Features

The Illegals on stage during the “Homework.”

Russian Intellectual Football

A hard-knock game of comic proportions.

Semyon, Alexei, and Paul in costume with microphones
Semyon, Alexei, and Paul (from left to right) rehearse their take on “Beauty and the Beast.”

It is 6:30 p.m. and the brash young comedy team the Illegals have only half an hour left before the women in the Russian hair salon kick them out. Half an hour is not a lot of time, they figure, but it’s enough to run through their comedy routine one more time.

As the sound of an upbeat melody starts rolling, Semyon, Ruslan, Alexei, and Paul take two steps toward the mirror wall of the room, raise their arms, and smile smugly. Then they break into a flurry of short skits and absurdist one-liners, all in Russian.

“Do you have anything for the head?” Ruslan asks, looking pained, in one scene.

“Here, take an ear …” answers Alexei.

Looking in the mirror after every joke, the Illegals pretend to see the blinding stage lights and the cheering audience that will greet them in two weeks at the popular Russian comedy competition called KVN.

KVN, roughly translated as the “Club of Humor and Wit,” is a team game show, where students from different colleges, cities, and countries compete by presenting comedy sketches, humorous musical numbers, and improvisation. It is fast-paced and intense; one of the show’s creators once described it as “intellectual football.” With no direct equivalent in other cultures, KVN is an essential component of modern Russian life and a popular import of Russian-speaking immigrants around the world.

The fifty-year-old tradition started after the death of Stalin. As Soviet control began to ease in the late 1950s and 1960s and television sets became more common in Soviet households, a group of Russian university students created a unique television game show. At first, KVN was a question-and-answer game based on a Czechoslovakian show and similar to Western models. Although the teams had to give correct answers, witty answers were also allowed. Soon, the producers began to emphasize humor, making up amusing contests and assigning the teams funny skits to prepare.

With lightheartedness rarely seen at the time and humor normally reserved for the underground subculture, the nationally televised show immediately captured the Soviet imagination. During each game, life on the streets would cease, and the next day, everyone would discuss the jokes they’d heard. KVN aired through 1971, expanding to more and more teams from different cities and Soviet republics, but then was cancelled due to criticism from government officials. It was revived only at the dawn of glasnost, when emerging liberties and disarray in the government allowed for less control of what was being said on television.

A humorous critique of the world in the form of popular entertainment, KVN has continued almost unchanged since Soviet times. In Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, being a “KVNshik” can make one a celebrity on par with famous professional comedians. Away from its television audience, however, KVN is — for some 40,000 Russian-speaking immigrants in the US, Israel, Germany, and even Australia — not a road to fame, but a unique national tradition worth holding onto in a foreign land.

Ruslan, Alexei, Semyon, and Paul strike a pose
Ruslan, Alexei, Semyon, and Paul (left to right) in the green room.

Looking in the mirror, the Illegals rehearse a scene from one of the three essential contests forming any KVN game, including the upcoming quarterfinals. Each game starts with the “Greeting,” where a team introduces itself with short tidbits of humor, loosely connected miniscenes, and dialogues. Then they move on to the “Warm-Up,” an improvisational contest in which each team has thirty seconds to come up with a funny answer to a question. Then comes the “Homework,” usually the longest and most theatrical part of the KVN game. It is akin to a sketch from Saturday Night Live and is rehearsed in advance. The Homework skit needs a lot of preparation, and each teammate has to be on top of his game.

For the Illegals, one of the key moments in the Homework is a scene borrowed from “Beauty and the Beast.” Ruslan — a blond, blue-eyed, big-boned Byelorussian — plays the merchant, whose three daughters (Paul, Alexei, and Semyon) ask him to bring back gifts.

“What would you like, my oldest daughter?” Ruslan asks.

“Bring me a decorated shawl,” replies the redheaded Paul, “from Gucci!”

“What would you like, my middle daughter?”

“Bring me an older sister who is not stupid,” says Alexei, the tallest of the three “daughters.”

“What would you like, my youngest daughter?”

“Bring me alimony for three years from that Beast!” answers Semyon, carefully enunciating every word.

At the end of the scene, everyone starts talking at once. Paul gets criticism for his bad pronunciation of “Gucci.” He repeats it several times, giving more punch to the “cci.” Semyon blushes deeply as he tries to argue with Ruslan about the wording of the skit. Meanwhile, twenty-five-year-old Alexei — the team’s oldest member — smiles to himself like a satiated cat. His hair is sticking out and worn-out jeans hang on his tall, thin body. Over the clamor, he hears Sasha, the team’s music assistant and only man behind the scenes, scolding Ruslan.

“You show off too much,” Sasha says. “And you eat up lots of words.”

“He is fine, leave him alone!” says Alexei protectively. Putting his hand on Ruslan’s shoulder, he tells him, “You are a star.”

Other, less poignant criticism continues to echo through the room as everyone gets ready to leave. Ruslan, who has the springy walk of a boxer and a childish smile, tells the skinny, stylishly dressed Paul that he does not like him as an actor. “Do you like me as a man?” Paul says flirtatiously as everyone chuckles.

“Bunch of homos on this team!” says the dour KVNshik as he walks out into the cold Brooklyn night.

The Illegals, whose four members currently live in three states — New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania – are a truly heterogeneous team. Unlike the majority of Russians who immigrated as Jewish refugees, Ruslan and Alexei both moved to the US three years ago, using a four-month visitor exchange program to stay on the new continent. Before the two friends met, Alexei and a few other young illegal immigrants created a KVN team based in New Jersey and named it, appropriately, the Illegals. At first, many KVNshiks, who have lived in the US since the biggest wave of Russian immigration in the early 1990s, thought the laid-back style of the Illegals was strange. Others, however, saw in their style a way to improve KVN’s American league.

“I first met them at the KVN festival in 2003,” remembers Sergei, a member of a Chicago team and a friend of the Illegals. “They brought freshness and youthful inspiration into the game. I immediately wanted to meet them. Their acting ability and quality of humor put them on a level higher than the other teams in the league.”

Yet so far, the Illegals have not been very successful. They left their first game due to disagreements about the judging. Then, they regrouped to incorporate some members of a team from Philadelphia — Semyon and Paul among them.

Semyon, who has attentive eyes and an apologetic manner of speaking, did not participate in KVN back in Russia, but loved to watch the games on TV. Unlike Alexei and Ruslan, he is not an illegal immigrant. After he moved to Philadelphia with his parents five years ago, he found out about the local league and created his own KVN team. “I wanted artistic realization,” he explains. “Some people paint, others play a musical instrument, and I play KVN. It’s a great feeling when you’ve written something, performed it, and the audience liked it. I feel artistic satisfaction.”

Semyon invited his childhood friend and neighbor, the redheaded Paul, to join the team. Paul, who had just moved from Israel, did not remember much Russian. But he was stylish and funny and had a good attitude. “I basically came to KVN for sex,” Paul says impishly. “But now I am the one who has to supply all the chicks.” Outside of KVN, Semyon and Paul work and go to college. They are majoring in film and hope to make a documentary about the plight of young illegal students like their teammates.

The last member to join the Illegals was Ruslan. Although he contributed professional KVN experience from Russia, the team still lost last season’s semifinals. “I went to rehearsals like a fool with a notebook and a pen,” says Ruslan. “And everything just ended in drinking.” Although Alexei’s official response to Ruslan’s complaint is “Nothing brings people together like vodka,” he blames their loss on razdolbaistvo — a slang word that means irresponsibility, carelessness, and even laziness.

“Razdolbaistvo is both our flaw and our style,” he says. “We can’t get together, we can’t rehearse, we can’t figure out the music. That’s why we lost at the semifinals last year. We were funny, but unorganized.”

The Illegals with microphones
The Illegals onstage during the “Homework.”

Less than two weeks before the game, Ruslan is having breakfast with Alexei at a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn. A rowdy group of men drink vodka and argue about yesterday’s hockey game. It is noon. As they wait for a steak, chicken livers, and apple blintzes, Ruslan explains that he has been playing KVN since he was thirteen.

“I even remember the first joke I had to say,” he says, his blue eyes gleaming. “We had this scene: an ad for Aeroflot. The guy looked out the window and said ‘Oh, look, flying elephants.’ And I took his glass away and said ‘Okay, that’s enough for you.’”

