dress, specially apparent in
the female attire, the national language, and their ignorance and lack
of politeness, make them a people apart.
The gist of the matter is, that in Hamadan and its environs, the
Armenian is simply a Persian, not a Mahommedan; while in Julfa he
is an Armenian of the Armenians; “and the Jews have no dealings
with the Samaritans.”
As to the Jews, their position is terrible. Probably in no country in
the world are they treated worse than in Persia. Beaten, despised,
and oppressed, cursed even by slaves and children, they yet
manage to exist, earning their living as musicians, dancers, singers,
jewellers, silver- and gold-smiths, midwives, makers and sellers of
wine and spirits. When anything very filthy is to be done a Jew is
sent for.
 CHAPTER VII.
HAMADAN.

Tomb of Esther and Mordecai—Spurious coins—Treasure-finding—Interest—A

gunge—Oppression—A cautious finder—Yari Khan—We become treasure
seekers—We find—Our cook—Toffee—Pole-buying—Modakel—I am nearly
caught—A mad dog—Rioters punished—Murder of the innocents.

Hamadan has no show place save the shrines of Esther and

Mordecai. A poor-looking, blue-tiled dome or “gōmbeza,” some fifty
feet in height, surmounts the shrine, and covers the tombs
themselves; the rest of the building is in red brick, in many places
mudded over. It presents the appearance of an ordinary minor
shrine. In the outer chamber is nothing remarkable. A low door leads
to another apartment by a passage; on crawling through this inner
passage, which can only be done with considerable discomfort,
almost on hands and knees, one enters a vaulted chamber, floored
with common blue tiles. There is no splendour here, and nothing to
attract the cupidity of the Persians.
In one corner lay a heap of common “cherragh,” or oil lamps of
burnt clay, covered with blue glaze, such as are used by the poor.
They are on the same principle as the classic lamp, a reservoir for
the oil or fat, with a projection in which lies the wick of twisted cotton
or rag; these lamps will give a dull, smoky light for some hours
without trimming. Our guides, two evil-looking and squalid Jews,
informed us that twice a year the place was illuminated. In the centre
of the apartment stood two wooden arks, almost devoid of ornament,
but of considerable age; these were thickly sprinkled with small
pieces of paper, on which were inscriptions in the Hebrew character,
the paper being stuck on as is a label. Our guides could only tell us
that pious Jewish pilgrims were in the habit of affixing these to the
arks. We could not even ascertain which was the tomb of Esther and
which that of Mordecai. The arks were shaped like dog-kennels, and
had a slightly ornamented pinnacle of wood at either extremity of
their roofs. The guides declined to allow Pierson to make a drawing
of them; but I fancy this was merely done to extract a further gratuity.
Nothing else was in the place save a poor and much-thumbed copy
of the Jewish Scriptures, quite modern and in the book form.
When we left the tomb, after having gratified the two Jews, one
produced from his pocket a large bag of what appeared to be ancient
coins, both copper and silver. We examined these, and I was
anxious to make a purchase; but Pierson assured me that they were
spurious. And the Jew, after many protestations, acknowledged that
they were so, with the exception of a few coins of Alexander the
Great, with the head in high relief; and Sassanian coins of various
monarchs, on the reverse of which were always represented figures
and an altar (of a fire temple). These two sorts of coin are so
common in Persia as to be absolutely worth merely their weight in
silver, and the coins of the Sassanian monarchs are constantly being
found in crocks.
Treasure-finding in Persia is a frequent thing, and is easily to be
accounted for in a country where the bankers are simply money-
changers, and there is a danger of being a mark for the oppressor, in
being thought a rich man. The only way to invest money is in land or
houses; either of these methods are subject to the same objection,
the owner is known to be a man of property; and unless he can buy
protection is subject to exactions and extortions innumerable.
Burying or secreting remains; for a good Mussulman will not lend his
money at interest, though many who are not strict do so, the current
rate of interest among merchants being twelve per cent. per annum,
paid monthly; while, where there is risk at all, or the loan is given
without full security, twenty-five to forty per cent. is often exacted.
