Girl on a Plane Read online

  As we stand there in the desert, I feel the hot wind sucking the moisture from the land and from my body. It ripples my T-shirt, tugs at my skirt, flipping the wrap-over open. I try holding it down with one hand, but the wind tosses my hair up around my head, into my eyes. I reach with the other hand and hold my hair down behind my neck in a ponytail. Gritty sand whisked up by the wind stings my legs and arms. I screw up my eyes against the sun. And the cameras continue to whir and click, click and whir.

  All too soon I’m back on the plane, wondering what happened out there. What it was all about. And what good it will do us.

  I lie across my three seats, feeling exhausted and wondering when and if I’ll ever leave the plane again. My head throbs now; my arms and legs ache. I’m so hungry, so empty, that I feel as if I have no substance, as if I’ve been completely hollowed out.

  And I think how crazy it is that the reporters managed to get here, to Amman, and out into the desert to come aboard the plane, but no one thought about bringing us the meals from Beirut or any water—​or anything.

  I watch the reporters packing up their photographic gear and climbing back into their minibuses, and I feel disappointed, betrayed, even. If this were a movie, we’d have been rescued by now. But it’s not a movie—​it’s real, and no one can possibly rescue us with all these explosives on board.

  A man walks up and down, slamming the minibus doors shut. Then they’re off, snaking their way across the desert, until the last one disappears in a trail of red dust. The dust settles and the desert is still again. And it’s as if none of them were ever here.

  20

  1200h

  Rosemary sits down in the empty aisle seat and drops several long packets of duty-free cigarettes into the seat between us. “Phew! It’s hot!” she says. “We’re nearly out of duty-free now. I can’t offer a meal, so may as well keep everyone’s spirits up. And these are the last few packets of cigarettes. Everyone’s smoking like chimneys—​have you noticed? Do you want any? Do you smoke?”

  “Only occasionally,” I say. “And not in front of my parents.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to have one of these. A present for someone when you get home, perhaps.” She passes over a carton of two hundred Rothmans.

  “Thanks.”

  “Tim was funny,” Rosemary says. “He asked if he could take some to give to his dad.”

  “Really? And did you give him some?”

  “I’m afraid I did. I didn’t want to ruin his reputation in front of the twins.”

  “They look so sweet.”

  “Yes, they are. Quite mischievous too.” Rosemary looks at me. “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, all right . . .” I hesitate.

  “I heard about you and the skinny hijacker.” Rosemary grimaces.

  I shrug, noncommittal. She’s so nice, but I wish she wouldn’t be kind. It reminds me of Marni and makes everything much more difficult, pierces my hopelessly thin armor.

  “Hungry, I expect.”

  “Mmm, and thirsty,” I say.

  “You know, they’re promising us food tonight.”

  I look up. “That’s good. If we can wait that long!”

  “Did I hear the word food?” David swings into the aisle seat opposite us.

  “Only some,” Rosemary says. “And, frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t want to raise your hopes. Up at the front, we’ve been distracting each other with recipes.”

  David groans. “That sounds like torture.”

  “My mother’s sherry trifle and the curry in the officers’ mess were definite favorites,” Rosemary says.

  “Don’t, please,” David says.

  “Oh, and bacon sandwiches,” she adds.

  “Oh God. I can smell them.” David closes his eyes and swallows.

  “Spaghetti Bolognese with grated Parmesan,” I say. “Then homemade vanilla ice cream . . .”

  “Ah . . . with melted chocolate on top!” adds Rosemary.

  “So cruel!” David grimaces. But then he grins at us. “I’d have—​a hamburger and chips with loads of tomato sauce, or a great slab of steak, grilled mushrooms, garlic butter . . .” He stops and shakes his head. “Now I really know what it feels like when your stomach caves in.”

  I glance out my window at the circle of Jeeps and the tanks beyond. “Are they definitely the king of Jordan’s tanks, Rosemary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are the guns trained on us, then?” I ask. “They can hardly pick off the hijackers, so what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ve been talking to the very tall hijacker.”

