My Chocolate Redeemer [antikvár]

Atkins International Airport, outside the city of Waq, in the country of Zanj, is something of a surprise. The traveller who steps down onto the tarmac after bouncing over hot air currents for hours in a racketing, shivering turboprop has been buffeted into grimfaced acceptance and deafened. This happens to those who have tried putting their hands over their ears during the flight, only to find that this sets up a vibration running from the elbows through the wrist bones to the finger tips, as if the nerves have turned to ants which march along the neural pathways into the brain via the ears. Waq is a 'request' stop where the pilot's door, which sags on its hinges and flaps during flight, gapes shamelessly as the plane taxis to a halt to show you the Jordanian pilot leaning back from his controls, yawning and scratching his grizzled grey hair while the Taiwanese stewardess says, 'Hurry up, darling/ as she swings open the hatch. The passengers rouse themselves from their torpor and stare at the back of the departing passenger and one of them says quite distinctly, 'Well, I hope she's got her head screwed on.' The air of Africa enters the plane, hot and dry, smelling memorably of dust and salt. A paper cup, still with a few drops of orange juice adhering to its sides, falls down the steps behind you and you wonder whether it has been thrown out deliberately. And then you're on the ground and the spongy humidity wraps around you as you walk to the terminal building, passing a collection of planes parked on the tarmac with weird designs on their tails and names like Ba-rozwiland Air and Monomatapa Freight Services. Biggest of all is a jumbo jet of Zanj Air in the national colours of black and pink, a livery unexpectedly elegant in the bright winter sunshine, though as you get closer you see that the cockpit windscreen is broken and the plane is mounted on concrete blocks on one of which 3