“You ripped!” says Alexei mockingly as he digs into his steak.

“When I first started, I didn’t write my own jokes and didn’t really act onstage,” continues Ruslan. “I learned how to write jokes, how to feel the text. So, KVN is not about talent, but experience.”

“I had talent, but I’ve killed it working with these guys,” says Alexei with a sigh. “People told me to go into acting.”

“Well, people told me that, too,” says Ruslan defensively.

“No, no, they lied. Besides, I was the one who told you that. Anyway, I didn’t want to go to acting school, because I like it as a hobby, not as a profession. I’ve always played the role of a fool, and an actor is more than just one character of a fool. My first role ever was to play a fool, and then the second, and the third, and it stuck. But I sort of act like a fool in life, too. Maybe that’s why this role is easier for me.”

Alexei, who became a KVNshik when he entered university in Russia, thinks he should quit competing after this season. “This game is for the young,” says the twenty-five-year-old. “I need to quit soon. I am way too old and KVN takes away so much time.”

“It takes away health, too, since we need to drink a lot,” interrupts Ruslan.

“Time and nerves,” finishes Alexei, who goes to college and keeps a night job at a Russian TV station.

“A great classic once said that KVN is not a game, it’s a lifestyle. Of course, no one knows what that means, but it sounds beautiful,” says Ruslan. He turns more serious and adds, “Someone who once participated in the games, I mean like fully — writing, acting, and stuff — cannot just quit.”

But Alexei doesn’t want to dwell on the serious. “Anyway, to come back to talking about talent,” he says. “Me and him play pretty much all the roles. Wait, what the hell do those two do?”

“Well, one is a redhead, so if something goes wrong, we can always blame him.”

“He also makes great tea.”

“Yeah. And the other one, Semyon, he is just a nice Jewish boy who doesn’t do much.”

“Every team needs to have one, you know,” concludes Alexei.

In Russia and many former Soviet nations, every KVNshik nurtures the hope of becoming a celebrity. But in the US, where an independent KVN league started ten years ago, stardom is out of the question. Although in format and style the American KVN league mirrors the High league of Russia, it does not have millions of fans. The teams sponsor themselves, auditoriums rarely fill up to capacity, and only a few KVN games make it onto a local Russian TV channel.

However, the enthusiasm of local KVNshiks like the Illegals makes them stand out among the mass of Russian immigrants. They do not resemble the majority of older Russian Americans, who, having left the old country for good, severed all ties with modern Russia. They are also not like many younger Russians, who grew up in the US and know little about their country of origin.

Instead, the comedians grew up in the post-Soviet Russia of endless possibilities. They emigrated not because they had to, but because they could. They are media-savvy children of globalization — in their spare time, they browse Russian websites and watch Russian satellite TV. Unlike some immigrants who are completely detached from the life of a cold country thousands of miles away, young KVNshiks often exist in a strange niche between here and there. On the one hand, they have Russian friends, Russian wives, Russian vodka. On the other, they are integrated in American society — they graduate from schools like Harvard, Berkeley, and NYU and work as programmers, businessmen, or lawyers.

But living in this niche, American KVNshiks find themselves at a disadvantage. Surrounded by a different culture, they have neither the structural and financial support enjoyed by Russia’s nationally televised KVN, nor the possibility to achieve true stardom as Russian-speaking comedians. Even their humor reflects their unique situation. To entertain their small, immigrant audiences, they often turn to localized jokes about the immigrant experience, be it Brooklyn restaurants or linguistic mix-ups.

When he first saw American KVN, Alexei thought it was very amateur. “Three years ago it was just horrible,” he says. “The favorite theme was when a dude dressed up like a woman, came out onstage, and said something. The first time I saw that, I realized that you can’t perform here. But everything has been changing and looking more like the real thing. If there are no young teams who want to compete, there can be no KVN. What would be left are the older teams. They are nice guys and their humor may be fine for this audience, but they are not helping KVN evolve. We need more young teams, especially guys from back home.”

With their experience from “back home,” the Illegals are trying to raise the level of the American league by bringing humor that is both poignant and not immigrant-specific. Their other choice would be to give up KVN completely. But even with this amateur league and a limited audience, playing KVN is worth their time. It is a tradition, a form of identity, and a way to preserve their culture.

“We can spend a whole evening talking about KVN and not even notice it,” says Alexei. “It has become part of our lifestyle.”

The five KVN teams onstage
The KVN teams gather onstage to hear the final results.

At 11 p.m. on a Thursday, Alexei is working the controls at the Russian TV station. With little time left before the game, he is surprisingly calm.

“We still have a lot to work on, and we only have one day left — that’s definitely a big minus,” he says. “At the same time, we are funny dudes, we look cool onstage, and we are pretty good actors. I don’t remember a game when we totally rehearsed. If one joke doesn’t get through to the audience and then the second, people see that the team did not rehearse. But if the first joke gets to them and the second, then the audience is in the right mood, they clap and cheer and don’t pay attention to the little mishaps, because everything is absorbed by the overall atmosphere.”

His deep voice leaves the hope for that magic atmosphere lingering in the empty control room. “Even though we are jerk-offs, everyone still wants to win. We all have problems, work, school, some of us have both work and school, not enough time, but you gotta have more in life than work or school.”

Alexei wants to win this season because he is not sure the Illegals will play next year. It’s not only his age. He is also worried that Ruslan may go back to Belarus. Although he has just received his work permit, Ruslan is waiting for a travel visa to see his friends and parents back home. For now, he refuses to buy a car, because he doesn’t want “to get anything that would tie me to the US.” If he does not get the visa before the end of the year, he will leave the country for good. At least in Belarus, Ruslan — the kind of person who sees the world “as if it’s made up of punch lines” — has a bigger chance of becoming a real KVN star.

Two nights later, there is commotion outside the dressing rooms of the Jewish Community Center in Philadelphia. Leather-clad Russian men smelling of liquor swagger down the hall, with Russian women in short skirts and heavy makeup trotting behind them. The women smile confidently, leaving a trail of sweet perfume.

Two women come back to the green room of the Illegals, with cigarettes and cans of Red Bull for the teammates. Semyon and Alexei open the cans and drink. All four Illegals put on hip, dark-gray jackets, beige slacks, and bright-colored shirts. The female admirers straighten out the men’s jackets and put gel in their hair. With only a half hour left before the game, the room is tense. There are endless bottles of cognac and juice on a table surrounded by drinking visitors. Semyon is angry and nervous because Ruslan has been drinking heavily.

“I’m gonna kill that fucker!” he yells. “How can he do this? The game is about to start! Where the fuck did he go?!”

Someone walks into the dressing room and asks, “Why do you guys look so gloomy?”

“Why should we be happy if we’re losing?” says Alexei, half to himself. He circles the room, muttering his lines and squinting nearsightedly. Sergei from the Chicago team tries to rally him. “Capture the audience, this scene is totally on you. If you capture the audience, you’ll rule, I promise you!”

Alexei nods absentmindedly, but does not speak. Ruslan comes back. He does not seem very drunk. “I’m always nervous before the game,” he confesses. “But when the fanfares sound, it goes away.”

Five minutes before the start of the game, the Illegals gather in a tight circle, put their hands together in the center, and yell in chorus, “We swear to you, O goalkeeper, that we will never lose!” They jump up, screaming and making punching gestures.

“I’ll destroy everyone!” bellows Alexei.

The female fans line up to kiss the teammates and wish them luck. An entire minute is filled with a seemingly endless “mma, good luck, thanks, mma, good luck, thanks …”

“It’s like we’re leaving for war,” Semyon says.

The auditorium is almost full. There are no empty seats, someone jokes, just unsold tickets. E. Kaminskiy, an experienced KVNshik from a legendary Russian team of the late 1980s, hosts the game. The jury, consisting of older KVNshiks, two of last year’s champions, and a TV newscaster (the only woman), sit in the first row. Five teams are competing tonight: NYU (famous for winning ten years ago), ASA College (famous for ever-changing members), the Philadelphia team (famous for attractive members), Nantucket (famous for constant intoxication), and the Illegals (famous for razdolbaistvo).

The game starts with the Greeting. “The Greeting is a chance to conquer the audience,” Sergei notes. “It’s all psychological. You need to click with the audience from the first phrase, with your energy and charm. If the audience reacts to you, then you’re the king.”

