Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: My parents do not ask any questions about my time
Speaker 2: in Jordan. Maybe they think they understand what happened from
Speaker 2: reading the New York Times, listening to Walter Cronkite on
Speaker 2: the CBS Nightly News, and receiving occasional updates from the
Speaker 2: State Department and the airlines. Maybe they just want me
Speaker 2: to rest. Or maybe they don't know how to talk
Speaker 2: to me about such a delicate topic. We've never discussed
Speaker 2: anything real. We laugh and make light of most matters,
Speaker 2: even serious ones, keeping pain unspoken and as far as
Speaker 2: possible from where we sit. We can't joke about the hijacking,
Speaker 2: so we avoid it.
Speaker 1: That's Mimmy Nickter, cultural anthropologist, Professor Emerita at University of
Speaker 1: Arizona's School of Anthropology, an author of four books, most
Speaker 1: recently her first memoir, a memoir of Terrorism, Trauma and Resilience.
Speaker 1: Mimy's is a story of a terrifying incident that becomes
Speaker 1: a secret in its aftermath, and the way a legacy
Speaker 1: of keeping secrets within a family can form a pattern
Speaker 1: it takes a lifetime to break. I'm Danny Shapiro, and
Speaker 1: this is Family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. Mimmy, tell me about the landscape of
Speaker 1: your childhood in nineteen fifties sixties Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I would say the landscape it was black
Speaker 2: and white, and yet the reality is that it was
Speaker 2: very gray. Talking about the internal landscape here. From the
Speaker 2: time I was about seven, family secrets started early. My
Speaker 2: mother instructed my older sister and me that if anyone
Speaker 2: asked how my brother was doing, we should always say
Speaker 2: he was fine. Now, my brother was eight years older
Speaker 2: than me, so by the time he was fifteen, he
Speaker 2: often stayed in his room when people visited, and he
Speaker 2: didn't go to see us when we went to see
Speaker 2: family members. And I didn't really feel comfortable having friends
Speaker 2: over because of how he sort of slumped on the
Speaker 2: sofa in his sleeless undershirt. He would stare into space
Speaker 2: and laugh to himself, and I didn't understand what was
Speaker 2: wrong with him.
Speaker 3: I was quite young, but I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 2: And you know what, night I would lay in bed
Speaker 2: reading a book my way of escaping the household, and
Speaker 2: I would hear him through the very thin wall that
Speaker 2: my room shared with the bathroom, sort of mumbling speech
Speaker 2: and talking and whispering, and he had this. I figured
Speaker 2: he had an imaginary audience in there with him. And
Speaker 2: I hear him like hissing, like he was talking to snakes.
Speaker 2: And I was an imaginative little girl, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: get his sounds out of my head. And yet it
Speaker 2: scared me that whatever was wrong with him might be
Speaker 2: waiting for me, that something ran in our family.
Speaker 3: And I never asked my parents though, why.
Speaker 2: He hardly smiled, but he did laugh, and he laughed
Speaker 2: when nobody was there. And why he talked about things
Speaker 2: that were never going to happen, like swimming the English Channel,
Speaker 2: for example. I just knew many things were not to
Speaker 2: be talked about.
Speaker 1: Was he in the world that you and your family
Speaker 1: lived in in Brooklyn, in your neighborhood, your community, extended family?
Speaker 1: This was never talked to it. Did he go to school?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: I grew up in a religious Jewish family, and he
Speaker 2: went to a yeshiva with my sister, she was two
Speaker 2: years younger than he was. And yes, he went to school,
Speaker 2: and by the time he was thirteen, the principal told
Speaker 2: my parents that they should take him to a doctor
Speaker 2: because something was a little was off with him. So
Speaker 2: he had an early on set schizophrenia, and so he
Speaker 2: lived in the house.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was okay until he was maybe twelve.
Speaker 1: Did you have that language early on set schizophrenia? Was that?
Speaker 1: Were those words you ever heard?
Speaker 2: No, he was not diagnosed because my parents this was
Speaker 2: a family secret, and my mother and father both felt
Speaker 2: that they didn't want to talk about it, and they thought,
Speaker 2: actually he might outgrow it. It was some kind of
Speaker 2: a phase. Mental health was not something that was discussed.
Speaker 3: I think it was.
Speaker 2: Partly my brother was supposed to be a doctor. That's
Speaker 2: what my father wanted, and he was very angry. So
Speaker 2: there was anger in the household from my father when
Speaker 2: he was home.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about sort of the
Speaker 1: shape of your family, And I'm also curious, was this
Speaker 1: Orthodox community in Brooklyn that kind of area where the
Speaker 1: whole kind of culture and community is observant.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Flatbush and there were two kinds
Speaker 2: of communities joined to live side by side there, both
Speaker 2: Italian Catholics and Jews. And I think our family life
Speaker 2: and many of the Jewish families in our neighborhood revolved
Speaker 2: around the people we knew from temple. My mother decided
Speaker 2: that I should go to an Orthodox she vote because
Speaker 2: she wanted me to skip first, so I did that,
Speaker 2: and then that was another point. I think that was
Speaker 2: uncomfortable for me because I went to a school where
Speaker 2: the girls and boys were from a much more religious
Speaker 2: background than I was, and so I knew pretty early
Speaker 2: on that I really didn't fit there. And so even
Speaker 2: then if somebody asked me sort of what synagogue my
Speaker 2: family belonged to, I couldn't answer, because it was not
Speaker 2: the right synagogue. That would be a sure giveaway that
Speaker 2: I didn't fit. On the exterior, I would say we
Speaker 2: looking in from the outside, we looked like a happy family.
Speaker 2: That's not what was going on on the inside. I
Speaker 2: really didn't know my father very well. My father had
Speaker 2: a business in Philadelphia, and he would leave Sunday night
Speaker 2: and walk to the subway station going to Manhattan and
Speaker 2: take the train to Philly where he lived in a
Speaker 2: rooming house kind of situation, and he'd come home on
Speaker 2: Friday before Shabus and when he was home, he laid
Speaker 2: around on the couch napping, usually with the newspaper New
Speaker 2: York Times covering him. And he was a very religious man.
