Soviet Planes

Tarig Hilal
4 min readMay 11, 2022

Memoir

Few things are less reassuring than a Soviet plane run by a Sudanese airline.

My mind, now feverish for lack of sleep, imagines the Russian lettering across the entrance to the plane as a warning that I step aboard at my own risk.

Stooping to enter I find myself in a dark and dingy world, a ceiling so low that I remain doubled up all the way to the main section of the plane, where…