In order to pack in many disconnected jokes into the fast-paced Greeting, KVNshiks often imitate the format of TV ads, with their spicy one-liners. When the Illegals take the stage, Alexei announces, “American masochists ask to increase the punishment … for masochism in America!” The young audience is quiet. They process the joke. Then, they erupt in laughter. In another scene, Ruslan (who likes “current” jokes) plays Alexander Lukashenko, the Byelorussian president. After he won the elections, he says, “Dick Cheney called to congratulate me. He invited me to go hunting …”

After the Greeting, the Illegals are in third place. But this is no time for distress. They have to prepare themselves for the improvisational Warm-Up — what Alexei calls the most telling contest in KVN, as it allows the participants to show off their true ability in spontaneous comedy. With only half a minute to think, the teams have to answer each question as wittily as possible.

“In the last Winter Olympic Games, the athletes from Zimbabwe did not win any gold medals. Why?” reads out Kaminskiy.

The Illegals stand in a circle, whispering, laughing, and nodding. Finally, Ruslan approaches the microphone. “That’s because in the last Summer Olympics, Zimbabwe’s diver died of happiness when he finally saw water!” The audience cheers loudly — nothing like a bit of dark humor to please the Russians. After several questions, the judges once again reveal the score for each team. The Illegals move up to first place.

The next and last contest is the Homework. The Illegals have constructed their Homework performance around the childhood of each of the four members. First, Semyon announces that when he was a kid, he wanted to be a banker. In the bank, Semyon offers his customer (Ruslan) a $100,000 credit line.

“A hundred thousand?!” cries Ruslan. To the music from Pulp Fiction, he pulls out a gun and points it at Semyon. “Attention, everyone, this is a robbery!” He turns to Alexei, another customer at the bank. “Don’t move!” he yells. “Or I’ll shoot his brains out!”

“You are bluffing,” says Alexei, calmly.

“Why the hell am I bluffing?!”

“Because he doesn’t have any brains.”

After Semyon is dead, Alexei flees the bank and Ruslan hides from the cops under Kaminsky’s podium, where he finds “a remote control for the judges.” Suddenly, a newscaster — also played by Alexei — interrupts with “breaking news from the scene of the robbery.” Ruslan, it turns out, is a correspondent sent to cover the robbery he has just committed. Smugly, Ruslan says that no one has seen anything. “There is only one witness,” he says, pointing the gun at KVN’s host in the corner. “But he didn’t see anything, either.”

In the next scene, Paul comes out onstage to confess that he always wanted to be “a tall, broad-shouldered blond,” rather than a skinny redhead. At least he has acting talent, he says, and the Illegals break into the scene from “Beauty and the Beast.”

The final scene is from the childhood of Alexei and Ruslan — two thickheaded thugs.

“I can read thoughts,” says Alexei.

“People’s thoughts?” asks Ruslan.

“Yeah, people’s … c’mon, help me out!”

Ruslan raises a cardboard sign and Alexei proceeds to read it. “Thoughts,” the sign says.

When Ruslan ends up robbing Alexei, Paul and Semyon emerge in police uniforms and arrest them.

“And that is how we all met,” concludes Ruslan, as they take a bow.

Tonight, there is nothing stopping the Illegals. They have the charm and the energy, and they are prepared. The audience loves them. Most importantly, the judges love them. Tonight, the Illegals finally win.

Now, they only need to survive the after-party.

Update, August 3, 2013: Edited and moved story from our old site to the current one.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a writer based in New York City. She was born during a cold Russian winter and grew up in the golden hills of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her essays and articles on art, culture, business, travel, and love have been published in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Russian Newsweek, Oakland Tribune, and Flower magazine. She received the 2013 North American Travel Journalists Association silver medal for her Los Angeles Times cover photo "Barra De Valizas." She is currently working on a collection of essays about her year-long solo journey around the world.

 

Relics

200702_Image_02cr.jpgDetroit’s transition from past to present.

Concept

As technology spreads into the future, the obsolete are left behind. New things are created, while past creations decay. Nature begins to take apart what man once struggled to assemble. There is a threshold that is hard to pinpoint, when a manmade object becomes nature again. The difference between the two becomes blurred, and the beauty of this transition becomes visible: Concrete cracks with plant life. Iron and steel bleed rusty stains. Years of paint stratify walls. Wood warps and buckles to the elements. Trees grow upon the tar roofs of skyscrapers. Detroit is this transition.

Through the RELICS installation, man once again alters nature by extracting these objects, interrupting their return to the earth, and using them to create a contemporary museum of natural history. Patrons of this reliquary room sensually engage the history of Detroit, encompassed by energy and information. The viewer is overloaded by input, not unlike the artist’s own experiences while exploring forgotten sites. The senses are flooded, and one becomes fully aware of his/her surroundings — in the present moment — triggered by objects of the past.

Like everything and everyone, Detroit is moving and changing through time. Transiting cycles of birth, death, and rebirth; the City is our creation, and therefore, reflects our behavior. In the 300-some years since being named “the strait,” Detroit has gone from pure marshes and forests teeming with wildlife, to expanding farmland and industry that expended and veiled the fertile ground, to a state of post industrial wasteland with a waning population. Inhabitants have steadily fanned out of the core in a concentric pattern, leaving the civic center for nature to reclaim with infinite persistence. Now, a state of renaissance and rebirth is blossoming in the city’s core, and the natural cycle continues. The RELICS installation attempts to capture this state of transition and present the viewer with questions regarding art, history, and time — especially the dramatic changes over the last 100 years. How long, in this ever-changing landscape of our present world, does it take for something to be forgotten?

RELICS aims for a communication with viewers regarding what we, as civilized creatures, are creating, destroying, and leaving behind. It is meant to spark reveries and inspire conversation with strangers, and simply, to overwhelm viewers with the sheer mass of information, memory, and energy generated by thousands of relics of the future.

Logistics

At last count, over 400 wooden “boxes” make up the reliquary walls that create this installation. Each box measures 18” x 18” on the face, with a 12” depth. The boxes are made of medium-density fiberboard, 6 tons of it, and assembled in a chasing pattern with wooden screws and glue. The content of each box is secured by a variety of adhesives and hardware, whether recessing within the cube or protruding beyond the face. Each box rests upon those below, and is secured to the others and a supporting wall (unless free standing). Box construction places all weight upon the vertical boards, with added strength from wall to wall, or box to box pressure. Weight of individual units varies from about 10 to 100 pounds, with the heaviest being in the minority. The entire installation is modular and adaptable to any space, utilizing each site individually, but a large area with high ceilings is ideal. The boxes are open to the elements and human contact — naturally, they may change through travel and exposure. Some have been sold, others have been destroyed and/or recycled, and new boxes continue to be created. The installation is reconfigured and updated according to location and theme; hence, a detailed architectural plan of the potential exhibition area is necessary to determine the size and dimensions of this reincarnation.

[ Click here to enter the visual essay ]

 

 

One Piece at a Time

Stitching the past together.

QuiltFor Hanukkah this year I may have received the most meaningful gift I’ve ever been given. My family isn’t all that big on the gift-giving associated with that time of year. Like many people, it’s more about the time we spend together as a family than the price tags or the presents. We get simple things, like Dutch chocolate letters, an old tradition from my dad; or useful things, like teacups or socks or warm sweaters. And to be honest, this year I didn’t even want a gift. Everyone was happy and healthy, and that’s all that mattered.

However, my mom surprised me this year. When I was in high school she taught me how to knit, and I had spent many years slowly knitting colored squares with the intention of one day creating a quilt. She started making squares as well, and when I went away to university we stored the squares and the yarn in our guest room. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had taken on the task of sewing together not only squares that both she and I had made but added those to squares my dad’s mother had made as well: a three-generation quilt.

I was completely stunned. I knew that my mom must have spent countless hours painstakingly arranging all the squares and sewing them together. Her inclusion of pieces from my oma (“grandmother” in Dutch) gives the quilt an added meaning. My oma passed away when I was fourteen, just as I was beginning to know her. She and her husband, who died when I was three, were both Holocaust survivors. I feel as if I’ve spent the rest of my life searching for pieces of them, tying stories, pictures, and memories together in an attempt to hold on to her.

I know a few people who have their grandparent’s pocket watch or a piece of jewelry belonging to a great-great relative. Or maybe it’s an old photograph that they carry in their wallet. These objects remain almost invincible to time, preserving the memories of their past owners and keeping them alive.

