Girl on a Plane (26 page)

And there is no trace. No twisted debris, just the quiet ponies and the low talk of the men behind me. And as I stand there under the huge blue dome of the sky, a small whirlwind starts up. Approaching from the east, it grows, twisting into a funnel, gathering momentum, and swirling in through the open paddocks toward us. The ponies seem unconcerned as the whirlwind stirs up the sand about them, blowing itself out before it reaches us.

I study the landscape. The ground is hard, impacted sand with scrub and scattered rocks. A good place to land a plane. I remember the faint ghost of the airstrip running across the Google Earth map, and I know it really was here that I came in that VC10, out of the sky to the east, to land amid the rising red dust and to taxi into the plane's last position.

They ask if we would like to see the polo field, and we walk in hot sunshine along the avenue of paddocks parallel to the airstrip, stopping occasionally to stroke a stud horse, to take its picture. I lag behind, taking film of the hills, panoramas of the place that had enclosed me, that I had looked out on from within.

The polo field, the new grass one, is irrigated with water every night, they say. And the grass is luscious: a huge, wide, flat expanse of it, a lawn on my airstrip. There are hedges, a pavilion with bougainvillea climbing up it; birds chirrup in the lines of newly planted olive and palm trees and in among the shrubs. It is fecund. There's an enclosure for tethering polo ponies, a shady pergola for the riders to wait in, and grass . . . so much grass.
Did you have to bring new earth in order to plant this grass?
I ask, needing to know if my footprints are still under there. Yes, they say, we did.

I leave the men talking and walk out into the middle of the polo field. Did I walk here then, across this space? Perhaps to get to the line of minibuses that finally took us away, into Amman, to be released to the InterContinental Hotel? Were they parked here, on this spot? Or is this where we had our photo taken with the guerrillas?

Suddenly, as I stand in that flat space, two minarets on the far hillside begin their call to prayer. The song of it washes across the land, the two voices pausing in turn, as if waiting for the other to sing the next phrase. They were not here all those years ago but have come to claim the land as theirs. The sound of the eternal Arabic words is perfect. The final touch.

Slowly we retrace our steps back to the stable block, where white plastic chairs have been put out and tea has been poured into glasses. Three more stable hands join us. It's the famous Jordanian hospitality: solemn, respectful, polite, and full of humor. We drink our tea and are asked to stay for lunch, but sadly we have to move on.

Before I go, I stand watching a beautiful white stallion drink delicately from a trough. He lifts his head, and water droplets fall from his soft muzzle. The heat haze shimmers under the midday sun, and little black beetles climb in and out of pockets of sand at my feet. I had no idea that all these years later I would stand here and feel so held by these hills. The benevolent landscape seems to accept me, in peace this time. And the fear that I felt, called to the surface and out into the open air, seems to have lost its power.

I could be wrong, but I think I left it behind on that Revolutionary Airstrip, the one that lies just below the surface of the Jordanian polo club.

While this story is a work of fiction, it is grounded in a real, life-defining hijack that I experienced when I was fifteen. I was there in the Jordanian desert, sitting in a hijacked plane trussed with explosives, for four days, while the deadline approached. I really did travel alone back to boarding school, get my belt caught on a grenade, search through trays, looking for food, and have my picture taken by the press in the desert.

But for years I never wrote about it. It was only when my publisher encouraged me to try that I started to believe that perhaps it was the right time. I began by researching, realizing that I needed to place my story in the historical framework of the real event. So I read about the hijackings, looked online, visited the VC10 plane at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, and eventually returned to Jordan.

When I began to write, I remembered a great deal and was overtaken by powerful feelings and strong images, but there were still gaps. Try writing in detail about four days that happened a very long time ago: where and who everyone was, what they were wearing, how they moved and behaved. It's hard recalling conversations that took place last month, never mind more than forty years ago, so the conversations and characters in my story are imagined. For example, there was no Maria who might have been assaulted, although there were rumblings, which we “children” were not allowed to know about, that something untoward might have happened with one of the hijackers. Nor was there a drunken Mr. and Mrs. Newton, though some of the passengers did have too much to drink when the duty-free was being given out to anyone who wanted it. There was a boy with a terrapin, but I never spoke to him. I did sit next to an older boy at the beginning of the hijack, but he is not the fictional David. And so if anyone on the plane thinks they are being described in these pages, that really is not the case. Any inadvertent similarities are entirely coincidental. I also altered other details for dramatic purposes to enhance the story. This
is
a work of fiction.

There were many other people on that plane in 1970. They will have their own stories to tell. This one is mine.

With thanks to Charlie Sheppard, Chloe Sackur, Alison MacLeod, and Robert Hull; also to Honoria, Marian, Caroline, and Deborah, and to the wonderful friends and family who offered invaluable advice and insight. My special thanks, though, go to Stephen, for his unwavering love and support.

At what point did you feel the most frightened during the hijack?

I felt most frightened when the hijacker came through the curtain at the beginning, waving a gun. I had never had a gun pointed at me before, and the fact that his hand was shaking and he looked so nervous and highly strung made me feel certain that I was going to die. I was also very frightened when I heard there was a bomb on board that could be detonated at any time.

What was the most difficult part of the entire ordeal?

The most difficult part of the whole ordeal was not being able to tell my parents that I was alive. (I couldn't bear the thought of my family suffering unnecessarily, thinking I was dead when I wasn't.) It was also very hard not knowing where they were, and whether anyone was going to meet me off the plane in London after I was released. 


Did you actually talk to any of the hijackers? Did you ever feel empathy with any of them?

Yes, I did talk to a few of the hijackers. Their stories of suffering and homelessness touched me, made me really think what it might be like to have nothing: no home, no possessions, no country, and no prospect of any of these things in the near future. I couldn't feel empathy with them for putting so many people's lives at risk, but I could feel empathy for their situation as refugees.

What did you do when you got back to the UK—​did you go right back to school?

When I got back to the UK, my mother took me down to her family's farm in Cornwall, where she grew up. We stayed there for a few days while she checked to see how I was. But I was missing crucial schoolwork and had exams to take, so I was soon returned to school.

Did you keep in touch with any of the other passengers after the hijacking?

We exchanged a few letters, but then lost touch. But since the book was published in the UK, I've been contacted by quite a few people involved in the original hijacking.

What made you decide to write this book after forty-five years?

It felt like the right time to write this book. I had gone from writing nonfiction (before my three children were at school full time) to picture books (while they were growing up) to short stories (as they began to leave home for university). At this stage, with more space and time for writing, a longer novel felt possible. But it was very hard to begin with, digging up all that fear and reliving it again in order to write convincingly.

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M
IRIAM
M
OSS
was born in England but grew up in Africa, China, and the Middle East. She is the award-winning author of more than seventy children's books. She now lives in East Sussex, England, with her family.