Here is an adventure Dalia and I had just after we got married. In August of 1969, we were returning to Israel from a trip to East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), and then we were to go to the United States, when this little(?) problem developed. It is very interesting. Read it, even though it is long. I guarantee you will read it to the end in one sitting.

ADVENTURE IN ISRAEL & AFRICA:

1968-69

In June, 1968, I arrived in Israel where I joined the Hapoel Tel-Aviv basketball team. Hapoel Tel-Aviv had sent a representative to New York to sign a few Jewish basketball players to play in Israel.

On my second day in Israel, two guys from Hapoel took me on a tour to the Gaza Strip. I had no idea where we were going, or if it was dangerous. They said they knew a shortcut, so we drove on an unpaved road for quite a distance. All of a sudden, Israeli army tanks and jeeps surrounded the three of us, and we were told to get out of our car and keep our hands up. Uzi sub-machine guns were aimed at us the whole time. My two friends explained who we were and what we were doing there, but since the soldiers had already reported us, they were told to bring us to the commanding officer in Gaza City.

One of the soldiers had an Israeli newspaper, which had a picture of me as a new player for Hapoel Tel-Aviv. Sports are very big in Israel, and most of the soldiers who were guarding us were Hapoel fans, so I became their instant hero. They couldn't do enough for me, one even giving me his Uzi sub-machine gun, and letting me shoot a few times into the desert. When we arrived in Gaza City, the commander explained to us we had been traveling on a forbidden military road, and that earlier in the day, his soldiers had removed two land mines from the road. The rest of that trip was, comparatively, uneventful.

My team played, and won the Israeli championship, against Hapoel's main rival, Maccabi Tel-Aviv. This was the biggest game of the year, and was played in a large outdoor stadium, and was televised on Israeli television. This was the first year Hapoel had ever beaten Macabbi, and I had a very good game. I, then, tried out for, and was selected to be on, the Israeli National team. We played in Turkey and Romania and won the European Cup championship in Salonika, Greece in 1969. If this were an Olympic year, I would have played in the Olympics.

On October 27, 1968, I married my Hebrew teacher, Dalia. We lived in Ramat-Aviv, close to Tel-Aviv University where Dalia studied History and taught Hebrew. We lived down the street from the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir. Our house became a center to my American friends on the Israeli team, and many American students from Dalia's class.

Our honeymoon was spent in Eilat, on the Red Sea. In the midst of our celebration dinner at an expensive French restaurant, Eilat was bombed from the Jordanian city of Akaba. The city became dark and most men from the city ran to join their defense units. Both of us remained in the restaurant, surrounded by candles, and finished eating our French dinner. The walk back to our hotel was in pitch black darkness with soldiers running all around, and was not a pleasure, but it only was a hint of what the future had for us.

It seemed, adventure was always a part of our lives. So, it was clear that we would choose for our second honeymoon to travel on a student flight to East Africa. The trip went through Turkey and Greece.

We planned to move to the United States at the end of August, 1969 as I had a teaching job in New York, beginning in September. In Tel-Aviv, we went to the student travel office and found very inexpensive flights to East Africa. We felt this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and decided to travel there and vacation in Africa, for about a month, before our return flight to New York.

We landed in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and rented a car there. We planned to tour Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on our own. When we landed, a woman approached Dalia and told her she would be better off to remove her Jewish necklace.

Nairobi was then a quite modern city, mostly African, but having a very high percentage of Indians. We stayed at a hotel recommended by Israelis. It was small, but, surprisingly, introduced us to the British lifestyle and opulent food, which was a mixture of African and British. Everyday, we were shocked by the unusual kinds of food served in unusual ways by British-mannered African servants. There were so many waiters, they seemed to outnumber the guests.

Just five minutes out of the city, and you were in real Africa; unpaved roads, open bush country teeming with wild animals, half-naked natives armed with spears. We saw countless lions, elephants, giraffes, baboons, water buffalo, thousands upon thousands of gazelles, zebras and wildebeests. African women passed by, wearing only skirts and covering their faces from the camera, but not the least embarrassed with their bare breasts.

We went to the main national parks, from Lake Mangara, where we saw lions sleeping in trees, to Ngoorungooru Crater, where the animals were so numerous and close you could smell them near you. At times, we took African guides to search for animals in the parks. We found cheetahs in the bush with their cubs, and, once, we chased (or were chased by), a rhinoceros. A poisonous cobra snake terrified our guide so much, he couldn't stop shaking for an hour. Baboons climbed onto our car and wouldn't let us out. We came across a recently killed antelope, with vultures and hyenas fighting over its remains.