  “The Giant,” I say.

  She laughs. “Yes. He says all his comrades are Palestinians who’ve been living in refugee camps here in Jordan for years and years, ever since they were forced out of Palestine. They think that the rest of the world has ignored what’s happened to them, so this is what they’ve had to do to get attention—​and help. They’re desperate, he says; otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it, and they are hoping against hope that someone will help them return to their homes in Palestine. They say they’ve been driven to take action, including taking over areas of Jordan and putting up roadblocks, so the king of Jordan’s making his presence felt with those tanks. I just hope it doesn’t end up in a civil war.”

  “Are they actually fighting each other?” David asks.

  “I don’t think so, not yet, but we don’t really know. Syria, on the other border, is looking like it might get involved.”

  “Invade Jordan?” I say.

  “Possibly.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. To stop the unrest?”

  “Then we’ll be in the middle of a war as well!”

  “Well, let’s hope not.” But she doesn’t sound sure.

  “So all we can do is sit here,” I say, feeling desperate, “and wait for it to happen?”

  “Well, not entirely.” Rosemary smiles. “The captain’s arranging for each of us to send a telegram to Ted Heath.”

  “Ted Heath, the prime minister?”

  “Yes, the British prime minister, to try to persuade him to release the Palestinian terrorist captured in London. The hijackers are obviously behind the idea too.”

  “Was she the one on the Israeli plane flying from Amsterdam?” I ask.

  “Yes, to New York. It was rerouted to London. Do you know, Leila Khaled is only twenty-something, my age—​imagine. Apparently she wears a ring made from a bullet.”

  What happens to make you end up hijacking a plane in your early twenties? I wonder. Something very serious. And what can it be like to be made to leave your home and country? Become homeless? I really want to know, to make sense of it. I know what it’s like to move so often, but we always have a home to go to. We always have a choice.

  “Celia! Where’s Rosemary?” It’s Mr. Newton, and he sounds very drunk. “Yes, Rosemary.” His voice is querulous. “I want her. She promised me . . .”

  Rosemary stands up. “I’d better go. I’m not sure that Celia should have given the Newtons an entire bottle of whiskey. They’ve drunk half of it already.”

  21

  1300h

  Tim’s spending more and more time with the twins. They’ve all rolled up their sleeves and walk around with their school shirts unbuttoned and flapping to try to keep cool. Lucky them, I say. I even heard Tim begging Rosemary to cut the legs off his school trousers.

  He says the twins are very impressed with Fred. They have an agreement: if they can have Fred sitting on their table with the lid open, they’ll let Tim read their comics. He doesn’t let Fred out of his sight, though. Ever. They’ve also swapped their Spirograph for his Etch A Sketch, and right now the three of them are talking to one another up and down the aisle on walkie-talkies.

  David has gone to play Monopoly with Alan and Rosemary in first class. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. The talk of war has made me feel even more jittery and anxious. All I want to do is
cut out and sleep. I don’t want to think anymore about anything—​just for a while.

  But it’s so hot. The air hangs heavily in the cabin. The temperature’s reached well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside already, and everyone’s sweating nonstop. Some people’s hair is plastered to their heads like they’ve just gotten out of the swimming pool. Sweat runs into our eyes all the time, and those in glasses have to wipe them continuously as they steam up in the heat. Eye makeup runs too, so most women have given up wearing any.

  The cabin smells of hot plastic, smoky upholstery, and stale sweat. Our clothes stink too, but what can we do? We’re all in the same boat—​well, plane. And the thirst is unbearable. My throat’s so sore now that my voice has gone all croaky, and it’s a real effort to talk. When are they going to bring us another water ration? It’s got to be soon.

  And now, to add to all that, a revolting smell is wafting up the aisle from the toilets. There’s been no water to flush them for hours. The last time I went, they were almost overflowing, but that was nothing compared with this. Looks like the captain and Jim are trying to sort something out with Sweaty and the Giant.

