Being is almost glass, standing at the airport
air thick with feeling. Gates close, attendants stride
down the corridor that leads nowhere.
Planes dim microscopically. The agent's smile wears down.
A woman's face peaks through the opaque chamber of her choosing.
No man. No child. Just a woman,
passing X-ray-nude through the security machine.
Her name is Jane-something, only she spells it with a Jiim
that wraps itself into an Alif, then tucks under a flying fatHa.
The guard pulls her over with mechanical gentility; a contempt
that makes her feel unwrapped. "Why are you traveling
without your husband?" is all he can think to ask until his superior
arrives. He pushes her a questionnaire in which the first item
reads: Are you a terrorist-- Yes or No. She breaths underneath it all,
her cooperation, an element of her belief. The slam stops her pulse.
Birds in flight break the glass with their fragile frames. It cracks
the landing view. They detain her past her boarding time. They shuffle
her onto another flight. She sits next to women wearing socks: the standard
dream fare in which embarrassment is the ticket and not the Spanish
word for pregnancy- although, they do fly over Andalusia. Bound
for a nudist colony, perhaps the crew will shove her onto the shores
of France; a country that expels girls from public school for wearing
a scarf. Waves would pull her garments out to tide- and she- marooned.
She unfolds the brochure tucked into her seat pocket. The slogan
"We will liberate you" totes along its cultural context. Is this a
convertible plane? The jet stream takes the top off. Her scarf whips back
against the wind's leer. She wonders which strong gust will blow
off her robe. High above her head, circles a celebrity- the billboard eagle
here in the flesh and feather. She strains to see it hover overhead -- wishes
it would fly in tandem with another traveler, or cover its damn hole.
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