I try to imagine it. Did Christine Lee Hanson ask her mother, Sue Kim, to sit by the window? When she arrived with her mother and father, Peter, at their seats in Row 19, did the little girl swap her seat, 19D, with her mother’s, 19F, so she could watch as the plane, heavy with its own weight, lifted off the runway at Boston’s Logan Airport? Did she watch her city recede into the distance, growing smaller and smaller, and, with the wonder of a child, measure the shrinking buildings with her fingers until they seemed small enough to fit in her hands?
It was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The sky was, as in a children’s story, perfectly clear — almost suspiciously blue. Yet on such a beautiful autumn morning, there was no way to foresee the storm that was coming. The wisps of clouds the plane passed through as it climbed toward cruising altitude would have looked to a child not yet 2 1/2 years old, like scattered pieces of white cotton. At her age, the simplest things can inspire wonder: the colors of a flight attendant’s uniform, the reading light above her seat, even the steady roar of an aircraft engine, with its rhythm almost soothing enough to induce sleep.
But then five terrorists, armed with knives, razor blades and pepper spray, suddenly appeared in the cabin, shouting and stabbing flight attendants. How could a child process such a scene in her tiny mind?
Perhaps, for a moment, she thought it was a game. Perhaps her father, Peter, turned toward her, hid his suffocating terror behind a smile and assured her that everything happening around them was only a game. Perhaps he tried to persuade her, as Roberto Benigni does in his Oscar-winning masterpiece, “Life Is Beautiful,” that the madness and terror surrounding her were nothing more than a children’s game — and that there would be a prize at the end.
Set in Italy in 1943, after the country’s occupation by Nazi Germany, the film follows Guido, played by Benigni himself, who is arrested along with his family in the mass roundups of Italian Jews and deported by train to a Nazi concentration camp. His wife is separated from him and their son. To shield his young boy from the horror, Guido tells him that the camp is part of a game: If he hides successfully and earns 1,000 points, he will win the grand prize — a real tank.
Guido transforms the terrifying Nazi camp into an elaborate game for his son, a desperate defense against the terror surrounding them.
Did Peter, Christine’s father, do something similar with his daughter? Did fear drive him into the territory of the white lie, wrapping the little girl in a false sense of security as the plane, burdened with the hatred of its terrorist hijackers, plunged toward the south tower?
We do not know exactly what happened in the first minutes after the plane was hijacked. But investigations by the Sept. 11 commission indicate that after the hijackers stormed the cockpit and used pepper spray and knives, most passengers in first class and in the front and middle sections of the plane were forced to move toward the rear. Christine and her parents were among them. Did Peter manage to convince his daughter that this, too, was part of the game?
There, at the back of the plane, amid fear and the agonizing wait for death, Peter made two telephone calls to his father, according to the investigation. In the first, received by his father at 8:52 a.m. in Easton, Conn., Peter sounded composed.
“I think they’ve taken over the cockpit. One of the flight attendants has been stabbed, and someone else may have been killed in the front. The plane is making strange movements. Call United Airlines and tell them it’s Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles.”
Did Christine hear her father whisper those words to her grandfather? Did she understand what was happening, understand that this was no game? Did terror seize her as well, and did she grasp the enormity of what was unfolding? Was she holding her father’s hand? Clutching the edge of her mother’s dress? During the second call, her grandfather could hear the terror and trembling in his son’s voice.
“Things are getting worse, Dad. One of the flight attendants has been stabbed. They seem to have knives and pepper spray. They said they had a bomb. Things are getting really bad on the plane. People are throwing up and feeling sick. The plane is moving in violent, jerky motions. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we’re going down. I think they’re going to Chicago or somewhere and crash into a building. Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll happen very quickly. … Oh, God. Oh, God.”
Perhaps Christine was bewildered by everything happening around her. Perhaps she cried. Perhaps she wrapped her arms around her mother and father with all the strength she had and closed her eyes at the moment of impact. Perhaps, in the midst of that long embrace, her father whispered into her ear, just as Guido does in “Life Is Beautiful” in his final encounter with his son, when he hides him in a cupboard moments before he is executed.
“It’s the final round, sweetheart. Everyone is looking for us. Whatever you do, don’t make a sound. And don’t open your eyes until they’re all gone. When it’s over, we’ll have earned our 1,000 points and won the grand prize.”
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