Aside from objects, stories that are passed from generation to generation also keep memories from dying. Also, sometimes people name their children after those who have passed on as a way to give honor to their memory.

As for my grandmother, I try to weave the stories my family has told me about her with my own memories as well as physical objects. Before she died, a Holocaust museum in Florida interviewed my grandmother. I listened to the tapes, searching for answers into who she was. She described her experiences about being in a line that separated the people who will live from the people who will die, and about where they slept, ate, and cried. Her spirit and determination comes through on those tapes so vividly, it’s almost as if she’s next to me and we’re having this intimate conversation. I want and need to keep her memory alive for my children and their children too.

In the meantime, the quilt lays on my bed, protecting me from the unknown secrets in the night and keeping me warm. My squares, which are sometimes slightly misshapen or hampered by mistakes, intertwine with those of my mom, pieces that are uniform, brightly colored, and cheerful. My eyes follow the stitches to my oma’s squares, neat, tightly bound, and of deep, rich shades of brown and orange that were popular in the seventies. And maybe it sounds silly, but I know she’s there with me. It’s as if her soul shines through the yarn. Perhaps physical objects are our most powerful relics after all. Either way, they certainly keep our bodies and our hearts warm.

 

One piece at a time

Stitching the past together.

For Chanukkah this year I may have received the most meaningful gift I’ve ever been given. My family isn’t all that big on the gift-giving associated with that time of year. Like many people, it’s more about the time we spend together as a family than the price tags or the presents. We get simple things, like Dutch chocolate letters, an old tradition from my dad; or useful things, like teacups or socks or warm sweaters. And to be honest, this year I didn’t even want a gift. Everyone was happy and healthy, and that’s all that mattered.

However, my mom surprised me this year. When I was in high school she taught me how to knit, and I had spent many years slowly knitting colored squares with the intention of one day creating a quilt. She started making squares as well, and when I went away to university we stored the squares and the yarn in our guest room. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had taken on the task of sewing together not only squares that both she and I had made but added those to squares my dad’s mother had made as well: a three-generation quilt.

I was completely stunned. I knew that my mom must have spent countless hours painstakingly arranging all the squares and sewing them together. Her inclusion of pieces from my oma (“grandmother” in Dutch) gives the quilt an added meaning. My oma passed away when I was 14, just as I was beginning to know her. She and her husband, who died when I was 3, were both Holocaust survivors. I feel as if I’ve spent the rest of my life searching for pieces of them, tying stories, pictures, and memories together in an attempt to hold onto her.

I know a few people who have their grandparent’s pocket watch or a piece of jewelry belonging to a great-great relative. Or maybe it’s an old photograph that they carry in their wallet. These objects remain almost invincible to time, preserving the memories of their past owners and keeping them alive.

Aside from objects, stories that are passed from generation to generation also keep memories from dying. Also, sometimes people name their children after those who have passed on as a way to give honor to their memory.

As for my grandmother, I try to weave the stories my family has told me about her with my own memories as well as physical objects. Before she died, a Holocaust museum in Florida interviewed my grandmother. I listened to the tapes, searching for answers into who she was. She described her experiences about being in a line that separated the people who will live from the people who will die, and about where they slept, ate, and cried. Her spirit and determination comes through on those tapes so vividly, it’s almost as if she’s next to me and we’re having this intimate conversation. I want and need to keep her memory alive for my children and their children too.

In the meantime, the quilt lays on my bed, protecting me from the unknown secrets in the night and keeping me warm. My squares, which are sometimes slightly misshapen or hampered by mistakes, intertwine with those of my mom, pieces that are uniform, brightly colored, and cheerful. My eyes follow the stitches to my oma’s squares, neat, tightly bound, and of deep, rich shades of brown and orange that were popular in the ’70s. And maybe it sounds silly, but I know she’s there with me. It’s as if her soul shines through the yarn. Perhaps physical objects are our most powerful relics after all. Either way, they certainly keep our bodies and our hearts warm.

 

Easily angered

haydenth.jpgA conversation with Tom Hayden on being stirred by bullies and killers.

Tom Hayden is living proof that one person can make a tremendous difference in the course of a lifetime. Perhaps best known as a member of the Chicago Seven, Hayden helped organize street demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Hayden began his life in activism as a founding member of the widely influential group Students for a Democratic Society. Active on a host of issues in the early 1960s, he was arrested and beaten in rural Georgia and Mississippi as a Freedom Rider. He later became a community organizer in Newark where he helped create a national poor people’s campaign for jobs and empowerment. When the Vietnam War invaded American lives, Hayden became an increasingly vocal opponent through teach-ins, demonstrations, and writing. Due to his involvement in the 1968 protests, Hayden was indicted with seven others on charges of conspiracy and incitement. After five years of trials, appeals, and retrials, he was acquitted.

Hayden spent the 1970s organizing the grassroots Campaign for Economic Democracy in California. He was elected to the California state assembly in 1982, followed by the state senate ten years later. He served in public office for eighteen years until his retirement in 2000.After 40 years of activism, politics, and writing, Tom Hayden remains a leading voice for ending the war in Iraq, eradicating sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation. Recently, InTheFray Travel Editor Michelle Caswell spoke with Tom Hayden via email and learned how those committed to reshaping America might put their ideas into action.

The interviewer: Michelle Caswell

The interviewee: Tom Hayden / Los Angeles

 

You have recently been working on behalf of No More Sweatshops!, a California-based workers’ rights organization that has been pressuring public agencies to end the practice of buying sweatshop-made products. Has the ‘no tax dollars for law-breakers’ campaign had any recent successes you would like to talk about?

After an interminable struggle and wait, the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco signed monitoring contracts with the independent and pro-worker Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), [in December 2006]. They should be able to do four site visits this year as well as obtain complete disclosure of factory sites and subcontractors.

How are all of the issues you advocate for — an end to sweatshop labor, conserving the environment, ending the war in Iraq — related?

I would say they are connected through Machiavellian power structures as well as … in the new populism we see. While organizations have their reasons to keep the issues separate, no one can deny that Iraq is about oil and that anyone concerned with global warming, for example, should be equally passionate about global suffering.

You devoted the early part of your career to fighting for civil rights as a Freedom Rider in the South. Four decades later, schools are segregated across the country and the economic gulf between blacks and whites is still astounding. In your opinion, was the civil rights movement a success? What went wrong?

Yes, the civil rights movement prevailed against the Machiavellians in achieving voting rights, civil rights, and the end of the Dixiecrat political coalition at the time. To a lesser extent, the movement’s energies were directed towards jobs, for example, in the demands of the March on Washington in 1963 and the War on Poverty of 1964. We ran into two walls. First, the war in Vietnam sapped any resources to confront the battles at home. Second, the end of segregation removed the incentive for the plantation economy, and there was no public sector jobs strategy to fill the void of employment. Had the assassinations not happened, the political energy might have been renewed successfully.

While there have been some major protests against the war in Iraq and public opposition to the war is growing, we haven’t seen nearly as big of an outcry as in the 1960s protests against Vietnam. Why is this, in your opinion?

Actually the 2002 and 2003 protests were larger and earlier, and the American public came to regard Iraq as a “mistake” faster than during Vietnam. But the comparative images do make the Sixties appear grander, if I can use such a word. As [for] reasons, in the Sixties it was necessary to be in the streets because there was no inclusion. As a result of the Sixties, much of the consciousness came “indoors,” to the classrooms and neighborhoods, so to speak. But also the end of the draft has been a big factor in subduing potential restlessness on the campuses.

Do you think young people are apathetic today? What can we do to instill a culture of activism among young people?

It’s up to each generation. We had no elders in the 1960s; the question for people like me is how to be an elder, not a leader, today.

Can you speak about your work advocating for U.S. Congressional hearings on exiting Iraq?

After the 2004 elections, I was terribly afraid that the Democrats who were anti-war were shell-shocked by defeat and in danger of retreating further away from an anti-war position. I became involved that year in helping stir some interest in the progressive Democrats taking an open interest in what is now the subject of the moment — not how stupid it was to invade Iraq, but how … the movement and its political allies [can] design or demand a blueprint for withdrawal. Since 2005, most of the Democrats and some Republicans have come around to the need for an exit plan including a withdrawal deadline. They won’t go much further unless really pushed during the upcoming presidential elections by activists on the ground.

