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For several years, I have worn my favorite green t-shirt, fading with age, that has a screen-printing of a Palestinian youth throwing a rock with the slogan “We Are All Palestinians” emblazoned in red lettering. I am partial to this slogan because it captures in four simple words a diversity of meanings. It shifts our vantage of oppression—too often viewed within a U.S.-centric racial paradigm–to a transnational context; it builds solidarities that allow us to draw connections between US wars at home and abroad; and it forces us to rethink means by which our own resistance—no matter how small—adds weight to the stone we throw in unison as part of a collective Intifada.
And yet I’m writing tonight about another meaning of the slogan “We Are All Palestinians.” I’m locked in a Moscow hotel room—essentially imprisoned—because I do not have a Visa to enter the country. I know, I know…it may seem quite a stretch to compare my “misery” of sleeping in a modest, yet adequate, bed with the daily humiliations faced by Palestinians. (And btw, shame on me for not getting the damn Visa–yah, right for only $250.00!–and I’ll admit that I’ve always wanted to see Lenin’s tomb!)
So I’m in a hotel room–so what am I complaining about? Well, it’s not my relative comfort that I’m concerned with here, but rather the restrictions, regulations, rulings, and requirements that govern us all and create the false divisions between citizens vs. “illegals,” of borders and “green lines,” and of the nation-state itself–a construct always built upon parceling out the racialized “other.”
So, I sit here at a small desk at the Novotel’s 3rd floor, which is designated for those of us without proper Russian Visas; and to be frank, the experience has been quite bizarre. I was driven to the hotel in a special vehicle with two guards who navigated through check points, back roads, and barbed wire, which surround the Sheremetyevo International Airport (see pic below of the airport from outside my window). The hotel front desk attendant has told me rather frankly that I could not visit the hotel bar (yes, of course I asked how to grab a beer) because I’m not allowed to mingle with the Russian people. Outside my door, there is a guard on duty (male, of course) to be sure that I don’t leave my room. I tried leaving my room once to explore by feigning that I was merely looking for the ice machine, to which the guard asked me to return to my room, and he called for room service–hospitable, but firm.
But it was on this special route to the Novotel through back entrances and concealed passes where I witnessed a different side of Russia. Gone were the luxury retail stores—the exact ones that line the seemingly endless terminals at JFK airport, the “Miracle Mile,” and Rodeo Drive—where I saw a glimpse of the daily lives of working-class Moskva. I saw where workers parked their smallsters and Ladas, smoked cigarettes, and walked to and from their airport jobs, some with smiles but many with solemn, tired gazes. I also saw an odd area where run-down school buses were overcrowded with ethnic minorities—obviously not the buxom blondes and Nordic, chiseled men that filled the Aeroflot magazine covers designed for Euro-tourists.
So, as I prepare for sleep and my flight to Cairo in the morning, I’m left with the truism that one doesn’t have to travel to Gaza to grasp the solidarities we share in Eastern Europe and North America—and as I’m sure to find out soon in Northeast Africa. “We Are All Palestinians” is more than a slogan. It’s a vantage from which to view the world, our relationship to each other, and the collective imperative to act.
from the 3rd floor
