Biography which was a finalist the 1995 pulitzer prize. Her most recent include cleopatra a life and the witches, salem 92. Shes received from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the humanities. As well as a fellowship from. The Common Center in 2002 to 2003. Martha hodes is professor of history at New York University and the author also of morning lincoln the sea captains wife a true story of love, race and war in the 19th century and white women, black men, illicit sex in the 19th century south. Shes the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the nih, Harvard University and the whiting foundation. She was a fellow here, the Common Center in 2018 to 2019. We owe her i owe her a special debt of gratitude for serving really wonderfully for two years as the interim director of the Common Center. Until last month. Please help me. Welcome back to the center martha hodes and stacy schiff. Thank you, salvator martha, im so delighted to join you here. No one. What . No one tells you about the Cullman Center is that when you have the feeling that you have been expelled from paradise. So im very, very happy to be back. Its very bittersweet, but im thrilled to be back with you. This book, happy, is about what happened to you in 1970, but its also about how you retrieved those that 50 year old history. So i just thought we should start with an overview of what actually happened before we get into the reconstructing, what actually happened. Do you want to just describe the hijacking with a little bit of context . Do and i will. I also just want to say very quickly, thank you to salvador and the Coleman Center and to stacie, all of you, for being here this evening and all of you who are joining us virtually. I dont know if the microphone can pick up my heart, but a wonderful first question, stacie. So i will say. September 6th, 1970. I was 12 years old. My sister named katherine was 13. We flying from tel aviv to new york. It was the end of the summer we had spent the summer in israel with our mother. My parents were modern dancers, Martha Graham dancers and. My mother had gone to israel to help start israels modern dance. The batsheva company, and we were coming back to return to school. And on that day, four planes were hijacked by members of the popular front for the liberation of palestine. And i can say more about them later. One of those planes was foiled in midair. One was flown to cairo and. Everybody was evacuated and the plane was blown up. Two of the planes, including the one my sister and i were on unaccompanied, were flown the jordan desert and. Three days later, another plane us. So there were three planes held hostage in the jordan desert. My sister and i were, among those who were held in the desert inside the plane for six days and six nights. So lets leave it there. Back to you. Okay. So lets talk about the title for one second before we go any further, because a hijacking, youve just reclaimed the word hijacking as i see it, right . A hijacking as someone takes you away or takes something that you have from you and youve just basically. No, no, no, im going to appropriate that hijacking for my own. So you always think of the book as sort of my. Was that the title as you worked and just since im on that, you told a reporter 1970 when you were 12 years old that you intended to write composition about your experiences in the desert . Yes. So guess i could say, well, what took you so long. But so here. 50 years later, you finally have so tell us what sent you down the road and also do. Please answer my title just because im very curious about that. Yes. And your own responses is such a wonderful one. So i think i had this title for a long time. But when people ask me the title of the book, i would always say that i didnt know what it was because i reluctant to name. I think it is a name that you have to write it. Thats part well thats part it for sure. And that was definitely an ambivalent process. So partly about reclaiming something that had happened to me. It was also very about being my experi science. And i say that because each had such different experiences upon everything where you were sitting in the plane, what you slept through, what you were awake for, to your knowledge of middle east politics in 1970 and where you stood on israel palestine issues there was so many variables. So i could only write my story and that definitely part of that pronoun, that possessive pronoun in the title. But i love what you said about the School Composition because youre absolutely stacie. I did not remember this but when was doing my research, there was an article i think it was in Time Magazine or maybe newsweek, where a reporter talked to me and then wrote this line that said martha hodes 12 year old schoolgirl, i think i was called, said she was going to write composition about this when she got home, which i never did, by the way. And we can talk about why didnt want to talk about the hijacking when i got home. And you are the second person to suggest this had not occurred to me that the title of the book is kind of a seventh grade composition that you that you might find it kind of like Summer Vacation wasnt exactly what i said but yeah. And ill also just say that the subtitle a personal history of forgetting and remembering is also about being personally caught up in or participating in a world historical event, involuntary and so its its history. Its also a personal history. Did the subtitle go through multiple permutations or was that also fairly set from start . I didnt have a subtitle a long time. And then when i think, i came up with it pretty quickly and it stuck and i almost like the subtitle even if i was more ambivalent about the title, but ive come to like the title and ive come to think of it as my seventh grade composition. Im in most seventh grade compositions. One does not make a narrative decision to play the whole saga. The first time is as memory, and then the second time as history, which you did here. So was that obvious from the start that you were going to first sort of play with those shards of memory and then sort of back up and, give