Prize. Ud her most recent books include cleopas, eight life and that ane and thatwhich is a sale in 1692. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation both the National Endowment for the humanities as well as a fellowship in 2002, 2003. Martha hodes is professor of history at unit university and author of morning leak again, sea captains wife a true story of love, race, and wore the 20th century and white women black men elicit sex in the 19th century. She is recipient of fellowships in the Guggenheim Foundation. Neh, harvard university. He was a fellow in 2018 2019. We owe her, i owe her a special debt of gratitude for serving wonderfully for two years of the director until last monday. Please help me welcome back martha hodes. [applause] thank you. Martha, im so delighted to join hehere no one tells about the Coleman Centers when you leave you have a feeling youve been expelled from paradise. Im very, very happy to be back its bittersweet but its good to be back with you. This book is what happened in 1970. Its also about how he retrieved the 50yearold history. We should start an overview of what actually happened before we get into the reconstructing of what actually happened do you want to describe the hijacking with a little bit of context . I do and i will. I also want to say very quickly thank you to salvador into stacy and all of you for being here this evening. All of you joining us virtually. I do not know if the microphone can pick up my fluttering heart. [laughter] that wonderful first question. I will say september 6, 1970 i was 12 years old. Mymy sister named catherine was 13. We were flying from tel aviv to new york. It was the end of the summer we had spent the summer in his isrl with our mother. My parents were modern dancers and might mother had gone to israel to help start israels modern dance company. And we were coming back to return to school. And on that day at four planes e hijacked from members of the liberation of palestine i cante stay more about them later. One of the planes was foiled and admit it well was flown to cairo and everybody was evacuated and the plane was blown up. Two of the plans include the when my sister and i were on blank unaccompanied flown to the jordan desert and three days later another plane joined us there were three planes held hostage in the jordan desert. My sister and i were among those held in the desert inside thee plane for six days and six nights. So lets leave it there. Lets talk about the title for one second before go any further. You just reclaim the word hijacking as i see it hijacking as someone takes you away or take something you have away from you and you basically said no, no, and im going to perforate the hijacking for my own. Did you always think of the boos you worked and you told a reporter in 1970 when youre 12 years old you intended to write a composition about your experiences in the desert. So i guess i could say what took you so long . [laughter] hear you finally have it. Tell us what sent you down the road and please answer my title question and very curious about that. At yes your own response to such such awonderful one. I think ive had this title for a long time. When people would ask me the title of thes book i would alws say didnt know what it was i was so reluctant to name it. You name it you have to write it. Thats an ambivalent. Partly it was about reclaiming ssomething that it happened to me. It was also very clearly it beig my experience. And i say that because each hostage is such a different experience everything from where youre sitting in the plane, what you slept through, what you were awake for. Your knowledge where you stood on palestine issue i can only write my story that was part of it prone out the possessive pronoun in the title. Olivia said about the school competition. I did not remember this. But when i was doing my research there is an article in Time Magazine or newsweek reported talk to me i think i was called such as going to write a composition about this which i never did by the way. We talked about why i didnt want to talk to the hijacking when i got home. You are the second person to suggest on this had not occurred to me the title of the book is kind of like a seventh grade composition. Like my summer vacation. May be not be exactly what i said. [laughter] what they will also say the subtitle the personal history is also about being personally caught up in or participating in a world historical events involuntarily. Until its history but its also personal history for the rest of the subtitle go through multiple permutations or was that also really set from afar . I camek up with that pretty quickly and it stuck i like the subtitle it has more beveled about the title. I t come to like the title and think of is my seventh grade composition. [laughter] a month seventh grade competition one does not make a narrativee decision that memory and the second time as history which you did here. Was obvious from the start youre going to play with the shards of a memory and back up and give us a more objective account of what happened . The very difficult book to structure this energy of whatss happening in the desert and there are two parents who are need to also be able to see the number in that picture how to dd you cover the structure . Is doubling another from the beginning as the historians or anyer writers like chronology ad we usually write thing right thg chronologically and we do that. From harpercollins at the time who is the one who really helped me with the structure. But you start out by telling readers or thing that happened. What i did a site actually start in the preface something of a preface. I give all of the memories i had before, i started writing the book that was january predicted write down those memories before i began researching and writing for thus the first few pages. Then i tell the whole story and then i go back and reconstruct what happens in several other parts including my parents experience a and some family context. In reconstructing what happens in the desert and finally what happened when i gotot home. And of all the books i have written those the hardest book to structure. Im the one i have never written a whole draft and restructured and part of that was difficult but im really glad that i did. Initial structure it was different. It aptly was yes it was. You talk