Ruins of all sorts abound in every part of Persia, and these ruins
are constantly being either levelled for cultivation, the earth being
valued as a fertiliser (they are many of them of mud), or taken down
and removed in donkey-loads for the sake of the old burnt bricks,
which it is found practically cheaper to obtain in this manner than to
make and burn; for an old brick is more valuable to the builder, being
always a good brick, than the new one, which is often small and
worthless, except for ornamental facings of decorative brickwork—an
art in which the Persians, particularly in Shiraz, have attained a great
proficiency, but which, from the poverty of the country, and the less
substantial mode of building practised on that account in the present
day, is rapidly dying out.
In these various operations the discovery of a “gunge,” or treasure,
is not infrequent, although such a find is not always a very profitable
transaction for the finder. I have known three such instances.
One occurred at a place called Bonaat, in the province of Fars,
some five stages from Shiraz. The finder was a man of learning, who
had a house and a few acres of land at this place. He had mostly
lived at Baghdad, where he had been well educated, but, on his
marriage, bought the little estate at Bonaat.
He found one day in the mud wall of his house, a very old one
which he was rebuilding, five jars full of coin. He sent away the
workmen, but not before some of them were aware of the discovery,
and at once proceeded to bury the treasure (of the truth of this story
there is no doubt). Two or three days after this, a messenger from
the owner of the greater part of the country in the neighbourhood
arrived, and he proceeded to demand the whole of the treasure-
trove; he gave no good reason, simply saying that his master meant
to have it. The finder tried to make terms with the man, but,
unfortunately, he had no means of bribing him but with the actual
coins found, which the messenger was anxious but afraid to accept.
Taking possession of all the contents of one jar, which my
acquaintance with many protests placed at his disposal, the great
man’s retainer produced a written order for the man to accompany
him to Shiraz, and, putting two men in charge of the house and the
rest of the treasure, the poor fellow’s wife, child, and servant being
sent off to a neighbour’s without ceremony, they started at once for
the residence of the man in power at that place. The end of the
matter was, that the contents of all five jars went to this grandee,
while nothing remained to the unhappy finder but the suspicion of his
having secreted a still greater treasure, and he went about in fear of
his life, frequent demands being made for the supposed balance still
hidden. In disgust he sold his house and land for a trifle, and went to
Bushire, where, under the shadow of the British Residency, he was
safe from further troubles. I never got other details than this, but I am
in a position to vouch for their truth.
Another case was that of a villager who found a treasure of coin in
the ruins of a mud village close to Ispahan. He, luckily for himself,
was alone, and managed to transport the whole amount, little by
little, to a place of safety. Shortly after this he set out, as a poor man,
to walk the pilgrimage to Mecca. This was sufficient and valid excuse
for a disappearance for two years. This time he wisely employed in
the safe investment of the amount. He went in rags, he returned in
comparative affluence; and though often accused of the crime of
having discovered a treasure, he wisely denied it; and having
secured by a handsome payment the protection of a local magnate,
whom he had, doubtless, to heavily subsidise each year, he
remained a wealthy man, and will probably be allowed to die in his
bed.
The last case was that of a peasant of the neighbourhood of
Zinjan, and occurred within the last five years. It was reported to the
local governor that a peasant named Yari was in the habit of selling
ingots of gold to the Jews of Zinjan at a rate considerably below the
market price; the governor seized the man, searched his house,
finding a considerable quantity of gold in ingots therein, and, as the
matter had now become public, reported the whole affair to Teheran,
with a statement that the fellow had discovered a gold-mine, or found
“the treasure of King Darius,” or the way to make gold!
This “treasure of King Darius” is a legendary myth that is
constantly occurring to the minds of the inflammable Persians. An
order came to take the man at once to the capital, but he simply
denied either the treasure or the mine, stating that he had found a
few ingots, and sold them gradually. But the evidence pointed
another way, for the appliances for fusing the metal, of a rough
description, were found in his house, and what could an obscure
villager know of fusing gold?
The man remained a long time in prison in Teheran, and it is
stated on the best authority that means were employed to cause him
to speak, which are common in the East, but are happily no longer in
use in Europe (save, it is said, in Turkey).
