My name is Gayle Salloum and I was hijacked to Cuba when I was ten.
I was born in Maraval and went, very young, to Bayshore. And that’s where I grew up. We had a large lime of very diverse friends.
I was a Quesnel and married Anthony Salloum, whose sobriquet is “Tone”, a businessman-slash-calypsonian. We have two beautiful daughters, Amanda, 22, and Danielle, 21.
In 1970, I was ten and we had the Black Power Revolution. The [Chaguaramas-based] regiment had mutinied and the whole western peninsula had become a risky place. My father said, right, I want my wife and daughters safe. So we went on the “milk run” flight to Miami.
As we took off out of Jamaica, two gentlemen walked up the aisle close behind a stewardess. One went into the cockpit and the other turned around and pointed a gun at the cabin. And everybody just froze!
The gunman had a glass eye. I can see him before me today, very scary. He said, “Nobody stand up or move.” Over the plane’s PA system, the other gentleman said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your new captain speaking. This airline is now called, “AAFF, Afro-American Freedom Fighters”, and we are taking you to Algiers”.
There was mass panic in the plane. We circled in the air for four hours or more, while they decided where to refuel. At the time, [TT PM] Eric Williams and President Castro were liaising regarding flights between Trinidad and Cuba. Eric Williams called Fidel Castro, who, being the king of hijacking, offered Cuba as a refueling stop and that went down real well with the hijackers, who thought they’d be taken care of by their hijacking comrade.
I wanted to see the gun so I begged my mum and she said, “Okay, just get up and pretend to fix your dress and peep”. The gunman walked straight to me and put the gun to my head and said, “Down!” Well, I freaked! And it made everyone in the plane even more anxious.
We landed in Havana and all I remember was it was long and very, very, very hot. The engines were off and inside the plane was boiling. People were tired and terrified. Then we saw green “regiment” trucks make a circle around the plane, but far, far off—and then they started coming closer and closer towards us.
Captain Bower came over the PA and said, “Please remain calm. The two gentlemen will disembark and be taken to Algiers on another plane”. As the two men left, the entire plane clapped and cheered. The men were put promptly into jail where they didn’t spend as luxurious a night as we did. We were bussed to a beautiful hotel. The next morning, we finally flew to Miami.
After the trauma settled, that became the story I had to give to school, to ballet class, to this, to that. And now to BC Pires and the Guardian.
Many years later, Patrick Manning hosted a dinner for Fidel Castro at the prime minister’s house and my husband and I were invited—and I went to meet Fidel and thank him. But the dinner was nothing like I hoped: Fidel Castro was kept far away, unreachable.
Pat Bishop and her choir performed Handel’s Messiah—they were spectacular, making a tacky dinner, 500 people crammed into tents who wanted to say they saw Fidel Castro, into something really incredible. Fidel, through an interpreter, made the usual da-da-dah-dah-dah speech thanking everybody on Earth. And then he and his entourage swept away. I turned to my husband and said, “Let’s go” and didn’t even look back to see if he was following me.
I went straight up to Fidel Castro and put out my hand. And he shook it. And I said, “I’m so sorry to disturb you but I was a little girl on a plane hijacked to Cuba many years ago and I always wanted to tell you I was really, really scared and you made me feel very safe”. He looked at me with these lovely, lovely eyes, and held my hand with both hands and, in Spanish, said, “I remember that and we were all very lucky it turned out the way it did”.
It sounds a little kinda twee but I would say a Trini is a rainbow.
In my journey, in my walk in my life, Trinidad & Tobago is a love-hate relationship.
Read a longer version of this feature at www.BCRaw.com