Story from the Martinair tragedy

It is absolutely a treat to read articles by Capt. Elmo Jayawardene (EJ), a few years senior to me, in our alma mater, St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, where he excelled in many spheres; specializing in basketball for countless number of monumental years, both as a versatile player/captain and a ‘no-nonsense’ coach. His contributions to our college, aviation profession, and the society at large were, and are, ‘immense’ in order to encapsulate a very long story short of a “Good Samaritan”.

I refer to an article published in this paper a few weeks ago, “A sad night to remember” by EJ. It gave a very clear and comprehensive account of the worst air disaster that ever occurred in our country.

My short story goes as follows. The native place of a known person to me during that time was Laxapana. On hearing the fatal plane crash, like many others in the surrounding areas, he also visited that place where the smoke was still emanating from the smoldering debris, inside the deep precipice. Whilst being very vigilant for any objects, suddenly he had noticed something moving inside a small cavity, underneath from where he was standing. There was no easy access to that but he managed to grab it after falling flat on the ground and reaching it with greater effort, because with a slightest mistake he would have ended up inside ‘Seven Virgins’. Sounds good, but fatal!

To his surprise it was a passport of an Indonesian pilgrim to Makkah, the holiest city in Islam and the followers of the faith.

I requested him to give it to me for a few days, as I was so curious and desirous to have a look at it, because just after leaving school, during that time, I haven’t seen a single passport of anybody. Later, he obliged my request and I returned that to him a few days later. Years later, when asked about it, he told me that he had given that to a friend in his campus who was so ‘kind’ enough ‘not to return it’ as he had pretended to have lost it.

If my 40+ years memory serves right, the name of the holder of that passport was, BIN AHMED SARKAT.

Last December was the 46th anniversary of that painful tragedy.

LALITH FERNANDO