Appointment Is Samarra

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Appointment in Samarra • Commentary Do we make our own Fate? DARDIS MCNAMEE 01/09/2009 As citizens of the post-modern world, we don’t believe in Fate. Not really. We believe in things like free will, self-improvement, and the power of positive thinking. Henry Miller’s remark that “We make our own fortunes and call them fate,” has become a truism of our time. So what do you do when something happens that stands as proof that we may be wrong? As proof that there is “a tide in the affairs of men” that seems to have a will of its own, that we are being carried along on a current apparently predetermined, and certainly controlled, by forces beyond our ken? That’s how I felt the day I picked up the paper and read about Johanna and Kurt Ganthaler, the couple from South Tyrol, who had taken a couple of weeks in early summer to go on holiday in Rio de Janeiro, the grand and exotic former capital of the Portuguese empire. They were to fly home on June 1, on Air France Flt 447. But something held them up, and they missed the flight. They were not among the 216 passengers and 12 members of the crew who died when the plane broke apart and plunged into the sea. As we now know, there were no survivors. When the Ganthalers heard about the crash, they were flooded with relief. The gift of life had been given them once again. Euphoric, they returned to Europe by a later flight; landing in Munich and renting a car, they headed home. Somewhere near Kufstein, husband Kurt apparently fell asleep at the wheel, swerved, and crashed head on into an oncoming truck. Johanna was killed almost instantly, and Kurt ended up in intensive care, fighting for what was left of his life. It was an Appointment in Samarra – the fulfillment of an old allegory told by W. Somerset Maugham as the preface to a forgotten play he wrote in 1933. Somewhat condensed, it goes like
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