Many young idealists from the 1960s gave up their activism as they got older. Why have you stuck with it? What motivates you?

My own story is connected to the story of these times, and I seem drawn to following the stories to their end. I also remain easily angered by bullies and killers, and don’t understand why anyone would get tired of holding them accountable.

What do you think is the future of the Democratic Party? Do you think it is possible to advocate for change within a two-party system? How can the left take back the Democratic Party? How have you managed to make the shift from protesting the Democratic Convention to being a delegate without compromising your ideals?

I believe in the creative power of independent social movements, but also that when those movements grow large enough they will [and should] flow into electoral politics like a tributary of a great river. I don’t think the Democrats can be “taken over” because at their core they are embedded in the Machiavellian elite. But the rank and file of the Democratic Party can and will propel very progressive candidates to certain offices where the movements are strong, and they can even challenge in the presidential primaries during crises like this one.

How can people get involved? What is something that someone can do right now to make a difference in his or her community?

I hope that people can connect their work on a personal level with larger strategies for change. An example, but only one, would be to get in the face of military recruiters at your local campuses. Not only will you save some kid’s life, but you will contribute to shutting off the military manpower (“cannon fodder,” we used to say) necessary to keep the Iraq War going. The war will end when enough people-power pressures the pillars of the policy, if you see what I mean.

 

Giants among us

200702_ttlg_th.jpgExplorations of history and heroism in London.

Before I arrived in London, a local friend supplied me with a list of must-sees: Buckingham Palace, Harrods, St. Paul’s Cathedral. I diligently check items off the list, impressed, but uninspired. The last sight on the list is noted with two stars — Postman’s Park. The trouble is, I can’t find it.

I study my map, scanning street by street as if playing a word-find jumble, without luck. The persistent drizzle is wearing down my patience, so I stop a cabbie for directions. He points to a green speck on my map only a few blocks away. Then he puts his finger to his lips and drives off, and I sense that I’m about to be let in on a special secret.

The park is empty save for a woman smoking a cigarette, a black bird with a bright orange beak, and me. The bird lands at my feet and hops toward me, holding one foot up as if injured. Here, next to the noisy, crowded streets of downtown London, I finally feel I can get acquainted with the city Shakespeare called “this other Eden.” Postman’s Park, tucked between looming office buildings and steps from the hoards of tourists at St. Paul’s, is as humble as a park could get — no life-size bronze statues, no Sound of Music hills, no majestic elms. What it has is this: tidy lawns, blooming perennials, a few koi in a small fountain, and a series of plaques.

The plaques make this rather unremarkable park remarkable. Under the eaves of a loggia where the woman and I are sitting, ceramic tiles commemorate ordinary people who died trying to save the lives of others. “Edmund Emery from Chelsea leaped from a Thames steamboat to rescue a child and drowned on July 31, 1874.”“Solomon Galaman aged 11 died of his injuries September 6, 1901, after saving his little brother from being run over in a commercial street.”

My first impression is to fill in the blanks in my mind. I see a cobblestone road filled with horse-drawn carriages traveling in all directions and the Galaman boy darting after a ball. Solomon pushes his brother out of the way just as a carriage overtakes him. But then I feel a little cheated because I don’t really know if that was how the event transpired. There isn’t enough information. I want to know more — like how Solomon’s mother handled the news and if Mrs. Emery was proud of her husband’s bravery. Most of all, I want to know why. Why did Robert Wright of Croydon enter a burning house on April 30, 1893, to save a woman even though he knew there was petroleum stored in the cellar? Did he recognize the woman, or did he just hear cries for help and decide to act? But I will never get more than the paltry details written here.

These tiles were the brainchild of painter and sculptor George F. Watts, a socially conscious Victorian rebel of sorts who disliked the upper classes. During his own time, he was very successful and was called “the English Michelangelo.” In 1887, the Queen’s jubilee year, Watts wrote to The Times requesting a memorial be built to record examples of everyday heroism and self-sacrifice. Nothing came of the letter, so he decided to go it alone. He paid for the first 13 plaques to be built on this wall in the former churchyard of St. Botolph’s, still located at the west end of the park. After Watts’ death in 1904, his widow continued working to bring the total to 53. The most recent date I can find is 1927.

The black bird flies away, maybe to find someone willing to share his lunch. Then the woman stubs out her cigarette and leaves too, and I am alone. Her heels clicking on the stone path get fainter and fainter. I have that illusive feeling of being sealed and protected from the outside world — the sounds of the double-decker buses and salesmen hawking souvenirs cannot permeate the gates of the park.

It’s not hard to imagine Mark Tomlinson and Ellen Donovan and Herbert Maconoghu, each dead about 125 years from some heroic act, sitting along side of me. Theirs is an invisible weightiness, a presence here in Postman’s Park that forces me to wonder if I would come to the aid of another, no questions asked. Would I have what it takes to run into a burning building to save three children like Alice Ayers did? Could I jump into a river for a boy entangled in weeds like William Donald? Without the pressure of my life on the line, it’s easy to say yes, I would do the right thing. But I don’t know for sure.

 

Cabbie joints

Cabbie joints Cricket scores, chicken tandoor, and commiseration.

Ashfaq Khan enters Lasani, and heads directly for the restroom at the back of the restaurant, calling out “Kya haal hai?” (“How’s it going?”) to acquaintances.

The television is tuned to Geo TV, a local Pakistani channel, which is now showing the news, largely ignored by the drivers clustered around the tables, who look up from their conversations only for the cricket scores. In this almost exclusively male, South Asian milieu, cabbies are able to relax, chat with other drivers clustered over the tables, or speak loudly into their hands-free cell phone sets. A Hindi and Punjabi hum washes over the restaurant.

Khan returns with his slow, shambling gait. His middle-aged face is good-natured, open. He lacks the on-the-ball keenness of a veteran driver, having only been a cabbie for two years after a long stint as a parking lot attendant came to an unceremonious end. He picks up his order of chicken curry at the steam table, and settles down by himself to await his fresh naan bread. “Sometimes I call my friends and we eat together,” Khan, 40, says. “But I don’t want to waste their time. Time is money.”

It is just after 10 p.m. on a Monday. Most shops are shuttered, and the crowd that swells the streets during the day is heading home to bed. As business slows down, cabbies begin thinking about dinner. Switching on their off-duty lights, they pull up to the curb along 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, where Lasani has sat for a decade now. Restaurants like Lasani are havens for the city’s South Asian cabbies. While other busy urbanites spend top dollar to sit at the bars while celebrity chefs ignore them, the cabbie joints clustered around Manhattan’s “Curry Hill” in the East 20s, on Church Street near the World Trade Center, and on the Lower East Side opposite Katz’s Deli, have cheap food and clean bathrooms — a must for busy drivers. Here, they can exchange juicy stories about goings on in the back seat, complain about the taxi medallion system, discuss the ins and outs of the U.S. immigration system, and know they will find a sympathetic ear.

Khan is no fan of the driving life, but he appreciates the fact that he can set his own pace. “See, right now, I’m hungry, so I come down to eat,” he says. “You don’t need to wait for a break. You are your own boss.”

Dreams of home

According to Schaller Consulting, a New York taxi industry research firm, New York’s $1.82 billion taxicab industry employed 42,900 yellow cab drivers in 2005, 91 percent of whom were immigrants. A large number of them — 39 percent — came from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

The immigrant driver will almost never possess his own medallion — an official permit required by New York State. This piece of aluminum is what separates ordinary cars from cabs. But at $350,000, the cost of obtaining the medallion is often too much for recent immigrants. So, instead of buying, they lease them from wealthier owners at around $700 a week.

While the security and profit potential of ownership is a distant dream for many drivers, the taxicab industry has always been a magnet for fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, offering a ready job and the prospect of take-home cash at the end of the shift for those willing to endure tedious hours behind the wheel. In the thirties, the job belonged to Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants. The eighties saw a wave of South Asians taking the wheel, drawing friends and relatives into the industry in their wake.

“They are often people with dual class identities,” says Vijay Prashad, professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and author of The Karma of Brown Folk, a sociological study of the South Asian Diaspora in the United States. “They have aspirations.” Many cabbies come over as students, hoping to put themselves through school by driving at night, but many years later, find themselves stuck behind the wheel. Then there are cases like the small-scale farmers of Indian Punjab, who had to seek greener pastures when the government’s 1980s “green revolution” initiative brought in mechanization and favored wealthy farmers, Prashad says.

