Berlin to JFK — A Flight Through Time, History, Freedom — SwissAir Passing Blessed NY Home April 2012 - IMRAN®
In April 1987, I arrived in (then West) Germany—not as a migrant, but as the youngest foreign journalist guest of its government. Back home in Pakistan, I had been a student political leader—imprisoned and tortured by a U.S.-backed military dictatorship that feared dissent more than it feared decay. General Zia-ul-Haq ruled with iron and ideology, his regime propped up by the CIA and Saudi oil, while the ISI grew into a shadow state.
When my German hosts urged me to visit (then West) Berlin, I resisted. I imagined a city cold, grim, and depressed—surrounded by walls, haunted by war, and suffocated by Soviet shadow. But destiny had other plans.
I flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, then boarded a Pan Am flight from Bonn—after a weeklong stay in that working capital of West Germany—to West Berlin. That city, encircled by East Germany’s barbed wire and ideology, became the most electrifying part of my two-month European journey.
I turned 25 there, in a place where freedom had to be flown in. Tegel Airport was its lifeline, and just across the divide, in Dresden, a young KGB officer named Vladimir Putin served the Soviet hammer that kept East Germany silent.
During that visit, I met West German leaders—including their foreign minister—and boldly predicted that Germany would reunite within five years. They laughed, dismissing it as impossible in their lifetimes. But history had its own rhythm.
By November 1989, I was an American living in New York City, watching CNN as the Berlin Wall crumbled. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The laughter of diplomats echoed in memory, now replaced by the roar of freedom.
Exactly 25 years after my first landing, in April 2012, I returned to Europe—touching down at Schiphol, Amsterdam within hours of my original arrival in Frankfurt in 1987. After a conference keynote speech there, I took a train to unified Germany.
Berlin was now whole, and I loved my new stay, walking the same places I had a quarter century prior. Finally, it was time to return home.
Tegel—the Cold War portal that had once welcomed me into the caged freedom of West Berlin—was preparing to close. My flight out, SwissAir to JFK, was among the last international departures from that historic airport before it was decommissioned.
Besides Manhattan, New York and Lahore—my forever hometowns—only Berlin has etched itself into my soul. It is a city I resisted, then embraced. A city I returned to at 50. And, at 55. God willing, a city I hope to return to again for my birthdays in the future, if fate and the jetstream of time permit.
Some journeys are measured in miles. Others in meaning. This one was both.
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As the Airbus descended into New York airspace, I captured this moment: the deep blue waters of Long Island stretching beneath the wing, the red Swiss logo gleaming on the winglet. My blessed home lay just below, as history soared behind me. Over Bayport and Sayville—Fire Island drifting past the frame—the coordinates read 40.7320, -73.2300. The coast to my right, the archive to my left.
