The Arab Connection Story

                                  The Arab Connection Story

                                                                         1974

                                                   A true story that actually happened

                                            Written 6/6/ 2012 and Re-written 7/03/2016

                                                               Howard Yasgar

In 1974, my very best friend was a fellow named Miguel Marquez.

Miguel was a Cuban refugee who had lived on a small Island off the North coast of Cuba called Cayo Coco.

While he was growing up on that small island, Miguel’s only exposure to a big city was his monthly trip to Havana.

He made this monthly trip with his father in their family’s tiny twelve foot wooden sailboat which his dad also used for fishing.

Miguel told me that once a month when they were in Havana, his father would buy whatever supplies they needed and then, he and Miguel would stop off for a few drinks of rum, as well as doing a little social activity with the ladies, before they headed back home.

So up until 1974, that monthly trip to Havana was Miguel’s only exposure to a big city life.

On their farm on Cayo Coco they grew vegetables and raised a few pigs, they lived in a typical Cuban farm house with a thatched roof made of palm fronds.

Miguel was the oldest of five brothers and three sisters, and because Miguel had a good head for making money, he was the leader of the family business, which was cutting down trees and burning them to make cooking charcoal.

The charcoal they made was put in burlap bags and sold to a charcoal broker, who supplied them with the burlap bags and took their charcoal to the local market in Havana by boat.

It was in 1968, when one of Miguel’s brothers, Rudolpho, who was in Batista’s army, was machine gunned down by Fidel Castro’s men, and he was never able to walk again.

Then another one of his brothers was imprisoned for eight years for trying to escape Cuba by boat.

That was when Miguel started to realize he was living in a dangerous place and he had to escape.

So, using all his family’s savings of $8000.00, he paid a local fisherman to secretly smuggle him, his wife, his mother and father, and his step son out of Cuba.

One dark evening they were all secretly taken by boat to a small island with a lighthouse on it called Cayo Lobo, that’s where they were eventually rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

From Cayo Lobo the Coast Guard took the family to Key West, and eventually they all ended up in Miami as Cuban refugees. (See the Miguel Marquez Story)

Once they were in Miami, Miguel and his family slept on the floor of his uncle Totico’s apartment.

It just happened that Miguel”s uncle Totico was my good friend, and he brought Miguel over to see me.

Miguel’s uncle, Totico Esceverria and his family had once been wealthy landowners in Cuba.

Totico had escaped from Cuba when his family’s land was confiscated about a year before Miguel  had escaped.

Now that Totico was in Miami, he was starting his life all over again selling screened aluminum patios, and that’s how I had met him.

Totico suggested that because Miguel was a good mechanic, that I teach him the automotive electrical rebuilding business. He felt it would be good for Miguel to become a skilled automotive electrical rebuilder and start his new life in America.

At the time that I met Miguel, it was 1968, and Miguel spoke almost no English, and I spoke very little Spanish, but it quickly became apparent to me that Miguel was not your usual refugee.

He was a hard worker, and a quick learner and he was very curious about everything that I did. Miguel was not like anyone I had ever met before, he was the very first  highly intelligent Cuban hill billy that I ever met.

When I first met Miguel he was 39 years old, 10 years older than me. He was a ruggedly handsome guy, about six foot tall, with a Mediterranean complexion. He had a lanky build, and jet black hair. If it wasn’t for his darker complexion we could have been taken for brothers.

Once Miguel started working for me, I found that he certainly was a very rare in individual, he had lots of natural intelligence and he was also extremely self-confident, as well as quick witted, and he always seemed to have a lot of humorous one line jokes.

Miguel was like a Spanish standup comedian, he could make a joke about anything.

While I was teaching Miguel the rebuilding business, it became my opportunity to learn Spanish and Cuban culture from him.

So early on, I started doing my best to teach Miguel English, and in return he taught me what I thought at the time was good Spanish.

He told me all about his life in Cuba, as well as all about his family, so it wasn’t long before we became very close personal friends, and my wife and I were then invited to all Miguel’s family functions.

I think, Miguel’s family was very surprised to see that he had an American friend that was helping him to adjust to his new life in the United States.

