Paragliding with the Ghost of Abbas Bin Furnas

Continuation of the authorized translation of Kathmandu's Ocean, by Mohammed Al Harthi

In the previous chapter Omani poet and travel writer Mohammed Al Harthi arrives in Pokhara, Nepal, the “City of Lakes,” to realize his dream of “Free Fight.” He stumbles upon a paragliding agency across from his hotel, and walks in:

“I want to book a paragliding session,” I told the proprietor, one Mr. Tulsi, who worked with many of the local gliding agencies — including Blue Sky, where my friend Damu worked as a flight instructor.

“But I don’t want any pilot — I want Damu.”

Tulsi said he’d try to this up for me while, of course, securing a commission in the process. 

He called me back later to say that Damu wasn’t taking individual bookings, as he was busy training a group of new pilots.

“Ok if I book with you another pilot?” Mr. Tulsi asked me.

“No thank you!" I said. And left the agency.

I knew that Damu flew twice or three times a day, and flying with him specifically, was part of the reason I returned to Pokhara.

I rang Damu myself.

“They told me that you are busy - But you’re the only one I’ll fly with.”

“You’re a dear friend, Mohammed,” Damu said. “If you can be a bit flexible, I’ll find a way to take you outside scheduled hours. And don’t for a second consider paying Blue Sky, or booking through your hotel. This flight’s on me.”

The standard rate for dangling below a broad cloth parachute was $100. This included video and photos taken by the pilot, as he steered, with the passenger seated in front of him. 

In this sport, the pilot changes the craft’s position and center of gravity in the air by loosening his grip on the two ropes in his hands, or pulling on one or both of them.  

$100 was nothing compared to the cost of paragliding in France or Switzerland. I knew that the pilots received about a quarter of that price. The rest went to the agency. I had something in mind at that moment, but I didn’t tell Damu what it was, when he insisted he would take me for free.

Damu called me the next day and asked me to be ready to go at any time. He needed to check his training schedule.

I ate lunch at the Sepani restaurant and made sure it was a light meal. I didn’t want to get sick during the flight. I then returned to my balcony at the Inn, where I could see Mahindra Jeeps returning with the gliders after they landed in the field next to Nemune restaurant. I had eaten there while touring Nepal by motorcycle two years before. 

By early afternoon my heart started to sink.  I feared Damu had forgotten me. Or maybe something had gone wrong?  

Half an hour after I’d reconciled myself to a disappointment, the phone rang.

It was Damu, asking me to come to Blue Sky. It was a seven-minute walk from the hotel.

As I entered the Blue Sky office, I saw Damu standing with a broad smile on his face.  He greeted me, then gave me a bear-hug. 

“Are you ready to fly?,” he asked me.

“Are you kidding me?”  I said, charged with excitement.

Damu picked up one of the corners of the parachute case, and thew it on his back.  As we left the office together, Damu hailed a taxi. The taxi driver helped me put the glider on the roof of the car and tie it securely with heavy rope. Then we set out for the summit of Sarangkut — a forty-five-minute trip upward on a winding road. On the way Damu asked me about Badr al Nu’mani, our companion for the 2005 trek.

“Badr is still living in Abu Dhabi,” I told him. “He comes to Oman from time to time.”

We reminisced about that trip, which we each had found difficult and rewarding in different ways. I was surprised that Damu seemed to remember the details even better than I.  

Damu told me that he felt blessed. He was happily married and had built a house.

“But the pace of work hasn’t changed,” he said. “I still fly twice a day in the tourist season. When it’s not raining, sometimes three times a day.”

“You don’t worry about yourself?” I said. “Accidents do happen. I’m prepared for an adventure of a lifetime, but you do this every day.”  

“Accidents happen when the pilots cut corners with safety measures,” Damu replied.

“The basic rule is, don’t fly in windy weather any less than necessary or more than necessary. That way, hopefully you will live a long life, and not drop down into Lake Fewa like a shot pigeon.” 

“Hey I’m relying upon you to keep me safe while we’re riding that rubbery wing on the roof above us now,” I said. 

Damu continued to describe what I would soon experience: 

The jet which flies from Muscat to Katmandu or the two-engine propeller plane that takes you from Katmandu to Pokhara both depend on the same laws of physics. The only difference here, is that that how much fun we will have is directly related to our altitude and our speed.”

“You, Mohammed, will sit there, in front of me,” he said, pointing to a part of the glider.