Speaker 2: He prayed every day, went to the synagogue, and had
Speaker 2: he lived in Brooklyn all the time, I'm sure he
Speaker 2: would have been very active in the temple itself, in
Speaker 2: some kind of position there. But he wasn't. He didn't
Speaker 2: have that kind of life. He was busy working. And
Speaker 2: my mother, I never knew what she did actually, but
Speaker 2: I knew she had a desk and she had files,
Speaker 2: so I thought it was important. Those were times when
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to disturb her. I think what really
Speaker 2: characterized my mother. She was outgoing, friendly, liked to talk
Speaker 2: to people, but because she was also very ashamed of Joel,
Speaker 2: she couldn't have a normal life. She couldn't bring people
Speaker 2: into the home spontaneously. There was something in her life
Speaker 2: that she couldn't talk about that she always had to
Speaker 2: cover up. And I think at that time, during the
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, schizophrenia was often blame on the mother's
Speaker 2: parenting style, her rejection, specifically her rejection of her child
Speaker 2: during infancy and childhood, and so I think she carried
Speaker 2: that with her silently. My mother loved music. She had
Speaker 2: gone to Juilliard and had to drop out to go
Speaker 2: to work. All her life, music was probably the most
Speaker 2: important thing to her. Saturdays, she would cocoon herself in
Speaker 2: her bed room for the three hours of the Metropolitan Opera.
Speaker 2: And even when I was really little, like five years old,
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to disturb her. That was just the rule.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I would go and look through the keyhole
Speaker 2: of her room and see what she was doing, and
Speaker 2: she looked like she might be sleeping, and I knew
Speaker 2: she wasn't sleeping. She was just enjoying this three hour opera.
Speaker 2: And I think she got a lot of emotional pleasure
Speaker 2: from that that she couldn't express.
Speaker 1: So you left the yeshiva and went to a high
Speaker 1: school in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: By eighth grade, I was just done. I was done
Speaker 2: with the whole the mismatch between what I felt when
Speaker 2: I was outside of the house and what I felt
Speaker 2: inside the house. And I mean, I didn't have words
Speaker 2: for it, but I told my parents I wanted to
Speaker 2: go to a public high school.
Speaker 3: And they said okay.
Speaker 2: And I think once I got there, it was interesting
Speaker 2: because even though they were religious themselves, they realized that
Speaker 2: they had taught us. They had given us a sense
Speaker 2: of Jewish culture, and now we had a choice. And
Speaker 2: I think once I got to high school, I would
Speaker 2: go do things on Saturday at football games and things
Speaker 2: like that, and Temple was kind of to meek boys.
Speaker 2: So I had already started, I think, at an early age,
Speaker 2: kind of looking questioning.
Speaker 3: And oddly enough, I.
Speaker 2: Think the what I took away from the Yeshiva for
Speaker 2: my early age was this idea of questioning, because we
Speaker 2: had this very intense sort of Hebrew Talmudik studies and
Speaker 2: that kind of thought, that kind of argumentative and deep
Speaker 2: thinking about things like that, that fascinated me.
Speaker 1: For college, Mammy goes to George Washington University, close enough
Speaker 1: to home to be an acceptable choice to her parents
Speaker 1: and far enough away that she can reinvent herself tell
Speaker 1: a new story in which she's free of the burden
Speaker 1: of keeping a secret. In fact, she can just get
Speaker 1: rid of the secret entirely by telling a new story,
Speaker 1: one in which she doesn't have a mentally ill brother,
Speaker 1: in which she doesn't have a brother at all.
Speaker 2: I could hide him completely. And so when any new
Speaker 2: friends asked me, well, how many siblings did you have?
Speaker 2: I would say one.
Speaker 1: What did that feel like? Was it fine? Did you
Speaker 1: feel guilty?
Speaker 2: I didn't feel guilty about it, because I had been
Speaker 2: trained to not talk about him, I had been trained
Speaker 2: to hide him. I guess I was a very good learner,
Speaker 2: I would have to say, looking back, because I had
Speaker 2: really embodied that to hide what wasn't normal, and that's
Speaker 2: exactly what I did. And so no, it's a very
Speaker 2: interesting question. I'd have to say. From an early age,
Speaker 2: I knew how to compartmentalize. In my junior year, I
Speaker 2: had this itching to travel. The first two summers I
Speaker 2: had come home and worked in New York City. Then
Speaker 2: after my sophomore year in college, I told my parents
Speaker 2: that I wanted to do it semester abroad, and I
Speaker 2: went to London, and then from London, we took a
Speaker 2: weekend and flew to Paris, and it was just very
Speaker 2: exciting to be in another country. So my travel bug
Speaker 2: was really growing. And when I came back from London
Speaker 2: after Christmas time for a second semester, I wanted to
Speaker 2: go away again. And I knew that my parents would
Speaker 2: really want me to go to Israel. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to Israel because we thought of Israel at
Speaker 2: that time as a socialist, very progressive country. I knew
Speaker 2: about the kibbutz. It was the sixties, and a kibbutz
Speaker 2: seemed like a very immunal and exciting kind of life
Speaker 2: because both genders worked. I like the idea of it,
Speaker 2: and so my parents agreed to send me.
Speaker 3: And they, of course the reason that they agreed.
Speaker 2: Was because they thought going to Israel would bring me
Speaker 2: back into the Jewish fault. I knew it wouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: I was seeing it as a new travel location, but
Speaker 2: nonetheless I did want to go there.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy. Mimy is twenty living on a kibbutz
Speaker 1: in Israel, surrounded by young travelers from all over the world.
Speaker 1: She hitchhikes across the country, takes a side trip to
Speaker 1: Greece and roads, and tastes a kind of freedom she's
Speaker 1: never known before. When it's time to come home, she
Speaker 1: almost misses her flight.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to go home.
