Here Comes Trouble (40 page)

He chose the name Abu Nidal (“father of the struggle”) and grew impatient with the PLO. One of his first jobs when he formed his own splinter group was to start bumping off the PLO leadership. He hated them more than he hated the Israelis, but he did leave time for killing the Israelis, too. Over a span of twenty years he coordinated terrorist actions in over twenty countries that killed at least nine hundred people. He was good at what he did.

In October 1985, just two months before I would cross paths with Nidal, his rival splinter group, the Palestine Liberation Front, run by the equally-feared Abu Abbas, hijacked a cruise ship, the
Achille Lauro,
off the coast of Egypt and killed an elderly American by the name of Leon Klinghoffer. They put a bullet in his head while he sat in his wheelchair, and then wheeled Leon in his chair straight off the ship and into the Mediterranean.

This act stunned most of the world, and it was fair to say that Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs were developing a PR problem.

I lived in the part of the United States—southeastern Michigan—that had (and still has) more Arab-Americans and people of Arab descent per capita than any other part of the non-Arab world. I grew up with Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians. But mostly Palestinians, whom we called Arabs, but thought of as white people, the way you used to think of Hispanics as white people (sure, they were brown, but they were Catholics, so they got half a point).

The Arabs in Flint owned the grocery stores, the movie theater, the department store, the real estate agency, and a lot of gas stations. Saying that the people of Flint liked the Arabs would be like saying they liked themselves. A man who was born in Palestine was more likely to have delivered you in the hospital than blow you up on a plane.
Much
more. We simply did not have this view of them as “terrorists,” and so when
Arab
or
Palestinian
became a dirty word, it didn’t become one for most of us. Ask anyone in Flint who grocery-shopped at Hamady’s, bought their school clothes at Yankee’s, ate at the American diner or danced at the Mighty Mighty Mikatam, and they will not know what you are talking about when you point out to them that the proprietors of these establishments had their lands invaded or snatched from them by the Israelis on the other side of the world.

This was not the sentiment throughout much of the rest of America.
Arab
had become pretty much synonymous with “evil,” and between OPEC jacking up the price of oil and causing “oil shortages,” the two recent wars with Israel, and the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Americans had pretty much seen enough to make up their minds that the last person you wanted to see in your neighborhood or on the flight to Fargo was an Arab guy.

An Arab-American foundation decided that they’d seen enough, too, and opened up an information and education office in Washington, D.C. They tried to put out press releases to counter the terrorism stories in the media with news about what Arab-Americans were doing to make America great. They sent speakers to talk to students on campuses. And they sponsored journalism fellowships to take groups of writers and reporters to the Arab world and show them firsthand how most Arabs lived and behaved.

In the summer of 1985, I applied for one of those fellowships. Issues regarding Arabs were a concern for the readers of my newspaper, the
Flint Voice
(which was now the
Michigan Voice
), many of whom were Arab-Americans in Flint and Detroit. I had never been to that part of the world, and the foundation promised full access to whatever we wanted to see in the countries we would visit—including interviews with those countries’ leaders. In November, I learned that I had been selected for one of the fellowships and that the trip would begin the day after Christmas.

I flew from Flint to New York’s JFK Airport on the evening of December 26 in order to connect to the Royal Jordanian Airlines flight that would be taking our group to the Middle East. We were all told to meet at check-in, and there I was introduced to the people from D.C. who would be conducting the two-week tour, as well as to the other journalists in the group, about a dozen folks who came mostly from the world of alternative weeklies or left-leaning magazines. There was no one from the mainstream media and no one whose media outlet reached more than a few thousand people. I guess the Arab image burnishing had to start somewhere.

We loaded ourselves on the overnight Royal Jordanian flight from New York to Amman, Jordan. The flight was scheduled to stop in Vienna, where we would change planes to another Royal Jordanian flight that would then take us on to Amman.

I slept most of the way across the Atlantic on the jumbo jet that was filled with mostly Arab passengers. I studied up and read articles I had copied about the countries we would visit: Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia (later dropped from the itinerary). We would also visit the Israeli-occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

As we came across the coast of Europe the sun was up, and within an hour or two we began our descent into Vienna. The pilot informed us that we were about twenty minutes behind schedule.

We landed safely and began taxiing to the gate. As we arrived near the gate I could see an El Al jet parked next to our gate. I unbuckled my seat belt and began to gather my belongings for deplaning when, all of a sudden, the pilot hit the brakes. The force of it was so hard, my head hit the seat in front of me.