  A child’s walkie-talkie crackles quietly behind me. It’s Tim, creeping backwards down the aisle. When he’s alongside me, he stops.

  “Pooh,” he says, “the toilets really stink.”

  “I know, it’s disgusting. Let’s hope they can sort it out soon.”

  “Come in, number two,” Tim says into his walkie-talkie. “Do you read me? Am in very stinky situation. Meet me at row five.”

  When I do finally manage to snooze, David wakes me, desperate to tell me what’s happened while I’ve been asleep. He’s grinning from ear to ear.

  “You’ve missed the funniest thing ever, Anna,” he says.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, the captain told the hijackers that the sewage pumps aren’t working because the engine’s switched off, and apparently the tanks weren’t emptied in Beirut, so he said they have to empty them now somehow because those toilets are horrendous. He told them the waste chute’s at the back of the plane and that they’d have to dig a pit below it and then unscrew the cap. But Sweaty said the captain and Jim should dig the pit. In this heat. They weren’t happy about it.”

  Tim comes by and stays to listen.

  “So Jim and the captain climbed down the ladder and had to dig a pit with these small shovels while all the hijackers watched. It took them a while, and when the pit was big enough, Jim pointed to the sewage stopper and showed Sweaty how he couldn’t reach it, and the captain did the same. So finally a tall, lanky guerrilla arrived with this other hijacker, who climbs up on his shoulders. Jim and the captain stand well away from the pit as the two men wobble toward the stopper. When they’re underneath it, the man on top reaches up and starts turning the metal rim of the lid holding all the sewage inside the chute. And whoosh! Out spurts a great stream of it!”

  Tim and David are laughing hysterically. “Totally covered from head to toe in poo!”

  “That is so disgusting!” Tim grins.

  “Yes, they weren’t best pleased.” David grins too. “Check out Sweaty’s face. They’re all so annoyed. When they got back on board, Jim and the captain couldn’t stop laughing. They said they knew it would happen all along, and, sure enough . . . ! They were so funny. They sounded just like two naughty school kids.”

  22

  1400h

  The captain has just repeated that unless Leila Khaled, the Palestinian hijacker imprisoned in London, is released by the weekend, the hijackers will blow up our plane. Like we could forget. He says we all need to write to Ted Heath, the prime minister, and the hijackers will send our messages to him.

  Apparently we have to be short and sweet. So I’ve put:

  Please release Leila Khaled, imprisoned in London. I want to come home alive. Anna, aged 15.

  Tim is sitting next to me, looking at his piece of paper.

  “I don’t know what to write,” he says. “Will you help me?”

  “Of course.”

  “The problem is, I don’t really get what’s happening . . .”

  “It’s complicated, isn’t it?” I say. “But we need the prime minister, Ted Heath, to save us, which he can, if he does what the hijackers say.”

  “By letting that woman in London go?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What happens if he won’t?”

  “I expect he will,” I lie. “Especially if we write to ask him.”

  But inside I doubt he can give in to kidnappers’ demands. Don’t politicians always say they won’t?

  “Do you think I should write in capitals?” Tim asks. “Mr. Garnett says my handwriting’s hopeless.”

  “I think a telegram comes out in capitals anyway, so do it however you like.”

  “Oh, OK.” He starts to write. When he’s finished, he holds it up for me to see. “Do you think the prime minister will like it?”

  PLEASE SAVE US I'M HUNGRY AND SO IS FRED MY TERRAPIN.

  TIM XXX

  “I think he’ll love it.”

  Rosemary comes to collect the notes. “That’s excellent, Tim,” she says. “Let’s hope it does the trick.” Tim looks pleased, then rushes off to finish his game with the twins.