Speaker 3: I'm wearing my green mini dress.
Speaker 2: I'm the last person to board the plane. Almost miss it.
Speaker 2: Get put in first class. I'm thrilled and I've had
Speaker 2: a great summer, and now I'm anxious to get home
Speaker 2: and anxious to get back to my senior year in college.
Speaker 2: And after a couple of hours of flying, we stopped
Speaker 2: in Frankfurt for refueling, and as we flew over Brussels
Speaker 2: a few minutes twenty minutes later, the pilot said, eight
Speaker 2: hours to New York. And then just then a man
Speaker 2: and woman came running down the aisle and somebody screamed,
Speaker 2: he has a gun, she has a grenade.
Speaker 3: And by that time I.
Speaker 2: Was in economy class, and I was sitting on an
Speaker 2: aisle seat, so I could see them. I had no
Speaker 2: idea where they were going or what they were doing.
Speaker 2: And they kicked the door of the cockpit, and the
Speaker 2: pilot opened the door, and they rushed themselves in there,
Speaker 2: and they made an announcement shortly afterwards that this was
Speaker 2: the popular front for the liberation of Palestine and we
Speaker 2: shouldn't be afraid. They were taking us to a friendly country.
Speaker 2: And just then we felt the plane turn in the air,
Speaker 2: so much so that the bags that were under people's
Speaker 2: seats just kind of flew into the aisle, and we
Speaker 2: didn't know where we were going. I had no idea
Speaker 2: what was going on. In nineteen seventy, this kind of
Speaker 2: hijacking from a plane like this wasn't happening. There had
Speaker 2: been hijackings before, but mostly from Miami to Cuba, and
Speaker 2: those were for money. They wanted to ransom money or
Speaker 2: something like that. So in the beginning I thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: this is just going to be like a big inconvenience.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get that to New York late, and
Speaker 2: that's just going to ruin my plans and sounds so
Speaker 2: stupid today now.
Speaker 3: I would say though, that.
Speaker 2: The older people, some of the very orthodox people on
Speaker 2: the plane, the dual citizens duel is really American citizens
Speaker 2: Holocaust survivors. Because this plane was coming from Tel Aviv,
Speaker 2: they knew they were worried. So it wasn't just me.
Speaker 2: I think there was a lot of young people on
Speaker 2: board too. It was September sixth, so that was Leabre
Speaker 2: Day weekend that year, and everyone big families were on
Speaker 2: the plane, and so there were some people who understood,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't one of them. And we flew for
Speaker 2: another six hours and they got on the loudspeaker. Again.
Speaker 2: We hadn't heard from them for all this time, and
Speaker 2: then they said, we're taking you to a friendly country.
Speaker 2: Jordan will be landing soon. This is you know, we
Speaker 2: will not harm you. So then the pilot was doing
Speaker 2: a lot of circling, and my seat made Bob was
Speaker 2: his name, looked out the window and he just said,
Speaker 2: I don't see anything down there. There's no terminal, there's
Speaker 2: no lights. It's just like desert. It was just like
Speaker 2: the sunset when we were landing, so there was still
Speaker 2: light enough to see.
Speaker 3: He said, there's no runway.
Speaker 2: There's some drums, like big drums with like torches in them.
Speaker 2: And the pilot, i think, kept circling because he didn't
Speaker 2: know if he could bring the plane down on the sand.
Speaker 2: The pie deckers they had a gun with them and
Speaker 2: the grenade, and they they were forcing him to bring
Speaker 2: the plane down there. And the man who was sitting
Speaker 2: at the window didn't speak English, and he had been
Speaker 2: sleeping the whole time, and he suddenly woke up and
Speaker 2: he turned to us and he said New York.
Speaker 3: Because he felt the plane.
Speaker 2: Sort of stop, and he just laughed. It was very
Speaker 2: good to have a moment laughter amidst this. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't until that moment when I looked out the window
Speaker 2: and I saw what was there, and what was there
Speaker 2: was a group of very very I know, one hundred
Speaker 2: men in takis with guns over their shoulder. That's when
Speaker 2: I thought, Oh, what is this and what's going to
Speaker 2: happen next? That was when it began to sink in
Speaker 2: so slowly for me.
Speaker 1: You also you describe a truly terrifying moment in which
Speaker 1: this was not the only jet that was hijacked, and
Speaker 1: a second jet is landing and comes very very close
Speaker 1: to hitting the jet that you all are on. Yes,
Speaker 1: it felt to me like that was the first moment
Speaker 1: of terror, like visceral, Oh, we could have died, and
Speaker 1: also now there's this other jet, like wtf.
Speaker 2: I couldn't actually see that close. I was on the
Speaker 2: other side of the plane, and so I heard everyone
Speaker 2: talking and like screaming, and I sort of turned and
Speaker 2: I began to realize that this was a lot more serious.
Speaker 2: What really, I think took me into reality was slightly
Speaker 2: after that the second plane landed, when somebody came on
Speaker 2: the plane, a woman without a gun speak in English,
Speaker 2: and she explained again that they were from the Popular
Speaker 2: Front for the Liberation of Palestine and that they were
Speaker 2: going to hand out landing cards, which seemed kind of normal,
Speaker 2: and they would be collecting them and our passports. And
Speaker 2: in a short time they handed out the cards, and
Speaker 2: then the couple across the aisle from me, who were
Speaker 2: ultra her box. She took out four passports, two for
Speaker 2: her and two for her for her husband. One was American,
Speaker 2: one was Israeli. Then she took out the nail clippers
Speaker 2: and she and her husband began to clip the pages
Speaker 2: of the Israeli passport up. They stuffed the little pieces
Speaker 2: into a throw up bag that they had on planes
Speaker 2: then and shoved it in between the seats, But the
Speaker 2: pictures and the identification page they swallowed. And that's when
Speaker 2: I turned to my seat mate Bob again and whispered,
Speaker 2: did you see that? Why did they do that? And
Speaker 2: he explained to me, also whispering that if they found
Speaker 2: out that they were also Israelis, we don't know what
Speaker 2: would happened to them. We didn't know that at the time,
Speaker 2: but now I know that they actually hijacked four planes
Speaker 2: at the same time, all flying over Europe. Two of
Speaker 2: them came to where we were, the which is called
Speaker 2: Dawson's Field, a very remote area of Jordan, middle of
Speaker 2: the desert. And then the other planes. One was an
Speaker 2: l All plane and they already had marshalls air marshals
Speaker 2: there and one of the hijackers was killed on the
Speaker 2: plane and the other one was taken in custody when
Speaker 2: they landed in London, and another plane was redirected to Cairo,
Speaker 2: and they told the pilots that the plane would blow up,
Speaker 2: and so they just had enough time. As soon as
Speaker 2: they landed in Cairo, the people were able to evacuate
Speaker 2: through the shoots just moments before the plane was blown up.
