She nodded dubiously. She didn’t think they could fly.
Let me know if I can help, she said.
I will. But he was shaking his head, very slightly. No one could help him with this. As with so many things.
They went back into the party. As they crossed the threshold from balcony to room he touched her arm.
Thanks, Mary.
105
After we were given our passports we put our names on a few lists, and waited some more. Of course those were the days that felt longest of all. Finally we got lucky; our names came up on one of the Swiss cantonal lists— for Canton Bern, in fact, where we had been all along. We were invited to move to Kandersteg. A village up in the Oberland. On a train line, where the line ran into one end of a tunnel which cut under the mountain south to the Valais. Said to be quiet. A bit of a backwater. Room in a hostel for us, and apartments being built. We said yes. My daughter, her husband, their two little ones.
Once there we moved into the hostel, and got on the waiting list for an apartment building soon to be finished. Kandersteg turned out to be a very Swiss village, like a set from a movie, a rather clichéd movie, but fine, we were there. A family from Syria. There were five other refugee families living there, from Jordan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Mauritania. We said hello to them cautiously.
Of course we all knew about the SVP, the Schweizerische Volkspartei, the Swiss People’s Party. They do well in the mountain cantons, and they don’t like immigrants. People in the Fremdenkontrolle and the SEM, the State Secretariat for Migration, were often only marginally helpful to us, or even unfriendly, but the SVP are actively hostile. It’s best to avoid attention. Part of that means not gathering in groups with other refugees, looking together so dark and strange. Unheimlich. We all knew that. When we met, at first, it tended to be privately.
So, a day came when I stood outside the doorway of our hostel. Green alps rising all around, gray mountains above them leaping to the sky. Like living in the bottom of an immense roofless room, or even at the bottom of a well. But a quick creek in a drainage channel ran right through the middle of the village, making a cheerful sound. The air was clean and cold, the sunlight on the rocks above a thick yellow. A real place, despite its unreal look. And we were here. Here, after twelve years in a Turkish camp, two years on the move trying to get to Germany, very crazy years, very hard; then fourteen more years in the Swiss camp north of Bern. Now we are finally somewhere.
And yet now I find I am seventy-one years old. My life has passed. I will not say it was wasted, that’s not right. We took care of each other, and we taught the children. They got a good education in that camp. We did what we could with what we had. It was the life we could make.
And now we’re here. And the SEM awarded us a small lump sum based on how long we had stayed in the camp, and that being so long for us, it wasn’t all that small. We could combine it with the savings of the Jordanian family new to Kandersteg, and together we rented an empty space in a building on the main street between the train station and the cable car terminus. The space had been used as a bakery, so it was not too difficult or expensive to change it into a little restaurant. Middle Eastern food, we were told to call it. Kebabs and falafel, and other things people already knew about; then, when we got them into our place, we could have them try dishes more interesting. Six tables and we would be full. It seemed possible, and it was interesting to try. Well, who am I kidding— it was exciting to try.
Of course I am old now, but there is no changing that, except by death. At least I have this day, and these days. All that happened before seems now to have happened to someone else. It’s like remembering a previous incarnation. Especially home itself. I remember when I left Damascus I looked around and promised myself I would someday come back. Damascus isn’t like any other city, it’s old, the oldest capital left on Earth, and you can tell that when you’re there, it’s in the streets and the way it feels at night. And when we were released from the camp, I had the chance to return. I even got a plane ticket. I went to Kloten thinking I’ll just go back and see it. The family didn’t want to go, but I did. But then in Kloten I had a kind of a, I don’t know what— a kind of a breakdown I guess. Who was this going back, and why? I tried to put it together, all the pieces of my life, and I couldn’t do it. I concluded that the person who thought of going back was not me, that I was no longer that person. The years in the camp had taken me, day by day, the same day every day, to another person. So at the last minute I said no to myself, and went back down to the train station under Kloten and returned to the camp. My family greeted me curiously, unaware of this shift, this fact that a different person had returned to them. Are you okay? they asked, and I said yes, I’m okay. I just don’t want to go anymore. I didn’t understand it, so how could I explain it? Who can tell the riddle of their own true self?
