now to business stacy schiff is

the author of viera mrs. vladimir nabokov, which won the 2000 pulitzer prize for biography and saint-exupery a biography which was a finalist the 1995 pulitzer prize. her most recent include cleopatra a life and the witches, salem 92. she's 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 captain's 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. she's 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, i'm 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 i'm very, very happy to be back. it's very bittersweet, but i'm thrilled to be back with you. this book, happy, is about what happened to you in 1970, but it's 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 don't 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 israel's 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 let's leave it there. back to you. okay. so let's talk about the title for one second before we go any further, because a hijacking, you've 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 you've just basically. no, no, no, i'm 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 i'm 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 i'm 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 didn't know what it was because i reluctant to name. i think it is a name that you have to write it. that's part well that's 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 you're 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 didn't 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 wasn't exactly what i said but yeah. and i'll 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 it's it's history. it's also a personal history. did the subtitle go through multiple permutations or was that also fairly set from start? i didn't 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 i've come to like the title and i've come to think of it as my seventh grade composition. i'm 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, it's a very difficult book to structure in a way, because

we have you we have your perception of what happens. we have what's happening. this propulsive energy, what's 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 don't 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 that's 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 i've written, it was the hardest book to structure and the one i've never written full draft of a book and then restructured it. and doing that was difficult. but i'm 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 it's 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 didn't write about your diary. so do you to talk about that disconnect and i mean, it's 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, that's 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 we're writing about because they're 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 hadn't it since the hijacking,

but i'd 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. here's what i experienced and of course, that's 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 women's 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 wasn't 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 couldn't 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, it's so fascinating. i'll let you tell the story and i won't 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 it's almost as if you outsource your emotions to her some level. and you also reveal that there's a 17 year old boy who himself has a completely different take on what's happening. so did you and your sister. i know you didn't really talk about this over the years. was there a code for. we're 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, we're not to discuss that. i mean, what was how did that even work? so sister catherine was you're 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 wouldn't 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 that's 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 doesn't doesn't 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. that's not in the book because it came after it was so absolutely right. and then, you know, you asked about love that you say that's not in the book. it is the book. those words are not in the book. those the quotation isn't. but absolutely right. that's fascinating. spirit of. that is absolutely of the book. thank you for. that i wouldn't 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 wasn't 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 won't be here at the opening of school. she's on one of those hijacked planes. and, you know, my teachers did not even know they didn't 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 she's not is not here because she's on one of those planes but but could we save a seat, you know, in the front row? because she's 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 marxist-leninist. they were not muslims, jihadists, the popular front, an internal policy of causing harm to any hostage. and they they did not. and that's very different, obviously from 911. nonetheless multiple hijacking on one day brought up a lot of remembrances. and that's when my and i said each other, i'm 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. i'm 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 you're traveling on the same passport. i didn't even know that was a thing. yeah. and the fact that you're 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 marxist-leninist 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 didn't 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. and she feel like she understood it so much better than did so. the popular front, founded in 1967, right after the 67 war, and that was just three years after the plo, the palestine liberation, had been founded. the popular front were were a younger generation consider themselves revolutionaries were a minority but influential in their leadership was drawn from

the well-to-do to doctors, lawyers, intellect. they spoke multiple along with arabic english, french, german. they recruited membership from the refugee camps and from much poorer classes. but leadership was an extraordinary class of people. their goal was a single democratic, pluralistic, secular state of equal rights for -- and christians and atheists as they were they. one of their strategies was hijacking and they were among the minority of the plo most of the plo, and they pillow's leadership including yasser arafat at the time, did not approve of hijacking of the taking of innocent civilians and eventually the popular front did renounce that strategy but they were not at all representative of the plo in that way jordan you know that that took me a long time to figure out jordan was a funny nation.

in 1970, allies of both the united states and, israel. but of course, jordan and israel were enemies of each other. the popular front made its in the capital city of amman. they picked jordan because it was an easy from which to make their own strikes. israel on their own, on military strikes. but the jordanian and palestinian population was it was a complicated it wasn't jordanians versus palestinians but i would most of the population both jordanian and palestinians did not like or approve of the popular front being in control of city of amman. they kind of made it a state within a state. but of course many of the palestinians who lived in jordan had been displaced from their homes in 1948 and then again in 1967, because they settled on the west bank. so complicated set of population

