After something like five and a half years and twenty-four hours of travel, I’m back. My luggage isn’t though, so here’s a liminal space for this liminal time as we wait to hear about the fate of half the aircraft’s baggage that also didn’t make it.
“We had more solidarity with random strangers in one hour than on most days in Canada,”” said a young traveler to their mother, with admirable optimism. “Welcome to Lebanon,” their mother had told us while we scrambled to figure out what was going on. We laughed and said: “We’re going to hear that a lot in the next few days.”
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The stress and exhaustion of transatlantic travel after so many years gives me new insight into the wisdom of immigrants from past centuries; their boarding a ship to the new world most often meant an arrivederci forever.