Hello world!

In 1949 an Italian airliner going from Alexandria to Rome delayed itself an hour over the Ionian Sea west of Greece. The copilot took Alitalia’s newly acquired DC-4 down in a flat spiral, circling ancient Mount Aenos, while the captain went back to assess a passenger situation. The young radioman tapped his Morse key to alert the Cephalonia airport they had a medical crisis on board.

The captain, an American pilot on loan from Pan-Am, returned to the cockpit to announce “The baby came. It’s a boy.” He squeezed past the radio racks, and stepped over the console to get into his seat. “The mother’s okay. American girl in a hurry to get to Paris… I think she’s got family there.”

The copilot asked “The Sisters say okay?”

“Those nuns? Yeah, Togliatti, the nuns said everything’s okay. They cut the cord, wiped him off, and stuck him to his mama’s tit.” The Pan-Am man looked out and asked “Where is this?”

“Greece. Cephalonia.”

“Which army’s got the airport?” the captain asked.

“Greek.”

“They’re both Greek, Togliatti. That’s the whole point of a civil war. I mean Nationalists or Communists?”

“Greek. The fighting stopped. We land?” the copilot asked.

“How’s our fuel?” the captain wondered, tapping the gauge to settle the needle. “Down a quarter,” he said. That meant the DC-4 had fuel enough for a landing and a takeoff, and still enough to make Rome, no sweat. The captain thought.

“Stop in Athens?” the copilot asked.

Athens was almost as far as Rome. Salvatorian Sisters had taken charge of the thirty-six — now thirty-seven — passengers. Calmly, quietly, as though this was another working day, they’d rigged modesty drapes behind the cockpit, then delivered the baby in their makeshift maternity ward. The birthing was over. The mother and baby were well.

“No,” the captain decided, “we’re not stopping. Take us up to six thousand. Let’s get on to Rome.” Leaning back, he told the young radioman “Let’s clear California, Ennio. Get us a heading for Rome.”

“Cephalonia,” Ennio said, his hand already clicking the key.

“Okay, kiddo. Get us out of here, unless you want to stay for lunch.”

“We eat in Rome,” Ennio said.

Ennio had no desire to stop on the island where his brother, a radioman in the Italian army, had been murdered. Late in 1943 Italy abandoned the war and signed a sepaerate armistice with the Allies. On Cephalonia, the Nazis took 11,000 Italian boys prisoner. They exterminated 6,000, then drowned 3,000 more to keep them from joining the Allied war effort.

“Buona fortuna,” Togliatti shouted. “A new baby — il neonato — un miracolo.”

“A miracle?” Ennio asked the captain. “Is it true?”

“A miracle? Well, I never heard of a baby born on a plane. There’s supposed to be plenty of warning. I guess this girl didn’t get the word.”

“Santa Madre ci benedice,” the copilot exclaimed. He kissed the Our Lady medal around his neck.

“English, Togliatti.”

“The baby is the Holy Mother’s blessing,” Ennio interpreted.

Togliatti nodded. “The Holy Mother, yes, the Holy Mother… She put the baby here. And the Sisters… She put them here. Un evento miracoloso.” Smiling, supremely happy, the copilot was confident that this particular DC-4 would never fall out of the sky.

The Pan-Am man turned back toward the boy at the radio. “Log it, Ennio. Time and position,” he said. “Get the mother’s passport and call Rome — someone there needs to alert the embassy.”

Ennio’s log entry for October 29th noted the time as 9:21GMT and their position as 38° 7′ 12N 20° 30′ 2E. Ennio wrote nascita di un ragazzo. madre anna whitby. senza padre. — birth of a boy to Anna Whitby, no father.

•••

Of course, the baby had a father. He certainly did, for Anna Whitby — of the Albany Whitbys — was not the sort of girl to have a baby out of wedlock. Good God, no. She had simply misplaced her husband, a French engineer named André Lamont.

André was camel-back somewhere along the Nile near the Second Cataract. In August he’d left Anna studying at the Cairo University while he travelled by rail to see the dam at Aswan. From there he trekked upriver by camel caravan to examine a site proposed for Egypt’s second great dam. André’s intended fortnight excursion had regrettably stretched on. By the 29th of October, it had become a three-month expedition.

Unperturbed in Cairo, Anna delved into Amarna Period art at the university where, riveted by Akhenaten and Nefertiti, she hardly noticed André’s absence. She got a letter from him every eight to ten days, and always replied. It was, she thought, probably pointless — addressing letters to a transient French foreigner in tiny bank-side waypoints such as Nag al Khatabab or Nag al Birba. Anna assumed her letters took the train to Aswan, retired to a cubbyhole in the post office there, and waited for André to get them on his way back to Cairo.

By late October, overshadowing all else, the child’s birth had become an imperative. Anna could not dally in Egypt if the child was to be a French citizen. The birth must be in France where the laws of jus soli and jus sanguinis would guarantee the child’s dual citizenship — both French and American. An independent young lady and an experienced traveller, Anna quit Egypt without André. She could have easily had the baby in the British Hospital in Cairo. Instead, Anna found herself alone and helpless on the rubber floor mat of an Italian airliner. Buona fortuna indeed.