Girl on a Plane (25 page)

“I think it's a great idea. How many days?”

“Shall we say three or four?”

“Four,” I say.

“OK, five, then.”

I laugh. “I love you, Marni.”

“And I do you,” she says. “So much. We just need to get down there, don't we? Then we can really relax. It'll be good for all of us. Just think, sleeping in, the farm, Cornish food, and air.”

“And peace,” I say.

“And peace.”

Dad closes the door on the photographer. “Thought I'd check the news,” he says. “OK?” He pulls the chairs away from the TV and turns it on. The screen flickers. The sound is turned all the way down.

“Oh God,” I say. My plane is there on the screen with the two others in the desert.

My plane. In the heat, the dust, the wind. The silence.

Suddenly a black puff of smoke erupts from the plane's nose, followed by a huge explosion, blossoming black, bright orange, red. Debris spirals high in the air. A second explosion tears into the main body, ripping it open. The broken tail bursts outward. Thick black smoke rolls along the ground and into the sky.

“No!” I cry. “No!”

Tires explode, plastic blisters and melts. The frame, the doors, the fuselage, writhe and twist in white heat.

My plane . . .

“Good lord,” my father says, stunned. “The hijackers have blown it to smithereens. Why?”

We stand, watching as the flames lose energy. The smoke rolls off. The air clears. The camera zooms in. And all that's left is a black, twisted wreck.

I feel the earth shift.

My mind translates the images, but I feel that it's me that's disintegrated.

That
Anna, the one in the desert, has been destroyed, annihilated. Like the plane, she no longer exists.

Dad snaps off the TV, but the image of the plane is still there, exploding, blistering, writhing . . .

“Marni,” I whisper. “Help.”

She puts her arms around me, holds me. “What?” she says. “What is it?”

“I don't know . . . who I am.”

“You will,” she whispers into my hair. “You will find yourself again.” We are both crying softly. “You will be safe Anna, and calm Anna, again. I promise . . .”

And I look up into her dark eyes, and I believe her.

I went back.

I went looking for the Revolutionary Airstrip in the desert outside Amman, where I'd been held hostage on board a plane for four days.

At first I just Google Earthed it, typing in
Dawson's Field hijackings,
and found it just outside the town of Zarqa, north of Amman, on the way to the border with Syria. Dawson's Field is the name of the disused airstrip once owned by the British, a wide, flattened strip of desert between a small escarpment and a line of hills. The hills I'd sat looking at while the deadline ticked closer.

I printed more maps, zooming in and out, and, as I studied them, became haunted by the ghost of the old airstrip lying quite clearly there, running east to west, its track marked out in the sand, unerasable, like an archaeological site or a burial mound. To the immediate left of it were two white-roofed buildings and a perimeter fence of some sort around a small network of roads, and an entry gate at the southern end.

I emailed the British Embassy in Amman and asked the concierge at the InterContinental Hotel about the possibility of gaining access to the airstrip, and was told that Dawson's Field was right in the middle of a military zone and that I wouldn't get permission to go in. Perhaps they were jittery about the proximity to the border, where hundreds of thousands of Syrians were gathering, fleeing the civil war that was raging there.

I
will
go back,
I thought.
I
will
find it. I will stand there on the sand and look out on those hills again.

But I didn't book the air ticket. I made excuses. I didn't have time. It was the wrong season. And still the landing strip haunted me.

One day I wrote down a list of all the feelings I had about returning to Jordan. I wrote quickly and honestly and found they were entirely contradictory: half positive, half negative. One half were those of a curious woman who was delighted at the thought of an adventure, looking forward to the challenge, to experiencing new sights and discoveries. But the other half belonged to a frightened child. She was hiding inside, looking out through a window, terrified. So I imagined the woman standing alongside the small child. And in my mind's eye, I saw her gently put out her hand and say,
Come on, let's do it together.

/ / /

“Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts while we travel through Israeli airspace,”
says the voice over the intercom. Why? To stop demonstrations of anguish by Palestinians traveling over the homeland they are forbidden to visit, or because there's a danger of stray missiles? Three-quarters of those now living in Jordan were originally Palestinians, from several influxes: the first in 1948, when Churchill and the French carved up the area, then after the Six Day War. And more recently there have been more refugees, from Iraq and Syria.

