Death in the Clouds

#31 Posted by tahmed32,

1) See below for the flight path of Flight 93 to know at what altitude the plane suddenly nosedived. It was 40,000 feet.

2)Because I've tried :) No more signal just after take off!

#31 Posted by tahmed32,

1) See below for the flight path of Flight 93 to know at what altitude the plane suddenly nosedived. It was 40,000 feet.

#29 Majumdar

Sigh!
More Sighs!

http://chowk.com/interactors/38620

zeemax: how do you know the altitude of the planes when the phone conversations and how do you know at what altitude there is cell phone transmission is no longer possible?

#27 Posted by bjkumar,

BJ, all your 8 points and whatever ... blah blah ... don't count. It's all hearsay.

What DOES count if you, on your next trip, can turn on your phone and see if the signal indicator shows anything ... i.e. just after the plane has cleared a few hundred feet, let alone a few thousand metres!!!

Beej,

Your article is called "Death in the Clouds" your post 28 is titled "At Bertram's Hotel". Is it just a coincidence or they have been named after (two of my fave) Christie Novels- one faeturing HP, the other Miss Marple?

Regards

At Bertram’s Hotel

Bertie held the girlie magazine close to his face. His myopia made it impossible to read or even gawk except when he held it that way. He had misplaced his pair of glasses – in fact, he hadn’t seen them since last night when he did his bookkeeping.

The numbers had added up, of course. There wasn’t much to those numbers. They just confirmed what he had known already – that revenue was dwindling – it was in a state of free fall, in fact. The number of guests had dropped to a trickle this summer – and this certainly was not the height of the tourist season. It did not help either that his hotel was not in a very prominent location.

But things hadn’t been this bleak till about a couple of years ago – when those Indians opened their motel just across from him. Bertie’s little place was smack in the middle of the island median. The “Bertram’s Hotel” sign was not too visible until one got close to it, by when it would often be too late to make the exit off the highway. And the Indians had placed their prominent neon sign outside, visible from half a mile – right next to his sign – dwarfing it and distracting from it.

Bertie had tried to stay competitive – sometimes by shopping around for supplies – but there was little he could cut back. This business was not very profitable to begin with and labor was expensive. People who could employ their family members at virtually free wages held an insurmountable advantage and Bertie knew it. He had tried to start doing many chores himself including most of the janitorial duties – but there was a limit to what he could do. His stint in Vietnam had left him with a bullet in his right leg – the doctors were not sure that the risks of removing it were worth any benefits, so they had left it alone. Bertie felt he was at a great disadvantage.

Those Indians – he cursed under his breath! Then he dozed off.

Bertie came awake with a start.

The two brown men looked at him without any expression. The shorter one was lugging a small handbag. Bertie took an instinctive dislike to the two. He did not know them, of course, but mistrusted the way they would not meet his gaze.

“How much is a room per night?”

Bertie named a figure. The pair did some calculations – then, as expected, without a word of explanation, they walked back out toward the other hotel. Bertie cursed – those Indians made it very difficult for him to compete. He tried to call the men back, to no avail.

“Oh well, it is perhaps just as well! Who needs a couple of f******, anyway?!” In Bertie’s book, any person who looked less than his vision of an all-American was a candidate for that designation.

* * *

It was a couple of days later. Bertie’s 1987 Corolla had had a leaky gasket and he was dropping it at the mechanic’s – about half a mile from the hotel. He paused suddenly – there was something familiar about the guy in thin mustache stepping out of the Lingerie Store – which actually stored only a little lingerie since it was mostly a store for adult books, videos, and DVDs. Then he remembered – it was the youger of the pair from the other day. The man looked around nervously as he headed toward the cheap-looking rental car. He hadn’t bought anything.

Bertie spat – the pervert was probably just after cheap thrills – gawking inside. He was glad they had not stayed at his hotel, or he would have been cleaning up whatever muck they would leave on the floor!

* * *

The tall stranger stood immobile. His silhouette filled the doorway. The trenchcoat was dripping wet.

“Bertram Daniel?!”

“Call me Bertie! What can I do for you?”

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

He would ask quite a few questions, in fact. Soon the place would be full of other people dressed in wet garments – all colleagues of his. They would all ask from him and from everyone else. They would go through the place with a fine tooth comb. They would examine every little corner of his hotel and the one located next to it. They would haul away tons of evidence. They would know pretty much everything there was to know and still they would know very little.

It had been only a couple of days since history had been made and – lousy history as it was, Bertie’s own place in it was also fixed forever!

(Note: this work is fiction. Earlier posted as an i-log.)

#22 Zeemax

Dear Zeemax,

I agree that the public can be naïve and emotional some of the time. In fact, our Pakistani brothers and sisters are in that state virtually all the time. However, the Amrikkans usually do not go for sentimental stuff. They go for what is often called “crass commercialism” but not the sentimental stuff!

