Girl on a Plane Read online

  “Honestly, Tim,” I say for the umpteenth time, “he’ll be here somewhere.”

  He looks up at me almost angrily. “But he can’t live . . . out of water . . . for long.” He takes another trembling breath. “What if he’s fallen out . . . of the door . . . in . . . into the desert?” Tears pour down onto his shirt.

  “He won’t have.” I’m determined he won’t have.

  “Or fallen d-d-down . . . in . . . into . . . the l-l-luggage compartment,” he stutters. “Ohhhh . . . no!” He begins to sob again, so hard that words fail him.

  “What, Tim?” I say. “What is it?”

  His words come in fits and starts. “He’ll . . . be climbing . . . all over . . . the bombs . . . down there.” My insides turn to wool. Could a terrapin set off a bomb? I feel sick. Should I tell the captain?

  “Look, I’m sure he’ll still be in the cabin, Tim. Really.”

  David comes back. I look up at him questioningly. He shakes his head. Jamal moves around him to get to the back of the plane.

  “Has anyone told the hijackers?” I ask.

  “Don’t think so,” David says.

  “I think we should. They need to be careful where they’re treading.”

  David watches Jamal. “Fred’s probably not the most important thing in the world to them right now.”

  Tim’s voice rises. “But he’s important to me!”

  “Of course he is, Tim.” I give David a look. “Come on,” I say, desperate to go somewhere, do something else, to get Tim moving out of his grief. “Let’s go and tell Jamal. Then he can tell all the others.”

  So we march down the plane. Jamal’s standing guard with his gun slung over one shoulder. He’s in the open space between the galley and the closed back door. Behind him are the four toilets. Even with the doors firmly closed, I can smell them from halfway down the cabin. As I approach, Jamal reaches for the water bottle on his belt, unscrews the cap, and takes a swig—​and that’s when I see something moving by his foot.

  It’s Fred! I stop dead in my tracks, feel David on my shoulder. He’s seen Fred too. “Ah,” he says. “Now what?”

  “Why’ve you stopped?” Tim pushes under my arm.

  Then, seeing Fred, he lurches forward, but David grabs him. “Don’t, Tim!” he hisses. “You can’t go rushing up to a guy with a gun.”

  “Why? He’s . . .” He looks up at David imploringly. “He wouldn’t hurt him”—​he looks at me—​“would he? He wouldn’t stamp . . . Anna! He wouldn’t throw . . . like the guitar . . .” Tim swallows, can’t continue.

  “Just hang on, Tim,” I say. “We need to make sure we do this right, get him back safely.” I look at David. “I’ll speak, OK? Don’t say anything.”

  I walk slowly toward Jamal.

  “Hi,” I say, aware of the other two behind me watching Fred make a slow detour around Jamal’s black boot.

  “Hello,” Jamal replies calmly, but his expression is unsure.

  “Jamal,” I say, “Tim here’s lost something.”

  “Right . . . ?” he says, looking inquiringly at Tim. “What?”

  “His terrapin.”

  “Terrapin?” He frowns, not familiar with the word.

  “A sort of little turtle that he keeps in a tin, in water.”

  “Ah.” His brow clears.

  “The thing is,” I say, “we’ve been searching through the whole cabin for ages, and Tim’s really upset at losing him, and, well”—​I pause and risk it—​“he’s just by your foot.”

  Jamal looks down.

  I hold my breath. I hope desperately that he is kind, that I’m not wrong about him. Don’t be a cruel terrorist. Please. Not now.

  Jamal’s face breaks into an amused smile. His body relaxes. He unslings his gun and leans it against the wall, kneels down, and very gently scoops up Fred. We watch, rooted to the spot. Jamal looks up at us, delighted, then he nods, beckoning us to approach. He holds his hand out to Tim. Fred clambers onto Tim’s hand slowly, as if tired of his adventure and wanting to go home.

  “Thank you,” Tim whispers. “Thank you so much.” He looks back at us, grinning. His eyes, still a little teary, are bright with happiness.