Speaker 2: During the week that we were there, on the third day,
Speaker 2: they hijacked a third plane. And they did that because
Speaker 2: the demands that they had, which were for the release
Speaker 2: of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and in jails in Europe,
Speaker 2: they had targeted those countries where they were holding their prisoners.
Speaker 2: They wired the planes that we were sitting on and
Speaker 2: they brought the third plane down because their demands had
Speaker 2: not been met by foreign countries, particularly by the United States.
Speaker 2: They wanted us to put the pressure on Israel to
Speaker 2: release these people who were in their veils. And when
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. They threatened to blow us up inside
Speaker 2: the plane, and they also hijacked the third plane.
Speaker 1: Were you age twenty aware of the fact that the
Speaker 1: plane was wired at that point.
Speaker 2: Yes, because there were people on the plane who had
Speaker 2: been in the army, the Americans, and they could see
Speaker 2: what they were doing, and occasionally we were taken off
Speaker 2: the plane so they could go through the plane and
Speaker 2: see what was there. And that's why I was kepped
Speaker 2: for much longer than most other people, because when they
Speaker 2: went through the overhead bins, they found a lot of
Speaker 2: things to incriminate people. And one of the things they
Speaker 2: found for me was an Israeli army shirt that had
Speaker 2: been given to me as a going wig present from
Speaker 2: a friend who had just gotten out of the army.
Speaker 2: You know, we had no idea they'd been going through
Speaker 2: our luggage. Then they took us off one day and
Speaker 2: they went through the other things that were in our
Speaker 2: actual lub ic checked in luggage. So they took the things,
Speaker 2: many things, and found many things, and it was based
Speaker 2: on math that they decided who they should keep.
Speaker 1: And you were very much somebody that they decided that
Speaker 1: they wanted to keep.
Speaker 2: I was, and they interiorated me twice at gunpoint, as
Speaker 2: well as a few other young people who they decided
Speaker 2: to keep because of also incriminating evidence. They had things
Speaker 2: from Israel.
Speaker 1: So they decided that you were Israeli, that you were
Speaker 1: an Israeli citizen, and also that you had been in
Speaker 1: the army. Yes, and then later that you were married
Speaker 1: to an Israeli social and you were both in the army.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: That was the second interrogation, after I denied everything during
Speaker 2: the first interrogation, but was so scared, I mean, being
Speaker 2: interrogated at gunpoint. The only thing I could think was, well,
Speaker 2: they haven't killed anybody yet, so maybe they won't kill me.
Speaker 2: And then the second interrogation, which was a day or
Speaker 2: two later, that's when they started asking me about my husband,
Speaker 2: Where was I Where did we fight in the West
Speaker 2: Bank and our Goalen Heights, And they started asking me
Speaker 2: these very specific questions.
Speaker 3: I was like, no, no.
Speaker 2: They viewed me as something I was absolutely not. I
Speaker 2: was a twenty year old myself, anti imperialist, anti Vietnam
Speaker 2: War protester against the American government, and yet to them
Speaker 2: I was a representative not only as an Israeli soldier
Speaker 2: but also an American. They thought I was Israeli but
Speaker 2: also American, so myself very othered. There was no way
Speaker 2: that they could understand when I was saying or really listen.
Speaker 2: You couldn't listen to me.
Speaker 1: How did you keep yourself remotely in one piece during
Speaker 1: that period of time this went on ultimately for you
Speaker 1: for twenty one days.
Speaker 2: Yes it did. I focused on other things I was
Speaker 2: used to, like, almost disassociating. It wasn't that I could
Speaker 2: really disassociate from that because we were all on the
Speaker 2: plane for six days without running water, electricity, no flushing toilets.
Speaker 2: In the beginning, it was a full plane of passengers
Speaker 2: with many young children on board, so it was really
Speaker 2: very very difficult. But we, and when I say we,
Speaker 2: myself and another woman got together to help pass the
Speaker 2: time for the children, and we began what was like
Speaker 2: a summer camp. We called it a summer camp, and
Speaker 2: we One of the women who joined us was also
Speaker 2: very good with singing, and we sang instead of Leaving
Speaker 2: on a Jetplane, which was a popular song at the.
Speaker 3: Time, John Denver.
Speaker 2: We sung living on a jetplane and just things like that,
Speaker 2: and some of the kids had games like mad libs,
Speaker 2: we had a pack of cards, and so we would
Speaker 2: just play with those kids and just pass a little
Speaker 2: bit of time that way until the Palestinians would tell
Speaker 2: us not to be there anymore when we started laughing.
Speaker 2: Then they didn't want us to spend too much time
Speaker 2: doing that. We tried to entertain others, and of course
Speaker 2: later on, I think myself and the other four women
Speaker 2: who were held with me out of the thirty one
Speaker 2: who were held when everyone else was released, we engaged
Speaker 2: engendered work there too. We cooked because they would just
Speaker 2: give us some food, and we were very happy to
Speaker 2: be able to cook something because we had very little
Speaker 2: food when we were on the plane, and now we
Speaker 2: didn't have much more, but we did have something so
Speaker 2: we could do that. We also engaged in gallows. You
Speaker 2: were when it got really bad.
