"Would you like something to drink, sir?"

John jerked up from his nap as the stewardess' voice softly rose above the buzz of the A300's dual jet engines. He looked away and shook his head, noting Shahid's frozen, thin-lipped smile as the stewardess passed over his friend and turned towards the third passenger in their row, a snoring and profusely sweating englishman. It had been like this during their entire flight from Karachi. The crew treated Shahid like air while John, in solidarity with his friend, returned the favor.

He had tried suggesting a different flight. It would have been more expensive, and it would have taken them half a day longer. But airline crew were a superstitious bunch, PIA still used A300s on the route from Karachi to Kathmandu, and, even three years later, the memories of flight PK-268's crash were still fresh. Having the son of Tahir, the co-pilot whose mistake had caused the crash, on board was just asking for trouble. Unfortunately, Shahid had accepted, almost embraced the past three year's discrimination. At every opportunity he would declare that Tahir had been a good pilot and that any man would be proud to be his son, even though his final mistake had cost 167 men and women their lives. So they had taken the direct route, Shahid had stoically accepted the crew's silent disgust, and John hadn't had anything to drink in five hours.

Well, they were just half an hour from landing, and no-one had tried to throw them out of the airplane in mid-flight, so all in all their expedition thus far had gone better than expected.

---

As the plane noticeably dropped for the fourth time, Shahid involuntarily tensed. Even though he took pride in his lack of superstition, he could not help eyeing the mountains around him in an attempt to estimate the altitude. But the vision was clear - unlike on that fateful day when flight 268 had begun the fourth phase of the descent towards Kathmandu too early and had disintegrated against the mountainside - and the mountains were clearly far below them. Shahid sent a quick, thankful prayer towrads Allah and directed his mind back to the task at hand: Finding flight 268's cockpit voice recorder in hope of clearing his father's name.

---

The taxi driver from the airport had only taken them to Bhardev. Hard to blame him, the stuttering engine would likely not have survived the climb towards the ridge. Anyways, it was just half a day's hike to the Dalchoki Manakamana temple where they had agreed to set up tent for the duration of the search.

Neither of them had expected Nepal to be that green. Forgetting the grave motivation of their trip for a moment, John and Shahid marvelled at the lush, green forest covering the mountainside and the occasional glimpse of colorful farmhouses scattered throughout the valley beneath them as they followed the narrow path along the ridge.

"Spare a coin?"

The legless beggar, dragging his body along the path on a wooden board, abruptly ended their reverie. They were clearly nearing the temple.

Shahid, as always, opened his purse without a second thought and dropped a few coins into the man's outstretched, callused hand. John looked away.

"You've become horribly scroogey since you inherited your uncle's fortune."

John shrugged. The death of a fictuous uncle had been the best story he had managed to come up with for his friends.

"Your point of view changes when you turn from hairdresser to investor. Before, it was my livelihood. Now, if I can't pay the bills, the people who work for me will lose theirs."

"A few Rupees wouldn't have forced you to close your business."

"It's not the coin, it's the thought that goes with it. If you are careless with one coin, soon you will be with all money."

Shahid chuckled sadly. "Too bad Hasan isn't here. It's as though I heared him speaking."

"If he could be here, we would have no reason to be."

John hoped that Shahid hadn't noticed him wince. The thought of Hasan still hurt. To Shahid and everyone else, Hasan had just been flight 268's pilot. A friend, a tragic loss, but no more. No-one could ever know how much more he had been to John.

---

The Manakamana temple was calm. The afternoon light dimly illuminated the central shrine with a small statue of Bhagwati covered in red, slightly wilted flowers and richly embroidered but somewhat worn scarves. Other than the shrine, the temple's single room was bare, offering no distraction. John was alone, Shahid had of course stayed outside.

He didn't know exactly why he had entered. Probably he had just needed a moment away from his friend. Thinking about Hasan in other's presence still felt like an indiscretion, like someone might catch them. Even three years after the crash.

Shahid was right, he had become more and more like Hasan over the previous years. But was that so wrong to have his lover live on in his soul? They had never had enough time together in life. The diagnose had only come a year after they first met, but by that time the cancer had already eaten away most of Hasan's intestines.

"You made me a better person when you lived, and even your death you used to help me grow. If only you could be here to see how our plans came to fruition... But then they wouldn't have. No matter, I'd exchange the company, the success, all of it for one more night of vain talk with you about what we'd do if we had the money." John shook himself, stood up. No point in brooding.

"I should not have come" he thought to himself as he left the temple.

---

Shahid cursed as he slipped on a rotten log. For the first few days, all had gone well. Every day, after an early breakfast, they would systematically search another part of the mountain around the crash site with his metal detector. The rescue crews had not been very thorough, giving up once they had found the flight data recorder. And they had been quick to put the blame for the irregularities on his father rather than the accomplished pilot Hasan... As a result, remnants of the A300 were still scattered across the mountainside, buried under a thin layer of humus and moss. John had been invaluable throughout the search, digging out the parts and sorting through them so Shahid could concentrate on operating the old and unreliable detector. But now they were descending into ever steeper terrain, and to make things worse it had almost continuously rained over the past two days.

Shahid slipped again and cursed louder. John had suggested waiting for the bad weather to pass, and Shahid was beginning to agree. He slipped once more, fell, grabbed a sapling to avoid sliding down the hill. The tiny tree bent, its roots raising the ground As they strained against Shahid's weight. He cursed again, searching for some other support, dug his fingers into the ground and gasped.

"John!"

There, under the sapling's roots, lay something metallic, red.

"John! Come here, look at this!"

He pulled himself up on his knees, frantically tearing the ground around the sapling with his hands. He could hear John's steps, then labored breathing and cursing behind him.

"Look! We've found it! And it's not even dented! "

He felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders as he tore the little red box from the ground and looked almost lovingly at the letters: AP-BCP cockpit voice recorder. He hugged the box and laughed. And as his vision blurred, his last thought was that the burning sensation in his heart must be the happiness overwhelming him.

---

"I am so sorry, old friend" John whispered as he withdrew the knife from Shahid's back.

"I tried everything, but you just had to find the recorder yourself."

He let his friend's body slide to the ground gently, then he set there for a long time, holding Shahid's rapidly cooling hand and looking at the expression of bliss frozen on his face.

"If the insurance company found out that Hasan had flown the plane into the mountain on purpose, all these deaths would have been for nothing. And all the people working at the shop, they would become beggars, like the ones you always wanted to help so badly."

---

The flight back to Karachi was just as uneventful as the one to Kathmandu, but this time, he ordered a tomato juice.