Girl on a Plane (8 page)

Furiously I turn on my heel. But one of the new guards is waiting to leave after his shift. He's standing where the cabin narrows, watching us with intense eyes, his belt crammed with bullets and hung with hand grenades.

I slide back along the galley wall and try to squeeze behind him. But my buckle catches on the back of his belt. I reach quickly to unhitch it, and Sweaty yells, rushes at me, pushes me to one side, and grips my arm. I feel the cold muzzle of his gun against my neck and shut my eyes.

Oh God. Oh God.

The muzzle presses deeper. My blood runs like ice in my veins. A wave of nausea, terrifying fear.

Please. Don't!

I can't breathe. My heart's exploding.

“Now, now. Calm down.” It's the Scottish navigator. “What's the problem here?”

Help me,
I plead silently.

“She.” Sweaty shifts the gun until it lies along my jaw. “She take his ammo.” He spits it out. Flecks land on my neck.

“Nonsense.” The navigator looks at me.

Help me!

“I'm Jim,” he says. “What happened?”

Can't speak. Can't move. The gun.

Gently Jim pushes the muzzle of Sweaty's gun to one side, puts one arm around me, and takes a step away from Sweaty. “Take a breath.” My legs crumple beneath me. My vision darkens. I can feel the navigator struggling to hold me upright. A sob rises, rips through me. I'm shuddering, gasping for air.

“I . . . was . . . get . . . past . . .” I start to shake uncontrollably. My knees, my legs, my hands, my arms.

I can't see. Can't hear. My mind's shutting down.

I'm . . . going . . .

The navigator's voice is muffled, distorted. “She was just trying to get past . . . caught on him . . . didn't mean to.” Then, louder: “It was a
mistake.
”

I feel a wave of gratitude. Sweaty swims in front of me through the blur, looking unsure. He shrugs, waves us away. The young guard in the ammo belt looks shaken, confused, as I stumble past.

Jim half carries me back down the aisle. He slides me in beside David and pulls my table down. I drop my head onto my folded arms and close my eyes.

“OK?” Jim asks from the aisle.

I nod into the table, still desperately trying to control the shaking.

“You sure?”

I look up briefly. Nod. “Thanks.” I feel sick, lightheaded.

“Look after this wee one for a bit, will you?” he says to David.

“Yes. Sure.”

When Jim's gone, David touches my shoulder. “Jesus, what happened?”

I shake my head. Can't make words yet. He strokes my back. It feels nice, comforting. After a minute I begin to mumble, “My buckle . . . got caught. On the guard's belt.” I pause and take a deep breath. “On a hand grenade.”

I sit up slowly, clench my fists tight to stop my hands from shaking.

“Christ, Anna!” David stares at me, speechless.

I'm overwhelmed with tiredness. I want to go to sleep. I put my head down again.

“Was that why Sweaty was yelling?” he says.

“He thought I was trying to steal it.”

“But you could have been shot!”

I lift my head and look sideways at him, then drop it again.

“God, I hope they get us out of here soon,” David says. “This is shit.”

I don't ever want to move again. I sit listening to my ragged breathing, with David quietly beside me.

My heart slowly returns to normal.
Normal.
What's normal? Is this normal now?

Gradually I stop shaking and sit up. I feel weak, as if I've been in bed with the flu for two weeks.

David's watching me.

“Where's Tim?” I ask.

“Playing Monopoly. It's good he hasn't seen you like this. While you were away he came back specially to tell me that he'd caught the twins passing hotels under the table to each other.”

I smile weakly at him.

“Did you hear that anyone with an Arab, Asian, or Indian passport is being allowed to leave the plane?” he asks. “Apparently the Giant gave the captain a list of about twenty passengers. If they do leave, there'll be less than eighty of us left.” He lowers his voice. “Our Arab family is going.”

I feel a sharp wave of disappointment. I felt protected somehow by their presence. I look over and realize that the woman is weeping softly—​with relief, I suppose. The man comforts her.