At last he confided to his jailers that he had discovered a gold-
mine in the hills; the excitement was intense, he received at once a
dress of honour and the title of Khan, equivalent to our knighthood—
i. e. it converts a nobody into a somebody. And Yari Khan, carefully
guarded and treated with consideration, was taken to Zinjan that he
might point out the site of the mine, for his descriptions, though very
graphic, had not enabled the searchers to find it. On his arrival he
endeavoured by an opportune illness to put off the evil day, but as
finding the mine was of more importance to the authorities than the
health of a villager, he was soon conveyed to the mountains where
he had carefully indicated its situation. But he could not or would not
find it. Free recourse was had to the bastinado, but no mine. The
man was cast into prison, and doubtless, unless ere this he is dead,
or has confessed the source of his wealth, or found means to
administer a bribe, he is still in prison on the lowest diet and a
frequent administration of stick, even if other and nameless horrors
be not resorted to.
Pierson told me that one of the occupations of the Hamadan Jews
is the manufacture of the so-called ancient coins; these are sent in
large quantities to Baghdad, Teheran, Ispahan, and Constantinople,
and sold there to the unsuspicious or ignorant European. He told me,
too, that Hamadan has a great reputation for the finding of real
antiquities, and that many of the Jews actually paid a small sum for
the privilege of searching the ground in certain spots, taking the
chance of a find or a blank day.
A Jew readily acceded to the proposal that he and two labourers
should be paid for their time, and a few kerans should be given by us
for permission to dig, and the intrinsic value of any object in the
precious metals handed over to him, the objects themselves being
ours.
A few days after, the Jew came to show us the place, some miles
from the town where the search was taking place. Two labourers dug
some foot of the surface earth away in clods and piled it in heaps.
The Jew watched the labourers, and we watched the Jew. After they
had uncovered the whole of the ten yards square, which it was
agreed that we should dig, the labourers set to to sift it through a
coarse sieve, but nothing was found; a second sifting, however,
which we noticed that the Jew watched with much more curiosity
than the first, produced four small cubes of gold; they were about
one-third of an inch cube, and were composed of tiny beads of pure
gold soldered together, a hole being left in two of the opposite sides
for stringing; they were hollow, and about two pounds in value (the
four). We found only these, and they were too few to form an
ornament, though doubtless real relics of ancient Ecbatana. So we
rewarded our Jew, and dug no more for hidden treasure, or rather
antiquities.
I frequently laugh at our housekeeping experiences in those early
days. We paid our cook ten kerans a day each for our messing, but
every little extra was debited to us with stern accuracy; as, one day
we made a pound of toffee, and at the month’s end were charged,
“For making the Feringhi sweetmeat, fifteen shillings!” These items
and the pay of my servants and my horse-keep made me fear that I
should not be able to live on my pay; but I soon found that the cook
was simply charging us four times the cost of our living. As Pierson
was now leaving for Teheran, I was able to manage with a humbler
cook on a less extravagant scale, and live better.
An amusing instance of the inveterate habit of making modakel
now occurred prior to Pierson’s departure. In the early days of the
Telegraph Department in Persia the line was supported by wooden
poles, generally poplar, and much trouble was found in buying these.
It would have been impossible for a European to buy them at all, and
as the natives had to be employed, it taxed all Pierson’s ingenuity to
prevent wholesale robbery taking place. The poles had to be paid
for, and the buyer and seller generally managed to put their heads
together to make the “Dowlet Ingleez” (English Government) pay a
very fancy price.
Some poles were suddenly very urgently required, and the
Sarhang or Colonel, the chief of the officials of the Persian office of
the telegraph in Hamadan, the moonshee[12] or interpreter, a
member of our staff, a native of Baghdad, and Pierson’s head-
servant or nazir, were sent together to buy poles to the tune of
kerans two thousand four hundred, in the villages in the
neighbourhood, on the principle that each would act as a check on
the other. These gentry divided their money into two portions, half to
be profit and half to buy poles.
The poles were purchased; but when they returned, the moonshee
desired an interview with Pierson.