as of hostilities of ships and the jordan desert course was a place where we could land the commandos could be in control of the of the planes that the tanks the jordanian army were surrounding us and we could see them. so the jordanian army was in a war with the popular front. so the city of amman was a war zone, but we could see the tanks, the horizon. and of course, somebody explained that to me. i had absolutely idea about any of this. and i remember of the one of the young women who befriended us saying, look, you see those tanks out? that's the jordanian army. they're on our side. and i just it was so hard for to understand that. so the theories and the ideologies are really going over your head. but one line that reverberates throughout the book, i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to make mess of it right now. the friendly yes country with friendly people. can you just tell it? yes. it's just it's such a yes straight to the heart. so thank you also for bringing that up. when we were up in the air

during hijacking, one of the commandos took over the p.a. system and said, you were landing in a friendly country with friendly people. and i do remember thinking, oh, good you know, then yes, they'll they'll know that i need to get home to my dad so under -- were waiting for and they were everybody was was waiting for and you know the thing about writing from memory is that you have to corroborate memory every single person i talked to and every newspaper i read or nearly every somebody quoted that line. so all of the hostage remembered that line. so i knew that it had been said and i will say that i hinted at this before, but some of the hostages had very frightening experiences, their interactions with our some of them were interrogated. the interrogations were to determine people's connection to the state of israel in order to determine would be a valuable hostage at the same time, the commandos quite kind to the

children and mike spearing says of them we're we're positive. so, for example there was one day when my sister again were in the desert sitting next to me and she was crying and one of the men stopped by a and he looked at her and he said, don't cry. we have children. and that felt very fatherly to her. and of course, we missed our father terribly. and when we were let outside the plane for air and exercise some of the commandos jumped rope with us, gave the kids, piggyback rides and little kids. we were too old for that. and i also have a memory of know we were in the middle of a desert. and so along with the tanks on the horizon, there was, a mirage of water. and it looked like were surrounded by water. and one of the commandos who understood the science of mirages, you know, knelt down on the sand with the kids and told them, you know, why why you're seeing water and that it's not real. so not only were they kind to us, but my sister and i were interested in. the stories that they told, it was very to them that the

hostages understood and their history and their stories and, you know i have to say, my sister and i were very different from many americans who went to israel in 1970, which was years after the 67 war. we were there because mother was a dancer. we have we haven't gone to hebrew. we didn't have zionist ties, didn't have a sense of the narratives that other people brought with them. and we were interested in the stories and we felt sorry for commandos, many of whom had lost their homes in. 1948. there were also holocaust survivors on the plane, and we felt terribly sorry for them as well. so as kids, we it was like we felt sorry for everyone and we wanted to solve everyone's problems, but we couldn't think of a way for everything to work out for israel, palestine. we just we think of couldn't think of a solution and that was a great surprise that that surprisingly but we wanted to and and felt sad for everybody

and of course not all the hostages were sympathetic or sympathetic to, our captors, but some who had grown up in zionist households were interested in in what they were learning and what they heard, even if ultimately, they kept their own views and as we sit here tonight, a statue of santa super, his little prince is being installed on fifth avenue across from the french services and. i bring this up just randomly because bring this up because threaded through your entire book in the most intriguing and beguiling manner are lines from the little prince, which is a book you were given by your stepfather to write that summer, which you had pretty much seemed to have committed to memory. so i have two questions. how did that happen? and does is the little prince now for you a book also about having been hostage in the desert for six days? i mean, how the two things completely braided together at this point in your mind. thank you so much for asking that, stacie. and i have to say, salvatore

mentioned this, but i don't know if people pick this up. it's really special to be talking to you. you're the biographer of author of little prince saint-exupery. so which and that biography was also important to me as as i was puzzling out the meaning of book. so thank you. so, yes, you're absolutely right. in my diary i found words telling me that i had read the little prince that summer, summer before the hijacking that my israeli stepfather given us the book read it to us and that i had read it many times. and then when i met with one of my fellow hostages, she was a 19 year old woman from brooklyn who was very, very kind to my sister and me and i met with her while i was the book, and she gave me the account she had written while we were. well, we were actually, i should say, when she got home, she wrote out her account and she it to me and you know, i said to her, i said, i can scan this on my phone. and she just handed me sheaf of papers and said no. apparently saved this for you for 48 years and gave me her

