In the sky a small plane caught our eye... It was a hydroplane. In other words, a plane that takes off from and lands on the water. We took a motorboat out to the plane and boarded...The interior had been completely stripped. There were only a few seats, and the doyens of our delegation, Necmettin and Falih, took them. The rest of us crouched on benches along the sides of the plane. If truth be told, I began to fear for this first flight of mine, but there was nothing to be done. It was a four-propeller craft... We took off...

We landed in Basra at dusk and stayed the night at a very beautiful hotel built by the British. After a feast that lasted until one in the morning, we went to bed and got up again at five the next morning... Our plane was somewhere near the mouth of the Shatt-al-arab... and we had to go there by motorboat... There was thick fog... We finally located the plane after a two-hour battle with the fog and took off proportionately late.