So all right, a new person. Old but new. I think about what I have now, as this new person in her life, not quite my life, it seems, but I’m trying to get my head around it. We work all day to prepare a meal. It’s a fixed menu for those who want the whole supper, and we take reservations, which sometimes happen and sometimes not, but by eight or nine the restaurant is mostly full. Easy with the six tables. It’s almost like hosting a dinner party at home, except instead of friends coming over, it’s strangers. Or let’s call them acquaintances. Many are there for the first time, but some have been before and come back. We always greet those ones with a smile, and they often talk to each other. Swiss German is such a funny language, it is sometimes hard not to smile. It’s maybe like the sound of their medieval life, chopping wood and clanging cowbells and the nasal toot of their alphorns, and maybe rocks falling off the sides of their awesome mountains. This compared to the fluid birdsong of Arabic; it would be funny to have both in the same room at once, but we don’t usually speak Arabic around them, we speak high German, Hochdeutsch, and they speak it back to us, slowly and clearly, with what I am told is a strong Swiss accent, but I don’t hear that, it’s the only high German I know. It was a tourist from Berlin who told me that, he said, in Berlin you would be taken for a Swiss woman, your German is that good, but with the Swiss accent. If it weren’t for the color of your skin of course, you know what I mean. I agreed that I did, with a smile.
So what we have now, I would say, is not money (very short), nor freedom (we are still registered as Ausländer), but dignity. And this is what I think everyone needs. After the basics of food and shelter that we need just as animals, first thing after that: dignity. Everyone needs and deserves this, just as part of being human. And yet this is a very undignified world. And so we struggle. You see how it is. And yes, dignity is something you get from other people, it’s in their eyes, it’s a kind of regard. If you don’t get it, the anger rises in you. This I know very well. That anger can kill you. Those young men blowing things up, they’re angry because they don’t have dignity. Which is something other people give you, so it’s tricky. I mean you have to deserve it, but ultimately it’s something other people give you. So the angriest of our young men blow things up because they aren’t given it, and mostly they blow up their own people’s chances in this world.
Take the Chinese. Chinese tourists who come in tell me, in English of course, that for a century they were oppressed by European countries, they were humiliated. They had no dignity anywhere on Earth, even at home. But who can imagine that now? The Chinese are so powerful now, no one can criticize them. And they forced that to happen by standing up for themselves. They didn’t do it by killing strangers at random. That is so wrong I can’t even express it. No, if it’s going to happen, it has to be done like the Chinese did it. Possibly Arabia with its new regime will change, and the wars end and the rest of our suffering countries change in ways that force the rest of the world to give us the respect we deserve. It will take changes all around. It will take the young to do it.
Meanwhile we fill our restaurant, night after night. We are legal permanent residents
of Switzerland. The years here will pass faster than in the camp, that’s for sure. That the boredom of the camp made time go slow, so that I must have lived a very long life by that protraction, is an irony that I don’t find all that funny. Better to have it all go by in a tearing rush. That I am sure of.
To get by here in this country, I’ve become a different person, and more than once. But this new person standing here now is not so bad. And there are things about the Swiss you have to admire. They are so punktlich, so punctual— this is funny at first, but what is it but a regard for the other person? You are saying to the other person, your time is as valuable as mine, so I will not waste yours by being late. Let us agree we are all equally important and so everyone has to be on time, in order to respect each other. Once we had the restaurant reserved by a single group, we decided to do it on Monday, our usual night off, so as not to inconvenience any of our regulars. So we were cooking away, fixed menu, pretty easy but had to be done right, and my daughter looked out the door and laughed. Look, she said, the invitation is for eight but some of them got here at quarter till, so they are waiting outside until it turns eight. Here, look at the clock, you’ll see I’m right. And at eight there was a knock on our door. We greeted them with huge smiles, I’m sure they thought we were a little tipsy. Then also in the train stations, this I like to watch, the clocks over the platforms show the time, and whatever your train’s departure time is, if you look out the window of the train right before, you’ll see the conductor of the train also has his or her head out the window, looking at the clock; and when the clock hits the very minute and second of departure, the train jerks and off you go. That’s the Swiss.