original copy in her account. and i didn't remember this. she about my sister. she and my sister and i sitting by the open door of the airplane one evening gazing out at the desert and the stars and talking about the book the little prince. so given all that, of course, i reread the book, which i hadn't read in decades, and if there's anybody who doesn't know, it's it's a story about an aviator who crashes in the sahara desert and then the book is about his encounters with this strange character. he calls the little. and as i was reading, i felt there was so much that was connected to the things i was writing about. and so you're right, stacie, almost every chapter i quote something from the little prince. and i just like to give a couple of short examples of some of my favorites. one is when i write about my sister and i learning about the plight of i quote line where the aviator in the little prince

says and once again, without understand why i felt a queer sense sorrow and that so describes how i felt at 12 and then another line that i loved so much when my sister and i arrived at kennedy airport, my father and stepmother were and i talked to my stepmother about it. and what she remembered was that we were quite cheerful and she put it this. so these are my stepmother's words. she said, no tears, no crying ready to go. and then there's a line in the little prince that i that invoke at that point where the aviator says. oh, about the little prince. nothing about him. any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert. so it was just so perfect in there. there are examples like that for every chapter, the book the little prince is an enigmatic story. i think the way i think about it now is that it gave me words to describe feelings that i wasn't able to describe not only at the

time, but also partly when i was writing the book. so that's what the book is to me now. thank you. okay. so finally decide after a few years to into this miasma of your past can you talk about i mean, i can't even begin to imagine the emotional that was required. how were you prepared yourself for going to the motion picture research room of the national archives and i and to watch the footage and thought we would i would set you up to read little bit from page 214 which maybe you could just set up that visit back to sort of watch that person on the screen. sure. so thank you. it was hard doing. the research was quite difficult and i often did have to prepare myself and at one point, i'll just i'll just tell this anecdote. i was i did a lot of research in the state department in, the national archives. there were just troves and troves telegrams. and i read through all of telegrams and i came to the end of. september 1970 folder and the next folder started in october. and all the hostages home by

october. so i didn't think i'd find in there, but when i opened it, i found something that i remembered quite well, which was a sheaf of papers, literature. our captors had given out for the hostages read spelling out their plight. i'd always remembered the opening words which something like ladies and, gentlemen, i feel it is my duty. explain why. why we have done what we have done. and i saw those words and i scanned the entire document and it took me two years to go back read it it was just it was just too much because i remembered sitting on the plane it so what you're talking about stacie is is a moment and i will happy to read this passage when i was in what's called the motion research room of the national archives and had a wonderful, wonderful researcher there, helped me find these cia tapes and it was it was kind of raw that the press had completely out of order and then turned to

the cia. so here's i say about it. on a summer day, nearly 50 years later, i watch unedited news footage in the motion picture research room of the national archives. the scenes appear in haphazard order. so the three planes had sat only about 30 miles from amman the trip out of the desert, took a couple of hours, and it was early afternoon in the capital when we arrived watching the tapes. see some of what i remember. the building stands against the hilly terrain beyond the city's downtown palm trees reaching to the top of the ground floor. the j in the sign for hotel jordan intercontinental sports, a 1960s style curling you soldiers director a vehicle a commando holds a megaphone horns cameraman run beside van 13 minutes in the tapes, which is to the inside of a van. passengers displaying expressionless caution. a photographer has thrust his

camera straight into one of the open windows. and there we are. i sit impassively, hand cheek, shielding me, obscuring me. catherine straight into the lens, serious responsible, afraid. she twists around to look out the windows, scanning the commotion, planning what to do, thinking how can i keep us from being separated? how can i keep martha safe? tentatively, i look around two large cameras and microphones surround us, shooting pictures, rapid. another reporter's hands holding a camera come in through the window, snapping one photo after another right there on screen. before my eyes is the 12 year old girl i been trying to conjure. but there's that feeling again. despite all the documents despite all the people i've talked to, many of whom, after all, don't remember in me, there's the feeling the hijacking must have happened to someone else studying the moving

image of that girl makes me feel more than anything else, like his story in coming upon a visual representation of her long researched subject for the first time, watching the tape. all these years later, i write down i can't believe i was there. it's an extraordinary passage, martha. really. it really is. so i'm going to unfortunately throw a question at you. you're not going to want to hear is after that immensely emotional? do you think any of this has anything do with what you went on to do for a living? you're not at all the first person to ask me that, stacy, but know, i never thought about it until. the first person asked me that. and i think the first person was my agent, wendy strassman, who couldn't be here this evening. you know, i was i was an impertinent question. no, it's it's actually a great question. i english was my favorite in high school and i just figured i'd be an english in college and then it's kind of a roundabout journey. i took an introductory religion class i loved it. and that might have had do something with something to do

