Egypt is judenrein, free of Jews. But a generation ago when Egypt was a cosmopolitan prosperous Mediterranean country, it had a happy Jewish community. I got to know them well in their exile, as penniless refugees dispersed all over the world. Improbably, this modest, intensely family-orientated people found its voice in Lucette Lagnado, Lulu, a quiet girl of my generation. Like others, her family settled in one of those old and poor apartment buildings of Bronx, unforgettable for the static electricity shocks I received when I touched anything. She describes her father in America:
My father never did find an employer in New York, though he did go to work every day. I still remember him setting out each morning, carrying the yellow manila envelope that he used instead of a briefcase, along with a large brown box perched under his arm.
He had become a tie salesman. His "office" was the streets and subways of New York, where he offered prospective customers dazzling ties with labels that said "100% Silk" and "Made in France" or "Made in Italy." They were none of the above, but the customers were taken by his charm and perhaps also moved by the sight of this dignified old man. And he occasionally made a sale.
I know because, as a little girl, I would sometimes watch as he button-holed potential customers on the street, or on the BMT line, and open the box to reveal his treasure trove of ties.
The bits of money that he earned helped to pay the rent, put food on the table and, not least, repay the debt of the Queen Mary (they had purchased their passage to America on credit. J). By the summer of 1979 the debt was down to $39. He made two payments, one in July and the final one, for $20, in September. An agency worker stamped a receipt "Paid in Full" and marked the balance due: "$.00."
I think the bureaucrats who wavered about letting Dad come to the U.S. should feel, on balance, pleased with their decision. He turned out to be an awfully good credit risk.
I could not tell it in such dry, matter of fact style. It is too emotionally loaded for me.
11 comments:
Her father, it appears, was not quite in the same league as Mr Kweku.
The bureaucrats who enthusiastically admitted Mr Kweku into the UK, I suspect, couldn't give a rat's ass about their decision, since they will not only not be held accountable, but will in fact be actively mandated to let in more people like Kweku and less people like Mr Lagnado.
Anon.
Profiling would have been effective in identifying Mr Kweku as a risk. Koko says she could have warned the Swiss about Nigerian and other West African crooks.
Do you think Koko was an accomplice?
Anon.
For every sad refugee's tale of paradise lost and living in reduced circumstances, there is another story of an "American Dream" fulfilled. Some people (J for example) have the resilience to remake their lives and even thrive in another country and another language. Others can never quite get it together again and spend the rest of their lives selling fake neckties in the subway and talking about the old country and the lost properties and the perfection of the former society (remembered through rose colored glasses - Egypt was a lovely place for a thin veneer of upper and middle class society to which the Jews belong but for the average fellah it was (and is) a society that provided a whole lot of nothing).
In Poland my father was a poor fisherman, barely scratching out a living cutting holes in the ice for his nets, and the same career probably awaited me, had Hitler not intervened. In America, he came to own a house and a farm and a car and money in the bank and all the middle class accoutrements. And his son received an Ivy League education and became an attorney - something literally unimaginable for the son of a fisherman in Poland.
Lagnado herself is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a best selling author who can make hay (read $) from her father's sad story - again this far exceeds what she could have ever achieved in Egypt, even an alternate universe Egypt that was not made Judenrein. Probably the only difference is that in an Egypt full of excess manpower a middle class woman would have a staff of hot and cold running servants (my mother in law visited the home in New Delhi of one of my son's (rather wealthy) friends from the University of Pennsylvania - they had a staff of 18 ). So she should, (in a bittersweet ironic Jewish way, because we are bittersweet ironic people who realize that life is just a joke that God plays on us ("a mensch tracht un Got lacht") thank Nasser just as I have Hitler to "thank".
K
I am sure you would have prospered in Europe too.
Let me add something. In Poland after the war, the world was wide open for talented proletarian children. In Poland, K, you had no competition at all. You would be a chief judge in Poland today. With two young schikses as assistants.
After the war they were still killing Jews in Poland - see Kielce pogrom. Then in '68 they threw out the few remaining Jews.
Still there is something about the cream rising to the top - a year after he arrived in (was deported to) the USSR my uncle was the right hand man to the nachalnik of his kolkhoz.
K
Yes, your judicial career probably would have paused in 1968. But after the fall of Communism you would have been reinstated and promoted.
Every day I kiss the ground here and thank my parents for coming here. Not one of my father's fellow katzetniks went back to Poland to my knowledge - it was widely understood (except perhaps by loyal Stalinists) that there was no future for Jews in Communist Poland, certainly not the kind of future my father wanted, involving ownership of land and a business and attendance at schul.
K
By the way, speaking of reinstatement, my favorite is those who were "posthumously rehabilitated" by the Party. Gee, thanks a lot.
K
After the fall of Communism, one could buy castles and estates in Poland for a few zlotys. You could fulfil the dream of our ancestors of living in a castle as a Polish nobleman, and hire a Jew to manage your latifundia.
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