We are flying into Queen Alia airport, named after the late king's wife, killed in an air accident. It's newly built, designed by Norman Foster. It was not there in 1970, when Amman, built on seven hills, was much smaller. The InterContinental Hotel, where we were taken after our release and where I have now booked a room to stay the night, has expanded and been refurbished several times since my hijacking. Nothing will look as it did, but perhaps I will be able to experience some of the feelings I felt then, some of the constants in Amman life and the locality that I must have seen all those years ago. The overarching feeling I remember of my ordeal is of being alone. But look, I'm not alone now. I'm with my husband of thirty years. He's here beside me, holding my hand.

I look out on blue sky and broken cloud and a great expanse of sea below. Ice particles cluster around the edges of my window. As we drop down, I see a haze of red dust and brown sand with crooked paths and cracked ravines, rising mounds, soft folds, a meandering dry riverbed, the shadow of clouds on land. The reddish-brown sand stretches all the way to the horizon. As we descend closer to earth, ripples appear, strange scratch marks, a beaten track, hard and clay covered.

We hit the tarmac, and I feel a great surge of emotion. Tears fall.

We climb down the steps and walk toward the new airport, all glass and concrete. Like a collision of sea and sky, its scalloped roofs, shaped like camels' lips, rise and fall.

In no time we're in a taxi, flying past olive groves, fruit and vegetables grown in hoop houses, wide expanses of scrub, new highways, tent encampments, men picnicking on the central reservation. There's Louis Vuitton, Starbucks, Ikea, and everywhere construction projects, more construction projects, more hollow-eyed, unfinished houses. The seven hills of Amman are densely covered with square, flat-roofed buildings, fawn and white and all the tones in between. And as the sun sets below the horizon, the peach sky leaves us for graying clouds and night.

/ / /

I'm in the foyer of the InterContinental again all these years later, no longer one of a frantic crowd of released hostages being stormed by the media. People sit around unconcerned, elevators ping open, there's background music and bellboys in uniform, an Arab with a bird of prey on his arm, glass cases displaying jewelry, gray-suited security men. The polished floors reflect and shine. I sit in a carved, lacquered chair and watch the revolving door turn its circle. I look at the reception desk, at the public phones, at a sofa covered in a rattan rug, like the ones we had at home, and I feel numb.

As we settle into our room, I'm aware of the arrival of difficult feelings. I can't stop thinking about my parents. Both of them are dead now, but back then, when I was released and came here, they were all I could think about. How could I let them know I was OK when I didn't know where they were, whether they were going to meet me in London? Whether anyone was? I couldn't even find out if they knew I was alive. There were no mobile phones, and I couldn't call them on a landline, as I didn't know where they were. My overriding feeling then was of being alone, and now I seem to be reliving it, as well as feeling an unbearable sense of loss.

The next morning, I stand looking down from the hotel room, seven floors up. I can see twin minarets and a mosque with a pale-blue dome decorated in beautiful patterns. And right below me, on a rooftop by a satellite dish, a Siamese cat rolls in the sun from one side to the other, and back again. And there, below it, leaning against a palm tree, a man in a suit is smoking—​in the exact way my father did, the same stance, the same way he held his cigarette a little way from him, the same turn of his head to release the smoke. I see them everywhere, the ghosts of my parents: the edge of my mother's chin in the elevator, the back of her head in the bar, her turquoise dress. It's taken me by surprise, how much they're here—​when they weren't before.

We breakfast on fresh fruit and slabs of Jordanian yogurt. There are bowls of oranges, lemons, overflowing mint, tomatoes, and great chunks of halvah looking like layered cliffs.

It's time to go and talk to the driver we've hired for three hours to take us, we hope, to Dawson's Field. I don't know what to say, so I ask to go in the direction of the new Hashemite University, and, as we get talking, I gradually mention the reason for our trip. He seems unfazed. His name is Salah, a smart-suited, middle-aged man with an open, friendly face and laughing eyes. He says we can stop and look at my maps when we're outside the town of Zarqa.

