Traveling without Luggage

by Wendy Mathewson

"How many bags?" the women behind the counter asked. "None." I said. "Just this," and showed her my little green backpack, which I had taken to work in Jerusalem two Thursdays ago. I found my seat on the Austrian Airways plane and slumped against the rainspattered window, as my ears were barraged by an eerily cheerful selection of Strauss waltzes. (ONE two three ONE two three ONE two Cookoo!) Having gotten no sleep during the night, I recalled from my high school French class that bags under your eyes are called, in French, "little suitcases."

I was slightly more alert on the next leg of my journey home, from Vienna to Chicago. I looked down at my hands and my arms and the rest of my body, my flesh. Underneath the borrowed clothes, this is me. This is all I could take out. This is what my friends and family are so glad is safe. For the Palestinian people I left behind, who cannot flee when the gunships and tanks attack their neighborhoods, the state of Israel has control over their flesh- its safety, its location, its health. The occupation of Palestine is not just about territories. It's about people who are forced to lead occupied lives. And their very flesh is what many of them are willing to give up in order for their people to have freedom and justice.

As I passed my entry card to the customs agent at O'Hare, he glanced at the route of my extended homeward journey: Israel, Cyprus, Austria, the United States. "Any baggage?" he asked. "Nope." I replied. But he couldn't see what I was carrying inside of me as I walked past him toward the double doors marked "Exit," behind which my family was waiting. In addition to the little suitcases under my eyes, I had little suitcases inside my flesh, which contained things like....the taste of the fear in the room as co-workers frantically tried to get ahold of family members the day their town was bombed by Israeli gunships....the air of cynicism as it was explained to me that, unlike the tourists and pilgrims, Palestinians are not allowed to move freely about their own country....the searing of shame I felt as I saw weapons and bullets from the United States fired at Palestinian children....the tension of terror as a friend described the need for groups of unarmed young men in his village to go on all night patrols in case Jewish settlers, armed by the government and legitimized by an exclusive understanding of the Bible, attack their defenseless village.

I wasn't really traveling without luggage. It just looked that way.