I pressed the intercom button again, looking up at the gaggle of Israeli soldiers at a distance above, and let them know that I opted for the scanner.
I was still worried about the radiation. I heard a loud metallic click, and the gate opened to a machine that looked like a time capsule. I stepped in, placing my feet on the stenciled footprints that marked where they should go, and raised my hands in a triangle above my head, as I’ve done so many times before in this country, unpregnant. I waited as the scanner moved around my body, and held my breath. The machine stopped, the light switched from red to green, and the magical gate opened, passing me through to another prisonlike cubicle. The light in the second cubicle turned from red to green, and as I started forward, the light turned back to red. I paused, confused. The same arrogant voice came over the intercom: “Could you please go back to the scanner? There was a problem.”
“What?” I asked, feeling my blood pressure rise. “You want me to go through the scanner again?”
“Yes. Go back.”
I went back to the scanner and raised my arms above my head. I held my breath as the scanner moved again around my body, careful not to move. The light turned from red to green, and I moved forward into the next cubicle, where I waited for that light to also turn green to pass me through after two full-body scans. But the light turned red again. It must have been a mistake. I looked up to the glassed-in balcony, now with a handful of soldiers looking down on me in my little glass prison. They were laughing and smiling as they debated whether to continue radiating me and my stomach.
“Whoops”—the arrogant voice returned— “you moved. Can you please pass back to the scanner?”
Are you kidding me? I asked myself. It took every inch of self-restraint to not lose my mind. “I did not move. I have been through these scanners before. I know I did not move.”
“Go back to the scanner.”
“I am sure my baby will be born with three heads after this,” I offered.
“Go back,” he said. The other soldiers were still laughing.
After the third time in the full-body scanner, they finally passed me through to the next cubicle. But instead of directing me straight toward the exit and the luggage belt, they had me go to a cavernous room with a metal-grated floor off to the right: the suicide-bomber room. A light flicked on across from me, and a female Israeli soldier who was perched behind thick bulletproof glass leaned forward and said, “Take off your pants.”
“What?”
“Take off your pants, and lift up your shirt. I need to see your body.”
“Is your scanner not working? The one you just made me pass through three times?”
“Please take off your clothes.”
I took off my pants and lifted up my shirt to reveal my perfectly shaped basketball of a stomach and the red lacy underwear I don’t know what possessed me to wear that day.
“Are all the men in the glass box watching this from above?” I asked.
“No, they are not.”
I wondered if the woman staring at my pregnant, naked body was at all ashamed of their behavior.
“OK, you can get dressed again.”
I was confused, appalled, and angry until I suddenly had a moment of clarity: If the Israeli soldiers were doing this to me, a New York Times journalist accredited by the Israeli government itself, who had called the press officer in advance to graciously ask to be manually searched, how on earth did they treat a poor, Palestinian pregnant woman? Or a nonpregnant Palestinian woman? Or a Palestinian man? The thought terrified me.
I left Erez and filed a formal complaint to the International Press Center in Jerusalem and the Israeli government through the Times bureau in Jerusalem. More than a month after we filed the initial complaint, the Israeli Ministry of Defense issued a statement regarding the events at Erez, and in an unprecedented step for the ministry, they issued a public apology for my treatment.
Just as in Somalia, when I had felt my baby moving inside me as I witnessed the suffering of other infants, I could suddenly understand, in a new, profound, and enraging way, how most people in the world lived. I had been seeing that reality for years. But somehow, I had to admit, my pregnancy and the vulnerabilities of motherhood had offered me yet another window on humanity, yet another channel of understanding.
CHAPTER 14
Lukas