about what historians do, generally only write history we tend to look at documents. And we tend to believe the documents are actually going to deliver up the story. One of the resources was your childhood diary. It turns out to be something of an unreliable diary keeper. [laughter] i sayso that with great psalm this. You realize you could write the stories you could bear it from the truthfulul story. Ill tell her story that we we canlive with at the same tim. At one point you give us a list of the things you did not read about in your diary. He want to talk about that disconnect . The diary is a record of what you erase is much as a record of what you really preserve it. Again historians and the audience will know historians love forces from the time and place we are writing about they are considered the most reliable to the event. It kept a diary the summer i was 12 but i had it with me on the plane. I saved all of my diaries i dug it out thisll be my scaffolding for this book at the structure of the book, here is what i experienced and of course thats not at all, not at all what i found as you so eloquently put it in your question. What i found was and took me a while to formulate this. I crafted a story in the diary that i could tolerate they could tolerate with interesting enough some that memories i was never able to erase from my consciousness even though i made an effort and was quite determined not to absorb these things going on around me. These were some of the most frightening moments. The firste was up in the air wh the hijacking was taking place the copilot emerging from the cockpit with a gun in his neck and image i was never able to erase with and another was the night we landed our captors wearing the plane with dynamite. And another was some of my captors were very nice and nice to the children especially. There are different kinds of human being some were not nice people. There was one woman, there are several women commandos the popularop front believe in womes liberation that was part of their ideology. So that women were in charge of our plane but one woman was not a nice person at all and she at one point put her gun to me is is walking back to my seat. I do not write down any of that. Its funny when i broke my diary felt frustrated with myself. But i did not tell a full story. Over the course of writing the book i learned to have more empathy for the 12yearold girl who is not able to absorb everything around her. But i just want to give our listeners one example that is s telling. Weni landed on the sunday night and i described my diary the hijacking. And i wrote the sentence. My sister was sitting next to me and he was crying up in the air because it was very scary. I use the word hostesses which we called flight attendants in those days. I said the hostesses comforted a crying and called everyone. And then, it must have done this when i got backit because he ony time i read my diary i crossed out the words a crying catherine to the sentence read the hostesses comforted and combed everyone. I crossed out really well i took a lot of Light Holding up the light to see the words. So p clearly my older sister, my protector was afraid and crying. I could not bear that so that had to be struck from the record. That was such a clue to me the record i kept was so incomplete and unreliable. Trying to read through it someone erased. We talk about it wit so fascinating a late tell the story you are year end a half apart. You are completely different takes on whatmo happened. Its almost as if you outsource your emotions to her on some level. You also rebuild as a 17 year old blowing us a completely different take on what is happening. So, did you and your sister i know you didnt talk about over the years. Code or were not going to talk about . Did it never come up you are never in an airport and one turned to the other and looked away and said were not going to discuss that. How did that even work . She was. And i think any older sibling, she felt responsible for both of us, like any younger sibling, perhaps did. I like the way you put it, staci. I let her be my buffer. She was the one who answered the commandos questions when they questioned the hostages. She was the one who made. She was very concerned that we would not be separated. And she made sure that that was not going to happen or told herself she wouldnt let that happen. She was the one who got us in the capital city that night so she did everything. And for that reason she had to be much more present and more confident and thats one of the reasons i was not able to absorb everything going on lk around me. I think of her in a way as my hero and she read the book before it went to press and was incredible and talked me through the process of writing it but she pointed out just tocall her a hero doesnt do justice to her own experience because she was a child to and it was traumatic for her as well and she was also a survivor of all of this. So as far as i should also say this and after my sister read the book she sent the most wonderful formulation. She put it this way, she was her words, shes speaking and she said you forgot and wanted to remember, you remembered andwanted to forget. Its so right and then. How can you say thats not in the book, it is in the book. The spirit of that is absolutely right but thank you for that. I didnt say there was any sort of code. In 1970 women as our rule were not encouraged to think about terrible things that happened to them once they were over. There were some families who didnt make a point of talking about the hijacking but it was true of the majority of hostages that the idea was to go back to school and my father had gone to my school and then said marcy wont be here, shes on one of the planes and my teachers did not even know. In this day and age there was counseling and my best friend who every time a teacher called my name at the beginning of the school had to say shes not here because shes on one of those planes but could we save her a seat in the front row because she is short. It was traumatic for my best friend and i got in touch with teachers when i was writing a book, we were astounded they had never been told that this had happened. The first time to answer the last part of your question, my sister and i never talked about it. When 9 11 happened and i want to be clear that 9 11 was different, our