  “I heard the English were crazy about pets,” Jamal smiles, “but this one really is crazy.” He’s relaxed and friendly. And I’m so relieved. “How do you keep him in here?” Jamal asks, his eyes dancing with humor.

  “In a tin!” Tim says. “I’ll show you!” He dashes off with Fred, calling happily back over his shoulder, “He’ll need to get back in the water anyway.”

  Jamal smiles at David, and then at me, but it’s obvious that Tim’s going has left an awkward gap. I start to fill it. “I hope you don’t mind, Jamal, but I told Tim, and David here, your story.” I stop, feeling out of my depth. What am I doing? I plow on. “You know, what you told me, about your parents. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” Jamal says quietly, looking quizzically again at us. “I hope it will help you to understand why we have to do this.” And I feel the strangeness of it all. English kids, hostages, unarmed, talking to a Palestinian with live hand grenades on his belt, with bullets and a gun. But he’s still human.

  David isn’t ready to forgive or understand, though. “So what did happen, after you lost your parents?” he asks.

  Jamal shifts a little, and a shadow passes over his strong features. “My parents? After they were murdered?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “We walked with others that night”—​his expression is faraway, thoughtful—​“with our neighbors, our friends, the teachers, the shopkeeper from the village—​all fleeing their homes. We were the lucky ones. We were still alive. But we left with nothing, no food, just a little water.”

  “I know the feeling,” David says drily, looking at me.

  “Yes.” Jamal acknowledges it. “But you will return to your homes. To your homeland.” He looks straight at us, his face open, his eyes clear. And I wonder if he knows something we don’t and feel a glimmer of hope.

  He drops his head, shakes it. “I’m sorry you are here, but we are desperate. We were destroyed then, completely dispossessed and driven out with nothing: no home, family, passport, possessions. No security, no education. Nothing—”

  “And so, because of that, we may all be killed tomorrow,” David interrupts. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but why should I pay for it? And my family? And Anna’s?”

  “We just want the world to take some notice.” Jamal is insistent. “We’ve tried everything. In the end, what else can we do? Tell me, what would you do?” He’s challenging us, wanting us to understand.

  “Look!” Tim appears, shattering the moment. He touches Jamal on the sleeve. “This is Fred’s tin!”

  “Fred.” Jamal looks down at Tim. His face relaxes. His intensity disappears. “You call him Fred?” He smiles. “Like Fred Flintstone?” He continues looking in the tin. “There is not much water in here for him.”

  “It’s evaporated in the heat,” I say.

  “And, as you know,” David says, with more than a hint of bitterness, “there’s hardly any water on board.”

  “Here.” Jamal unhooks his water bottle from his belt. “There’s a little in here. Not much.” He tips it into Fred’s tin. As the water glugs out, I lick my cracked lips and am aware of David swallowing uncomfortably. Will I drink Fred’s water if I have to stay here much longer? Yes, I know now that I will.

  “Thanks, Jamal,” Tim says. We all lean in and watch Fred waggle his little webbed feet around and dip his head delightedly below the water.

  “He’d gotten terribly dry wandering about,” Tim says. “So, you see, you’ve saved his life twice.” He looks up at Jamal admiringly.

  “Good.” Jamal smiles.

  “Let’s hope you can do that for us too, then,” David says crisply. Jamal doesn’t respond.

  “Jamal,” says Tim, putting the tin on the floor and fixing the lid back on firmly, “d
o you sleep in those trenches out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where did you learn to use your gun—​and throw hand grenades?” Tim asks.

  “Unfortunately we had to learn. It became obvious that the only way we will ever get the land back that we have lost is to fight for it.” He pauses, checks that we’re all following. “The world forgot about us for a very long time. Defending ourselves is part of our lives now.”

  We’re all silent for a moment. He continues, gesturing with his hands as he speaks. “Imagine having to fight for the freedom to have a job, or to move from one place to another. Imagine—”

  “Where did you live before this, then?” Tim asks.

