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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 'We need to know'
By Amira HoweidyRania and Soha, two sisters, sit at a small table in the EgyptAir restaurant at Cairo airport's departure hall in the early hours of Tuesday morning. In 30 minutes time they will join 90 other passengers aboard a charter plane heading for New York. The unvoiced hope of all those on the plane is that they might find their loved ones alive. It is unlikely, though, that even the bodies will be found for them to identify.
They stare at nothing in particular, pushing their untouched plates away. The two sisters are engaged to Mohamed Galal, 28, and Hassan Farouq, 26, both crew members of EgyptAir flight 990.
"Mohamed called me at 9:30pm, US time, from a hotel and said that there would be a delay because of technical problems with the plane," said Rania. "He asked me not to go and wait for him in the airport before making sure the plane had taken off. The way he talked to me was very different, as if it was the last time. I felt worried but didn't tell anyone. I have a feeling they are still alive and that I will find them. Please God. They are faithful Muslims and they pray a lot and God might save them. This is my gut feeling."
Her sister Soha, 26, is more collected. "The only thing that's keeping me going is that I'm going to them, it's much better than waiting here and not knowing what happened."
According to Soha, her fiancé's family was on holiday in the US with their son and did not return on the same flight at his request. "His mother called me today and told me that he pleaded with his parents not to return with him on the plane because 'it was a very bad flight...' I don't know if he was just saying that to make them stay. We don't know. But he did stress that the plane had problems."
The father of the two girls, who had waved them farewell before the takeoff, accused government and EgyptAir officials of "blocking information from the media and from us; we need to know what happened, who was on that plane, who survived and who didn't," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. But no one seems to know anything except that all 217 passengers must be dead.
As investigations carried out by the US Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the FBI along with the Joint Terrorist Task Force are pursued in deep water, with little evidence emerging except for a single corpse, a large piece of the aircraft, small bits of wreckage, personal items and "evidence of human remains", frustration and ambiguity reigned. EgyptAir -- which had barely recovered from the aborted hijacking of one of its planes as it came from Istanbul two weeks ago -- is striving to save its reputation and recover from its tarnished image. But the release of contradictory and often inaccurate information has undoubtedly contributed to the state of confusion and enhanced a belief that "the truth is being blocked".
EgyptAir's 10-year old Boeing 767 was scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to New York and then on to Cairo. It was delayed in Los Angeles -- due to bad weather, according to information released by EgyptAir in Cairo immediately following the disaster. Investigators in New York, though, denied that weather conditions were responsible for the delay, after which EgyptAir fell silent.
This pattern continued, leaving many questions unanswered. Were there technical problems that might account for delay? Did EgyptAir step up its security measures, thus strengthening speculation that the plane might have been sabotaged? Is EgyptAir satisfied with the final maintenance check the plane received at JFK Airport before taking off? Or did the plane fly over a US military base that accidentally fired a missile that destroyed it, as the weekly Al-Musawar magazine suggested on its cover?
In the absence of credible information from EgyptAir, most Egyptians turned to CNN for news of the disaster. Even President Hosni Mubarak, who gave the American Cable News Network an exclusive interview on Monday, said he knew about the crash from CNN. And EgyptAir's chairman, Mohamed Fahim Rayyan, who broke the news of the tragedy at a press conference on Sunday, said CNN would broadcast the telephone numbers that people should contact to make queries about the names of passengers. When the passenger list was eventually released, it listed the names of those who had booked, rather than those who actually boarded the plane, which meant that it was not entirely accurate.
EgyptAir officials said 62 Egyptians, 106 US nationals, 22 Canadians, three Syrians, two Sudanese and one Chilean were aboard the plane. Yet it took the Egyptian side two days to confirm that more than half of the Egyptian passengers were actually military officers who had been in the US for training.
"I was shocked when I heard the news of the crash," wrote Al-Ahram columnist Salah Montasser on Tuesday, "first because of the magnitude of the disaster and secondly because Egyptian TV failed to break the news first." On the opposite page, Salama Ahmed Salama criticised the TV for breaking the news, and "then resuming the broadcast of football matches and the comedy series of Adel Imam".
As the news spread on Sunday, dozens of relatives headed to Cairo Airport in an attempt to find out if their loved ones had actually boarded the plane. Three EgyptAir employees sat with a long list of passengers' names, ready for the agonising task of breaking the sad news. The Health Ministry sent a dozen nurses and several doctors armed with tranquilisers, water and sphygmomanometers.
Hamdi Abdel-Bari was desperately searching the list for the name of his cousin, Gihan El-Shoura, a university teacher and daughter of Ain Shams University professor Mustafa El-Shoura. She had been in the US for the past year, accompanying her husband who was studying for a Ph.D. "She was seven-months pregnant and wanted to see her family badly. She was supposed to take a later flight, but was so anxious to get home she chose this one," Abdel-Bari told reporters. A few minutes later, he found her name on the list.
Shortly afterwards, an elderly man wearing a galabiya walked in and immediately learned his son was on the plane. The silence of the hall was broken by his cries. "My son... my son," was all he could say. While some collapsed completely, others broke into hysterical tears and screams. Angry relatives pushed away the press, their cameras and light stands. "Please go away, leave us alone," a young man shouted with tears in his eyes.
"Why did he have to board that plane?" a middle-aged, veiled woman asked herself in desperation. It was a question that echoed through the crowded hall. "Who will take care of his four children? Who? Oh God, please..." she called, as a nurse tried to calm her.
The plane that left for New York Tuesday morning was packed with relatives and a group of EgyptAir officials headed by Rayyan. "We know there is no point in taking the families there when the bodies haven't even been found," EgyptAir's Vice-President Mohamed Shahine told the Weekly. "It might not be logical but at this stage all we can do is help the families in any way we can."