  Mr. Newton is listening to the BBC World Service news on his transistor radio. He kept the volume down low at first, but the guards don’t seem to mind. In fact they seem pleased to hear how much publicity they’re getting. So now a crowd gathers around the Newtons’ seats on the hour to listen to the news. I hear Big Ben strike. It reminds me of being in the kitchen at home. I wonder if Marni’s listening? She always says that the World Service keeps her sane. Is it keeping her sane now?

  I don’t need to get up. I can hear it from here. They’re talking about a thousand Red Cross meals waiting in Beirut to be transported to the three planes. Well, I wish they’d hurry up. I’m having stomach cramps a lot now, and I’ve begun to feel dizzy whenever I stand up.

  After the news, I slide down into the foot well to sleep, to pass time. But somehow it’s more claustrophobic down here now. The bleak forest of black metal seat legs seems more firmly bolted to the floor. Why can’t they move, let me have more space, instead of barring me in? But they’re not going anywhere. Like me.

  Forget the seat legs, I say to myself. Close your eyes. Think of something else. I squeeze my eyes shut and think of the windows, the long line of windows down each side of the plane. But even they feel like a cruel illusion, trick windows that pretend you can look out on the world but don’t let you see out properly. They’re too high up and too small. And what’s out there anyway? A line of hills—​and those tanks.

  I give up trying to sleep and climb up onto my seat—​only to feel barricaded in by the rows and rows of other seats. Are they deliberately obscuring my view, like the passengers standing up all around the cabin? I’m desperate for space. I want to look a long way but I’m stuck inside this arch, this tunnel, with too many people squeezing themselves between lines of fixed chairs, between obstacles, turning sideways to pass one another, turning back to pass forward, up and down, up and down the narrow aisle.

  And I’m losing any sense of the outside of the plane too, of its nose and its wings and its tail. I try to picture the tail rising majestically behind us, the strange VC10 tail with the engines at the back, but I can’t see it. I know the body of the plane is huge, but the space inside seems fragmented into tiny, suffocating little compartments. Compartments that I need to escape.

  Now.

  23

  1500h

  Hundreds of miles away in the same desert, and under the same murderous sun, the wind gets up. At first, there are just small flurries and sharp scatterings, but soon the sand is being whipped several feet above the ground. And as the wind builds in strength, huge clouds billow up, armed with billions of stinging grains, and the desert begins to shift.

  The ferocious wall of sand fills the sky, g
rowing higher and higher, until it curls over at the top like a gigantic wave. The blood-red tsunami of sand, now many miles wide, gains momentum and races across the desert, toward the plane.

  There’s little warning.

  The sky darkens, and within seconds the storm blots out the sun and plunges the desert into darkness.

  The sandstorm bombards the plane, slamming down on it, pounding the windows.

  Clouds of red sand pour in through the open door. The clouds thicken, twisting and rolling down the cabin . . .

  I hear cries, violent coughing, and shouts as the crew and hijackers struggle to shut the door.

  My eyes are stinging. I blink furiously, trying to wash the grit out, but the air is thick with it.

  I can’t breathe, can’t see.

  Rosemary runs past. “Cover your face! Hold anything—​blankets, anything—​up over your nose and mouth!”

  I grab my blanket and hold it over my face, see David and Tim doing the same. Then I duck my head, crouch over.

  But I’m suffocating. Breathe, just a little. There’s no air.

  I hear moaning and begin to panic. But then I remember Marni’s mantra: “Breathe slowly, in through your nose, out through your mouth.” The blanket smells musty, of old earth.

  Breathe. In.

  The wind tears at the plane, buffeting it violently.

  Out.

  I feel it sway, move as if it’s a living thing.

  Breathe in. There’s the heavy clunk of the door being pulled to.

  Breathe out.

  How can the plane stand up to this?

  Breathe in.

  How long will it last? I sit hunched while the wind screams and the rampaging storm thunders outside. I imagine the sand covering the wheels, rising up over the guerrillas in their trenches. Will it bury us alive? Entire villages disappear sometimes.