Marc Rosenthal

IT WAS SHORTLY after Sept. 11, 2001, and John F. Kennedy Airport looked like the set for a B action movie: Jumpy security guards patrolled the terminal, clutching rifles and shouting nervously at the thousands of passengers gathering in huge lines. I was supposed to fly to Amsterdam to participate in Crossing Border, an arts festival so surrealistic only a Dutch hippie who spent the '60s tripping out could have conceived of it.

I'd been writing—or at least trying to—for several months as an artist-in-residence in the United States, and was happy for the getaway. In fact, knowing that I'd be spending two more months in America as a swarthy foreigner with an accent and a Middle Eastern passport, I was in almost desperate need of a break. Amsterdam wasn't Israel, but it was close enough for my best friend to agree to fly there to be with me for a few days.

Electronic tickets were less common back then, and the festival organizer had written to tell me that my ticket would be waiting at the KLM counter at the airport. The unpleasant woman at the counter insisted there was no ticket. That shook me up a little. I called the organizer in the Netherlands, who answered in a cheerful but sleepy voice. After telling me how good it was to hear from me, he remembered that he'd forgotten to send the ticket.

"What a bummer," he said. "My short-term memory isn't what it used to be."

He suggested that I buy a ticket at the airport; he'd reimburse me after I arrived. When I said it would probably be expensive, he replied, "Man, don't even think about it. Buy the lousy ticket even if it costs a million. You have a cool event scheduled for tomorrow and we need you here."

The sour-faced lady demanded $2,400 for a middle seat in economy class, but I didn't argue. A cool event and my best friend, Uzi, were waiting for me in Amsterdam.

The flight was completely full, and the passengers looked a little nervous and tense. I knew this wasn't going to be an easy trip, but it became harder when I discovered that sitting in my seat, between a nun and bespectacled Asian man, was a bearded guy with tattooed arms, wearing sunglasses and looking like an evil, long-lost member of ZZ Top.

"Excuse me," I said somewhat timidly, "but you're sitting in my seat."

"It's my seat," the beard said. "Scram."

"But my boarding pass says that this is my seat," I persisted. "Look."

"I don't wanna look." The beard ignored my outstretched hand. "I told you, this is my seat. So scram."

'I am not getting off,' I told him, 'and if you try to take me off by force, I'll sue all of you.'

I called the flight attendant. She managed to get a little more cooperation out of the beard, and it turned out that because of a computer error, we'd each gotten a boarding pass with the same seat number on it. In an authoritative voice, she said that since the flight was full, one of us would have to get off the plane.

"I say we should toss a coin," I told the beard. I was desperate to stay on the plane, but it seemed like the only fair way to solve an exasperating problem.

"No coins," the beard said. "I'm sitting in the seat. You're not. Get off the plane."

I felt one of the already overloaded circuits in my brain finally blow. "I am not getting off the plane," I told the flight attendant, who'd just come back to tell us that we were holding up a planeload of passengers.

"I am asking you to get off now," she said in a cold voice, "or I'll be forced to call security."

"Call security," I said in a tearful voice. "Call security to drag me off. It'll just add a few more zeros to the amount I'll be suing your airline for. I paid good money for a ticket. I received a boarding pass. I boarded the plane, and this is exactly where the story ends. If there aren't enough seats on the plane, you can get off yourself. I'll serve the food to the passengers."

The flight attendant didn't call security. Instead, the white-haired, blue-eyed pilot appeared, placed a hand on my shoulder and politely asked me to get off the plane.

"I am not getting off," I told him, "and if you try to take me off by force, I'll sue all of you. All of you, do you hear me? This is America, you know. People have been awarded millions for a lot less than this."

And at that moment, when I was supposed to be especially threatening, I began to cry.

"Why do you have to fly to Amsterdam?" he asked. "Is someone in your family ill?"

I shook my head.

"So what is it, a girl?"

I shook my head again. "It's not that," I said. "I just can't be here anymore."

The pilot was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Have you ever flown in a jump seat?" I managed to control my tears enough to say no.

"I'm warning you in advance," he said with a smile, "it's very uncomfortable. But it'll get you out of here, and you'll have a good story to tell."

Etgar Keret

And he was right.

—Translated by Sondra Silverston

—Mr. Keret is the author of five books, including the recently published "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door."