  “In a refugee camp. Where else can you go when you are driven from your land where you have lived all your life? I hope to go back to Palestine one day. All we want is to go back home, to our land. That is all that drives us.” He looks away at the porthole, his face in shadow.

  “So, after your parents died,” says David, “who looked after you?”

  “Relatives, to begin with,” Jamal explains, “but they were Palestinians, so they were driven off their land too. We all had to leave our country and come over the border to live in refugee camps here in Jordan, where we have been ever since.” He looks at each of us in turn. “We are the people the world forgot.” He pauses, opens both palms. “And this is what we have to do now, to get someone to hear us. We don’t want to live in refugee camps forever. Would you? Would you condemn your children to grow up homeless and angry as well?”

  “We might not live to have children,” David swipes back under his breath.

  “I’d be really mad if anyone did that to me,” Tim says.

  Jamal nods. “Some of us do go mad.”

  “Yeah, Lady Mac, for one,” says David.

  “Who?” asks Jamal.

  “The woman who comes on board every night,” I explain, “to threaten us.”

  “She’s really scary,” Tim says.

  “I knew she came to speak to you, but I didn’t know she did that.” The three of us exchange glances. Jamal looks at us, hesitates, then seems to decide something. “She thinks she’s in charge here, but the real commander, the one who spoke to the reporters, is a good man. I cannot speak to her.”

  “Why not?” asks David.

  “She hates the English. They were the ones who gave our land away to the Jews, and she knows my mother was English.”

  “You’re half-English?” says David, and I wonder what he feels about that.

  “Yes, my mother came originally to Palestine to teach English. She fell in love with my father and never went back. My father brought her to the farm.” He looks down. “At least they died together. They would have wanted it that way.” The light has gone from his eyes. They’re hollow with the memory of it. “Now I have them here, always, inside my heart.”

  I’m moved by his words and desperately want him to know that we do understand something of his story. “Jamal,” I say gently, “we also know what it’s like not to have a fixed home. All three of us—​our parents are sent to different jobs all over the world every few years. You talk of land, but we don’t have any. My parents don’t have a home, an actual house or land that belongs to them, that they own. And when people ask me where I come from, I don’t know what to say. I’m English, but I come from nowhere. There’s nowhere in England where I belong.”

  “But England is your homeland.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you go and live somewhere in England, your homeland, if you choose to?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  “Well then, that is the difference. We are not allowed to go back to our homeland. They say it does not belong to us anymore. We cannot go back there. Ever. That is why we are fighting. Fighting for our freedom to return.”

  I feel David’s restlessness. “I heard that you were looking for Jews on this plane,” he says, “but there weren’t any; that you really wanted to hijack an El Al plane.”

  “Yes,” Jamal says.

  “Why El Al?” asks Tim.

  “It’s a Jewish airline. It’s the Jews who have taken our land.”

  “But a long time ago,” David counters, “weren’t they forced to leave their homes in Palestine that they’d lived in for hundreds of years? They’d have felt persecuted then, that they had no land, no homeland of their own.”

  Tim shakes his head. “This is very confusing.”

  David turns to him. “Yes, it is. And more recently, millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust during the Second World War. So after the war thousands of Jews from all over the world went to live in Palestine, wanting to be safe.”

  “But it was really our land,” Jamal insists.

  David considers his point. “Yes, but the argument about who that land belongs to goes back hundreds of years.” He turns back to Tim. “The Jews and the Arab Palestinians each believe it is their homeland, and after the Second World War, it led to terrible fights. And it hasn’t gotten any better since then. And now we’re caught up in it.”

  “What a mess,” says Tim.

  “I know,” David agrees. “How do you sort that one out?”

  “By hating each other?” I ask. They all look at me.

  Tim sighs. “I don’t know why the grownups don’t sort it out properly. What’s wrong with them all?”

  The Giant comes down the aisle, catches Jamal’s eye, and tilts his head toward the front.

  “I have to go,” Jamal says. “It’s been good talking to you. I’ll see you later on, maybe this afternoon.”