Many of these men leave their families behind in the hope of bringing them over when they are able to find higher paying jobs. For most, obtaining a measure of stability can take years. Until then, they drive cabs, share apartments with friends and relatives in South Asian enclaves in Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, and Astoria in Queens, along Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. They try to stave off loneliness among the comforting sights of sari and gold jewelry shops and with people like themselves. This homesickness leads them to the humble, hole-in-the-wall South Asian cabbie cafes of Manhattan, with evocative names like Pak Punjab, Lahore Deli, and Chutney.

Among these restaurants, little regional touches dictate where cabbies choose to stop. Nuances like the channel playing on television, the newspapers on offer, and the language of banter make these restaurants a home-away-from-home for many drivers.

Then there’s the food. Bangla Curry on Church Street at Reade Street, and the Shipa Kasturi Pavilion on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, for instance, feature a good selection of fish curries, favorites of Bangladeshi drivers weaned on a diet of rice and fish on the Ganges-Brahmaputra River delta. Pakistani restaurants make a fine art of naan bread, and a few restaurants offer only vegetarian entrees, catering to Indian vegetarian drivers.

Some places, like Lasani and Chandni, located on either side of the A.R. Rahman Mosque, enjoy a more diverse patronage. At Lasani, a calendar from the Tayyab Brothers Grain Market in Pakistan adorns one wall. Another bears a poster advertising prayer timings at the A.R. Rahman mosque.

Several times a day, devout Muslim drivers drape their jackets on chair backs at Lasani, wash up for prayers in the restroom, and then go downstairs to the basement mosque. “Then they come upstairs to eat,” says Komal Sultana, Lasani’s co-owner, who employs Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Arabic cooks to serve up regional specialties. “That’s the most important thing. If they don’t get good food, they won’t come.”

On her steam table, spicy red tandoori chicken (in the authentic style of the town of Lahore in Pakistani Punjab) and lamb gosht keep company with whole fried fish for Bangladeshis, and mild, aromatic squash and eggplant stews in the Arabic style for African drivers.

The spread is tempting, but cabbies have to watch what they eat, Ashfaq Khan says, as he carefully consumes a side of shredded lettuce that most other diners ignore. “If you’re gonna be sitting a long time, you get a lot of diseases,” he says, echoing the concern of a number of drivers, who, since they have to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, often forego it altogether.

Cabbie stresses

Khan works for 10 hours on weeknights and 12 hours on weekends — Friday and Saturday nights being the most lucrative for any driver. He pays $700 a week to lease his medallion from a private owner, and an additional $50 a day for gas — a total cost of $1,050 a week. During the week, Khan can make a profit of $80 to $90 on a good day. On bad days, he may break even. Weekends are better, yielding a profit of $200 a day or more.

Even so, it takes two incomes to make ends meet. Khan’s Trinidad-born wife is a travel agent, and is gone during the day when he is home. “Sometimes we’ll see each other during the weekend,” he says as he pops a few candied fennel seeds — an after-dinner breath freshener — into his mouth. “Sometimes I go home early, wake her up, and we talk.”

On top of the bad hours, he has to deal with the Saturday night revelers. “They’re drunk and spend all the money in the bars.” With stresses like these, Khan is not long for the taxi industry. He plans to someday get an automobile or refrigerator mechanic’s certification, and then buy a house. “A man can dream,” he says, half-smiling.

It’s the hard aspects of the driving life that have convinced Bangladesh-born Mamnun Ul Huq that cabbies need to band together. Ul Huq, a 44-year-old cabbie, often visits cabbie joints to get drivers to enroll in the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance. He eats most of his meals at home — he pauses to blow on his coffee at a Curry Hill Dunkin’ Donuts — visiting the restaurants only to meet his cabbie brethren. “It’s good food, but too much oil,” he says with a grimace.

Since its inception in 1997, the NYTWA has been trying to organize yellow cab drivers. So far, it has gathered around 7,000 members, Ul Huq says, about 16 percent of his fellow drivers.

Besides visiting the restaurants, Ul Huq often uses the Bangladeshi Citizens’ Band radio network to announce NYTWA’s plans of action. “People need to unite to get what they want,” he says, “especially in a job with unreliable working conditions, where a man can get stabbed on duty.” In March 2005, a passenger plunged a knife into Ul Huq’s neck, missing his aorta by centimeters. It took a 10-hour surgery to treat the wound, he says. These “crazy guys,” as they are called, can strike without warning. As late as last year, two Bangladeshis — a yellow cab driver and a livery cab driver — were sent into a coma when they were attacked, victims of what are believed, from eyewitness accounts, to be hate crimes.

The difficulties of being a cabbie are so great that even Ul Huq, as involved in cabbie-welfare work as he is, may quit the industry. “After the stabbing, I can’t sit for hours,” he says. “I’m trying to get some business plans together. Let’s see.”

 

Strange Shore

Best of In The Fray 2007. African refugees on Chicago’s North Side.

We have all heard stories about war, displaced people, and refugees throughout the world. As outsiders it is easy to think that once these people have been removed from immediate harm, all their problems are solved.

Tucked away on Chicago’s far north side amid university students and professors lies a growing community of African refugees. The new residents hail from all of Africa’s war-torn corners and struggle to make new and better lives in a foreign city.

The Mambo family of Burundi is representative of this growing community. Asiya Mambo, and her children, Aline, 14, Bea, 14, Vote, 5, and Lelia, 2, came to the United States in September 2005 because of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Burundi. Asiya’s husband is still in the camps looking for a way to come to the United States.

Asyia and her family traveled for five years among refugee camps throughout Africa and ended up in Mozambique. Originally from Burundi, her two nieces, Aline and Bea, 14, now speak five different languages because of their constant moving. Each member of Asiya’s family faces different challenges in their new lives in Chicago — from building a new social circle, to adjusting to a new school system, to finding a job. These images attempt to show the rebuilding of a shattered existence.

[ Click here to enter the visual essay ]

 

On the edge of Mozambique

200701_ttlg1.jpg

Two newlyweds discover that the foreign and the familiar aren’t always polar opposites.

We are looking over the menu at a small restaurant on the beach in Beira, Mozambique. The borders of this city hang into the ocean; appropriately, Beira means “the edge” in Portuguese.

Although it is dinnertime on a Saturday night in the heart of the country’s second-biggest city, only one other table in the restaurant is occupied. Upstairs is a deserted discotheque; to the right is an empty pool hall. Our table is right on the beach, and the restaurant’s weak lighting barely illuminates the whitecaps as they break on the sand.

The menu is impressive: ten pages of pastas, meats, fish, and fancy drinks. Of the four people at our table, three of us have lived in Brazil, so we are naturally thrilled to see some Brazilian delicacies on the menu. When the waiter comes, we order only to find out that they don’t actually have any of those dishes available. Further into the ordering process, we find out that they don’t have much of anything. I politely ask for the pasta alfredo. “We don’t have that,” replies the waiter in a heartfelt, apologetic tone. I request the pasta with garlic instead. They don’t have that either.

“Which of the pasta dishes do you have tonight?” I inquire.

“No, that’s what I mean,” says the waiter. “There’s no pasta.”

Deterred, I reopen the menu and motion to my husband, Joe, to make his order. He discovers that there is no stroganoff, nor chicken, nor shrimp. Of the full page of fish dishes, only one is available. Joe takes some time to regroup.

“Do you have the vegetable salad?” I ask.

“Sorry, no.”

We all end up ordering pizza.

While we’re waiting for the food to arrive, Joe and I step out of the wall-free restaurant onto the smooth sand. A twelve-inch-wide piece of concrete juts out of the sand and leads out into the ocean. I walk on the concrete while Joe holds my hand, suspicious of my balance. We can see the concrete disappear into the sea and we stand there on the edge, deeply disoriented. It doesn’t feel like we are right by the shore. Waves rise up like monsters and crash all around us. We could be in the middle of the ocean, on a boat somewhere, lost at sea. I am dizzy from the sloshing and pounding and frothing of the waves. I could lose my balance, fall into the water and be lost forever. The stars glint and glimmer on the ocean’s dark surface; all at once, they are trapped by two vast skies. I tilt my head back to meet them, and my head swims with all the light — there is nothing so limitless as the African sky. If you’re not careful you could tumble into it, head over heels, heart over feet, to that blurry horizon where ocean becomes sky, where no one could ever find you again.