We were no more than thirty to forty feet from the gate. I looked out my window, and within seconds there were military vehicles surrounding our plane
and
the El Al plane. There were a few jeeps with soldiers and riot police and a larger vehicle that I didn’t recognize, but I did understand that that was a huge gun attached to it. This was not the Von Trapp family greeting us in Austria with a rendition of “Edelweiss.” This just looked, at first, downright weird, then Hollywood-like, then eerily frightening.

“Folks,” a voice on the intercom said. “We’re going to be here a little while, so sit back and we’ll keep you posted.”

That is what they did not do. There was silence from the cockpit. An hour’s worth. Nobody said anything—though the collective mind-fuck going on in this Royal Jordanian jet was fierce and full of imagination:

• Had we been hijacked? Were there hijackers in the cockpit?
  
• Was there a bomb on board?
  
• Were there terrorists who had been identified as passengers on this plane?
  
• Had the El Al plane been hijacked? Was there a bomb on board their plane?
  
• Was there an incident inside the airport, perhaps at the El Al gate next to us?
  
• Was this a drill? And why were we the guinea pigs?
  

I did not understand why we weren’t being told anything, and the flight attendants were beginning to feel the same way. I chose a simple method of discovering the truth. I got up out of my seat and went up to the cockpit and knocked on the door. A flight attendant told me to sit down. The cockpit door opened. It was the co-pilot. Cross “hijacking” off the list.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said politely, “but people are getting frightened by all this activity and no one knows what is going on.”

“We’re just about to announce it. There’s been gunfire and grenades launched just inside here, and they think a number of people are dead. They are holding us here. That’s all we know. And I need you to go back to your seat.”

I was speechless. It really wasn’t the answer I was expecting. I was probably hoping that the movable ramp, the jetway, had had a malfunction or something. Of course, this would not explain the presence of the Austrian military.

“Why haven’t you said anything?” I asked.

“Like I said, we were just getting ready to. Please take your seat.”

I felt a bit nauseous as I walked back down the aisle. One of the people traveling with me asked me if I was OK.

“No,” I replied. “We’re not OK.”

At that moment, the pilot went on the intercom.

“I’m afraid we have some bad news, and I want everyone to remain at ease as we are all fine,” he began. “There has been an incident in the terminal that has caused them to shut the airport down. It appears to be a terrorist attack directed at the passengers on the El Al flight next to us. The attack seems to be over and we are not in danger. We just ask that you remain in your seats and we will give you information as we receive it. Thank you.”

So you’re sitting on a plane full of Arabs and Muslims and you get a friendly announcement like that. And you’re not just sitting on any plane, you’re sitting on the
Jordanian
plane, next to the intended target, the
Israeli
plane. What’s the mood on your plane? Everyone continues leafing through their complimentary in-flight magazine,
Better Homes and Jordan?
Flight attendants apologize for the inconvenience and announce that the headphones for the in-flight movie will be free? Complimentary apple juice and honey-roasted peanuts? Bulletproof vests for first class and duck-and-cover for the rest of us?

No. The plane turned into a panic zone. Not a boisterous one, but a fearful, quiet one where the passengers settle into a feeling of near suffocation. They know that they are all—
all
—instant suspects. Those of us who aren’t Arab avoid eye contact and sit still in our seats. Being on an Arab-filled flight on an Arab airliner helped one recall that these things usually end badly—and they usually end right here, on the airport tarmac, right where we were sitting. The Munich athletes and their captors were killed on the tarmac. So was an American soldier on a hijacked plane, brutally beaten to death and dumped out the door of the jet and onto the tarmac. Raid on Entebbe? The Israelis came in with guns blazing at the Uganda airport. And then there was the Air France jet. They just went ahead and blew that sucker up. On the tarmac.

Another hour goes by, and there is a knock from the outdoors on the main cabin door. Airport officials have wheeled up a metal staircase to the forward cabin door of the plane. The door opens and on come men in uniform carrying guns. They are not from catering.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention. The Austrian officials have boarded the plane and they would like to see everyone’s passport, so if you would be so kind as to cooperate with them we would greatly appreciate it. This should not take long.”

Due to the color of my skin and the lack of any decorative scarf on me, I was pretty much a safe bet and was probably not who they were looking for.
But who are they looking for? I thought the attack was “over.” They ARE looking for someone on this plane!