with being brought up in a such a secular household and being interested in world religions. so i became a religion major and then i got a master's degree at harvard divinity school studying comparative. and while i was a student, grad student, i had a i had a work study job at the schlesinger library and the history of women. and i found that i being deeply in people's personal papers and daily lives, and i liked that more than the abstractions of religion and philosophy. so that was my journey from major to religion, major to historian. and then i went on to get my ph.d. in history, but i had never put the hijacking into that narrative. and i don't know how it fits, but but i am not at all dismissing the fact it might fit in there. just an impertinent question. and now another million dollar question. we always, first and foremost to the diaries as historians, because, of course, that's the beating of the matter. right. and that's presumably the unvarnished truth in some way.

so does this make you read history or write it any differently? and in your research, you up against some enduring untruths about the ordeal? in fact, it wasn't true that the popular front detained only the jewish hostages, for example and as late as 2020, i think the jerusalem was getting the story wrong. so where does all of that misinformation leave you, an historian? and and how do you history if you can't trust memory? that's just a tiny question. oh, just a tiny question. so, first of all, historians all know questions. yeah, historians all know that memory is unreliable. so know for reading court testimony and are sworn to tell the truth. we still know based on memory. so that didn't surprise me because my own documents were my sources. it was, in a way, utterly shocking that memory could so unreliable. and i knew that certainly from writing my book about lincoln, because one of the things i did in that book was the

reminiscences. lincoln's assassination were so wildly off that i decided when wrote the book that i would only use the sources that happened within weeks and months of the assassinations, the letters and diaries that people wrote so that just made it so real to me. how unreliable sources can be. and your point about enduring myths was was was also a very important one to me, was one of the enduring myths was, as you mentioned, that our captors immediately sent all non--- away and detained only -- on the plane. that's not what happened. but but to be fair i think that myth endured because what happen was very confusing and it was very confusing to the hostages. so i have some empathy for that misunderstanding. there was one evening where the captors read out certain and certain people from our plane permitted to leave for the city of amman. and everybody who left was not jewish. and that was very clear.

at the same time, there were many -- who still detained on our plane. and that same night -- from the other plane, which was a swiss airplane, were permitted to go to amman. there was also a group of about 50 hostages who were held two weeks longer, and about two thirds of them were non---. so it was it was complicated because that that night when only -- left plane, the people who left were not jewish, i should say the people who left were not jewish, but the people on the plane were -- and non--- that was that was and frightening to people. so that i think that myth from that from that moment and those memories which were hard to erase. but when i reading other sources, interviews, etc., constantly came upon hostages giving interviews, saying, you know, after that evening when that happened, our captors never between -- and non--- again and again, you know, captors were human beings. and some of them some of them made strategic mistakes.

know. and afterwards, this was something that came out quite a lot, you know, by asking hostages, are you jewish? which was a way determine connection to the state of israel your value was a hostage that was that a very poor choice of question because it was it was very frightening to many of the -- were on the plane, especially if you were a holocaust survivor. so very confusing complicated, nuanced kind of situation. but it was very to me in the book and i do this to make clear that that wasn't the object of our captors. so along same lines, an audience member would like to know, have you thought about your next book and no pressure and i'm thinking about going back to lincoln writing more memoirs. yeah, great. thank you for that. i always take a long time between projects. so i'm not feeling pressure that it's such an interesting experience writing about my own memories and writing about 20th century history. so part of me just longs to go

back to the 19th century where none of my historical actors are alive and i can read their documents and do what i will with them and a where i feel, you know, the historian, has a certain amount of control over that. so it's very possible i will back to the 19th century. on the other hand, you know, writing this and and and talking to friends from my past who knew me then has been very important. a tiny little part of me thought about writing fiction, and my agent said, oh, martha, do that. i think it. but she's not here tonight, is she? just listening, you know? i think there's a way in which everybody wants to write a novel. i don't think i'll do that, but i don't know yet. i'm not if i if i have enough time my life, i might stay in the 19th century. and also and write something more about my own experiences. do you think in a way, it has reshaped how you read documents. and so i think it has and i, i mean, there's nothing i didn't know about reading documents, but what i said before, how

stark it became, how clear it was, especially about what i left out of my diary because we read especially in the 19th century, you know people wrote for luminous letters with so much. when i was researching book about personal responses to lincoln's assassins, and i just drunk up those details. but and i knew that i knew that people were omitting things from their letters. but now i wonder more than i did before. what will we never know. i only knew because i was the person who erased from the record. you anticipate the next question? what was the most difficult thing to leave out of the book? oh, what a wonderful question. yeah, i this comes very much from my experience and again with my editor and with two friends who are here this evening who a first draft of the book, you know who you are. and of course bruce, my beloved husband who's here, who also read early drafts of the book and all of those people said to