These people will accept us, if we aren’t too many. If we are too many, they will get nervous, that’s pretty clear. I think it’s the same in Hungary or in any of these little European countries. They’re prosperous, yes, but there are only a few million of them in each country. Seven million Swiss, I think, and three million Ausländer among them; that’s a lot. And it’s not just the sense of the nation, but the language. This I think is the crux. Say only five million people on Earth speak your language. That’s already far less than many cities hold. Then another five million come to live with you and everyone speaks English to understand each other. Pretty soon your kids speak English, pretty soon everyone speaks English, and then your language is gone. That would be a big loss, a crushing loss. So people get protective of that. The most important thing, therefore, is to learn the language. Not just English, but the local language, the native language. The mother tongue. Their culture doesn’t matter so much, just the language. That I find is the great connector. You speak their language and even when you’re messing it up like crazy, they get a look on their face: in that moment they want to help you. They see you are human, also that their language is a hard one, a strange one. But you’ve taken the trouble. The Swiss are very good about that. Their language classes are free, and besides they have four languages among themselves, which they hack to bits with each other every day. Take the tunnel under the mountain from this town to the town at the other end of the tunnel, and they don’t speak the same language they speak here! You go from weird German to weird French, and really, we speak German better than many Swiss who live just twenty kilometers from here. It makes them more tolerant, maybe. They joke about each other in that regard.
When everyone jokes like the Swiss do about each other, when everyone in the world has their dignity, we will be all right. In the meantime, here I am, an old woman, my life mostly lived in refugee camps, out on the street outside our little restaurant, early sunset as always here, in the shade at 3 PM. It’s a shady town so deep in its hole, a calm town, a sleepy town. Whatever happened in the past, whatever happens after this, today is today. In a little while I’ll go back inside.
106
The day before Fasnacht, Mary got a message from Arthur Nolan. He was getting back to Zurich in time for it, could he still join her?
Yes, she messaged back. The rest of that day she thought about him, wondered what it meant that he was back. She was pleased he would be there. Had he cut short a tour?
She went out to see The Clipper of the Clouds descend onto the big new airship flughafen in Dübendorf. When he emerged from their little Jetway he saw her and smiled. A slight man.
She accompanied him to his co-op, looked around curiously as he put away his small bag of stuff. Frank’s last place. Who remembered him now? Seemed like it might already be down to her. Maybe his parents were still alive. If so they would be so sad. Horrible the way mental illness spread its pain around, cut people off. Her Frank, she had done her best; and he had been a friend anyway, she had loved him in her way. Nothing to be done.
They trammed up to her place, and he laughed to see it. You took a place sized for me, he joked as he walked down the length it, farther to the left than she could have gone.
They dined in a nearby trattoria. Art told her where he had gone on his last trip: central Asia, mostly, circling the lower slopes of the various mountain ranges, where animals were doing very well. The Caucasus, the Pamirs, the Karakorums, the Altai, the Hindu Kush, the Himalaya. There was a Lenin Peak in the Pamirs, and Tajikistan was almost all a wilderness reserve, imperfect but real. They had seen a snow leopard, and black-faced langurs, and many other creatures. People had inhabited these mountain ranges for thousands of years, but the nature of the land meant it was a bit like Switzerland, only more so; some terrain was just too wild to make much of. His friends Tobias and Jesse were helping to create what they called the Anthropocene wilderness, a composite thing that was like the wilder wing of the Half Earth movement, and many of the governments there were cooperating in creating a vast integrated park and corridor system that included and supported the local indigenous human populations, as park keepers or simply local residents, part of the land doing their thing.
It sounds great, Mary said. I’d like to go on that one.