When the dizziness is too much for me, I jump off the concrete and join Joe on the beach. We write notes to each other in the sand until the waves wash them all away and we’ve gotten our feet wet. We have been married for only a few months; every day is still a honeymoon.

The waiter beckons to us. Our pizza has arrived. Although we ordered different kinds, the food all looks pretty much the same.

As we are finishing our meal, two obviously intoxicated women stumble to the table next to ours. I don’t know what they’re on, but it is pretty clear what they’re after. They can barely sit up in their chairs, but they are making eyes at my husband. I am slightly angry, but mostly I am filled with pity. I try to imagine what I will do if they make my husband an offer; I can’t decide what exactly, but I’m certain it will be awkward for all of us.

A restaurant security guard comes over and asks the two women to leave the premises. One argues loudly with him; the other, with glazed eyes and frizzy, explosive hair, is slumped over the table like a corpse. The guard has to physically remove them both from the restaurant.

The waiter comes over to apologize. “Some people have no shame,” he laments.

While we pay the bill, I think about the two women and what their lives are like. Sometimes we are so quick to assume that people have made choices, when really life can be a blinding sandstorm of disappointment. What happened to these women? How did they get where they are at this moment? How can lives dissolve so quickly, like so many handfuls of salt cast into the open ocean?

As we leave the restaurant, we notice the two prostitutes in the street. The silent one is laying in the dirt as a puppy laps at the hem of her jeans. The loud one is standing over her, shouting something at the security guard who is watching from across the street with his arms folded over his chest.

We drive away into the night, moving west until we can no longer hear the rushing sound of the waves.

Three hours north of Beira is Gorongosa National Park, one of Mozambique’s remaining big game parks. A couple of months have passed since our first pizza dinner on the beach, and we are starting to realize the many ways that Mozambique’s civil war, which ended in 1992, still affects everyday life. I am no longer surprised by restaurants with long menus that only serve thin pizzas. As we have visited schools, orphanages, and health centers, we have seen the more vital ways that the civil wore tore down this country. People are still trying to build it up.
When we arrived at the park today, after a dusty early morning drive, we went in search of bottled water and found, instead, the park’s director.

“We don’t have any food here,” he said. “As you can see, we are still trying to rebuild.”

It didn’t take him long to explain that Gorongosa used to be the best game park in Africa — nay, the world. He said that before the war, people came from all over the planet to see Gorongosa’s animals. During the war, however, all the game parks in Mozambique were virtually destroyed. The rebels used one park as a base of operations and many animals were killed for food because local populations were starving. Since then, it has been difficult to draw tourists to visit the game parks. Most people go to Kruger Park or other famous game parks in neighboring South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.

Despite all this, we are sort of tourists, and the clouds are perfect. The landscape seems to change and undulate as each moment passes. One minute we are surrounded by feathered trees, when suddenly the horizon comes into view and the tall grasses sway in the wind, ruffled like ocean waves. There are few animals, but I am content with the trees. Joe and I are riding on the top of a land cruiser straining our eyes for a glimpse of a baboon or warthog. We missed the lions — apparently, they are sleeping. We are searching for the elephants, but they are shy.

As we drive further along the dirt roads, bumping over potholes and brushing grasshoppers off our arms, reality fades away until I can remember it just vaguely, the way you remember how salty seawater feels on the back of your neck when you are living in the desert. I can’t remember what Africa is, or America, or even the planet Earth. It is just me, the husband that I am leaning on, and an azure sky that stumbles into the horizon and bumps into one especially tall gnarled tree. When I look closer I see that the tree is filled with monkeys.

What was apparent our first week here becomes increasingly clear as the months pass by: There is more than one kind of post-war reconstruction happening in Mozambique. Some people have dedicated themselves to attracting tourism to the game parks and nightlife, but the real and most vital kind of reconstruction is happening quietly, little by little, in individual homes. Things fall apart and get torn down; every moment is a good time to start the process of fixing. I have met social workers, teachers, volunteers, nurses, government officials, and aid workers who are dedicated to building up individuals and families and communities. They are the ones who will really reconstruct this country and every other country, and eventually, if all goes well and their wishes are granted, the whole star-speckled universe.

Despite the amazing differences, every place is strikingly similar to all the others. Wherever you go, there are happy people and sad people and empty restaurants and blue skies and, occasionally, eternally tall trees filled with noisy animals. There is nowhere in the world like Mozambique, and by that I mean it is just like home.

 

Bad Eyewear Can Mark a Child

Best of In The Fray 2007. How I learned to be sneaky and failed.

I was prescribed glasses fairly early on — after my vision had become suspect when I began walking into walls and stepping on Muffin, our aging Lhasa Apso. In 1979, on my fourth birthday, my father tried to take a picture of me in my Little Orphan Annie dress, but as he called my name, I could only look around with a blind and aimless gaze. In a flurry of despair, I was rushed out onto the porch, where I promptly failed a set of amateur sight tests administered by my mother. This failure sealed my fate of bespectacled childhood.

Now, those were the days of spartan provisions in the field of eyewear, before the time when designers manufactured children’s accessories to mimic their fashionable adult lines. Options were limited. The children’s section at the optometrist’s office consisted of 11 inches of shelf behind the counter with one or two horrific styles in your choice of mousy brown or black. They flattered no one. Constantly reminded of this fact by my sensitive classmates, I would remove the culprits the first chance I got, which was always during my walk to school. My glasses were octagonal, a sort of stop sign design that was mildly popular in the late 1970s. Though I detested these glasses, I knew they were expensive, so every morning I would gently slip them into my backpack like a pair of endangered cockroaches. I praised myself for my cunning and my mature considerations of value. On my return walk home, I would delicately pull the glasses out again, confident I had fooled everyone into believing I had 20/20 vision.

I couldn’t see the board. For nearly three years, my mother attended parent-teacher conferences where she was scolded for failing to provide her daughter with corrective lenses. My mother would argue. My teachers would sigh. My mother would return from school, confused and frustrated, and find me sitting six inches in front of the television. In a weary voice she would ask me, “You’re not wearing your glasses at school, are you? Don’t you know you’re ruining your vision? Do you want to go blind?” I would be irritated by the distraction and only unglue my eyes from the screen long enough to toss a few languid apologies in her direction. After quickly confirming that nothing of great import was happening on The Love Boat, I would then add a few tears for effect in the hopes of finalizing the discussion. I knew my mother wouldn’t understand the sublime genius of my scheme or realize I had sacrificed my precious vision to save myself from endless social torment. Undaunted, she would position me in front of a mirror and say things to my reflection like, “This is the person you really should be saying sorry to. Right here. In this mirror.” I would sniffle in agreement and nod ferociously at our looking-glass counterparts, but I wasn’t really sorry. My only remorse came from missing what happened to Isaac and Gopher in Puerta Vallarta and having to suffer through my mother’s amateur child psychology tactics.

For second grade I was assigned to Mrs. Rizzo’s class. I remember it as a hazy year, mainly because I couldn’t see anything, but it was compounded by Mrs. Rizzo’s maternity leave. Her absence made her seem mysterious, like a distant uncle who died of snakebite. In her place during those months was Miss Savage, a youngish spinster with radical ideas and enormous smoke-colored glasses. The dark lenses must have hampered her vision, because she compulsively followed each line of text across the page with her finger whenever she read. Although I did like her for letting us chew gum, the finger-reading made me somewhat suspicious of her.

One wintry morning, after watching me squint and stall and crane my neck in my third attempt at reading the day’s assignments on the blackboard, Miss Savage spoke in an uncharacteristically commanding tone. “Why don’t you go and get your glasses?” she said, more a demand than a query. “But I don’t wear glasses,” I heard myself begin to whine when she interrupted me with a voice that was louder than her rhinestone-studded eyewear: “I know they’re in your bag.”

I knew at once I was defeated. It was the end of an era, and nearsighted as I was, I had grown to enjoy my time in the fuzzy world of neck-thrusters and squinters. I pushed my tiny chair away from my desk and trudged back to the coat closet, slowly, guiltily, like a criminal approaching the guillotine. My pink unicorn sweater felt hot from shame and the burning eyes of my classmates who had all turned to watch me slink to the back. I reached into my matching unicorn backpack, fumbled around for my glasses, and pulled them out. The class was silent and time stood still.

