Passenger on hijacked EgyptAir plane makes excellent case for keeping his smuggled frozen chicken
This week's hijacking of an EgyptAir flight by a man wearing a fake belt of explosives could have been a tragedy, but the worst, thankfully, was averted.
That means, especially in Egypt, it's time to joke about it. The Egyptian tradition of "nokat," or jokes, in the face of "mossiba," or catastrophe, is a treasured part of the national character.
That's why Egyptians -- and many others -- have been sharing a darkly hilarious post from one of the passengers on the EgyptAir flight recounting the reactions of his fellow passengers when they thought the worst was coming.
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The 'farkha baladi'
The best story, if we could choose, is the one the man who valiantly defended the frozen Egyptian chicken he had smuggled onboard.
AbdAllah El Ashmawy recounted on Facebook that one passenger had smuggled a frozen "farkha baladi," or tasty local breed of chicken -- presumably for some future meal. The passenger had managed to keep the chicken concealed in his bag throughout the entire hijacking all the way to the airport in Cyprus.
When the flight headed back to Cairo, however, airport security officials tried to take away the man's chicken. He protested loudly, El Ashmawy recounted, until officials promised to put the chicken in a fridge for him.
The ordeal pushed the man, still passionately defending his contraband, to make an excellent point.
"You allowed an explosive belt on board," he asked the officials, "but you won't let me take my chicken?"
There were other reactions that made that El Ashmawy "lol," as he put it. Another excellent one included a man who phoned his wife to divulge the location of his secret bank account -- a common practice among the Egyptian upper middle class. His wife, too distracted by the revelation of a hidden stash of money to remember her husband was sitting on a hijacked plane, asked him to repeat the name of the bank several times, El Ashmawy said.
Another passenger apparently called each of his family members individually for short conversations, saying, "Mohammed, I've been kidnapped," and "Fatma, I've been kidnapped" to each.
The flight also bred other bizarre behavior, including a passenger who took a photo with the hijacker -- and a flight attendant who helped them -- creating a very strange chapter in air travel. And one, now that everyone is safe, that is rife for yet more jokes.
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Heidi Moore is a Business Editor at Mashable. She directs a team of reporters and editors in creating richly reported, smart and entertaining stories about media, startups, advertising, careers and Social Good that show that business is really a reflection of life and what we value in it.Heidi was previously a finance and economics editor at the Guardian, New York bureau chief and Wall Street correspondent at Marketplace Radio, and a financial reporter at the Wall Street JournalShe loves yoga, rooftops and taking photographs of everything.
