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Rifai survived, but his wounds were quite extensive, and he required eleven operations on his hand and arm. There was little doubt as to who was responsible: Black September. My parents came to the conclusion that England was no longer safe. They decided to send Feisal and me even farther away: to America.

Chapter 4

Arriving in America

Nineteen seventy-two was a difficult year for my family, and not just because of threats from terrorists. That was when my parents decided, after ten years of marriage and four children (my twin sisters Aisha and Zein were born in 1968), to divorce. The fact that my brother and I were away at boarding school did not shield us from the uncertainty that all children from divorced families must face. But we were fortunate that our parents always remained very close and were united in their concern and support for us.

In September 1972, Black September carried out another attack, taking hostages and subsequently killing eleven Israeli athletes at the summer Olympic Games in Munich. The attack took place in the spotlight of the assembled media from across the globe, and now the whole world had witnessed their brutality.

In October my brother Feisal and I went to America. On our first trip to the United States a few years earlier we had been to Florida with our parents and little sisters and had visited Cypress Gardens and the recently opened Disney World. So I was excited at the thought of returning to the States—in my mind, it was one big theme park. But New England in the fall was not quite Disney World.

My new school, Eaglebrook, a prep school in western Massachusetts, was perched on a hill in the Pocumtuck range overlooking the town of Deerfield. The school had the feeling of a Swiss mountain resort, complete with chalets and its own ski run. Feisal and I shared a dorm room, and he went to school at Bement, just down the hill. Another change that took a bit of getting used to was the food. One of my favorite snacks in Jordan was bread and zeit ou zatar, olive oil mixed with dried thyme. But here I was introduced to the delights of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I did not like St. Edmund’s in the UK, but I never got into a fight there. Eaglebrook was different. I was the first Arab the school had ever seen, and there were several Jewish students. Pretty soon, some of them let me know I was not welcome. I did not understand their animosity and was too young to have encountered the concept of irrational prejudice. In later years I would become all too familiar with people who judge individuals on the basis of their identity, but to a child it made no sense. I knew that Jordanians and Israelis were enemies, but we were now in the United States, and these were Americans. In my mind there was no connection between an Israeli and a Jew. But even in western Massachusetts, it seemed, I could not escape the conflicts of the Middle East.

I got into a number of scrapes. Although I had security guards who accompanied me everywhere, their instructions were to protect me from terrorists and assassins, not from aggressive ten-year-olds. Sometimes I did not help my case. In one confrontation, my antagonist said, “Yeah, you and whose army?” I replied, “Me and my dad’s army!”

One afternoon one of the proctors—older students who were responsible for keeping discipline—kicked my brother out of our dorm room, brought in an older boy from down the hallway, and said, “You and he will fight.” I was enthusiastic, but I did not know how to fight and neither did he, so we locked arms and pounded each other on the back. The proctors let us go at it until we were out of breath, separated us, and then made us go at it again. I jumped onto a bed and leaped at my antagonist, knocking him over. He fell and hit his head hard on the floor. We were all scared something had happened to him, and the proctors hauled him away. It was completely by chance, but because I had taken down a much bigger boy, the others began to show me a little more respect.

I had just arrived at Eaglebrook