Would you? Because I’m going to do it again.
If I go, I’d like to spend more time on the ground, she confessed. Just stay in one place for a while, see what happens.
We could drop you off and pick you up again.
That sounds good.
After dinner he gave her another hug and headed off to the tram.
The next day was Fasnacht in Zurich. Shrove Tuesday, falling on February 14 of this year. Art came up to her place to meet her, and when she opened the door she found him wearing a silver lamé jumpsuit with a plastic red hat. You’re going to freeze in that, she warned him. She herself had on a long black cape and carried a Venetian domino she could put on when she wanted, a beautiful cat face, which restricted her vision too much to keep on all the time, but looked nice. She put it on to show him and he said, Oh I love cats.
I know you do, she said. Do you want to borrow a coat?
I’ll be all right.
They went out into the darkness of early evening. As so often, Fasnacht was going to be cold. On this night the air was particularly chill, temperature already well below freezing. This had a peculiar effect on the festival, because many Zurchers were like Art, dressed in costumes not really appropriate for such cold. But the Swiss were pretty cold-hardened people, and apparently Art was too. As they walked down Rämistrasse arm in arm, they saw people in grass skirts, Hawaiian short-sleeved shirts, bikinis and the like, also fur coats, band uniforms, national costumes from many nations, and every possible type of kitschy cantonal costume. And almost every person out there promenading carried a musical instrument. Fasnacht in Zurich was a musical evening. On every street corner, one or more musical groups were playing for small crowds surrounding them. For a while Mary and Art listened to a steel drum band banging away metallically at some spritely tune from Trinidad. Right behind the band, a fountain was gushing into the air, its water plashing down in time to the music. Bulbous ice knuckles made a thick white verge around the edges of the fountain’s basin.
Lower on Rämistrasse
they strolled slowly by the luxury shops, looking at window displays. The shop that sold Alpine curiosities held them for a long time: polished facets of stone, geodes, burls and cubes of wood, all enlivened by a small menagerie of stuffed Alpine animals. Also fur pelts, stretched out like artworks against the walls to right and left. Art stuck his nose to the glass to see better.
What are they? Mary asked.
I’m not sure. I mean the stuffed ones are easy, that’s a fox, and a weasel. I’m not really sure about the pelts though.
Kind of sad, no?
I don’t know, once they’re dead I think stuffing some of them is okay. And keeping their fur. Once I came on a dead owl that was perfectly intact, a huge thing, and I took it to a taxidermist and had it stuffed. It was beautiful, I had it for years.
What happened to it?
I don’t know, I was about ten.
Down the street to the next corner, where an Andean band in serapes played their pan pipes and guitars. They at least were appropriately dressed for the cold. They sang in tight harmonies, not in Spanish— maybe it was Quechua. These were professionals, or at least professional street musicians, and Mary and Art stayed and listened for a long time— so long that Mary got cold, and steered Art down into the Niederdorf.
Here they found that Zurich had put its lions out for the evening, a fact which caused Art to exclaim happily, time after time as they passed the little prides. Mary told Art what she knew about them, which she had just read in the paper the week before; they were fiberglass lions, life-sized, molded in ten or a dozen different postures, then painted different colors by different groups, and placed all over the city to celebrate its two thousandth anniversary, back in 1987. Turicum, Art interjected, a Roman city. Mary agreed. After the city’s yearlong celebration of its two thousandth year, she went on, most of the lions had been auctioned off, but the city had kept a hundred or two in storage at one of the bus garages, ready to be redeployed, and this year’s Fasnacht had been declared special for some reason or other. So now they passed lions painted like alpine meadows, like flames, like the blue and white Zurich flag; like tram tickets and zebras and sea serpents and the British flag (they booed it); like Art Deco lamps or granite or brick; and as for their various postures, Art identified most of them to Mary as they passed them: That’s couchant, that’s rampant, that one’s assaultant; that one’s at gaze, that one’s accolé. That head is caboshed, if you can believe it.
The Ministry for the Future Page 54