One morning, we awoke in our cramped Volkswagen to find ourselves surrounded by elephants. We went boating on Lake Victoria, where the shore was pink with flamingos and other rare birds. At night, scary sounds kept you awake. Some hotels put bonfires around their hotels to keep wild animals away, and, while sitting on the verandas, and being served drinks, you could catch a glimpse of yellow eyes of some wild "cats" in the dark. One hotel was situated overlooking a water hole, where you could sit and watch animals come to drink. We sailed on the Blue Nile River between the crocodiles, hippos and elephants.

We got into an automobile accident in Tanzania, and were almost put in jail because they didn't believe we had auto insurance. Finally, we were able to convince them, and they let us go.

To get a real taste of Africa, we decided to travel on one of their buses to Entebbe, in Uganda, an overnight trip among naked women nursing babies and throwing up the entire trip. The rope holding our camera, which was tied to my arm while we slept, was cut and the camera stolen. The bus stopped along the way in the bush, and people got out to cook by a fire. The sights and sounds and smells on that bus ride gave us a real taste of Africa. We did not travel like tourists, but actually ate and slept and lived with real Africans. The Africa we saw was beautiful, colorful, and alive.

In Kampala, Uganda, we went to the opening of a movie that was filmed in Africa, "The Cardinal." Sitting close to us was the President, Idi Amin, and his bodyguards. Even though the atmosphere in the city and beyond was quite calm, you could feel the fear in the air, especially against Europeans and Indians. Idi Amin became a ruthless dictator, and was responsible for killing tens of thousands of his own countrymen.

One night, we stayed at a youth hostel in the middle of nowhere. There were some men who had just killed a gazelle and were cooking it over a campfire. They gave me some of the meat, which was quite stringy, but tasty. Dalia was afraid to taste it. These men were probably poachers, and what they were doing was against the law. Poaching is a very serious problem in Africa, and the government is spending a lot of money to stop it and to punish those who they catch.

We visited the port city of Mombassa, which Tarzan used as his escape route to India in his stories. In Mombassa, we stayed in a hotel with an Italian film crew who just came from making a documentary on the pygmies, and they were very excited about the encounter. The pygmies were considered very dangerous, still using poisonous arrows, and the film crew advised us,, not to visit them. We went to the beach in Mombassa, and, as cold as it was, I had to swim in the Indian Ocean.

We loved to visit the colorful African market places. The women were all dressed in bright African print dresses, and the fruits and vegetables were big, ripe and beautiful. For the women, going to the market place was a social event, so they all had to look their best. The children had never seen red hair before, and many rushed up to Dalia to touch her hair.

Most tourists were British, and we were amazed to find, in the middle of the bush, British sitting around tables having proper drinks in the sunset. Africans were their servants, and wouldn't move or talk when a white person was present. It was exactly as you would picture what life was like in the British colonies in the 1800s. In the hotels, in the middle of the bush, four or five African servants could serve you, by candlelight, while English women walked around dressed in fancy evening gowns.

A large part of our time was spent collecting African souvenirs (wood statues, jewelry and fabrics). Some of the shop owners got to know us, and, needless to say, we spent every penny we had, and even shipped goods to back New York to be paid for C.O.D. when we arrived.

We spent all of what little money we had touring the countries and buying souvenirs. We knew we were leaving the next day, and were being picked up at the airport in Israel, so we arrived at the airport with no money. When we got to the airport in Nairobi, we were told there would be a ten-hour delay because of airplane trouble. We had no money left to buy anything to eat, but we met someone at the airport who was a salesman in one of the stores in which we bought a lot of goods. He remembered us and lent us money so we could get by.

Because of the plane trouble, we had to take a different plane. The original plan was for the plane to go directly from Nairobi to Tel-Aviv, non-stop. The new plane's flight plan was to go from Nairobi to Tel-Aviv, with a stop to re-fuel in Khartoum, Sudan. Sudan, being an Arab country, went along with the Arab boycott of Israel, and would not allow any plane going to Israel to fly over, or land in, its country. The airline (Sterling Airlines, from Denmark), then changed the flight plan, so the new flight would leave Nairobi, re-fuel in Khartoum, land in Cyprus, and continue to its final destination in Copenhagen. All passengers going to Israel would get off in Cyprus and take another plane to Israel.

Little did we know, all these flight plans, and changing of flight plans, would lead to the adventure of a lifetime.

There were twelve passengers on the plane who were going to Israel, with Dalia being the only Israeli. All had passports from their countries of citizenship, and Dalia had her passport from Israel. Also, to leave Israel, citizens must get permission from the army, so Dalia had to carry her army release papers.