After pointing out his own integrity and high sense of honour (this
man’s English was peculiar; it had been acquired of the sailors in
Baghdad, and was freely interlarded with oaths; but, worst of all, he
had never learnt the use of the words very, more, and most,
substituting the more homely expression which is used by Anglo-
Saxons for sanguinary, as a word meaning all three; his conversation
was thus less choice than forcible), he communicated to Pierson that
half of the sum said to be expended had been set aside as plunder,
but that he was no party to such arrangement. When I heard of the
matter I set it down to disinterested virtue, but Pierson, whose
experience of the Oriental was larger than mine, determined to sift
the matter.
Hardly had the moonshee retired than the nazir requested a
private interview, and stated that he too felt impelled by virtuous
indignation to discover to his master the wicked conspiracy of the
Colonel and the moonshee, who had agreed to divide the hundred
and twenty tomans illicitly gained into three shares, making forty for
each; but that the Colonel suggested to him that it would be better to
give the moonshee nothing, which would leave them, the sarhang
and himself, sixty each.
“Of course, I report the affair to the sahib, and he will use his
discretion,” he said. The next morning Pierson sent for the Colonel,
who denied the whole matter, produced receipts duly sealed for the
payment of the whole two thousand four hundred kerans, and
indignantly protested his honesty: “Comme officier Persan—décoré
par sa Majesté!” (he spoke French fluently.) On an inquiry being
instituted, it came out that the original idea was, as the moonshee
said, to divide the plunder into three shares. Then, as the nazir said,
into two—hence the honesty of the moonshee; and at last the
Colonel resolved to keep the whole himself, which accounted for the
virtue of the nazir. The money was disgorged, and the chief of the
Persian Telegraph in Teheran fined his subordinate in Hamadan forty
pounds, or one hundred tomans. So there is not always, in Persia at
least, “Honour among thieves.”
Pierson left for Teheran, and I was alone in Hamadan with no one
to speak to but the two corporals of engineers, who were the office
staff, and the two others, who were inspectors of the line. I was then
very ardent, and pushed my dispensary work, having many and
interesting cases, and finding my patients, especially among the
poor, increasing in number. Ramazan was gayer in his attire than
ever, and my knowledge of the colloquial increased rapidly. I had,
however, to freely have recourse to pantomime, as my only
interpreter, the moonshee, now Pierson was away, seldom came
near me.
But I had, without knowing it, raised up enemies among the native
doctors. I found that, if I could not get money from my better-class
patients, I could get experience; and I had commenced a system of
seeing every one gratuitously. Of course I had no lack of patients,
but the effect was, that the consulting-rooms of the native doctors
were emptied, as the Persians would always prefer gratuitous physic
with the additional “tamasha” (show) of a European doctor, to paying
those who practised medicine strictly as taught by Aflatoon (Plato),
Abu Senna (Avicenna), Galenus (Galen), and Pocrat (Hippocrates).
This state of things was naturally intolerable to the profession in
Hamadan, and my pseudo-friend, the Hakim-bashi, with the rest of
his brethren, took steps to frighten me, in order to make me cease
my obnoxious system.
I had been sitting quietly in the courtyard when my servant ran in
to say that there was a mob at the door. I went on the roof and found
it was so; some two hundred ragamuffins were assembled; they
hooted me, and said a good deal evidently of an uncomplimentary
nature. After a while stones began to come. I returned with a gun,
which I valiantly discharged over their heads, shouting “Bero!” (“Be
off;”) for I felt that, if I did not get rid of the small mob, a big one
would soon form, at whose hands I should fare badly. However, the
gun effectually frightened the fellows off, and the space outside my
door was cleared. I got on my horse to go to the telegraph-office and
seek advice. Off I started, accompanied by my servants (three) and
all Pierson’s dogs.
I noticed on the road that one of these dogs behaved in an
eccentric manner, attacking several people; but I was too occupied
and excited by my own affairs to take much notice. On getting to the
office, I at once sent a message to the director in Teheran, and his
promptitude prevented any further unpleasantness to me. Orders
came by wire to the Governor of Hamadan to punish the rioters the
next morning; and ere I left the office a guard of soldiers (at the
instance of our British Agent in Hamadan, who had heard of the
affair) was sent to escort me to my house, four sentries being placed
to relieve guard at my door.