Miguel himself told me that he was especially happy that we were friends.

He said, because having me with him, he was able to go into American  restaurants and stores, and places that he never would have ventured on his own.

As the years went by, Miguel and I began to converse with each other easily. Miguel spoke a lot of words in very poor English and I spoke a lot of words in very poor Spanish.

I’m sure, to anyone listening to us, our language was very unusual and I think that no one, either American or Spanish, could ever understand what the hell we were talking about.

But Miguel and I were able to understand each other perfectly, it was like we had our own language.

By 1974 Miguel and I had now become almost like brothers.

During the day, I employed him at my automotive parts rebuilding company, and on the weekends I also employed Miguel and his father in a small metals refining business that I had started.

It was in the summer of 1974, when my wife said she was planning on taking a summer camp vacation with my son and daughter.

Knowing that, I thought it gave me the opportunity to make a long awaited business trip to Connecticut and New York.

It might also be an excellent opportunity to show Miguel New York City. I could also show him where I had once lived in Westville Connecticut.

When I mentioned the trip to Miguel, he became very excited, and said he definitely wanted to go with me, and he asked me how I was planning to get to New York.

I told him that we would fly to New York, then rent a car there, and then drive to Connecticut.

That’s when Miguel told me that he couldn’t fly. At the time there was a rash of plane hijackings going on, with many of the planes being diverted to Cuba. Miguel said that if we were ever hijacked to Cuba, Castro would put him in jail forever.

Miguel suggested , “What about the train, we can go to New York by train”. Well, as far as I was concerned, I had ridden on trains several times in the past and I wasn’t too excited about doing it again.

I thought trains were a very slow and an antiquated way of getting anywhere.

On the other hand, perhaps a slow trip to New York with Miguel, could be fun. I thought we could both sit in the train’s club car, have a few drinks and tell each other jokes.

I then purchased two round trip tickets on the Amtrak train going to New York City.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, we boarded the train in down town Miami and quickly found a couple of seats in a empty passenger car.

We put our two suitcases on the overhead racks above the windows, and then we tried to sit down and make ourselves comfortable.

Miguel fooled around with adjusting his seat for about half an hour, I could see he was having a good time, as this was his first experience with an adjustable chair.

As he fiddled with it, he was joking around and making wisecracks about everything, always keeping me laughing.

The train started moving, and we immediately felt that our car was air conditioned, and the cold air seemed to be blowing directly on us.

We then adjusted our seats to lean back and tried to take a nap as we really had nothing better to do.

I think we slept a couple of hours, and we both woke up at the same time sweating profusely. It appeared that the air conditioning in the car had stopped working, and it was now sweltering hot, so I suggested we go to the rear of the train and possibly find a bar and get a cold drink.

The train was rolling along as Miguel and I started walking through all the wobbling cars, looking for the observation car that had the liquor bar.

After going through five or six cars, we finally found it, so Miguel and I spent the next few hours drinking rum and cokes, and talking to some of the other passengers.

As we sat there, having our drinks, we couldn’t help but notice the constant bumping and screeching of brakes, as additional railroad cars were either being added on or taken off.

But after we had three or four drinks, none of those screeches or bumping noises didn’t bother us anymore, and we paid no attention to them.  

It must have been way after two in the morning when the observation car finally emptied out and the bar closed up, so Miguel and I decided to try and return to our seats where our luggage was.

I admit that we were a little drunk, and both of us were ready to hit the sack for the evening.

As we started walking back through all the jiggling cars, we didn’t recognize any of them. We finally realized that we must have passed the car with our luggage.

Being a little drunk, Miguel started joking and accusing the railroad of stealing our luggage.

I have to admit I was a little concerned as to where the hell my suitcase was, so I was more than happy when we saw a conductor.

He said they had added a few cars since we left Miami and our seats and suitcases were still a few cars ahead of us.

We eventually found our seats and it appeared that our air conditioning was working again so we tried to get a little sleep. but after about twenty minutes laying there, Miguel said he was freezing, it appeared our train car was getting colder, and it soon became like a refrigerator and we both had goosebumps.

