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Family Secrets is a production of IHeart Radio.

My parents do not ask any questions about my time in Jordan.

Maybe they think they understand what happened from reading the New York Times, listening to Walter Cronkite on the CBS

nightly news, and receiving occasional updates from the State Department and the airlines.

Maybe they just want me to rest, or maybe they don't know how to talk to me about such a

delicate topic. We've never discussed anything real. We laugh and make light of most matters,

even serious ones, keeping pain unspoken and as far as possible from where we sit.

We can't joke about the hijacking, so we avoid it.

That's Mimi Nichter, cultural anthropologist, Professor Emerita at University of Arizona's

School of Anthropology, an author of four books, most recently her first memoir,

Hostage, a memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience.

Mimi's is a story of a terrifying incident

that becomes a secret in its aftermath.

And the way a legacy of keeping secrets within a family

can form a pattern it takes a lifetime to break.

Thank you. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

Mimi, tell me about the landscape of your childhood in 1950s, 60s, Brooklyn.

Okay.

Well, I would say the landscape, it was black and white, and yet the reality is that it was very gray.

I'm talking about the internal landscape here.

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