I felt now that all was safe, and the only result was that my friend
the Hakim-bashi, who got up the row, was severely bastinadoed by
the Governor.
On my return to the house I noticed the very extraordinary
behaviour of “Jill,” a black setter, one of a pair (“Jack” and “Jill”)
belonging to Pierson; she snapped and bit, emitting a peculiar cry,
and showed signs of rabies. I shut her up and made inquiries; it
appeared that she, an unusually quiet and playful dog generally, had
bitten every dog in the house. These were a very fine Arab
greyhound and two young bull-terriers of Pierson’s, a Persian
greyhound of my own, and a little white dog owned by the cook—for
Persians will often own and pet a small, long-haired dog.
Undoubtedly all had been bitten.
There was nothing for it but (Jill being now certainly rabid, for I had
watched her, and she was eating earth and uttering the special cry
which, once heard, can never be forgotten) to destroy them all; this I
had done, and the cook wept bitterly, but assented to the measure. It
is sad, in such a place as Persia, to lose all one’s four-footed friends
at one fell swoop; but so it was, and thus ended an exciting day. I
have never seen, except on this occasion, a rabid dog in Persia; and
as it is a country where water is very scarce, it shows that want of
water can have little to do with causing rabies. I never either saw or
heard of a case of hydrophobia in Persia.
 CHAPTER VIII.
HAMADAN.

Antelope—Hunting and hawking—Shooting from the saddle—Thief-catching—The

prince offers his services as head-servant—Our hunting party—The prince
takes the honours—Kabobs—A provincial grandee—His stud—Quail-shooting
—A relative of the king—Persian dinner—Musicians and singers—Parlour
magic—The anderūn—Cucumber-jam—Persian home-life—Grateful
Armenians—Lizards—Talking lark—Pigeon-flying—Fantails—Pigeons’
ornaments—Immorality of pigeon-flying—Card-playing—Chess—Games—
Wrestling—Pehliwans—Gymnastics.

The “poor prince,” Abu Seif Mirza, called one day and suggested
our going the next morning to hunt antelope, promising to show us
sport. When posting from Teheran we had seen several herds of
antelope, generally five or six animals together; and on one
occasion, as I have noted, a string had suddenly crossed the road
within ten yards of us—a thing very unusual, and which never
occurred to me since. The hunting of the antelope is a favourite
pastime among the grandees of Persia, and is also practised by the
villagers, who will frequently get a pot-shot from behind a stone
when the animals visit their drinking-places. They are either pursued
with relays of dogs, shot from the saddle, or, rarely, hawked with a
specially large kind of falcon, who always succeeds in stopping them
till the dogs pull them down. Our plan was the second one. After
drinking tea, we started one afternoon and marched out some seven
farsakhs into a sandy wilderness; the shah-zadeh (or prince), who
was a well-known shikari, shooting several small birds from the
saddle while at full gallop, to show his skill.
Abu Seif Mirza, after holding small offices at the courts of the
different Governors of Hamadan, such as mirshikar (or chief
huntsman), ser-cashikji-bashi (or chief of the guard), etc., had given
up the life of a courtier, and tried to support himself by agriculture;
this did not answer, for the prince, though a sober man, was a
spendthrift. He told us an anecdote, which we found on inquiry to be
quite correct.
On one occasion the Governor of Hamadan sent for him, and
offered him a present of forty pounds and a dress of honour if he
would rid the environs of the town of a certain highway-robber. The
grandson of a king did not hesitate, and set about the matter in a
business-like way.
“My great object,” said he, “was to obtain the reward intact, and so
the only thing was to do the job myself, as going out in a party in
search of the robber would have been expensive, and he would have
got wind of it and kept out of the way. I consequently put on the
dress of a substantial villager, disguised myself as a man of the pen
by a big turban and huge slippers down at heel, mounted a donkey
provided with a big pair of full saddle-bags, and started for the
neighbourhood where the robber carried on his trade. At the first
stage I purposely started after all other travellers had left, so as to
make myself a conspicuous mark for attack, and as I apparently
carried no weapons, I seemed, doubtless, an easy prey.
