Travel warnings evoke sense of dej
â vu
The State Department urges American citizens to remain vigilant
while traveling anywhere in Jerusalem … Americans should stay
away from demonstrations and generally avoid crowded public places,
such as restaurants and cafes, shopping and market areas and malls,
pedestrian zones, public transportation of all kinds… protests
within the Old City are possible, especially after Friday
prayers.
Travel Warning-US Embassy, Tel Aviv, July 19, 2006
Travel warnings evoke sense of dejâ vu
The State Department urges American citizens to remain vigilant while traveling anywhere in Jerusalem … Americans should stay away from demonstrations and generally avoid crowded public places, such as restaurants and cafes, shopping and market areas and malls, pedestrian zones, public transportation of all kinds… protests within the Old City are possible, especially after Friday prayers.
Travel Warning-US Embassy, Tel Aviv, July 19, 2006
My high school friend Phyllis, who years ago married an Israeli veterinarian she met while attending U.C. Davis, lives not far from Tel Aviv. We keep in touch, thanks to the speedy Internet, and she e-mailed me the Embassy warning notice. The document reminded me that the current Mid-East tension is not unlike the waning days of the U.S. presence in Iran.
In December, 1979, my family was living in Tehran on a military assignment. Even though trouble was brewing in that country, we’d returned anyway. We’d lived there before, during the late ’60s and grew to love the Iranian people, the country, Persian carpets, and the delicious food. And we knew that, in case of any danger to our personal safety, our government would whisk us right out. Citizens on official overseas government assignment have this assurance. U.S. citizens on private business do not.
By 1979, with Iran our established friend, an estimated 80,000 Americans had flocked to the country. Most worked for private civilian firms dealing with construction, helicopter manufacture, telecommunications and the petroleum industry.
That fall, even the news of the rioting South Tehran throngs seemed too distant to worry about. Tehran was a sprawling metropolis with 14 million people. Our home was in the city’s northern foothills, just south of the Shah’s Niavaran Palace. He began to dispatch daily fleets of helicopters to South Tehran. One chopper flew so low over our roof the vibrations zipped a giant top-to-bottom crack in our living room picture window.
Daily, tanks began to rumble down the streets of our neighborhood. Under darkness, from their nearby flat rooftops, Khomeini-supporting Iranians chanted “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is Great) for hours into the night. Machine guns went off in the distance. Evenings, we could hear rifles thudding against flesh as patrolling soldiers picked up anti-Shah suspects. After our car was spray-painted with the misspelled but unmistakable “Yonkee Go Home,” we began to live, and sleep, in an inner, windowless room.
Our Embassy did nothing for weeks except send out bulletins like the current Tel Aviv warning, advising us to take cover and avoid crowded places. Many in the official community surmised it was because Jimmy Carter liked the Shah and didn’t want to rock the boat. Day after day, we expected evacuation orders. None came.
After my children’s returning school bus was savagely rocked by an angry Shiite mob, I wrote a long letter to a Washington, D.C. newspaper describing the situation. I enclosed samples of the official bulletins that suggested we “take cover if we heard a siren wailing on the chancellery grounds.” (The Embassy was located seven miles from our house.)
Daily acts of aggression against foreigners increased. The Brits, Canadians and French sent in aircraft to pull out their people, both official and civilian. Each day’s silence from our government convinced us we were being kept hostage for the sake of official appearances.
When my letter arrived at the Washington D.C. newspaper, the editor printed it in four columns, including a reproduction of one of the Embassy warning bulletins. Within 24 hours, Carter’s office fumbled about making statements and issuing evacuation orders for official personnel. Sen. Ted Kennedy was stopped by television reporters on the U.S. Capitol steps and asked to comment on my letter. At last, the world spotlight was shining on Americans trapped in Tehran.
For weeks, we’d had no outside news. Radio stations carrying the BBC and the Voice of America were jammed. Iranian authorities confiscated shipments of the Herald Tribune, flown in daily from Paris. In early December, I found out about our impending evacuation from my short-wave radio. It pulled in the BBC Madrid in Spanish, which I understood.
Finally, a phone call ordered us to bring the children, one packed bag, and be at the embassy in an hour. With many others, we were driven in bullet-proof vans to Tehran’s Mehrabad airport. Luckily, as official military dependents, we got to depart on Pan Am flight. Civilians in unofficial status were jammed into web seats aboard troop transports that flew them as far as U.S. airbases in Germany.
The moment we landed to change planes at JFK in New York City, I got out, fell to on my knees and kissed the ground. Thirty-two hours from our Tehran departure, we finally reached California.
Actually, it’s rather freeing when you lose everything you own. My family had to leave behind our car, furnishings, appliances, even our clothes. And since Pan Am lost our one permitted suitcase, we arrived without even toothbrushes.
But, then, possessing material things is easy: it’s having your life that counts. We soon moved into an empty house, where we slept on the carpeting until I could afford to buy beds. By the following month, I’d saved enough for a table and chairs. Next came a sofa. We found an old AM-FM radio to put behind it, set to an easy listening station. My son joked it was our “hidden stereo.” Strangers were kind. A church lady let me go through the storage room where rummage sale items were kept, to stock my kitchen with a few pots and pans.
It’s when you’ve been stripped of everything, you learn about yourself and your own resources. Such an experience gives one different perspective from people who live safely all their lives and never had to flee militants.
My friend Phyllis told me to feel free to share her latest “war correspondence.” From Tel Aviv, she notes, “This is the front line in the war on terrorism. Militant Islam is just as much against the Christian West as it is against Judaism, Israeli or otherwise, and I hope America and Europe realize this before things get completely out of hand. I’ve heard liberals scoff at Bush’s reading of the situation, but there’s a big kernel of truth in the idea that militant Islam would like to destroy all of us and take the fruits of our progress for themselves.”
My terror experience was 26 years ago. Phyllis’s is going on now. One never forgets such things. That is why Phyllis knows, as I always remind her, that she has a home with me, anytime.