He stops under a road sign. It says Syria, straight on, right for Saudi Arabia and Iraq. We study the maps. It
is
a military zone, he says, and my heart plummets. I steel myself for disappointment. “But I think this”—​he points—​“is a sort of military club.”

“Really?” I feel a glimmer of hope.

“We shall see,” he says. “Maybe we can get in there.”

“How?”

“Come,” he says, getting back into the car, “we shall try. I think I know someone who works there.”

He drives on and then turns off the highway, onto a smaller road leading into the military zone. Army equipment lines the road; there are lookout towers, flattened areas of sand, and heaped car tires that look like makeshift rifle ranges. There's lots of barbed wire. We see a military checkpoint at the far end of the road, and Salah turns around quickly. Suddenly he swings right and stops outside a pair of black gates that have armed security personnel standing both outside and inside. “The polo club,” he says, winding down his window. He shakes the guard's hand. There's an amicable exchange in Arabic. He takes out his phone as if to call his friend. The guard stops him and waves us through.

We're in.

“What did you say to him?” I ask.

“I said that you had heard of the polo club and had come all the way from England to see it.”

I'm smiling. “You're a genius,” I say.

He shrugs matter-of-factly. “Well, you have to lie sometimes.”

We drive along a narrow road bordered by newly planted trees and park next to a long, low white building with high windows. A solemn young man in fatigues emerges from the building and greets us.

We are shown around, first through the long, white stable block, empty but for a couple of polo ponies. It's cool inside, almost gloomy, with just a brilliant patch of sun at the far end, where the other open door is. It smells wonderfully of horses, and sawdust and hay. We walk slowly down the length of the building, asking questions about the horses. Salah acts as our interpreter. I go over to talk to a beautiful chestnut that hangs its head outside the stable door and whinnies. I ask if it has a name, and I am told it is called Gazelle. Tears well up behind my sunglasses. It is what, in the quiet of my mind, I call my eldest daughter.

My husband asks questions while I compose myself. Then I ask if I can take photos on my phone. I can. We are joined by another stable hand—​a Pakistani with intense eyes and thick black hair. He's open and patient, answering our questions about the polo ponies with pride. There are ninety Thoroughbred Arab polo ponies, he says, for use by the military and the police, and several others stabled privately, some for the king of Jordan.

We pass outside, into the light. I can see the low, white buildings in the military zone next door that looked like silos on Google Earth. To our right are a number of pens and paddocks, one the whole length of the stable block, full of mares and young foals. The mothers crop the green hay off the beaten-earth floor. The little ones suckle. Occasionally one of them is spooked, bucking and cantering to another part of the paddock. They are beautiful. Their flanks shine; their bodies are lean and well-muscled, their manes clipped short. Tails swish. The continuous sound of cropping ponies fills the air.

I take pictures, but I feel disoriented, worried that the polo ponies will distract me, that I won't be able to hold on to why I'm here. We come to a white wall at the end of the track with a solid gate we cannot see through. The gate is pulled back, and we pass inside. This paddock, we are told, holds the ones bred from English polo ponies. They have to be kept separate from the Arabs. They don't get along well together.
They probably don't speak the same language,
I say, unthinking. Salah interprets, and the men laugh. The ponies, the man in fatigues says, are left out in the paddocks throughout the winter to make them strong for the game. He puts his hand to his heart when he says
strong
. They play four to a team in the beating sun.

I walk in among the polo ponies, right into the middle—​and suddenly I see my hills. I know them. I cannot believe I am here. These are my hills, this is my place. I feel amazement and disbelief. I feel exhilarated and disembodied. This is the place where I sat in the plane for four days while the deadline ticked away. This is where I walked in front of hundreds of reporters to have my picture taken, here, under the nose cone of the VC10. In this valley, between the running hills to the south and the sharper incline to the north, three huge passenger airlines sat in the heat of the desert trussed with explosives. For four days, this was the epicenter of the world's tension.