I don’t recall the walk back to my desk. Like a dream, the next thing I am aware of is sitting down, bent in half, cowering. I am wearing my glasses, those hideous harbingers of sight, and am mortified, unable to lift my head. Everyone has crowded around, and I can feel 26 pairs of naked eyes peeking at me over the desk. Seated on my left, Miss Savage lays one hand on my shoulder and uses the other to adjust her monster-sized super glasses. I hear her sigh with the effort. She clears her throat and announces to the class that I have something to share. The newfound perkiness in her voice, indicating she would no longer be alone in her goggled freakishness, makes me skeptical. Feet shuffle in anticipation as I quietly wonder how life will be different for me now.

I look up. I am greeted by faces I do not recognize, though the voices are familiar. The strange heads stare at me for a moment, then, unimpressed and bored, their bodies sit back down. Exhausted, I tentatively lean back in my chair.

I do not see the future and the mockery I will eventually endure: the flat-chested jokes, the lesbian taunts, the geek jeers. Those will come later and will be just as anxious.

For now, I see the present clearly and breathe. Looking back at me, Miss Savage begins the lesson.

 

A sip of Egyptian tea

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A doorman in a foreign land shares stories with an American visitor.

Amman, Jordan, is on its way to becoming a modern city in the Middle East. High rise buildings dot the landscape, and Mercedes and BMWs shoot through traffic circles. In the basements of every high rise and apartment building, you will find a “boab” who is sharing his living space with the tenants’ cars. The boab is a jack of all trades: he is a 24-hour live-in doorman, the building’s guard, a maintenance man, a personal grocery shopper, and the car washer. Indispensable but nearly invisible.

 

My name is Abu Hassan. People laugh at me because of my small feet. They are almost a size 4. No matter how I try, I can't hide them. I wear sand-colored open-toed sandals, like the ones we have back in Egypt. But here, in Amman, I wear sweatpants and not a long gallebeya, my traditional Egyptian robe that conceals my feet.

What's my daily routine? It's simple really. I wake up before the sun rises and wipe down each of the cars in the apartment building. There are 18 in total and they are all lined up. The six-story building is old and badly needs to be sandblasted. It's not nearly as nice as the one my son Mohammed works in down the road, but both buildings have the same owner. He is fair and occasionally generous.

I have my own room on the ground floor right beside the elevator, more space than I ever had in Egypt. There, we were six, packed in a tiny room. It was always filled with flies. The flies crowded around our babies' eyes when they slept, especially in the summer.

Now I have an entire bed to myself. I even have an extra one for when my son visits. There are no bugs, and I own a small black and white TV.

After washing and polishing each car early in the morning, I come back to my room and put my copper kettle on my small stove and wait until it whistles. I snatch it off the flame just as it is about to fully let out its piercing song so that I don't wake up everyone in the building. I mix in five spoons of sugar and dunk a tea bag that seeps its ochre goodness into the boiling water.

The glass warms up my fingers, which are rigid from the cold cleaning water outside. Unlike Egypt during the winter months, it snows here in Amman.

After my break, I sweep the entire entrance to the apartment building. The 14 pesky kids who live here leave little piles of candy wrappers in every nook you could imagine — between the cracks in the pavement, the grooves of car tires, and the tops of the entrance bushes. Every day I am forced to go on a trash hunt to keep the place spotless as they giggle and watch. As soon as I've cleared the entire area, they run to their school buses, leaving whirlwinds of dust and trash behind them. And I have to start sweeping all over again.

If it's a good day, the foreign woman on floor two may ask me to clean her apartment or help her fix things. She tips well, perhaps an American trait. She's clumsy, speaks broken Egyptian Arabic, and has a strange talent for breaking things.

She asks me to come up once a month to help her with repairs. I never know what to expect.

Last time, she had somehow ripped her curtains off their hooks. I've never known anyone who managed to do that. The time before, she had yanked the handle off the toilet. It took me a week to figure out that one. She then cracked her wooden bed frame in two. And one time she blew up her glass coffeemaker.

 

I call her Ruru, and that's what the kids call her too. At least she's able to distract them, by playing football with them after school so that I can get about my business.

Best of all, she loves my tea. She comes by once a day to chat, and I laugh. From her stories, I can tell that she's not just clumsy at home; she takes her klutziness into the world. Over tea and sometimes a tobacco waterpipe, or sheesha, she tells me stories — about her experiences at work and her convoluted attempts to buy things.

She calls pillows "beans." And when she tries to say "beans," she uses the word for "money" instead. Her Arabic is mangled, but she talks with her hands and reminds me of being back home in Egypt.

Ruru lived in Cairo for three years and has carried our humor with her. She seems to trust me more than others, because I can understand her even when her words make little sense.

Ruru is friends with the apartment building owner, so I feel extra kind towards her. I always put an additional scoop of sugar in her tea, even though she says it will make her lose her teeth. In return, she brings me treats. She knows what my favorites are: dried apricots and strawberry milk.

I pray that Ruru marries someone good. Someone who can fix many, many things.

 

 

Lead by example

The Sean Bell case is 50 shots too many.

There was a time when I would try to stick up for police officers. My late grandfather, Warren Brown, was in law enforcement for 35 years in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a detective in the juvenile unit and was highly respected in the community he policed. As far as my own experiences, I’ve never had any altercations with cops. When I had the unfortunate experience of being mugged one night on my way to a party in Harlem, I found the investigating officers to be extremely sympathetic and professional. When I got pulled over for speeding on a few occasions, I never received an obnoxious or cold reprimand. But, unfortunately, my interactions are a far cry from those of my two brothers, my male cousins, and male friends — all of whom have something in common. They are all black men.

Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo were also black men, who were gunned down in a spray of bullets by police officers. Fifty shots were fired in Bell’s case, 41 shots in Diallo’s. How many for the next? And that question must be asked because there will definitely be another tragic killing, as long as policemen continue to perceive black males as suspects. The Diallo case is closed. It is now common knowledge that the police got it wrong when they cornered Diallo. One of the four cops who was indicted testified that Diallo had matched the profile of a wanted rapist and had reached for what they believed was a gun. It turned out to be a wallet. And Diallo, a hardworking immigrant from West Africa, was unarmed.

Although a jury acquitted all four cops in the case, New York City later reached a $3 million settlement with Diallo’s family, who had filed a wrongful death civil suit.

There are still no answers for the Bell case. In fact, it has yet to yield indictments. But what is known is that Bell was unarmed, and no weapon was found on him or in his car. We also know that one officer alone fired 31 times. There have been protests around Manhattan led by civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton. New York Mayor Bloomberg said in a news conference right after the shooting that the “50-odd shots fired” were “unacceptable or inexplicable” but noted the need for an investigation to “find out what really happened.”

What needs to be said is that this latest shooting death was excessive, an egregious example of police brutality by the NYPD, and an honest snapshot of the way some officers treat blacks in urban communities. Because no charges have been made yet, the identities of some of the officers involved in the Bell case have yet to be revealed. Although the cops include two blacks and a Hispanic, I fail to see the significance. Police brutality is police brutality, and whether or not an officer is black or white, there is still an unspoken trend that allows cops of all colors to get away with aggressively interacting with black males.

My grandfather policed Cleveland’s Eastside, a predominantly black, lower-income community. He investigated gang activity, picked up truants and thieves. He also drove around in an unmarked car, and he wore plain clothes. My grandfather was proud to be a detective, and he earned the respect of the community by setting an example. He was a professional, not a bully. And perhaps that’s what went awry in the cases of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell. If the officers involved respected Diallo or Bell as human beings, not as guilty black male suspects, then maybe those men would still be alive.

My grandfather had to interact with violent youths, and he also had to turn the other cheek when the “N-word” and racial jokes were part of the everyday locker room banter. There were times when his job was stressful, dangerous, and tense. For sure, the undercover officers in the Bell case have been in stressful situations themselves. But my grandfather didn’t take his anxiety and anger out on the people he was paid to protect and to serve. He respected them. My grandfather never fired 31 shots at an unarmed person. And he never killed anyone. What a shame that the officers in the Bell and Diallo cases can’t have that track record.