me, you're writing too much, about other people and not enough about yourself. and one of my friends who's here in the second row, he gave me this piece of advice. he said, you tell us the reactions of, eight people, before you come to yourself. and then my other friend who's in the audience tonight said to me, i got worried when you disappeared from the manuscript. and so i think i wanted to tell a multifaceted story with my experience and, everybody else's experiences. i realized over time and, over many drafts, that i needed really center my own experience. and although that was the right thing to do, it was hard for me to say goodbye. all of those other voices, someone asks a very good question. what have you done with your diary and have you gone back to it subsequent life? so i have that diary and i have many, many other diaries i kept i started guess in 1968 more

reliable diaries. well you know what's funny is that i kept a diary probably into my mid-thirties and then i stopped and you know, i think my life circumstances were different. i had my beloved husband who i could to every evening instead of writing in my diary. and i think that's part of that's why a lot of us, if we have sympathetic partners or friends stop writing in diaries. so i have this long run of diaries and you i have spent some time reading through them, especially from my teen years in my college years. all kinds interesting stuff in there. i'm saving them. they're in a box. you know, i talk to my other historian about this. do we save our diaries and then when we're gone, somebody will do something with them or we burn them and throw them all out before go? or do we is it i mean, once i'm gone, somebody else could them out. fine with me. my friends often joke about

martha hodes papers, which sends an utter shiver down spine. of course, when i'm gone, i care. so those diaries are important to me now. but i don't know what their fate will be. i heard the other night that george kennan had kept a diary since the age of 11 until the age of 101. so i think you have a way to go still, if you're vast research. how many did you have to know and did you only use english language resource resources. yeah, great question. so one of the places i went to research was the international red cross archives in geneva switzerland, and almost all of those archives were in french. i scanned i do have a working knowledge of french and so i was able to translate them myself. and with the help of, you know, a translation program online and for tricky with the help of scholars and coleman fellows actually who spoke french there were also documents in german and i don't speak well enough german in any way or read it

well enough to know, but i also use translation and imposed upon of mine many the tapes i listened to had arabic speaking in them and. i don't speak arabic and i don't read it in any way. and so i was fortunate be able to hire graduate students. the middle east studies department at nyu and what was so interesting is there are so many different dialects and so i had to find graduate student who was familiar with the jordanian and palestinian dialects of arabic and they came into my office with me and i played the tapes and they translated it was quite a slow and rough process because there so much noise on the tape and people were speaking over one another, but they were incredibly, incredibly helpful to me and i was very glad that i was able to do that but really my only reading and working knowledge is my best is only with english. and so i had to use other resources. one of the great questions that hangs over the reader's is what you did all day, right? i mean, this is six. this is your own six day war and

you really you're hazy about it. and then only at the end of book, it's like page 280. you mentioned tranquilizers. yes. so yes. can you tell us about that? and do you have actually any physical memory of having taken them? so it's funny? because i asked a lot of fellow hostages, what did we do all day? and the answer i got was nothing or i can't remember. and then the more and more i did research and that was my memory too. i had memory of what we did. i had some but it's hazy and that's in the opening of the book. but as i read more interviews with past hostages kind of put together a sense of what we we read, whatever there was on the plane. we talked we played cards, we played guessing games people's birthdays around and we celebrated people prayed. we sang songs. one of the hit numbers that summer was, peter, paul and mary leaving on a jet plane. we sang leaving on a jet plane. can you listen to that song today?

it's actually it's funny. so that's such a great question. we sang living on a jet plane. and one of the other lines is know when i'll be back again. and some people it saying it as don't know if i'll back again. we sang it sitting on the sand. the hostages laughed. we thought it was so funny. now when i hear the song, it makes me quite sad. i remember that that 12 year old girl trying to be happy and wanting, you know, wanting her parents not to worry about her so. we did all of those things, but didn't have a lot of memory of i didn't have a lot of memory even of things like how hard it was during the day, cold. it was at night. and don't forget, there were no cell, no internet, no cell phones. so didn't know if the world even about us and, the press you know, the press was holed up at the air in a hotel in amman, which was the middle of a war zone. and reporters would come out to the desert and talk to our captors and to us. and at one point, a reporter

