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By STEPHEN BENZ
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 3, 2000
After a five-month stay, I left the tiny country of Moldova -- formerly part of the Soviet Union -- on an Air Moldova flight to Athens, Greece.
The airport terminal for Kishinev, the capital city, was a concrete block in the process of decomposing, a process it was approaching with celerity. There was no pressing need to renovate Kishinev's airport, since it received little use. According to official statistics, fewer than 6,000 passengers passed through the place each month. And the number had been declining since the Soviet breakup had abandoned the country to the vagaries of capitalism.
In the concrete bunker that served as a waiting lounge, I got a look at my traveling companions to Athens: a score of look-alike women, peroxided hair and short skirts, and fur coats being the travel fashion for the day. Everyone was chain-smoking.
An agent arrived to announce boarding, and the lot of us descended a crumbling stairway to a bus that took us across the tarmac to our airplane. It was an Antonov AN 24 Turbo, a Soviet jet of uncertain vintage. It had once been part of the Aeroflot fleet, the world's largest in its heyday. But the breakup of the Soviet Union had also seen the breakup of Aeroflot into a dozen different airlines. This Soviet antique was Air Moldova's flagship.
I took my seat and looked out the portal window. As the jet began to taxi toward the runway, it passed an emaciated old man in tattered clothes who went through a series of emphatic gesticulations that ended with him looking up at the cockpit and jabbing his hand toward the horizon as if to say, "You go thatta way." A drunk on the runway? A legitimate airport worker dressed in rags pointing the pilot in the right direction? In Moldova, you could never tell.
"Now we prepare for takeoff," the flight attendant said. "You will see the four emergency exits." That concluded the safety announcements. Nobody around me bothered with seat belts.
The flight attendant came down the aisle dispensing hard candies and asking people to extinguish cigarettes. No one obeyed. I told her that my carry-on bag did not fit on the narrow overhead shelf or beneath the seat. She advised me to put it on the open seat next to mine.
Whining and groaning, the airplane set off down the runway and rattled over potholes. Once airborne, the plane climbed vertically with the panache of a fighter jet and emitted terrible new noises indicative of torque and G-stress and other physical forces I didn't want to know about. Instructions above the emergency door advised, "Open hatch and throw rope out."
Soon the attendant handed out plates of cold sausages that squirted grease. Cigarette smoke, mingling with the cloying scent of cheap perfume, made my eyes water. I attempted an unsteady stroll down the aisle to the toilet. I was surprised again at how many young women -- all with exposed cleavage and bare legs -- were on the flight. There were only two other men, and they both stood in the back drinking from a duty-free bottle.
"American?" one asked when I emerged from the restroom.
They introduced themselves as Dima and Yuri and offered me a shot of brandy. How long had I been in Moldova, they wanted to know. What had I done there? What did I think of the country? We stepped aside for a buxom passenger on her way to the restroom.
I asked Dima and Yuri why there were so many women on the flight.
"They are going to Athens," Yuri said. "To work. Moldovan women are prized for their beauty. Very popular with the Greek men."
Only then did it dawn on me: Young women. Revealing outfits. Going to Athens, "to work." Before I could say anything else, Dima raised the bottle. "To the beauty of Moldovan women," he said.
We were called back to our seats -- a nod to safety -- as we neared Athens. I stared out the window at the barren Attic peninsula, and then Athens came into view, a dizzying array of white buildings and jammed streets enveloped in smog.
We circled over the birthplace of democracy and all its attendant capitalist chaos, a completely different world from the one we on the airplane had left behind. In a recent issue, The Economist had called Moldova a "nowhereland, stuck in a wretched economic and geographical plight, a country not so much forgotten as never remembered."
I looked down on cluttered Athens and thought of backward Kishinev with no traffic, no air pollution, no fast food, no noise, no media, no advertising. Was that so much worse than the mess of Athens?
It was time for the final approach. The Antonov AN 24 Turbo banked out over the Saronic Gulf and banked again at almost 45 degrees. Pressed against the window, I watched the wings wobble and the gulf waters rush up; then abruptly we leveled and the tarmac appeared.
At the moment of impact, the empty seat backs collapsed forward, my bag tumbled from the seat to the floor and an empty wine bottle came careening down the aisle.
A moment later, the hatch was opened and we filed out, Dima, Yuri, me and the prostitutes. I hesitated before descending to the tarmac, daring to breathe again, but it was no time to exhale. The women were pushing from behind, ready for some capitalist action.
Stephen Benz is a writer who lives in Miami.
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