The Ordeal Of John Suitcase

“What an ordeal! File a complaint, do something—what’s your name Miss——?”

John implores while attempting to read the name tag of the young woman behind the desk at the Lost and Found Luggage office of the airport.

“I'm Miss Trolley Bag", replies the young woman, placing special emphasis on her marital status.

"John Suitcase is my name. I'm on four wheels and twice as useful as a human being on two legs", explains John.

“Relax and tell me everything from the very beginning”, continues Miss Trolley Bag while adjusting the delicate spectacles over her equally delicate nose. Like all good women, she wants to know everything in order to remember the whole lot.

John clears his pure calf-leather throat to state the facts:

“Having been on display for just a day at Dave’s luggage store, I was sold into slavery to a rich issueless female customer named Bootie. Since then, I’ve safely carried her belongings to more places worldwide than I’d care to count.

Bootie takes frequent trips alone since her husband remains busy trying to keep pace with her liberal shopping sprees. She always fills me with all the things she thinks she might need, just in case the world came to an abrupt end.

She loves pushing me beyond the manufacturer’s design limits. At the check-in counter, she always insists that FRAGILE tags be attached to my handle—as if that act alone were to alter my fate.

Look at me! I’ve become difficult to manoeuvre, despite the fact that I come factory-fitted with four wheels. Until yesterday, I could move in all directions some of the time, and in some directions all of the time, but today I’m a directionless lost suitcase.

I recall, the first time I was placed on a conveyor belt, I ceased to be John Suitcase and instead became a machine-readable numbered piece of luggage. I swivelled, fell sideways and moved as if budged by an unseen hand. Much bigger suitcases ahead blocked the view but I could tell we were all going somewhere very fast.

When the conveyor-belt made a descending turn into a tunnel—there being no proverbial light at its end—other suitcases shouted in a chorus, ‘Oh no! The x-ray machine!’

We were showered with piercing rays. I held my breath during that unwanted medical check-up.

‘It looks for suspicious articles’, shouted an experienced suitcase for all first-timers who screamed at having their innards x-rayed.

Isn’t it tragic Miss Trolley Bag that humans, in this age, are obsessed with scanning poor suitcases instead of their own souls?

I hated that forced immobility because lying flat on an over-filled stomach just wasn’t my style. A non-conformist at heart, I closed my eyes and threw myself off the conveyor-belt at the next convenient turn.

Freedom lasted full five seconds until a loading assistant threw me back to where I didn’t belong—the conveyor belt. Suitcases and cartons behind laughed at my failed escape.

Then suddenly the merry-go-round ended and deathly silence filled the air. The belt was motionless; experienced suitcases knew exactly what lay ahead. A senior suitcase with colourful stickers over its weather-beaten body sighed and reminisced in a sombre tone about how lenient security arrangements were during the pre-9/11 days.

Soon there appeared on the scene a ferocious Alsatian with a disproportionate amount of wolf-blood in him. A bored handler stood by.

‘No dog is going to sniff me! Even as a piece of luggage, I have certain rights’, announced an adamant suitcase.

Without wasting a moment, the foul-smelling animal went about checking us for suspicious odour, ignoring some while sniffing others very deeply. Everyone agreed the beast could use a breath-freshener.

Soon afterwards, a brother suitcase was singled-out as suspicious and prevented from moving on. We observed a moment of silence in its honour. 

An old suitcase clarified, ‘The piece in question contains contraband white powdery stuff that makes human heads spin like a yoyo.’”

Cupping her chin, Miss Trolley Bag leans forward to listen to John with greater attention. Only in children's storybooks had she read about items that could talk.

“One by one we were stacked inside aluminium pallets. The large cargo holds of the airplane accommodated dozens of such metal coffins that separated brother from brother—suitcase from suitcase in our case.

We had hardly adjusted to the new climate when someone switched off the lights. A large motherly suitcase admonished its baby suitcase, ‘It’s time for bed. If you don’t close your eye-latches, the cargo-man will take you away.’

Then somebody outside shouted, ‘Loading completed!’ I knew our collective fate was sealed. There was no escape.

The airplane began to taxi. I felt claustrophobic. Four brother suitcases, heavy as myself, rested over me. I—not exactly light as a feather—sat over three others. Together we made an uncomfortable heap.