He looks over, smiles, shakes his head. “They should let you children go too. I shall ask them, when I can.”

“Thank you,” David says.
“Shukran.”

The little boy, unsettled by his mother's crying, starts trying to climb out of his seat, so the man turns away to deal with him.

I really don't want them to go. “David,” I say, “I don't . . .” A sob escapes.

He puts an arm around me. “Neither do I. Maybe they can help once they're off—​you heard what he said.”

It all feels so unfair—​so hopeless.

But it turns out that everything is not so simple for those leaving. The young couple behind us is engaged. He's Arab and she's British. He can go, but she's told she has to stay. He gets up to talk to the captain. Sweaty comes and speaks to the two of them, while the woman sits ashen faced. The two men speak in Arabic, and it's obvious that the man is refusing to go without his fiancée. Sweaty speaks directly to the woman, and she breaks down, begs him to let her go too. He refuses, raises his voice.

I can't stand it when he's nearby. The thought of him touching me again . . .

The man refuses to leave her, still insists she goes too. “We're getting married in a few days. In England!” he says again and again.

Sweaty shakes his head. He's standing right beside David now. I can see his expression.
He's enjoying it, the power he has over them. The bastard.
The woman starts to sob. The man sits down to comfort her. The Giant arrives, listens, and then relents, says she can leave with him. The man stands up, shakes the Giant's hand, looks overjoyed, then returns to his fiancée.

Before Sweaty and the Giant go, the Arab man opposite us stands up and with great dignity addresses them formally in Arabic. He keeps gesturing toward us, and for a moment I feel a surge of hope. Can we leave too? Will this all be over soon? But the Giant and Sweaty are adamant. We stay. Sweaty points to his watch and walks away. The Arab man sits down, defeated. His wife, who has already packed up their things, leans over and pats his arm. I want to thank him for trying but feel so incredibly disappointed.

All hope of escape has gone.

The couple behind us follows the hijackers to the front to speak to the captain about arrangements for leaving, and Tim slips into his seat beside me.

“Blimey, what was all that racket about?”

David ignores him. “It's really not fair,” he says. “Just because she's in love with an Arab, she's allowed to go. Maybe I'm half-Arab but have a British passport.”

“Are you half-Arab?” Tim looks fascinated.

“No, I'm not. But that's not the point. They're bending the rules, just for her. Who's making up these rules anyway? What about saying anyone under eighteen can go too?”

“Well, I think it's good that they're bending them,” I say. “If they're letting her go, maybe they'll bend them for us at some point.”

“Fat chance,” David says grumpily. Then, “I know, I know, I'm jealous. But it just doesn't feel fair. What have we done wrong? Why's her life more important than mine or yours or Tim's?”

“Well, at least some people are getting off,” Tim says.

“Exactly,” I say. “If some can, then maybe . . .” I trail off.

“We can?” Tim says brightly.

“Yes, maybe we can.”

The Arab family stands in the aisle. The man smiles, leans over, and shakes each of us by the hand. The woman waves from behind him. The little boy, still clutching his VW Beetle, sits on her hip, his arm looped around his mother's. He looks solemnly at us with big brown eyes. I try to smile, to make him smile back, but my heart isn't in it. There was something comforting about having that family across the aisle.

“I liked them,” Tim says wistfully after they've gone.

“Me too,” I say, and we all fall silent.

I decide to slide across the aisle into the three empty seats. The family is down under the plane, waiting for the minibus to take them away. The engaged couple stands hand in hand behind them. Through the window I see them climb into a battered old bus and drive away in a cloud of dust. Then I lie down across their three seats and try to doze.

It's late afternoon and still unbearably hot; the air is thick and heavy, and I'm dying for a drink. Since the others left the plane, a feeling of stagnation has set in. Nothing seems to be happening. No one bothers to move about much. It's as if we've been sucked into the black hole of despondency.

I'm in the foot well under the three empty seats, sticky with sweat, lying stretched out on my back with one arm over my eyes, trying and failing to sleep. Tim's curled up in his seat by the window opposite, and David's snoozing with his feet on my old seat.

