My first encounter in America was with a luggage cart. In the summer of 1992, when I landed at Kennedy Airport, I carried with me a travel bag filled with books. It was so heavy that it could not be checked in at my originating airport in Casablanca, Morocco, without putting me over the weight limit. Since I couldn't afford the excess baggage fee, I brought the bag with me on the plane, where the flight attendant helped me hoist it into the overhead bin. In New York, I hauled it down the jet bridge and through passport control, my hands blistering from the effort. Relief washed over me when I saw a row of carts. I tried to get one, only to discover that it required three dollars to unlock. I remember thinking: What kind of a heartless place is this?
I didn't have three dollars, or a five or a ten. The money I did have was in the larger denominations I had received at the currency exchange office where I'd traded in my meager savings. I began to doubt whether I would make it to the terminal from which my flight to California was scheduled to leave. Then a voice behind me called, “Do you need help with that?” A middle-aged man in a baseball cap picked up my bag and carried it for me to the terminal bus. All the way to my next gate, other people stepped in to help. This wasn't a heartless place after all, I thought; Americans were more than willing to lend a hand to a stranger.
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