hijackers were not some jihadists, they had an internal policy of causing no harm to any hostage and it was different but nonetheless many hijackings in one day from a lot of remembrances thats why my sister and i said to each other i taking about it again it was hard and then after that it took me 15 more years to think about writing a book. No reason for that im sure. I want to ask youabout your sister. Your traveling on the same passport and i didnt even know that and the fact that your joint on passport is poignant. Two faces on one travel document. We should talk about hijackers before we go much further. The popular front for the liberation of palestine, can you explain why they were not on the planes at jordan because that was unclear even at the time. It was unclear to most of you on the flight. Just as it was can you tell us about their demands and how they failed to impress those uponthe hostages . This was an important part of my research and one of the wonderful resources at the library. Interestingly enough Jewish Division holds collections of in normas number of documents published by the institute of palestine study which is a phenomenal set of volumes because it includes every speech, every matter that might have appeared so really along with autobiographies from my captors and interviews, it helped me understand context i didnt understand at the time and i will say my sister was not that much older than i but seemed to be so politically smart and she grasped so much about our palestinian captors and i feel like she understood it so much betterthan i did. The populist group was founded after the war and that was three years after the palestinianorganization had founded. They were considered themselves, they were a minority but their leadership was drawn from the welltodo doctors, lawyers, they spoke multiple languages, french german, they recruited membership from much poorer classes. There leadership was an extraordinary class of people. Their goal was a single democratic pluralistic secular state of equal rights for jews muslimsand christians and atheists because they were. Even one of their strategies was hijacking and we were among the minority of the plo, most of the leadership including the time didnt approve of evtaking of innocent citizens and eventually they renounced that strategy but they were not all representative of theplo. That took me a long time to figure out. Jordan was such a funny nation in 1970. Allies of the United States and israel of course jordan and israel were enemies of each other. The popular front made orders in the capital city of clan and picked jordanbecause it was an easy place to make your strikes in israel. But the jordanians and palestinians population that was a complicated mix. It wasnt jordanians nversus palestinians but i would say most of the population both jordanians and palestinians would not like or approve of thepopular front being in trouble of the city of clan. They made a state within their stand but many of the palestinians who lived in jordan had been displaced since 1948 and then again 1967 as soon as they had settled on the west bank so a complicated set of populations, of allied ships. And the jordan desert of course was a place where we could land and the commandos could be in control of the planes but tanks were surrounding us and you could see them so the army was at war with the popular front. But we could see the tanks on the right and of course somebody explained that to me as you might say with any of this and one of the women who befriended us saying you see those tanks out there, thats the jordanians and their on our side. It was difficult for me to understand. Y one line that reverberates throughout the book and im going to make a mess of it right now, the friendly people, can youjust tell us, its such a straight to the heart. Will start bringing thatup. When we were there during the hijacking one of the commandos took over the pa system and said youre landing in a friendly country friendly people and i remember thinking dont know that i need to get home to my dad. Everybody was waiting for us. The thing about writing from memory is you have to drop, every Single Person italked to and every newspaper article i read somebody quoted that line so all the hostages remember that line so i knew it had been said. V i will say that i had done this before but some of the hostages hadfrightening experiences and their interactions with our o catheters. And they determined peoples connection to the state of israel to determine who would be a valuable hostage and at the same time the commandos were quite kind tothe children. My experiences with them were quite positive so for example, there was one day when again when the desert was crying and one of those men stopped by and he said d, dont cry, we have children to and that felt very fatherly to her. When we were outside the plane for air and exercise, he gave the kids piggyback rides. And i also have a memory of we were in the middle of the desert so along with tanks on the horizon there was a mirage of water. One of the commandos who understood mirages meltdown on the sand and told them why youre seeing water. So not only were they kind to us but my sister and i were interested in the stories uthat they told that were very important to them that the hostages understand their stories. My sister and i are different than many hamerican jews in the 1967 war. We didnt have, we had gone to hebrew school, we didnt descend from americans or other people they brought with them and we were interested in the stories and we felt sorry for the commandos. There were also o hold Holocaust Survivors on the plane and we felt sorry for them as well so as kids, it was like we felt sorry for everyone and wanted to solve everyones problems but couldnt think of a way for everything to work out for israel palestine. Couldnt think of a solution. Great surprise. We wanted to and we felt sad for everybody and not all the jews were seven or empathetic to our captors but son some had grown up in scientist household and were interested in what theywere hearing. As we sit here tonight the statue of the Little Prince is being installed across from the french consular yservices and i bring this up because threaded through your book in the most intriguing matter are the Little Prince which is was read to you by your stepfa