I got up and found some old Miami Herald newspapers that someone had left on a seat, and we each took some pages out and covered ourselves, just like the bums do on a cold evening, and it worked pretty good.

However, after about fifteen minutes, we both again woke up as the air conditioning had shut off, and it now had become sweltering hot again.

I think by then, we were too worn out to consider moving to another car, so we stayed there talking until morning, with the cars temperature alternating between freezing cold and sweating hot.

Once we were in New York City, I rented a car and we drove the seventy miles to my former home town of Westville in Connecticut.

After sightseeing, by late in the afternoon, we headed back 70 miles to New York City.

Before we hit the New York border, I stopped to talk to several marinas that were located on the Connecticut River, as it was one of the reasons I had come to New York and Connecticut in the first place, as I wanted to get into the Marine parts business and I wanted the opinion from the marinas in Connecticut.

In New York City, we stayed in a hotel on 10th Avenue, and I took Miguel on a walking tour to see the sights.

That walk in New York became the experience of a lifetime for Miguel.

When we finally we stopped for a drink on 42 street, Miguel was amazed at all the strange, weird people he saw there. I enjoyed watching him as he kept shaking his head, Miguel said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

After a few drinks, and as we were returning to our hotel, I saw a cop running across the street with his gun in his hand, then, we heard several gunshots, so I pushed Miguel into a storefront, just in case a bullet came our way.

Miguel wanted to know who was setting off the fire crackers. I told him he was in New York City and it wasn’t fireworks he was hearing, the cop who was probably shooting at someone.

The next morning we woke up to the news that the railroad was on strike, and we now had no way of returning home to Miami.

I asked the desk clerk at the hotel what everyone was doing to get home.

He said, hurry up and go to the Greyhound bus station and get some bus tickets to Miami, so we did.

The line for bus tickets was already very long, and we stood there and waited, and as we waited, we were watching the news, and this became one of the few times I ever had a disagreement with Miguel.

The television news station had just mentioned that someone who had just died of cancer. Miguel looked at me and he said “No one in Cuba ever died of cancer”. I didn’t quite know what to say to him, as I didn’t know if he was serious or not.

I waited a minute and I asked him how the people in Cuba died. Miguel was silent for a moment and he said, mostly they die from eating bad pork or bad cheese.

I was dumbfounded, so I asked Miguel if he ever heard of anybody doing an autopsy in Cuba to determine how someone really had died, that’s when I could see Miguel was getting real mad at me, so I dropped the subject.

We finally boarded the bus that evening, and luckily found two comfortable seats next to each other. Neither of us knew what to expect, and the trip turned out to be really interesting.

The bus seemed to stop at every little hick town along the highway, letting people off and picking up some new passengers.

As people left, new ones got on and the seating arrangements changed, so we were having fun just watching all the different kinds of people.

Some that were getting on had suitcases and clothes that looked like they came from someone’s trash pile.

Every several hours, the bus made regular rest stops, letting all the passengers off to use bathrooms and get something to eat. The only problem was, that when you got back on the bus, sometimes someone else might be in your seat, this happened to us a couple of times.

Once while we were in Georgia, I saw Miguel sitting a few rows in front of me. I was near the rear of the bus on the left side, and Miguel was sitting on a right hand isle seat. Miguel was sitting with his body completely turned towards the center isle of the bus, it was the most uncomfortable sitting position I had ever seen.

Sitting next to Miguel, was a young thin black girl about sixteen or seventeen years old.

Eventually the bus stopped at some obscure bus stop along the side of the highway and the girl got off. That’s when Miguel came back and sat next to me. He pinched his nose with his fingers and said the young girl had such bad B.O. that he thought it was going to kill him.

As we entered the state of Florida, Miguel and I were sitting together near the front of the bus, right behind the driver.

I noticed there were two young dark complexioned guys sitting behind us.

I had first noticed them when we boarded in New York City, and I had guessed they might be from some foreign country.

So now, as we sat there, Miguel and I tried to listen to their conversation when they talked together, we couldn’t recognize one word of whatever language they were speaking.