When we boarded the plane in Nairobi, they announced the plane would be re-fueling in Khartoum. We informed the stewardess and the captain, Dalia was Israeli, and was not allowed to enter an Arab country. They said not to worry, the flight plans were changed, and we would not be going against the Arab boycott. They said no one would get off the plane in Khartoum, no one would be questioned, and no passports would be examined. We would just land, re-fuel, and take off. We were still very worried, because this was soon after the Six-Day War, and there was a lot of violent anti-Israeli feeling among Arabs at this time.

What we didn't realize, and discovered later, was, the flight crew had partied the night before, had a lot to drink, and never wrote down the changes to the original flight plan. So, when we landed in Khartoum, the Sudanese read in the flight plan the plane was going directly to Israel from Khartoum. The Sudanese, then, impounded the plane and refused to allow it to leave, and all passengers were told to leave the plane and go to the in-transit waiting room, where we were surrounded by soldiers waving their rifles at us. At this point, no one knew what was happening, but we realized something was wrong. After two hours, we were all asked to turn in our passports and airplane tickets. I didn't know what to do. I realized Dalia's Israeli passport could mean trouble, so I only turned in my own passport and hid Dalia's. I flushed her military release papers down the toilet.

The captain, then, informed us as to what was occurring. We again told the captain Dalia was Israeli, and we were worried. If she were found out, they would probably arrest her, maybe as a spy. He told us he could not tell his main office in Copenhagen when he called them, because he was constantly being guarded and his calls were being monitored. The flight engineer took Dalia's passport and hid it on the plane, and said they would have to take the plane completely apart in order to find it.

When the Sudanese examined everyone's passports and plane tickets, they found eleven passengers going to Israel, and sixty-seven going to Copenhagen. They did not know about Dalia, although all seventy-eight passengers and the entire flight crew were aware Dalia was Israeli. Fortunately, there were mostly young people on the plane who were not afraid of getting involved. They all worked to protect Dalia. Whenever the Sudanese tried to count the passengers, many of the students would start walking around to confuse the count. We were convinced they never got an accurate count. Also, there was a baby on board who was listed in her parents' passports. This added to the confusion.

To add to our troubles, one of the students on the plane was from India and was a Moslem. He told some other students he was very upset we were tricking "his people" (most Sudanese were Moslems) by not turning in Dalia's passport and by not letting them get an accurate count. He went to the plane's captain and told him he was going to tell the Sudanese about Dalia if Sterling Airlines did not give him $10,000. The captain told him, he would have to contact the airline office in Copenhagen and tell them. He then came to us and told us about the student. It was decided, he would continue to stall, while several students and the flight engineer would stay near him constantly to keep him from approaching the Sudanese, if he tried.

The Sudanese then called the eleven passengers who had plane tickets to Israel. They took us, one at a time, into a separate room where they questioned us They wanted to know why we were going there, had we ever been there before, did we have relatives there, were we in the army. While being questioned, we were menaced by soldiers waving rifles at us. We were separated from the others for a long while, and were scared the Arabs' anti-Israeli feelings were also anti-Jewish. All eleven of us were Jewish, and thought of how Jews were separated from the gentile population in Nazi Germany and elsewhere.

Khartoum is in the middle of the Sahara desert. When we looked out the windows, we saw a lot of sand, and we saw soldiers at every window - with rifles aimed at us. These soldiers were black Africans, and most had beauty scars carved into their faces. It was oppressively hot. Some of the Danish girls put on bikinis and went outside on the deck to sunbathe. The soldiers guarding us had never seen anything like that before, and were almost mesmerized by the display of skin.

The Sudanese would not allow anyone to make any telephone calls or speak to any ambassador, so, for several hours, no one outside of Khartoum knew what had become of our plane. When a different plane landed, and the passengers went into the in-transit waiting room, we tried to find Americans to tell of our plight. We spoke to a few people before the Sudanese stopped us and hurried us into a separate room. Eventually, the British Ambassador came to see what was going on, but we did not want to speak to him, because he was walking arm-in-arm with a Sudanese officer, and both were laughing and having a good time. We didn't trust him and he didn't even want to talk to any of us, but his friend was just giving him a tour. In the past, Britain had generally been very sympathetic to the Arabs.

The next day, an official from the United Nations was allowed to talk to us. We told him about Dalia and her passport. He said we were very smart and lucky, because they would certainly have held her, in order to show support for their Arab neighbors. (The Sudan is situated next to Egypt in northern Africa; the northern part of the Sudan is Arab and the southern part is black African. The Arabs run most of the country. All the army officers we saw were Arabs, and all the soldiers were black.) The U.N. official told us the United States did not have an embassy in the Sudan, although there was an American Information Office in Khartoum, which looked after Americans' affairs, but it had been burned to the ground the week before. The Sudan government was violently anti-American and anti-Israeli. He said the Sudanese newspapers reported the government had captured a plane carrying many Israelis and was holding them while awaiting orders from other Arab governments. He was very worried the airport might be attacked by angry mobs, as the newspapers tried to rile the people. He was trying to get the Sudanese to put more soldiers on duty to protect us, but the Sudanese just laughed at him.