“On getting some half-way to the village to which I was
proceeding, I was suddenly pounced upon by two men armed to the
teeth, who rushed out from behind a ruined wall and covered me
with their guns. I placed my donkey whom I was driving between us,
and immediately simulated abject fear. ‘Amān, amān!’ (‘Mercy,
mercy!’) ‘Oh, masters!’ I cried out; ‘I am a poor priest.’
“The men, seeing me apparently unarmed, lowered their guns and
demanded my money; with many protestations I thrust each hand
into the long pockets of my outer garments, and whipping out a
brace of pistols before they had time to raise their weapons, I had
shot one through the heart, and now rushed on the other, ordering
him to drop his gun or I would fire; he was too astonished to resist. I
bound him firmly, and informing him that on the first attempt to
escape I should either hamstring or shoot him, I proceeded to reload
my discharged pistol. I now searched them both, but only found a
few kerans on them. I laid the dead man across my donkey—he it
was on whom the price had been set; I shook the priming out of their
guns and removed the flints, and we got safely back to the
caravanserai from which I had started. The next morning I brought
my prisoner and the dead man into Hamadan. Of course the fellow
was duly executed, but the dog of a Governor never gave me
anything but a colt worth some fifty kerans—a bad business, sahib;
and though the catching the thieves did not cost me much, on other
occasions I didn’t get off so cheaply.” Here he showed us several
scars of sword-wounds.
The prince now changed the subject to that of servants.
Addressing Pierson, he asked him what wages he gave his head-
man (nazir).
Pierson told him he gave two pounds a month.
“And he robs you, I suppose?”
“Of course.”
“Why not engage an intelligent and honest man?”
“You know, Prince, I can’t find such a man in Persia.”
“Don’t call me ‘Prince,’” he said. “A man so poor as I am should do
as I have done and drop the title; I only call myself ‘Khan’”—and here
the tears were in his eyes—“till—till I can find myself in bread and my
horse in food. Let me see; five tomans a month, the usual modakel—
say ten tomans, my commission say twenty tomans; thirty-five
tomans—a noble position! try me.”
Pierson was amused, and treated the matter as a joke.
“No,” said the prince, “it is real earnest. I will come to you the day
after to-morrow.”
Pierson pointed out that it was impossible.
“I can’t see it,” said the prince; “in Persia the servants of the king
may attain the highest offices of the State; there is no degradation in
being a servant. What is the chief vizier but the king’s head-
servant?”
 The matter passed over, and Pierson did not engage a King of
Persia’s grandson as his domestic.
We put up for the night in a village, and were sufficiently
comfortable. At two a.m. we rose, and started at three. Abu Seif
Khan (as I may now call him, for so he desired to be addressed)
directed us to load with slugs, which he declared much more
favourable than a bullet, and gave us his directions, which Pierson
explained to me. They were, first, that it is no use to follow an
antelope unless he is hit; second, to be sure not to fire until near
enough; third, to keep our eyes open, and note the animals ere they
could see us. The antelope, the prince told us, always make straight
for their lairs, avoiding the mountains, and the only way to get a shot
is to attempt to cross their track, and to fire at the point where the
animal is actually nearest. He particularly warned us as to the futility
of following the animal, unless wounded, and definitely instructed us
always to fire on the slightest chance, and to keep the horse at his
greatest speed when doing so, “as unless he is really going ventre à
terre it is impossible to attain accuracy. If you do make a hit, follow
the beast as long as you can see him, then follow his track if you can
find it.”
It was now nearly dawn, and we were going straight for a range of
low hills, and as yet had seen nothing. Our Nimrod now stopped, and
directed our two grooms to continue slowly straight towards the hills,
now three miles off, in order to disturb the animals, while we turned
our horses’ heads to a direction nearly parallel with the range, but
tending towards it, going at an amble.
