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white gallibiyah, an ankle-length robe. Beside him was a donkey even skinnier<br />
than he was, and they were both looking at me.<br />
Later I’d come to think that this scene summed up Egypt. They could build<br />
12,000-foot runways but couldn’t keep old farmers from wandering onto them.<br />
They could buy $40M jet fighters but couldn’t keep them working. However, right<br />
then I was literally dazed. I’d just landed an F-16 without power, saved it and<br />
myself, and was staring at a donkey’s face.<br />
So, as I sat there, my sweat cooling and the emergency sirens growing louder,<br />
the peasant calmly shuffled in front of my jet, leading the mangy animal. As they<br />
passed before me, the donkey raised his tail and shat on the runway. The old man<br />
looked back at me and very deliberately shook his head.<br />
I think the donkey did, too.<br />
THE CAREER OF A TACTICAL OFFICER IS NOMADIC . TRUE MILITARY logic assumes that<br />
picking someone up every two to three years and having him start over somewhere<br />
else is a smart thing. It does offer a great deal of experience in widely varied<br />
environments, which, I suppose, is the point. You also get very good at moving and<br />
selling houses.<br />
My operational career had been overseas, and I wanted to stay there. No other<br />
commitments—why not see the world Germany had been terrific, but it was time<br />
to go. The Air Force figured that a young, combat-experienced, frontline instructor<br />
pilot would be ideal for . . . flying training jets in Texas.<br />
I disagreed.<br />
With feeling.<br />
Scrambling around for any alternative, I discovered there were some wild and<br />
exotic exchange tours available to fighter pilots. These programs provided<br />
American instructors to assist allied air forces that had purchased F-16s. I had<br />
friends who went to Greece, Portugal, and Turkey. One lucky bastard ended up on<br />
the island of Bali with the Indonesian Air Force and women in grass skirts. He used<br />
to send me postcards just to rub it in.<br />
I got Egypt.<br />
Still, I was excited. Land of the pharaohs and the Valley of the Kings. I’d<br />
studied it all as an architectural student in college, and now I got to see it firsthand.<br />
Pyramids and scuba diving. And it wasn’t teaching student-pilot aerobatics for the<br />
anal-retentive Training Command in Texas.<br />
Egypt in 1992 had none of the turmoil it is working its way through today. Hosni
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