After about an hour of listening to them, my curiosity got the best of me and I looked over the back of the seat and I asked the two guys where they were from. “We are from Lebanon,” they replied in perfect English.

I told Miguel that they were from Lebanon, and then, I told them Miguel was from Cuba, and I was from Miami. That started us all on a very long conversation.

The fellows said that they were both nineteen years old, and they came to the United States to learn to become helicopter pilots.

They both spoke fluent English, French and Arabic.

They said their families had heard that there was a shortage of helicopter pilots on the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, and they heard that the Saudi’s were paying big money for helicopter pilots.

I was surprised at how perfect their English was, they spoke without even a trace of a foreign accent.

They said that they both came from middle class families in Lebanon and their families had scrimped and scraped every penny they could to send them to a flight school that was located in the Miami area.

They told us that their families had saved every penny they earned and bought U.S. currency on the streets, all of the U.S, currency was tied into bundles of small bills and then they had been carefully stacked into their suitcases.

Then they told me that their flight from Beirut, changed planes in Paris France, and while they were at the Paris airport they met two innocent looking pretty girls.

When they woke up in the morning, their suitcases were empty and the girls were gone. The only money they had left was in a small carry on bag with about 30 bundles of U.S. one dollar bills.

Both guys said that they were afraid to call their parents to tell them what had happened.

As we listened to their story, they asked if we knew of any flight schools in Miami where they could talk to someone that could help them.

I told them that I knew of several flight schools located in the Miami area but they would have to contact the schools directly themselves for more information.

I said, once we arrived in Miami, I would be happy to make a list of the flight schools, but it was now Saturday and they would have to wait until Monday morning to call the schools.

Both of the fellows seemed very appreciative of my assistance in helping them, but

Miguel quietly told me, that he thought the two guys were a couple of idiots.

Once we arrived in Miami, I invited them to come with us to pick up my car parked at the train station.

Then I said we could stop by my house and I would look in the yellow pages and get them some phone numbers of flight schools, they both agreed.

I dropped Miguel off at his house and then drove to my home with the two Arabs.

At my house, I wrote down the phone numbers and addresses of the flight schools and gave it to them.

My family was still away for another four days so I asked the guys if they were hungry, and they said yes, they hadn’t eaten in two days, so I cooked up some hot dogs.

I knew they had only a little money left, so I suggested that perhaps they stay with me overnight and in the morning, I would drive them to the closest flight school on my way to work, they thought that was a good idea.

In the morning, I saw them looking inside their small carry bag they still had several bundles of well used American one dollar bills.

I looked inside their bag myself and I saw that they couldn’t have had more than a few hundred dollars left.

I made them breakfast and I gave each of them each a twenty dollar bill, the two guys were overwhelmed and said that they didn’t know how to thank me.

I told them that no thanks were necessary, as I was happy to help them.

As we were getting ready to leave my house, they sat on the sofa in my living room and said they had something to give me. They handed me a Lebanese business card with several names and phone numbers written on the back of it.

They said that I should call the first telephone number on the card, it was in Beirut Lebanon, and they said, I should mention their names. They said that the fellow who was on the card could supply me with all the counterfeit U.S. Fifty dollar bills that I wanted for $20.00 ea.

I didn’t quite know what to say. So I said, thank you but I had no need of any counterfeit currency.

They both looked at each other and said “If that was the case, I should call the second telephone number on the back of the card and that fellow was a contact to get all the cocaine I wanted and he would ship it to the U.S.A.”

I said that the cocaine business was also not for me. I told them, that people in Miami were caught every day smuggling cocaine into the United States.

“Not these people, they said”, so I asked them, what do they do that’s so different?

One of the Arabs said, “In Lebanon they washed clothing and blankets in water containing dissolved cocaine. And they added something that changed the smell. Once in America they wash the clothing again and recover the drugs.”

I didn’t want to listen to any more of the conversation or hear about the third telephone number, so I took the card and motioned for them to get their bags into my car, and I drove them to a flight school located near my office.

I can only assume that by today they are either pilot’s in Saudi Arabia, or in prison in the U.S.A.  I gave their card to a family friend who was a detective in Miami.

He wasn’t exactly excited to receive my information.