Speaker 1: So there were these waves of passengers being either taken
Speaker 1: away or what appeared to be released. We're no longer
Speaker 1: on the plane until it was you five? Why was
Speaker 1: it you five?
Speaker 2: Basically they'd suspected of being Israeli soldiers. Actually, one of
Speaker 2: the women was originally from Sudan, Sudanese jew and she
Speaker 2: spoke fluent Arabic, and so they thought she was a spy,
Speaker 2: so that's why they held us.
Speaker 1: Another acute, unfathomable moment, Mimi is no longer on the plane.
Speaker 1: She's heard it onto the tarmac and then onto an
Speaker 1: old bus. Through the windows, she can see the three
Speaker 1: empty lined up in the distance. One of the members
Speaker 1: of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issues
Speaker 1: a strange instruction, open your mouths and block your ears,
Speaker 1: because it'll go better that way. A moment later, she
Speaker 1: understands why one by one the planes explode, fire blooming
Speaker 1: into the sky, metal collapsing in on itself. In a
Speaker 1: landscape already saturated with fear, this becomes a new kind
Speaker 1: of rupture.
Speaker 4: That was a very.
Speaker 2: Surreal moment to watch three jets blown up, and to
Speaker 2: see the pieces just flying into the air, and the
Speaker 2: seats and the windows and just hurtling through the sky,
Speaker 2: and the black smoke that comes almost immediately from the
Speaker 2: explosion of these massive jets.
Speaker 3: And at the same time I'm watching.
Speaker 2: Us, and the sound is so loud and booming, and
Speaker 2: this earth is shaking, and I'm afraid that this small
Speaker 2: old bus that we're sitting in is going to somehow
Speaker 2: flip over or that a piece of the planes that
Speaker 2: are being blown up is going to fly right into
Speaker 2: our bus or break the windows of the bus, hit us,
Speaker 2: or we'll catch fire. Also because we were that close
Speaker 2: to it and we couldn't really block the sound, and
Speaker 2: my eyes were burning, I was shaking, the bus was shaking,
Speaker 2: and at the.
Speaker 3: Same time, I was relieved.
Speaker 2: I was so believed that I wasn't on the plane, and.
Speaker 3: Yet I didn't understand.
Speaker 2: Right after this happened, as soon as it became more ash,
Speaker 2: some of the Palestinians jumped on top of one of
Speaker 2: the engines that was still intact, just a small piece
Speaker 2: of the three planes was intact, and they jumped on
Speaker 2: top and they were holding their guns in their hands
Speaker 2: up high and sheer.
Speaker 4: And I watched this, and I it was.
Speaker 2: Almost like watching children hearing a game. They was so
Speaker 2: proud of themselves for what they had done, and I
Speaker 2: kind of understood their happiness, But of course, my happiness
Speaker 2: was about something else. My happiness was my relief at
Speaker 2: not having been blown up and how close we had
Speaker 2: come in that moment to being dead, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know it was coming next, which got us even closer
Speaker 2: to almost being dead. But that was such a profound moment.
Speaker 2: It's really seared in my mind.
Speaker 3: Even though I never talked.
Speaker 2: About this what happened, I could always see it in
Speaker 2: my mind, and I never told anybody about it.
Speaker 3: It was just an image.
Speaker 2: It didn't even have words. It was just that black
Speaker 2: smoke rising up and we could see it as we
Speaker 2: left the desert and started, you know, making our way
Speaker 2: towards the city and along some of the paths, some
Speaker 2: of the road. When we finally reached a road, there
Speaker 2: were people Palestinian refugees on either side of the road.
Speaker 2: They had seen this black smoke for miles and miles
Speaker 2: and they knew what the Popular Front, the most radical
Speaker 2: of the Palestinian groups at that time, what they had done,
Speaker 2: and they were cheering. They were so excited because it
Speaker 2: was such a strength and they were victorious over the
Speaker 2: Western imperialists. And we were just sitting trying to hide
Speaker 2: because even though the buses were moving still it was
Speaker 2: so frightening.
Speaker 1: And what was it that happened next that brought you
Speaker 1: even closer to death?
Speaker 2: And that then we learned we were really their hostages,
Speaker 2: and we were a small group of hostages. We were
Speaker 2: taken to a small apartment in Iman, so eventually there
Speaker 2: were thirty one people with us. In the first day
Speaker 2: or two were actually wonderful because we could sleep now,
Speaker 2: laying down, even though there was nothing on the floor,
Speaker 2: but just to be able to sleep horizontally rather than
Speaker 2: vertically we've been sitting on a plane for six days.
Speaker 2: We could walk a little bit, and there was water
Speaker 2: there not a shower or anything like that, but there
Speaker 2: was a tap with water we could We asked them
Speaker 2: for some things like toothbrushes and toothpaste, and they gave
Speaker 2: us some and we were able to brush our teeth
Speaker 2: we hadn't been able to do that. We were able
Speaker 2: to wash our hands, and we could make a cup
Speaker 2: of tea if we wanted to. But of course there
Speaker 2: was cholera in the region, so we had to be
Speaker 2: very careful about boiling our water and things like that.
Speaker 2: And that just lasted for two days, and then there
Speaker 2: was a war that broke out between the Palestinians and
Speaker 2: the King Hussein and his army, the army of Jordan.