  “Jamal,” I say quickly, “you said you thought we’d get to go back home. What about the deadline?”

  “I believe you’ll be OK,” he replies. “There’s still time. We still have a little time.” The Giant calls him again. “I have to go.”

  Everything is unresolved. Everything.

  We follow him down the aisle and watch as he crouches in the doorway, calls to someone below, and hands down his gun. The sun catches his hair as he starts to descend the ladder, and then he’s gone.

  David’s looking at me. “You seem to like him.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He shrugs. “Not sure.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s prepared to kill us, Anna. Blow us all up, if he has to. How can he possibly justify that? There’s nothing I’ve heard him say that makes that all right.”

  Tim leans forward in his seat. “Well, I think he’s nice. And I like him even more since he gave Fred his water.”

  I sit down in one of my seats across from the boys and stare out the window at the clumps of rock casting their shadows across the sand. I think of the restless wind chiseling away at the stone, making more sand, endless miles of it. And I think of the black cloud of the deadline creeping ever closer.

  Noon on Saturday, she said. Tomorrow. So why did Jamal say we had time? That seems like no time at all to me.

  And the words arrive from nowhere. The sands of time are running out. They make me think of the egg timer on the kitchen counter: two glass bulbs, one above the other, in a wooden frame. Turn it upside down, and the pink sand in the top runs into the bottom in a thin, straight line. Fine sand falling through space.

  Until time runs out and the glass is empty.

  39

  1600h

  Rosemary and Celia deliver each of us a small cup of water. I sip it very slowly, feel the silveriness of it slide across my dry tongue and down my blotting-paper throat. I imagine it rolling lightly, like mercury, into my stomach. All too soon my little cup is empty, but at least the water softens my headache for a while.

  And the afternoon slips by. No news comes. No one seems to be doing anything, well except the deadline, which is rushing toward us like a runaway train. I feel increasingly restless. I pace up and down the plane, past Rosemary, fussing over the fretful baby, sitting on his mother’s knee, past the Newtons, arguing about who forgot to bring spare bat
teries for the radio, past Maria, still looking fragile, past Celia, smoking with Alan, her hair wonderfully disheveled.

  Everyone seems to be smoking. The air is thick with it. The ashtrays are overflowing. Everything stinks of stale smoke—​the upholstery, our clothes, our hair. I’ve even seen the twins taking a surreptitious puff.

  As I walk past Jim, he offers me a cigarette. “Well,” he grins, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” And so I do. What the hell? Nothing matters anymore.

  I draw the smoke in. And I can’t explain how incredibly satisfying it is right now to do something that’s bad for you, that tastes so revolting, something different, something self-inflicted.

  “Keeps the old appetite at bay too, as well as the nerves,” Jim says. When he smiles I notice that his eyes disappear completely.

  “Thanks,” I say. And then my stomach rumbles. It sounds cavernous. “Oh, dear, sorry.” How embarrassing. I smile apologetically. “Bit hungry.”

  “Och, we’re all rumbling like underground trains,” he says kindly.

  I change the subject. “I’ve been wondering,” I say. “You know I helped Rosemary collect the untouched food and drinks on the first day; well, there was more stuff in there that was only half-eaten. So why, since we’re all so desperately hungry, don’t we eat it now?”

  “Ah! If only,” he says. “But imagine what it looks like in this heat, two days later? I wouldn’t like to open those carts up again. The smell will be terrible, and it’ll all be covered in mold and full of bacteria. Shame, eh?”

  “Big shame. We should have eaten it then.”

  “We should indeed.”

  I stub my cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray, thank him again, and drift back to my seat. My mouth feels disgusting, but it did before I smoked, anyway, and, as Jim says, it’s taken the edge off my hunger for a moment.

  I sit disconsolately, doing nothing for a while, then see Jamal coming down the aisle, on his way to the back for his next shift.

  He stops by my seat. “Hi.” He looks hopeful, then unsure. “You all right?”

  I shrug, look away, lean against the window. I want him to see how fed up I am, that it’s all his fault.