I had thought it would be great to lie here across the three empty seats, but the last metal armrest by the window is fixed, so my feet hung in the aisle for people to knock as they went by. And if I lay on my side, the seat belts dug into my shoulders and back. So I'm squeezed down here on the floor, with the metal grille that runs down the length of the plane right by my head; my hair caught in it earlier when I turned over, making me wince in pain.

I try to imagine the cool late-afternoon sea breeze up on the roof of our house in Bahrain, the boys arguing over some cricket catch or drinking juice at the kitchen table or stealing ice cream from the freezer compartment of the fridge.

How long will it take before I forget what they look like?

I sit up, scramble into the window seat, and stare out to where the hard sand meets the scrubland. Sam took off once into the desert from the house. Left home. He was only four. We'd been teasing him, loading his lunch plate up with leftovers, calling him “the dustbin,” saying he had to eat all of it. Suddenly he got up and left the room. We looked at each other, stunned.

“He'll be all right,” Marni said. “Just give him time to cool down.” But he reappeared with a small bag over one shoulder, his beloved tiger bulging inside it. He went into the kitchen, took a small colored bottle, and stood on a chair to fill it with water. No one said a word as he opened the front door and left. We just crowded around the window. And there he was, marching steadily out across the wasteland, a small figure wearing shorts and flip-flops. I remember how we expected him to stop, to lose his nerve. But he didn't. He just kept going.

“Quick!” Marni said to Mark. “Run after him. Tell him we're sorry.
Really
sorry. Tell him we'd like him to come back so that we can apologize properly. Did you get that?”

“Yes!” shouted Mark, scampering off.

“I think we'd better be a bit more sensitive,” Marni said. “When he returns, no smiling when you apologize. Especially you, James!”

“I promise,” Dad said with a smile.

And I'm overcome by a great wave of grief, of missing them. Missing everything: the lines that fan around Dad's eyes when he smiles, the way Marni's eyes light up and laugh on their own.

I remember standing on the top diving board, overlooking the tennis courts, last week. Dad had his toe on the baseline and both arms up in the air, one holding the tilted racket, his eyes gazing upward at the soft white ball, frozen for a split second before the explosion of his serve. And Mark was below, in the pool, splashing Sam, and Marni was sitting on the side, sipping orange juice from a frosted bottle with a white paper straw. And I was with them.

Now I'm left just trying to imagine them.

I'm startled by the captain's voice. He's saying that the guards have insisted we have a rotation to get fresh air at the open door, that we can only go in ones and twos and only stay for a few minutes each.

David asks if I'm up to going again, offers to put my name down for me if I like. I say I'll go with him but not alone.

When it's our turn, we sit on the black seat by the open door and look out. A slant of hot sun burns my knees. David's amazed to see the other plane.

“If I sit and dangle my feet out,” he says, “I might be able to see the third one.”

“I wouldn't,” I say quickly. “Don't make them angry again.”

I look at the low hills breaking the skyline, run my eyes along the length of them, as far as I can see and back again, trying to memorize the rise and fall, the edge and shift, of them, as if I'm drawing them with a soft pencil or charcoal. Along . . . and then back.

There's something soothing in it.

“God, I'm thirsty.” David is staring disconsolately out into the desert. “And I heard that guy Alan say that they've run out of soft drinks and there's no water at all now.”

“They can't leave us here with nothing to drink.” I look at him. “Can they?”

“They seem to be. Can you see over there?” He points. “Don't you think they look like trenches, like they've dug them around the plane?”

“Yes, but are you sure they're trenches? Do you think the guerrillas live in them? Like in the First World War? Trenches like that?”

“Sort of,” David says, “though smaller, more temporary. I suppose if they were billeted aboveground, they might get picked off by snipers or something. Have you noticed the hills on the other side of the plane? God knows who or what might come up from behind them.”

“What do you mean?” I hadn't even thought about it. He's making me feel really uneasy. “Everyone says that the Palestinians have control of this area.”