The airplane soon stabilised at cruise altitude. The air was thin and very cold up there, and some of the weak-hearted amongst us fainted. Either the men flying the airplane appeared to have no control over ambient temperature, or the airplane manufacturer had forgotten to provide conditioned air to the cargo-holds.

Some attempted to chatter inside the dark space but every word they uttered instantaneously turned into ice-cubes. Sentences became cold and cutting monosyllables.

A Louis Vuitton suitcase ordered a Lojel to provide more breathing space, 'Move! You smell of garlic. Were you manufactured using slave Chinese labour?'

An Indian trolley-bag with a pot belly poked fun at a tattered Pakistani suitcase, 'Why, you must be headed for heaven to receive seventy-two handbags as a divine reward?'

'Who told you that? Your seventy-two stone idols?' came the counter-question.

An aloof diplomatic mailbag, whose stars and stripes looked more like scars and gripe, intervened to prevent an all-out Pak-India mid-air nuclear suitcase war.

By sharp contrast, our respective owners sat comfortably in the belly of the Jumbo jet enjoying aerial hospitality and fine cuisine. We became resentful overhearing parts of the muffled gossip they indulged in. Audible too were the footsteps of stewardesses who moved about endlessly, pouring this, serving that. Some from the ignorant travellers just wouldn’t stop pestering them for beverages, convinced the ladies came free with the tickets.

The stay inside the freezing cargo hold lasted full four hours. After the engines were shut down at the parking gate, someone switched on the lights. The off-loading personnel appeared quickly, hollering instructions in fluent Arabic.

We were in Baghdad. This triggered a heated political debate that raged unabated until men dragged us out of the airplane. All the American Tourister suitcases purchased on credit bullied others bought with hard cash.

Soon it was time to part ways. Cartons and suitcases forgot their differences, and hugged one another launching emotionally charged good-byes.

The styling of Baghdad airport’s interior was minimalist—another way to say that nothing remained of a country run over by forceful democracy.

The force used in handling me was excessive even by eastern standards. Yet one more time, an Alsatian, more ferocious than the previous one, sniffed and then licked me. As a going away present, it lifted one hind leg to discharge bodily fluid that permanently discoloured my skin. I passed the litmus test, absorbed the liquid insult, and moved on to the baggage-claim area.

Suitcases came and went away happily with their owners. Alone I went round and round over the conveyor-belt, hoping to tell her everything. When the belt stopped moving, a man reported to another man that I was lost or not where I was supposed to be.

For the first time since I left the factory that produced me, I became afraid. A bottle of shampoo inside my belly leaked to flow over the neat granite floor. People stared with disapproval."

By now Miss Jane Trolley Bag is beginning to fully appreciate John Suitcase’s eloquence. She has handled many lost ones but never a suitcase that is built well and has a breakable heart.owner.moved us from t John has all the ingredients of a perfect husband.

It is lunchtime. She starts to chew her pen for starters and decides that John must be placed far from the madding crowd of other hopelessly lost suitcases.

Diligently she completes the necessary paperwork, attaches around the handle a destination-tag and scribbles special-handling instructions for John.

“Good-bye dear John, perhaps we’ll meet again—in another life”, she whispers in an emotionally choked voice. John balances himself on two rear wheels, plants a peck on her wet cheeks and rolls into the sunset.

For John, it is business as usual: licked by dogs, kicked by uncaring humans, he is probed by the x-rays yet one more time.

Far away, Bootie is agonised by John’s long absence. When she hears from the airlines’ office that they have found her missing piece, she shouts, “Hallelujah!”

At the Lost and Found Luggage office, John rejoices at the reunion when his eyes meet with Bootie’s. Despite the long journey and the poor shape he is in, he rolls forward furiously.

“Bootie! Bootie! I’m back from Baghdad and in one piece!” he shouts excitedly.

Unable to break John's speed, she gets hit squarely between the knees and cries out in pain, “You piece of sh—”.

As she lies flat on her back over the granite floor, tiny stars orbit overhead and John completes the sentence, “Piece of suitcase, thank you ma’am!”

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2024

NOTE:

The original article appeared in PIA's HUMSAFAR magazine.