asked one of our crew members, or i should say. no, the crew member asked the reporter, we're on a news blackout. don't know what's going on in the world, what's going on in the world. and the reporter said, you are the news. you are the only news. but there was no way to even know if our parents or anybody knew what was happening to us. so we were really in kind of isolated situation that that feels very unfamiliar in the present day. when you were front page news for a week, as i discovered, no sense whatsoever, no sense at all. no sense at all. on a related note, i don't think i let you off the stage without mentioning the alice kessler harris coincidence, because it's just an insane coincidence. so have you thought about how she handled the aftermath and about how differently the yeah. so alternate scenario. oh, absolutely. alice kessler harris is an eminent, distinguished historian at university and allison, i didn't know this about each other until leave. david greenberg is in the audience. this and david knew both of us and is the one who informed us.

alice been on one of the other hijacked planes. she had been on the el-al flight that was foiled in midair, and she had been traveling with her six year old daughter. they were back from from spending time in israel. and when alice and i learned this about each other. we we got together for coffee and told each other. our different stories. and of course, she was aghast that i had been held hostage in the desert a plane for a week. i turn was aghast at what she had gone in the el al plane, because what had happened in that plane was, the hijacking was foiled because. the captain had put the plane into a nosedive. the passengers were seatbelts it because they had just made a stop and the hijackers stood up and the captain knew that. and so he sent the plane a nosedive to keep the hijackers balance. and then they fell. and then people restrained them. but what happened? there was also an armed guard on, the plane, who shot one of the hijackers. that was the only death hijacker died. and this was in the row ahead of

alice and her six year old daughter. so what experienced was dishes, crashing luggage, falling down, blood everywhere. and alice's daughter, i write about this in the book turned to her mother and said you mean i'm never going to see my daddy again? so i was equally aghast. alice was home within 24 hours. her experience so, so horrific. one thing that alice did that i'm very admiring of was she talked to her daughter about hijacking when got home. and that's not something my did. my parents felt it would be better not to it up and i admired very much about alice that she that she made sure it wasn't something that was everything's okay now and was just forgotten. thanks for that one of the one of the things i think is most startling about the book or the way you've written the book is how little anger is on any level. and somebody in the audience asks a sort of. i was going to ask you how

worked in your family? but one of the members of the audience asks sort of similar question, which is if it were in your power, would you grant the hijackers amnesty? and if not what would you consider to be a fitting punishment for them? such a hard question. i should also say that our hijackers were never apprehended. we're a signal that we will. we need to wrap up. thank you, lauren. so we don't know who were it's it's not within my power. i'll repeat again that. the strategy of hijacking was not favored by members of the plo. they were a minority. you know, we something called stockholm syndrome, which is never medically recognized. condition would not apply any of our hostages that was named after hostages who were in connected to their captors and want to be released. not true. but anybody out in the desert. so we did we did want to go home, but we we also empathized

with them and my sister got home, she said in this taped interview, she said the words, no resentment. and i thought that was very interesting. and my father said that he felt sorry for and empathized with them, not their strategy and their tactics. so do with that as you wish. and why don't we end here? i'm drew faust when she's talking about her memoir, which is out right now, has said she hoped the book would qualify as a history memoir. yes. so she grounds experiences in the sweep of, a larger set of events so and means combine the kind of personal awakening with the march of social progress. so did you have any similar ambition here? what do you what did you want the reader take away from the book? yeah, i think those words from drew faust are wonderful in many ways. my models were other historians or other writers or scholars written about their own lives. they were. they were the people emulated. some came after, some came before, but many of them were were common fellows, i have to

say. annette gordon-reed her wonderful book, juneteenth. ava chin wonderful book called not st, that's just out burckhardt bulger, his book called fatherland about the nazi party and his family edward ball writing about his called life of a klansman. and of course saul reading list. it is. and of course, a poster there while she was incredible book stay true his memoir so all of these people who were either writing the same time i was or before or where you want to research your own life as a historian a scholar in order to understand more than just your memories and just the context. one of the things that my editor said to me was, you know, a memoir, just here's what i remember, but he said, you know, you want to do something. here's what i remember. here's how, here's how it fits in with all of this deep research, other people's memories, other people's experiences, captors, all of the resources i drew upon in order

to tell. still only my story but to tell it in the truest possible. i think we can do better than that. the book is sensational. it will for sale outside the doors, the holidays coming. martha is here to sign for you thank you so much for coming. state.