“With the ropes in my left and right hands, I will get us airborne. You will bounce from right to left and I will tumble with you so that you get the maximum thrill out of the experience.  Like me, you will also be a pilot, my dear Mohammed.  And in fact, you are in charge of this flight, with no engines and no airframe to protect you from the stinging of the wind. You will experience the same life energy as the eagle, the sparrow…and the butterfly.”

“Have you heard of Abbas bin Furnas,” I suddenly asked Damu. Before he could reply, I explained: 

 “He was the first human to try to fly with two wings. And he would have succeeded if he had not forgotten to add a stabilizing tail.  He was famous in his time for attempting mechanical flight, a thousand years before the Wright Brothers. But while he failed, he didn’t die trying as many others did. 

I continued my history lesson: 

“Furnas was known in the West as Armen Firman.  He was born in Al Andalus – Spain, when it was still Arab.  He was a Muslim scientist, a poet and musician and an expert in mathematics, astrology and chemistry.  He was a polymath, like Leonardo Da Vinci.”

Damu hadn’t heard of Abbas bin Furnas. But he had read about the American Wright Brothers and their historic first flight in 1903.
“Maybe you will read more about Furnas,” I said, “though as a writer I think his genius lay with the fountain pen. He was the first to invent a cartridge that directs ink into a thin, pointed cylinder, making writing much easier than dipping a feather in a pot of ink.” 

“The art of paragliding is changing,” Damu said, returning to the main subject.

“One day I remember noticing gliders over Pokhara fitted with a light engine. This is what we call “powered paragliding.” Some people prefer it to normal paragliding, but I think the droning of the engine spoils the natural sensation of floating as you pitch the wings and glide with them, serenely, like a bird, towards the ground.

Damu and I continued talking, while the taxi hauled us and the glider up the remainder of the helical road to the summit of Sarangkut. I imagined how the parachute above us would swell as the air infused the spaces between her veins on the slope of the mountain.  

Two years before, I climbed that same summit and spent two nights in one of the small inns nearby. The air in Pokhara this time of year was much colder than I was used to.

We made it to the place where would-be gliders gathered of their own free will, as the ground teams spread out the parachutes and the ropes on the mountain slope before they collected their respective ends and threaded them through two metal loops attached to the pilot’s seat. All this was preparation for a takeoff jog toward the mountain’s edge, a movement that filled the silken fabric with air so that it could rise freely into God’s air.

I recalled sitting on a stone then, imagining the sensations the people felt, in those gliders with their rectangular parachutes. When I finally got up my courage to join them, it was too late.  The rainy season had arrived. 

But here I am today with my friend Damu, once again, about to fly.  I had to find a way to ignore the fear – terror, actually -- of falling.  A descendant of Abbas bin Furnas’ original fountain pen was in my pocket. My diary also.  My intention was to write what I felt during this waking dream, the same one Abbas bin Furnas chased. I might fall from 2000 meters, or two kilometers, slowly or fast, whatever it was, it doesn’t matter.  But I was determined not to die by crashing into Lake Fewa.  

The taxi moved down the slope about fifty meters. I was just about to pay the driver, but chivalrous as always, Damu beat me to it and picked up the parachute case, and asked me to follow him to the takeoff area.   There, his crew began to unfurl the glider on the grassy slope.   

When I caught up with him, I was panting from exhaustion. Damu’s warm smile put me at ease.

“Don’t worry about your heart! ” he said loudly, “I guarantee it will continue to beat while we’re in the air. All you need it is a bit of determination, and faith.”

 “Determination is not what I am missing, my dear Damu. It’s the belief we will land safely back on God’s earth.”

 “Well trust in God, if you will. We’re about to take off.”

“Bismillah (In the name of God),” I whispered.

The last time I saw him Damu said he knew a Muslim family while he was growing up, and through them learned many things about Islam. Damu had then proceeded to chip away at my certainties about what lies ‘beyond’, in the process pushing my metaphysical core towards an existential trap: 

Whether you believe in the one God shared by three religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam, or if, like Damu, you believe in one or more Hindu deities… in mid-air, we are all the same. 

Up there, what you need most is a reservoir of faith, whatever and wherever its source.  Like that, Damu taught me to have faith in the idea of faith, without reverting to agnosticism.

Damu was an old soul, who found his way to religion while traversing the seven layers heaven. I recognized that moment my deficiencies, the deficiencies of a yuppie intellectual.  But in my heart, I told myself to fight the impulse not to believe.

“You are braver than those who do not embrace risk,” I told myself, “and those who write about experiences from afar.  You will make it, and God will recognize virtue in your doubts for he (or in Damu’s case, They) know that confronting doubt is the key to certainty.”

Next: Jogging Towards the Abyss