Except once in a while, they think it is okay to be open with their emotions! Once in a rare while – and 9/11 was one of those moments.

Let me entertain you by entertaining for a moment – if only for a moment, your conspiracy theory about “let’s roll” being a “fraudulent” phrase!

In order for this particular factoid to have been a conspiracy, at minimum, the following will have to had come together and be complicit in carrying it out:

(1) Mr. Beamer’s wife Lisa Beamer – who swore that indeed it was his “takia-qalaam”!

(2) The GTE operator Lisa Jefferson – who vouched that she heard Mr. Beamer say those exact words through the open line.

(3) The GTE phone company which provided dialing records to prove that indeed those calls were made.

(4) All the newspaper correspondents who painstakingly put this whole account together.

(5) All the newspaper correspondents’ wives who would put up with such people for having been complicit in such a heinous act.

(6) The thousands of witnesses deposing before the 9/11 Commission who provided corroborating evidence.

(7) All the 9/11 Commission members everyone of whom bought that line hook, line, and sinker!

(8) Mian Hamidm2, who is feeling very sentimentally moved by my piece – but being a typical Male Muslim Pakistani Chauvinistic Jinnah-type – lacks the guts to admit that sentimentality so has to hide it under a cover of criticism!

Are ALL those people complicit together?! I don’t think so.

Dear Hamidm2 sahib,

Thank you for visiting my humble page of the moment. And visiting it no less than three times in succession. :) :)

Have you considered the following possibilities?

1) Chowk decided to reject many of my "better" pieces but decided to pick this piece up only to make me look bad in YOUR eyes? (Hey, it is possible!)

2) I wrote this piece the way I did because I wanted you to recite the words from that Psalm - in a sneaky way?!

3) I wrote this piece the way I did because I wanted the whole chowk crowd (97% Muslim) to be force-fed that Psalm and get its full flavor?!!

Hey, ANYTHING is possible!

PS: Sir, as always, you rock!

chowk staff,

please take this ... this thing off the front page ....... it is really bothering me because i know that bj is a lot better than this ... this piece of garbage

thank you !

chowk staff,

you don't have to put up every thing that is submitted - next thing we know, you will be publishing garbage by masadi !

bj,

... i am sorry, but i know that you can do better than this ....... this was sheer bunkum and really quite stupid - i feel violated ..... if i want to read the bible i can do it on my own - you don't need to reproduce it ........... what a waste !

BJ,

'Let's roll' was a typical fraud pulled on the naive and emotional american public. Have you seen the movie about it? It was a tear jerker which showed the pilot's infant child on the ground more than anything else, still it won awards.

But for starters, how many times have you been able to use a cellphone at 10,000 meters? The movie showed passengers using cellphones like they were in a metro bus. No one even asks this simple question.

Cellphone signals are conveyed by communication towers which travel in a short straight horizontal line (which is why you need so many), and not straight up.

But, I guess you guys will believe anything to jerk your tears!

BJ,

The jarring note in 9/11 events is the mystery of United 93. I saw the movie but I gave u the youtube link of the US media clips.

My recorded video cassettes of the LIVE 9/11 reportage are in India, therefore I cant give u an authoritative reply on this. I remember that ABC or CBS reported that the last hijacked plane was shot by USAF, which was later reported as 'crashed' at Shanksville.

Th visuals of the collapsed twin towers are so overwhelming I/ppl forgot the actual newsreport of the fate of U93. Pl see the visuals of the US media and make ur own conclusions. Btw, I am not into this conspiracy theories...it's just based on the US media intial reports and the latest visual from the US media.

With Flight 93, like with every other aspect of the tragedy that came to be called 9/11, a section of the world audience – mostly located in the “Muslim” world – has come up with wild conspiracy theories. Before any such individuals start really believing their own words, it is worthwhile to point out that while there were no eyewitnesses left, a lot of cell-phone communication did take place and most of the earlier accounts of what happened therein were written by the several newspapers who reconstructed aspects of the event after interviewing the family members receiving those calls. The 9/11 Commission Report came much later and was in many ways a compilation of those very accounts and was in no substantial way any different.

#18 Posted by HP on September 11, 2007 9:59:53 pm

[It is a timely piece and right on the money.]

Thanks, HP!

#17 Posted by okhla99

Regarding the timeframe, this piece was originally posted as an i-log during Spring 2006. (I had provided that bit of information as a footnote during this submittal but it seems to have “fallen off” somewhere.) Clearly, a lot can be done with this theme or with every little bit of this theme. I certainly have not tried to do anything fancy – because the simple truth is sufficient and no matter what one does with it, it is virtually impossible to come up with something more heart-wrenching yet more suspenseful than the simple original of what actually took place!