Speaker 2: Because he didn't want this going on. There were more
Speaker 2: Palestinians in Jordan at the time than Jordanians. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to be seen like this in the world, to
Speaker 2: have these terrorists taking planes and blowing them up and
Speaker 2: all this taking hostages, and so he wanted to get
Speaker 2: rid of them. And so a civil war broke out
Speaker 2: in Iman, and these bombing and we could hear we
Speaker 2: didn't want to go near the windows. We didn't want
Speaker 2: anybody to see us. We could hear explosions, we could
Speaker 2: hear the whistling of bombs.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: One of the guys that we were held with was
Speaker 2: a soldier, American soldier, and he told us where to hide,
Speaker 2: where to go to lie down, to crouch down in
Speaker 2: case a bomb hit the house. And one day the
Speaker 2: house next door was blown up, and we were so
Speaker 2: close to our death. Even the person who was collecting
Speaker 2: water for us, because immediately when the war broke out,
Speaker 2: there was no water anymore, and someone had to go
Speaker 2: and get us water, just a little bit of water,
Speaker 2: like one cup of day we had at that point,
Speaker 2: or not even that much. He went to get us
Speaker 2: water and he never came back, and we asked what
Speaker 2: happened to him, and we found out he died along
Speaker 2: the way, he got blown up. So this death was
Speaker 2: all around us, and it was just a miracle that
Speaker 2: death was so close to us that they released us.
Speaker 2: Because if they lost us, then they lost everything.
Speaker 1: So ultimately that was the reason for your release.
Speaker 2: Yes, because they never got what they wanted. They didn't
Speaker 2: get the people released from the prisons.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: After twenty one days, Mimi and her fellow hostages are
Speaker 1: finally heading home. They're flown to Cyprus, then Rome, where
Speaker 1: they meet with President Nixon, then New York, where she's
Speaker 1: reunited with her parents sister at JFK. It's an emotional reunion,
Speaker 1: of course, but as soon as the family returns home,
Speaker 1: it's clear that the entire ordeal is now meant to
Speaker 1: be in the rearview mirror. Russiashana is the next day,
Speaker 1: and Mimmy can't imagine going to synagogue, being in public,
Speaker 1: facing all the questions about what she's been through. When
Speaker 1: her mother returns from synagogue, she asks Mimi if she's
Speaker 1: feeling better now, as if being held hostage for three
Speaker 1: weeks might be like a head cold she's gotten over.
Speaker 1: But this is nothing new, after all. Whenever Mimmy's mom
Speaker 1: has called her in college instead of saying hello. When
Speaker 1: Mimmy answers, she has always said, is everything under control?
Speaker 2: When I first came home, my mother she wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about it, and my father did neither.
Speaker 3: I mean, they didn't have the they didn't know.
Speaker 2: What questions to ask, and very much there was idea
Speaker 2: that when you came home, you just move forward. There
Speaker 2: was no PTSD concept yet that didn't happen until the eighties.
Speaker 2: And when soldiers came home from war, they just went
Speaker 2: home and they were supposed to adjust, and like that,
Speaker 2: I was supposed to adjust also, And I think there
Speaker 2: was this other overlay of us being a very hidden family,
Speaker 2: you know, master of secrets, and so I should just
Speaker 2: you know, put on a strong face that was important,
Speaker 2: appear that everything was under control, and go about adjusting
Speaker 2: to life.
Speaker 1: Now her mother has a solution, well sort of. A
Speaker 1: quick jaunt might be just the thing, a getaway to
Speaker 1: the sunny Caribbean, a clean slate, an escape.
Speaker 2: My mother came into my room, probably on the second
Speaker 2: day I was home, right after russiashan her. She was
Speaker 2: thinking about it that she might take me the Virgin
Speaker 2: Islands because that was a place where I could relax
Speaker 2: before I went back to college, and I was very
Speaker 2: reluctant that I tried to be a good daughter and
Speaker 2: respectful of her, and I thought, she also needs a
Speaker 2: break because she's been the one managing this and really
Speaker 2: dealing with this trauma herself of almost losing her daughter.
Speaker 2: And so I said, yeah, Okay, we go for a
Speaker 2: long weekend. And unfortunately when we got there, there was
Speaker 2: a hurricane after a day, and I was right back
Speaker 2: where I was kind of now. It was the weather
Speaker 2: that was out of control, and after a day of
Speaker 2: being in the water and truly enjoying.
Speaker 3: It, I had to stay inside.
Speaker 2: And when I got to the airport, I realized I
Speaker 2: was out of my mind to be at at airport
Speaker 2: so close in time to what had just happened to me.
Speaker 3: But I thought it could be a moment of closeness.
Speaker 2: When I could tell my mother what I felt and
Speaker 2: what had happened in my fear, but I couldn't.
Speaker 3: You really have a sense of what.
Speaker 2: You could talk to people about and what you can't.
Speaker 2: And so we left pretty quickly after the storm finishment,
Speaker 2: the airport opened up again, and then as soon as
Speaker 2: I got back to New York, as soon as I could.
Speaker 3: I went back to college.
Speaker 2: And that was really tough because my friends were anti
Speaker 2: war activists and they thought that my experience, which they
Speaker 2: had sort of been following a little bit in the
Speaker 2: newspaper and things like that. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: they knew, but they knew that I'd been held by
Speaker 2: Palestinian terrorists and they just thought that was kind of
Speaker 2: far out, and they really romanticized it. And so these
Speaker 2: were radical people that I was with, and so almost
Speaker 2: like by extension, I was now really cool. I was
Speaker 2: really overcome with this. How can I deal with this
Speaker 2: naive view that's such a romantic and inaccurate view of
Speaker 2: what had actually occurred to me? How could I possibly
Speaker 2: explain the fear? And actually I'd already compartmentalized it because
Speaker 2: I hadn't talked to my parents about it, and it
Speaker 2: was very difficult for me when I came back to college.
Speaker 2: But in a sense, my compartmentalization skills came in handy
Speaker 2: because I was able to sort of talk about it
Speaker 2: or somehow avert that hiding from people. So now I
Speaker 2: was literally hiding.
Speaker 1: So was that part of the coping mechanism, that feeling
Speaker 1: of basically being told, Wow, what happened to you is
Speaker 1: a really cool story and it being sort of objectifying
Speaker 1: in a certain way.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it is objectifying. It was something that was so
Speaker 2: not cool in any way. It was not a story.
