10/28/2021
Update 10-22-2021
Ferhat was buried yesterday in Algeria. Here is a picture of him in 2017, at a family gathering.
That seems such a simple, peaceful concept. You have no idea how much we have struggled to make that happen. Air travel in these times is more than difficult, nearly impossible.
Louis Kfoury of Kfoury-Keefe Funeral Home in West Roxbury serves the Lebanese community in that town, and has often shipped a body home to Beirut for burial. We were referred to him by a friend. He was kind and gentle and knew how to go about getting the diplomatic clearance and to deal with Air France to ship the body home to Algeria.
The normal funeral services went very smoothly, with the embalming, the ritual washing of the body, and a lovely prayer service at the Yusuf mosque. Louis got the death certificates from Boston, submitted them to the Algerian Consulate in New York, obtained the appropriate clearances and authorizations for shipment, and went to the airport on Monday the 18th to put him on board the plane to Paris, with connection the following day to Algiers. But Boston had to wait for final clearance from New York, who needed paperwork from Paris, who needed paperwork from Algiers that did not happen that Monday. Louis spent the entire day at the airport in Boston, waiting for the paperwork. By 2 pm Boston (7 pm Algiers) it was clear that the paperwork was not happening on Monday. The clerk whose signature was required had gone home for the day early, as Tuesday was to be a holiday in Algeria.
We panicked. If he didn’t leave Monday he would not arrive Wednesday. If we could not get the signature until Wednesday he would not arrive in Algiers until Friday, which is also a religious holiday in Algeria, and that would further complicate matters. Not to mention that all this was very stressful for his family in Algeria. Ferhat’s daughter Sarah in Algiers and her husband Abdo, who works for Air Algeria, worked hard to find the home telephone number of the missing clerk, called him at home, and asked him please to complete this action Monday night, which he did.
On Tuesday morning Louis went back to the Boston airport. The paperwork came through to New York at 9 AM, and the shipment was begun. He would arrive in Algiers on Thursday at 11.
Meanwhile Asma and I spent hours and more than 30 phone calls trying to reach Air France to confirm Merouane’s flight out on Saturday the 16th, to get home to Algiers on Sunday and make final arrangements for the burial in their home town of Bordj, three hours east of Algiers by car. We never did get through on the phone, but went to the airport Saturday afternoon with the email confirmation and the negative results of a COVID test in hand.
Air France did not allow him to board. They insisted that we had to finalize arrangements by phone. We explained that It was impossible to reach Air France by phone. When we had last spoken with an agent on October 1 we had changed the return to October 16 and we had the email confirmation. That was not enough to suit the very rude woman at the desk. We were sent home with her final word – you have to do this by phone.
We continued trying Air France, but at the same time shopped for any other way to get him home to Algiers before his father’s body would arrive, or at least no later than Wednesday at 11 am. The biggest problem was getting a confirmed seat on a flight from Paris to Algiers. Abdo tried through his connections at the airport in Algiers. No seats from Paris, but there was a seat available from Rome. No flights to Rome. What other options? From what other cities might there be flights to Algiers?? Cairo? Dakar? London Heathrow?
There was a flight on Lufthansa, but they too would get him to Paris but not to Algiers. There was no connection on Qatar airways until the 28th of October. Asma finally found a flight Tuesday from New York JFK to Algiers on Turkish Airways, by way of Istanbul, that would get him home Wednesday at 3:20 pm.
I called Turkish air to book the ticket and asked if they could book him from Boston on one of their partner airlines so that he could check his luggage through from Boston. Not possible. He would have to get to JFK on his own and check in at JFK. OK, I had points on JetBlue, so I booked him on JetBlue to JFK. Because I was paying for the ticket, they needed me to go to the airport to the Turkish Airlines desk and present my credit card and passport, to assure them that I was doing this intentionally and that he was not using a stolen credit card. OK, I had had to do that before for others, so I got the hours of the Turkish Airlines desk in Boston and agreed to do it.
We realized that his COVID test from Friday would not be within the 72-hour window, so another COVID test was needed. Getting a COVID testing appointment on the same day or even the next day, was proving difficult. Friday we had to drive an hour to Melrose. Monday we had to drive a half-hour to Dedham. My friend Nina was kind enough to chauffeur us all over the countryside to obtain a COVID test that would satisfy the airline.
There was now a lull in activities. We had his flights arranged for Tuesday, and the shipping issues were not yet on the scene, so we chose to relax a bit and enjoy the weekend together. We went shopping with my friend Susan for gifts to take home to the three small children, and some nice sweaters for their mother and sister. Various of my friends had brought food all week and were a kind and supportive presence for us all.
On Sunday my son’s puppy stole his iPhone. By the time we got it back she had chewed one corner of the screen and it was not working. He is blind and his iPhone is his connection to the world. I went to buy him a new phone and spent four hours on the phone with tech support that evening getting it set up, finishing up at 10 pm. Too late for the desk at Turkish Air. I knew I had only one more day to get to Turkish Air, but I would go on Monday evening.
Monday after the COVID testing I went to the airport and went toward the desks for Turkish Air, but they were not yet working. I asked when they would arrive, and was told there was no flight that night on Turkish, so they would not be there until Tuesday night. Disaster. If I didn’t get this information to them before flight time, they would not let Merouane on the plane in New York. I phoned Turkish Air to see what alternatives there might be. There were none. I had to show up in New York, or he could not board.
I immediately went online while sitting in the airport to shop for a flight to New York. I was not able to book the same JetBlue flight with him, but there was a seat on the Delta shuttle that would get me there about the same time as him. I booked a quick round trip to New York – leaving at 6 AM and returning from New York at 3, two hours after his flight time to Istanbul.
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