None of this felt good, and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t an Arab. I looked over at our group leaders with eyes that asked,
What the fuck?!
Thanks for taking me on this trip to improve the image of Arabs! We’re off to a smashing start! Can’t wait to see the next stop on the trip! Scenic ride to a crowded West Jerusalem bus stop at rush hour and a “hey-did-anybody-leave-their-bag-here-BOOM!”

I lived in Flint. I lived near Detroit. By 1985, the murder rates in both cities vied with each other to lead the nation. I was not unaccustomed to danger or random acts of see-ya-in-the-hereafter. But this was not that. I had found myself inside a terrorist incident where I am told that people inside this building have died.

They do not tell us the whole truth: that a total of forty-two people have been hit with bullets and grenade shrapnel. Worse yet, they have not told us that, at the same exact moment the attack took place a few paces from us here in Vienna,
another
group from the same terrorist organization has opened fire inside
Rome’s
International Airport. Sixteen people lay dead there, along with ninety-nine others who had been shot or wounded.

Because these attacks were timed to go off together, the police believed the attacks of the morning weren’t over and that there were possibly more to come. Were there terrorists on our Jordanian Airlines plane who had planned to get off when we were supposed to change flights and join the attack, perhaps right here at the gate next to the El Al plane?
But they couldn’t because we were twenty fucking minutes late?!
Had we been on time, we would have been right inside the terminal where the killing took place. Never had I been happier for my flight being late (and never since then have I complained when a flight is late).

The police weren’t taking any chances. They wanted to see who was on board our jet. And they were prepared to take action.

The “Passport, please” process went quite smoothly. Everyone was on their best behavior, and it was so quiet that even the babies knew to not cry or babble about anything. After about forty-five minutes, without incident, the authorities left the plane. Then it was back to waiting in the black hole of no information.

At some point, perhaps four hours into the ordeal, the pilot came back on the intercom.

“OK,” he said with a sigh. “Here is what we are going to do. The Austrians do not want anyone on this plane to get off and enter Austria. As most of you on this flight were going to transfer anyway to another plane going to Amman, we are just going to refuel this plane and take everyone to Amman. For the few of you who were connecting to another flight in the Middle East, we will rebook you in Amman and fly you there. If you are an Austrian citizen, you may get up now and come forward and we will release you from the plane. The rest of you, sit back and get ready to depart Vienna in twenty minutes.”

Here we were, just feet from our gate, but the Austrians weren’t going to take any chances. Better to just get the whole lot of them outta here as quick as possible and dump them off out there in their own pathetic desert. The fuel trucks appeared, hooked up their hoses of Arab oil, and filled up our wings for our flight to Jordan.

Twenty minutes later, as promised, they moved away the army vehicles and let us go in reverse. We taxied to the runaway and took off. Less than three hours later we were in Amman. The group leaders did their best to put the whole day in context, and there was no one among us who needed any drilling on the wrong-headedness of smearing all Arabs with this paintbrush. We were fine, we were safe, and we still didn’t know the whole story of what had happened. Our driver took us into Amman, and it was a beautiful sight coming in from the hills above the city. I thought, this is perhaps what Rome once looked like before it was modernized. It was dark by the time we got to the hotel and checked in. I went to my room and lay down on the bed, turning on the television. We were in Amman’s finest hotel (wanting to make a good impression!), so they carried the channel known as the “Cable News Network.” As I lay on the bed, I watched in horror. Everything I, we, hadn’t been told about the entire day’s events in Rome and Vienna, I was now learning for the first time—with color footage and color commentary. The forty-two bodies strewn across the terminal floor in Vienna, the 115 in Rome. The work of Abu Nidal. Abu had chosen this day, this moment, for a mass murder. I was merely supposed to be an extra in his snuff film, acted out on the world stage he had commandeered. He didn’t know me or anyone else on that plane or in that terminal. We were each just one of the faceless, nameless dozens who were to be hit by his machine gun fire or by a grenade or both, and then, should luck have it, bleed to death in front of the duty-free shop. Of course, we weren’t nameless, faceless,
and
landless, because when you’re landless, there’s no duty-free shops in the refugee camps, no Jamba Juice stand next door made with the oranges that were once yours. You were left to a life where you would bleed to death (though in a much slower way), just like you wanted me to, because you had been written off by the Israelis and by the world as meaningless, insignificant, a nuisance that should just go away. I hated the whole of it and I hated this world that I didn’t sign up to live in.
All are punish’d.