Speaker 2: It was a terrifying story. And maybe my friends weren't
Speaker 2: old enough. And you know, the only person who really
Speaker 2: took me in was Mark. He happens to be my
Speaker 2: husband now, but he really didn't ask me very much
Speaker 2: about it, and he just offered me food because I'd
Speaker 2: lost so much weight, like twenty five pounds during that experience.
Speaker 2: And during that time, I was sort of rearranging myself.
Speaker 2: I mean, I really couldn't concentrate in classes.
Speaker 1: But Mimy does get through with the excellent coping skills
Speaker 1: that have helped her all along. She and Mark eventually
Speaker 1: marry and have two boys. She earns a doctorate, advances
Speaker 1: in her career, becomes a professor, speaker, author, and during
Speaker 1: this whole span of years, she doesn't speak of the hijacking.
Speaker 1: She pushes it away, and many people close to her
Speaker 1: know nothing about it. But we know what happens when
Speaker 1: secrets are buried. As a guest on this podcast said,
Speaker 1: several seasons back. When you bury a secret, you bury
Speaker 1: it alive.
Speaker 3: For many years.
Speaker 2: How I dealt with this was I put it inside.
Speaker 2: And I think the image of a box is a
Speaker 2: strong one for me, because eventually, when I decided to
Speaker 2: talk about it, I did find a box and I
Speaker 2: opened it.
Speaker 3: But I think this was at.
Speaker 2: Least twenty five years or more after my hijacking, and occasionally,
Speaker 2: if there was something big happened in the world, I
Speaker 2: would say something like, oh, I was once hijacking. People
Speaker 2: would get so interested that I put it back and yeah,
Speaker 2: I was held for a while. It was clear that
Speaker 2: I didn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 3: But one time I got a phone call.
Speaker 2: I was in the middle of research project in the US,
Speaker 2: and I got a phone call from a former high
Speaker 2: school classmate who was now a researcher or PhD researcher
Speaker 2: and writing a book on international te rorism. And he
Speaker 2: had seen my name in some of the literature that
Speaker 2: he was reading as a passenger, and he called me
Speaker 2: and wanted to interview me. And I just said a lot,
Speaker 2: I have to think about it, I'll let you know.
Speaker 2: And I really didn't think I could do it at
Speaker 2: that moment. I was in my office and I was
Speaker 2: sitting around with my co researchers and other anthropologists. We
Speaker 2: were doing a very big study with adolescent girls talking
Speaker 2: about body image and dieting, and.
Speaker 3: I felt like, I still I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2: I thought, Oh, this guy just wants to interview me.
Speaker 2: And my whole career is about interviewing people and asking
Speaker 2: them at that point about girls about body image. I mean,
Speaker 2: nothing could be more kind of well embodied one word.
Speaker 3: But just something that was so fraught, and so many.
Speaker 2: People have problems with their body and how they feel
Speaker 2: about themselves, and yet here I was a researcher about
Speaker 2: to say no to this guy, and I realized I
Speaker 2: better do this interview. So out and we had an interview,
Speaker 2: and then afterwards I really suffered when the story came out,
Speaker 2: even though he knew a lot about it already, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't so much about my personal sort of fright,
Speaker 2: but it was more about getting the facts right for him.
Speaker 2: It was very difficult. I'd have a headache, I'd feel sick,
Speaker 2: I'd feel so drained and saddened, and so that's how
Speaker 2: I really stopped talking about it even more.
Speaker 3: And then there was also this is.
Speaker 2: Even before this had happened. A few years after the hijacking,
Speaker 2: I joined a law case, and in that lawcase, they
Speaker 2: really laughed at some of the things that it happened
Speaker 2: to me. Oh, you lost twenty five pounds. Any woman
Speaker 2: in America would be happy to lose that weight. And
Speaker 2: you know, you thought you didn't get your period for
Speaker 2: a long time after this hijacking, but you know now
Speaker 2: you're pregnant, so that's not a problem. And I was
Speaker 2: so demean by it and so upset by some gendered measures.
Speaker 2: I was now just fine.
Speaker 3: I wasn't fine.
Speaker 2: And I realized that these seeds of trauma were inside me,
Speaker 2: and given the right sort of weather and the right
Speaker 2: kind of watering, the right kind of situation could just
Speaker 2: grow and be big again. And so I had to
Speaker 2: kind of put them aside.
Speaker 1: These sort of.
Speaker 2: Little things that happened through my life made me realize
Speaker 2: I had to keep this sort of under wraps.
Speaker 3: Finally, I was in a yoga.
Speaker 2: Intensive and I've been practicing every day for a couple
Speaker 2: of months, and one day in a very intense pose,
Speaker 2: camel pose where you're very wide open, holding onto your
Speaker 2: heels from a kind of kneeling position, something flew out
Speaker 2: of my body and flew out of my stomach area.
Speaker 2: And afterwards it was one of those moments where like
Speaker 2: a did that happen? What just happened? But something happened,
Speaker 2: and right after the class I knew it was from
Speaker 2: my hijacking.
Speaker 1: You described it as a like a blue ball of light.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a blue ball of light that came
Speaker 2: flying out of my body. And by this time I
Speaker 2: had spent years working in India and in the Philippines,
Speaker 2: and I had seen a lot of healers working on
Speaker 2: people's bodies with their hands and taking out things from
Speaker 2: people's bodies or so they said. So this someboda have
Speaker 2: something emerging from the body, and things inside the body
Speaker 2: that can cause unhealed trauma lodged in the body. Was
Speaker 2: not something that was really that foreign for me. And
Speaker 2: when this happened, right afterwards, I just felt so much lighter,
Speaker 2: and I just knew that it was from my hijacking.
Speaker 2: This actually happened. When I went home, I realized that
Speaker 2: that was the day that I had gotten released from
Speaker 2: the hijacking, that I had been brought home, and that
Speaker 2: was an anniversary of that day. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 2: was still a while before I had the where thought
Speaker 2: to actually start writing about it.