Every now and then we saw groups of antelope in the distance, on
the plain on our right, but nothing between us and the hills. Abu Seif
Khan explained that to follow these would be hopeless, and that our
chance was that the servants, with whom were the dogs, would put
something up, and that we should attempt to head them, in which we
should certainly fail, but that we should have a chance for a shot. All
the dogs had been sent with the servants except the Persian’s,
which, though of strange appearance, could both, so the prince said,
hunt by sight and scent, and would find an antelope if we had the
luck to wound one.
 The ground was good going, a plain of sand and gravel, a few
loose stones lying about, and a rock or two protruding occasionally;
the whole having a greenish tinge from the tufts of young spring
grass growing here and there, and as yet undried by the fierce sun:
patches of thorn-bushes (bhuta) were frequent, but there was no
cover of any kind. The sun now rose, and the few antelope we had
seen, which before had appeared black, now became white, but they
were all on the open plain and quite out of our reach, of which they
seemed well aware, as they continued grazing.
Our leader adjured us to keep a sharp look-out, and kept himself
carefully watching the space between the hills and us, more
especially in our rear.
At last we saw four rapidly moving spots: to dash for the hills was
the work of a moment. The spots on our left became galloping
antelope. How we thirsted for their blood, and we raced apparently
with them as to who should attain first a point half-way between us
and the hills. On they came, and on we went; our horses needed no
stimulus, our guns were on full cock. Pierson, who had borne too
much to the left, came near them first, or rather, they came near him,
for they seemed to fly. He did not raise his gun.
Now was my turn. I was, I fancy, some hundred or perhaps ninety
yards from the animals, and I should have fired as they crossed me,
bearing to my left, and thus had them broad-side on, but I forgot the
Persian’s caution; my horse was going well, and I thought I must get
nearer. I bore to my right and followed; but, alas! I found my “Senna”
seemed, having made a supreme effort, to die away; the antelope
were doubtless well out of range when I fired my two barrels, without
effect of course.
I did not attempt to reload, but watched the prince, who with loud
cries had kept well to the right, fire first one barrel and then the other;
at the second discharge the third antelope swerved, but kept on his
course, and the animals were soon out of sight, Abu Seif Khan
tearing after them in hot pursuit, loading as he went. Pierson now
galloped up, and we cantered after the prince, although we were
doubtful if his eager pursuit was aught but mere bounce. But, no;
after a smart canter of about two miles, we saw the Persian stop
behind a low sandhill, dismount, look carefully to his gun, ramming
down his charge again for precaution’s sake, and flinging off his
huge, loose riding-boots and his heavy coat, he commenced
climbing the mound, crouching as he went. He had previously by a
gesture warned us to remain where we were.
As soon as he reached the top of the mound he fired and
disappeared on the other side. We cantered up, and found him
cutting the throat of a fine buck ahū (antelope). He now set to in a
sportsman-like manner to disembowel the animal, and it was soon
slung en croupe on his horse.
It appeared that his first shot was unsuccessful, but the second
had injured the fore-leg of one of the herd. As he instantly followed,
he noticed that one lagged a little behind, and that four passed
behind the sandhill but only three reappeared. The sequel we had
seen.
The sun was now high, and it was close on eight; we marched
slowly back to the village and breakfasted on antelope kabobs; that
is to say, small lumps of meat of the size of a half walnut skewered in
the usual manner—of a piece of meat, a shred of onion, a piece of
liver, a shred of onion, a piece of kidney, and so on; they were
impaled on a long skewer and turned rapidly over a fierce fire of
wood-ashes until cooked; and very tender they were.
The Persians always cook an animal before it is yet cold, and thus
ensure tenderness, otherwise antelope-meat must hang ten days to
be eatable, for we do not boil venison as they do in Persia.
We started from the village at midnight, and marched till nine a.m.,
arriving at a large village by a river, called Mahrand, thirty miles from
Hamadan, the owner of which, Mahommed Houssein Khan,
Mahrandi, had invited us to visit him for a few days; we were to hunt
the antelope and have some quail-shooting. Our host, a great friend
of Pierson’s, was an enormous man of great wealth, whose life was
a harmless one, passed generally in his own village, and he was
liked by his acquaintances, and adored by his ryots (villagers).
Simple-minded in the extreme, he had, save a fondness for the