At 35,000 feet above the Caribbean the sky has thickened with heavy cumulus clouds. We fly into them. Wind begins to rock the plane left and right. A sudden downdraft drops us a couple of hundred feet. I hear moaning and look up to scan the aisle. Two elderly women are desperately fingering their rosary beads as they chant in Spanish, but I feel no anxiety, just a tickling sensation in my stomach as the plane seems to leap and then fall, then rise again. 

I am 19 years old and this is the first time I have ever flown. I look out the window of the Panagra jet as we head toward Panama. It is a summer of firsts: I will be spending three months working on a ship until the fall when I return to my college studies, my home, and, oh yes, my parents’ suffocatingly constrained box of rooms and rules.

An abrupt drop and a shriek from a terrified passenger pulls me from my thoughts and that tickling sensation brings forth a laugh, not loud, not boisterous but loud enough to attract unwelcome attention. I look at the women’s faces down the aisle—their eyes—eyebrows arched from fear of meeting God too soon. They stare back at me in silence, and in their silence they are screaming, “HEATHEN! HOW DARE YOU LAUGH! WE ARE SOON TO DIE!” I clamp my hand over my mouth and turn to look through the window and wonder at the sight of lightning zigzagging from cloud to cloud, illuminating momentarily the darkened stormy sky. And then, as gradually as we entered, we leave the cloud bank, the plane rising high above it. It levels off, the passengers are relaxing, and soon all I hear is the hum of the engines as our jet slices through the air toward our destination. 

An elderly couple sits to my left. The man asks me where I’m from. I reply New York. He says they’re from Peru. He asks me my name and, hearing it, he nods and in a hushed tone asks if I’m Jewish. I tell him yes, but not practicing. I’m actually an atheist but I don’t tell him that. He whispers, “We are survivors of the war.” He soon invites me to visit them in their Miraflores apartment, on the outskirts of Lima. He warns me though that he doesn’t talk about their religion where they live. He fears awakening nascent hostilities. I tell him in New York we don’t live that way. We mix with everybody. Yeah, there are some jerks, but mostly it’s safe and OK to say you’re Jewish in New York. In Lima, no, he answers. It’s like they’re in a little box, he says, and to stay safe they have to be very, very careful who they let into their box. They dare not do so. It would be far too dangerous. 

The plane finally lands in Panama. As we say our goodbyes, they give me their address to visit if possible. I hope to. I want to see what their box feels like.