us a full account, a more objective account of what actually happened . Oh, its a very difficult book to structure in a way, because we have you we have your perception of what happens. We have whats happening. This propulsive energy, whats happening in the desert, and then we know there are two parents who are presumably, you know, whom we need to also be able to see somewhere in that picture. So did you how did you come up with the structure . Yeah, it was definitely not there from the beginning. The historians or maybe any writers in the audience will know. Historians like chronology, and we usually write things chronologically. I did that. That was my first draft. It was just a big chronological draft. And i see my editor, the front row, the wonderful, amazing gille from harpercollins at, the time now simon schuster, who who the one who really helped me with this structure and said why dont you start out by telling readers that happened. So what i did was i started in the preface something, a preface. I, i give all the memories i had before i started writing the book, and that was genuine. I did write down those memories before. I began researching and writing. So thats the first few pages, then i tell the story and then i go back and reconstruct what happened in several other parts. So including parents experience and some family, and then reconstruct in what happened in the desert and then finally what happened when i got home. And that was of the books ive written, it was the hardest book to structure and the one ive never written full draft of a book and then restructured it. And doing that was difficult. But im really glad that i did. So the initial structure was from what what absolutely was. Yes, it was. When you talk about what historians do, generally, when we write, we tend to look at documents and we tend to believe that the documents are actually going to deliver up the story. And one of the richest sources you have here was your read covered childhood, though you, turn out to have been some have been something of an unreliable diary keeper. I say that with great fondness. So you say that you realized that were you now realize you were crafting story in the diary as you went. You were writing the story as you could it, which was different from the truthful story, really. So its like we tell ourselves in order to live, but we tell ourselves, the stories that we can live with at the same time. Right . So at one point you give us this a list even of the things that you didnt write about your diary. So do you to talk about that disconnect and i mean, its as much the diary is almost like a record of what you were raised much as it is a record of what you you really preserved from those years. Yeah, thats so nicely set and thank you so much for that question. So again, historians in the audience will know that we as love sources that date from the time and place were writing about because theyre considered the most closest to the event and i was an inveterate diary keeper from about maybe ten or 11 years old. I kept diary the summer i was 12. I had it with me on the plane. I hadnt it since the hijacking, but id saved all my diaries in a carton, in a closet somewhere and dug it out. And i thought, this will be my scaffolding for this book. This will be the structure of the book. Heres what i experienced and of course, thats not at all. Not at all what i found as you so eloquently put it, stacy, in your question. What i found was that and it took me a while to formulate this, but i realized that crafted a story in my diary that i could tolerate that i could live with. And although my parents would never read diaries, it was a story i felt they could live with and they could tolerate. So some of the things i left out were, interestingly enough, some of the memories that i never able to erase from my consciousness, even though i made an effort and i was quite determined not to absorb these things going on around. And these were some of the most very frightening moments. The first was up in the air when hijacking was taking place, the copilot emerging from the cockpit with a gun at his neck, an image. I was never able to erase. Another was the night we landed our captors wiring the plane with dynamite, and another, you know, some of some of my captors were were very nice and were very nice to the children, especially. And some were you know, they were different kinds of human beings. Some were not nice people. And there was one one woman. There were several women commandos because the popular front believed deeply in womens liberation was part of their ideology. So the women were in charge of our plane, but there was one woman who was not a nice person at all, she at one point pointed her gun to me. I was walking back to my seat. I didnt write down any of that and it was funny because when i read my diary, i felt so frustrated with myself that i that i didnt tell a full story. And then over the course of writing the book, i learned to have empathy for that 12 Year Old Girl who wasnt able to absorb everything going on around her. But i just want to give our listeners one example that is so telling and was so important to me, we landed on a sunday night and i first wrote my diary on monday morning and i described my diary, the hijacking. And i wrote this sentence. So my sister was sitting next to me and she was crying up in the air because it was very scary. And so i used the word hostesses, which is what we called flight attendants in those days. I said the hostesses as comforted a crying catherine and calmed everyone down. Okay, then. And i must have done this when i got back because it was the only time i read my diary, crossed out the words a crying. Catherine saw the sentence, read. The hostesses comforted and calmed and i crossed out really well and it took a of Light Holding up to the light to see those words and so clearly. You know, my, my, my older sister, my protector, that she was afraid and she was crying. I couldnt bear that. So that to be struck from the record and that was such a clue to me that the record i kept was so in complete and unreliable. You know, i