Speaker 1: The body knows, I mean, the body even knows. Dates. Yes,
Speaker 1: you also write about speaking with one of your yoga
Speaker 1: teachers about this experience with this ball of energy that
Speaker 1: just emerges and it's as real to you as anything
Speaker 1: that you've ever seen. And she says that we human
Speaker 1: beings need to feel the full range of our feelings.
Speaker 1: And then she says, by not giving voice to your feelings,
Speaker 1: you ignored the wisdom of the body. Grief is woven
Speaker 1: into the fabric of our lives. We cannot hide from it.
Speaker 1: And I just thought that was beautiful and true and
Speaker 1: wise and profound, and really feels like that was the
Speaker 1: moment after which a kind of deeper healing was possible
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, it really was, because I think until then I
Speaker 2: was in some way I've already opened up to the
Speaker 2: experience and it was beginning to sort of come out,
Speaker 2: It already burst out, but now it was a long
Speaker 2: time to be able to write it, but didn't really
Speaker 2: understand the experience. And for a long time I thought
Speaker 2: maybe it had something to do with those poses, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to know more about how yoga affected the body,
Speaker 2: and what she said was self profound, as you said,
Speaker 2: because it just made it much bigger, and it really
Speaker 2: brought it back to all the feelings that I couldn't have,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't have them because you know, I was
Speaker 2: really socialized into this silence and not being able to
Speaker 2: express feelings, not being able to ask questions, and not
Speaker 2: being able to be be real and just about the
Speaker 2: whole range of things. And I think I just carry
Speaker 2: that really to an extreme. I was ready to hear
Speaker 2: what she said when she told me. I was ready
Speaker 2: to hear it, And I think that's always something important.
Speaker 2: When you hear wisdom, you have to be ready to
Speaker 2: accept it.
Speaker 1: Mimi soon accepts something else, an invitation. It's during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: another time rife with fear and uncertainty, when Mimy is
Speaker 1: contacted by one of the former hostages. It's the fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the hijacking and there's going to be a
Speaker 1: gathering over Zoom. That was the first time I saw
Speaker 1: these people in so many years.
Speaker 2: I saw that there was such a range a ways
Speaker 2: that this impacted people. It was only the people who
Speaker 2: were children at the time who I felt may have
Speaker 2: walked away unscathed, but yet they saw something that happened
Speaker 2: to their parents. But for most of us, who are
Speaker 2: the people who are held in her twenties, thirties, forties, fifties,
Speaker 2: it was just a range of things that happened that
Speaker 2: we carried, But we all carried the trauma in different ways.
Speaker 2: Some people never flew again. Some people like myself, didn't
Speaker 2: talk about it. They just put it aside. Some people
Speaker 2: moved to Israel because they felt they had to, this
Speaker 2: was their calling. Other people couldn't get off their couch
Speaker 2: for months. So it was really fascinating for me to
Speaker 2: see how each of us is impacted by trauma in
Speaker 2: a very different way, but we still all carried it.
Speaker 1: You know. It makes me think about something I've thought
Speaker 1: about a lot, which is that it's not so much
Speaker 1: what happens to us as when it happens. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to secrets, it's not so much the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept, but when they're revealed. And it struck
Speaker 1: me earlier in our conversation when you were talking about
Speaker 1: the Holocaust survivors and the older people on plane, like
Speaker 1: they knew they had the knowledge that bad things could
Speaker 1: happen in their bones. They carried that knowledge and coming
Speaker 1: full circle talking about the people who were very small
Speaker 1: children on a flight who very well may not have carried,
Speaker 1: you know, the imprint or at least sort of the
Speaker 1: conscious imprint of the danger that they were in. But
Speaker 1: as you said, then they grew up with parents who
Speaker 1: did fully have that imprint.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you and Mark have been married for a long time,
Speaker 1: you have two grown sons, You've written this book and
Speaker 1: it's come out, and when your parents died, you inherit
Speaker 1: the care of Joel. So where does all this, if
Speaker 1: you can somehow tie this together, kind of sit with
Speaker 1: you in your life? Now, where do you hold all
Speaker 1: of that?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a big question, isn't it? Answer Quarry about
Speaker 2: my brother, Well, he has passed. But when my parents passed,
Speaker 2: my sister and I became his caretakers, and I think
Speaker 2: by that time we realized he was a person living
Speaker 2: with a disability, and we loved him, and I just
Speaker 2: I felt the pain, and even though he's not here now,
Speaker 2: I still feel that pain of what his life or
Speaker 2: our life could have been if we didn't have to
Speaker 2: make him a secret. We didn't have to be ashamed
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 3: I mean, really, why did we have to be ashamed
Speaker 3: of him?
Speaker 2: Why couldn't we just have loved him and realized what
Speaker 2: he was living through himself. I think the world is
Speaker 2: in a better place now in terms of mental health,
Speaker 2: but I feel like for him, I carried the secret.
Speaker 2: He had to be a secret and a shame for
Speaker 2: my mother's whole life and my father's whole life. They
Speaker 2: never spoke of his mental illness. They were definitely in
Speaker 2: the closet about him. Was very, very painful, And I
Speaker 2: think I've realized that what a difficult position that is,
Speaker 2: and how many people like myself were socialized, particularly women,
Speaker 2: to speak about things that were uote unquote normal, and
Speaker 2: how the world has changed and how we need to
Speaker 2: change and how we need to talk about things because
Speaker 2: unhealed trauma can manifest in all sorts of ways. And
Speaker 2: I think, going back to what we were discussing in
Speaker 2: terms of the range of emotions that I limited myself with,
Speaker 2: you'll enjoy no that if you haven't allowed yourself to
Speaker 2: feel pain and sadness of trauma, of secrets, your.
Speaker 4: Range of emotions is very limited. And that's not the
Speaker 4: way we want to move through the world. Family Secrets
Speaker 4: is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Accur is the
Speaker 4: story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If
Speaker 4: you have a family secret you'd like to share, please
Speaker 4: leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on
Speaker 4: an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight
Speaker 4: Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 4: me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd like
Speaker 4: to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 4: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.