After two days, the passengers were told we were not being held captive; we could leave whenever we wanted, but the Sudanese were not going to release the plane. We could only leave on a scheduled flight on another plane. Since there were no scheduled flights out of Khartoum, we were, in effect, being held prisoners. We could leave, but there was no way out!

After two days of sleeping on the floor in oppressive heat, with little to eat, we were permitted to go into the city (because we were not being held prisoners!) to eat and sleep in a hotel. I was worried, if Dalia were discovered in the city, things would get a lot worse. I didn't want her to leave the airport, but I didn't want us to be the only two who remained behind. About thirty of the other passengers, being aware of Dalia's situation, elected to stay behind with us, so it wouldn't look suspicious. We all spent another night sleeping on the floor.

The next day, we were told Sterling Airlines was sending another plane to take us out. It would arrive in a few hours. When we knew we were being released, the flight engineer made up another excuse for going back to the plane, and he got back Dalia's passport. Several of us spent the next few hours planning on how we would get on the plane. We were afraid the Sudanese were going to give back our passports one at a time by calling names, and this would leave Dalia as the last person, and without a passport. She would then be discovered. The main plan we devised was for the captain to simply ask for all the passports, and tell them he would give them out on the plane.

If that didn't work, the next plan was for all passengers to start yelling and cheering, and just try to run onto the plane. Three of us would try to grab the passports as we ran by. This would, hopefully, confuse the Sudanese, and they would just let us go. All of the students, except the Indian, were aware of this plan, and were ready to execute it, if it became necessary. Four of the stronger males were assigned the job of getting the Indian on the plane, or stopping him somehow, if he should try to approach the Sudanese.

All of these plans were for naught. The Sudanese were so happy to get rid of us, they just let us all walk onto the plane and they gave our passports to the captain. On the plane, while we were seated, the Sudanese tried to count us again. As soon as the students saw this happening, most of them got up and started walking around again. The Sudanese officer started yelling for everyone to sit down, but the students ignored him and kept walking and cheering. The officer just shook his head angrily and walked out of the plane.

After seventy-seven hours of captivity in the airport's waiting room, our plane took off and we left Khartoum. The captain told us the flight engineer remained in Khartoum to be with the plane. He was so helpful to us, we were sorry we couldn't say good-bye.

The plane flew directly to Copenhagen. When we arrived at the airport, we saw reporters and photographers waiting for us. The flight crew had orders to take Dalia and me out the back of the plane, so we wouldn't be questioned. No one saw us, and we made our way through the terminal. While walking through the terminal, a telephone call for Dalia was announced. We were taken to a private office where Dalia took the call from her parents. Our story became an international incident, and was carried by most newspapers. Not only did the newspapers report there was an Israeli on the plane, but they also printed Dalia's name. For two days, Dalia's name was in every European newspaper, and, as incredible as it seems, the Sudanese were the only ones who did not know about her.

In Copenhagen, we met with the president of Sterling Airlines, who asked us not to tell our story to reporters yet, because the plane and flight engineer were still in Khartoum. The president couldn't show enough gratitude for what, he said, was the presence of mind shown in holding back Dalia's passport. He felt I had saved the plane for them. If they had proof an Israeli was on the plane, they would never release the plane. We weren't concerned about the president or his plane, but the flight engineer helped us tremendously, and put his life in danger by helping us, and we didn't want to take a chance of anything happening to him. The president agreed to buy us two new tickets to New York from Tel-Aviv, since staying in Copenhagen would mean missing our own flight. He would, also, fly us from Copenhagen to Tel-Aviv.

We agreed to help, and not even return to Israel for a few days, until things quieted down. They had us stay in someone's house in Copenhagen and they took very good care of us. We were given expense money, clothes, taken out to eat, and taken on tours of the country. To some of these places, we went with a couple we met on the plane. They were American and lived in New York, not far from where I lived. But, Dalia was very upset and wanted to see her parents before we left for New York.

After two days, the plane and flight engineer were released and flown out of the country. Dalia and I were then flown to Brussels under assumed names. They still didn't want us talking to reporters. We stayed in a beautiful hotel (at their expense) for two days, and we toured the city and had a nice time there, but we were anxious to get back to Israel.

Again under assumed names, we took a flight from Brussels to Tel-Aviv and our "second honeymoon" ended.

Two days later, we flew to New York. Later, we received a newspaper clipping, which said Sterling Airlines of Denmark, was banned from all Arab territory for all time.