think about all those times we spend in archives trying to read through what someone has out or erased. I just love that you fell into your own trap. Absolute alley dead light since you just led me right into it. Can we talk a little bit about your sister . You have such different takes. I mean, its so fascinating. Ill let you tell the story and i wont tell it for you. But you were a year apart. A year and a half apart. And you have completely different takes on what happens. And its almost as if you outsource your emotions to her some level. And you also reveal that theres a 17 year old boy who himself has a completely different take on whats happening. So did you and your sister. I know you didnt really talk about this over the years. Was there a code for. Were not going to talk about it. Did it just never come up or . You never in an airport together were one of you turned to the other and of looked away and said no, were not to discuss that. I mean, what was how did that even work . So sister catherine was youre right, just a year and a half older than i. She was the older sibling. 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. When we were released. She was the one who answered reporters questions. She was one who got us a hotel room in the capital city of a mom that night. So she did everything. And for that reason she had to be much more present and more conscious. And i think thats one of the reasons i was able to absorb everything going around me in the book. Think of her in a way as my hero. But, you know, she and i have talked about it of course, she read the book before it went to press and was was incredible and talked to me all through process of writing it. But, you know, she pointed out that just to call her a hero doesnt doesnt do justice to her own experience because she was a child, too. And it was traumatic her as well. And she was she was also a survivor of all of this. And so as far i should also this that after my sister read the book after was published she said the most wonderful she made the most wonderful formulation. She put it this way. So these are her words speaking. She said to me, you forgot and wanted to remember. I remembered and wanted to forget. Thats not in the book because it came after it was so absolutely right. And then, you know, you asked about love that you say thats not in the book. It is the book. Those words are not in the book. Those the quotation isnt. But absolutely right. Thats fascinating. Spirit of. That is absolutely of the book. Thank you for. That i wouldnt say there was any sort of code i would say that in 1970 children as a rule were not encouraged to talk about things that had happened to them once those things were over. That wasnt true of all the children who were on the plane there were some families who did make make a point of talking about the hijacking, but it was of the majority of of former hostages and fellow hostages spoke with that. The idea was to go back to school. And, you know, my father had gone to my school and my sisters and said, you know, martha wont be here at the opening of school. Shes on one of those hijacked planes. And, you know, my teachers did not even know they didnt even tell the teachers. I mean in this day and age, there would be counseling. And there were and my best who every time a teacher my name at the beginning of school at attendance had to say shes not is not here because shes on one of those planes but but could we save a seat, you know, in the front row . Because shes short, you know, and it was actually traumatic for her, for my best friend. But but nobody and i also got in touch with teachers when i was writing book, some of my seventh grade teachers, and they were astound. They had never been told that this had happened. And i think the first time just answered the last part of your question question. My sister and i never talked about. When 911 happened and i want to be very clear that 911 was very different. Our hijackers were marxistleninist. They were not muslims, jihadists, the popular front, an internal policy of causing harm to any hostage. And they they did not. And thats very different, obviously from 911. Nonetheless multiple hijacking on one day brought up a lot of remembrances. And thats when my and i said each other, im thinking about it again. And it was it was really hard. And then after that, it took me 15 more years to think about the book. No reason for that. Im sure i want to talk you i want to ask you further about your sister, but the one thing that was really struck me by the way youre traveling on the same passport. I didnt even know that was a thing. Yeah. And the fact that youre joined on that passport, exceptionally poignant, i think, as you read i mean, the two little faces on one traveled documents. Yeah. Anyway, just because you touched on them, i realized should really talk about the hijackers before we had much further. So their marxist, their marxistleninist from the popular front for the liberation of palestine. Do you want to explain why they want land the planes in jordan . Because i think that was unclear even at the time. Right. And i think their was unclear to most of you on the plane certainly to u. S. Children it would been. And can you tell us about their demands and how they impressed or failed to impress demands upon you, the hostages . Yeah. Thank you so much, stacie. This was a really important part of my research and one of the wonderful resources here at, the new york public library. Interestingly enough, the dora Jewish Division holds collections of an enormous number. Documents published by the institute for palestine, which is really a phenomenal set of volumes because it includes every position paper or every every letter that have appeared in an arabic newspaper and so it really along autobiographies from my captors and interviews they gave on film and books wrote it really helped me understand context that i didnt understand at the time. And i will say, speaking of sister who was not that much than i, but she seemed to she was so politically smart and she she grasped so much about about our palestinian and their plight. An