Passages: Welcome Home to Canada

by Michael Ignatieff

  You see, even without crossing the boundaries, without knowing the others’ language, your thinking agrees strangely with that of the strangers. Thought is surprisingly uniform; even spatial distance can’t change it. The human species, wherever it is found, likes difference. Today we hear, in absolutely every corner of the earth, this same speech: “We’re different. Our language is particularly beautiful. Our culture is uncommonly rich and distinguished. Our nation is perpetually menaced with disappearance …” And, “Let’s live together with our differences.” This means living in your own corner, staying in your culture of origin, protecting your spiritual, if not geographic, territory, contenting yourself with appreciating “the other” from a distance. This love of difference is not only in style everywhere, but it’s becoming a veritable world tradition. We tried in vain to divide the world into two, or even many, camps. The planet’s map is different depending on the angle from which it’s seen. But the planet stays the way it is. The world is globalized anyway.

  What hit me the hardest in your letter, what provoked a buzzing in my ears, is an allusion that you make to territory. You have qualified me as a “Ji Ju Zhe” in the country where I am. This Chinese expression is an excellent example of the disarming efficiency of my mother tongue. It stuns with sobriety, like a blow from a hammer. My understanding of Chinese is still good enough for me to suffer fully. A “Ji Ju Zhe” is someone who lives shamefully, pitifully, in a way that’s always temporary, under the roofs of others, sheltered from the lights, surviving on the leftovers from others’ meals, without contributing anything, like a rodent. (A certain Frenchman named Le Pen would adore this expression. And he’s not the only one.) Your letter hits home because it touches an aspect of reality.

  When the plane was taking off from the Shanghai airport—twelve years ago already!—I said to myself: it is as if I am dead; I will start everything again elsewhere. I didn’t have any intention or need to navigate. I was simply looking for a haven. No battlefield, no ancient ruins, no site under construction, but a garden. Where I was born and grew up, there reigns a mixture of ancient and modern dust that disconcerts me and sometimes makes me suffocate. So I left. To clean out my lungs.

  Even if I have never felt compelled, at any moment in my life, to pace off my territory (Kong Zi taught me despite myself to scorn that activity, calculations being, according to him, restrictive to the spirit), I don’t like departures and trips. I have always wanted a haven, a routine. All that is familiar to me touches me, holds me. Nobody today believes in my profoundly sedentary temperament. I’m always expressing my repugnance towards roots and my admiration for birds. I praise them for the freedom that I don’t possess. I have lost my wings, after having lived so long among the ruins. When I left China, I was no longer a young shoot that could transplant itself easily. I have neither the courage nor the force of a real nomad. If I went through another replanting, I think I would die.

  So I don’t try to content myself with a voyage. I aspire to a destiny—a destiny with roots. I like North America. I say it without blushing. I like this northern continent (my body doesn’t tolerate extreme heat) for absolutely childish and capricious reasons that hardly seem to justify the gesture of uprooting myself. Here, at least, the land is still green and the sky blue. Do your children know this, a blue sky? And the moon is disproportionately large, the way it’s seen in drawings. The sidewalks are very clean. Nowhere else have I seen so many smiling faces. Here, we rarely have to line up. And we don’t fly into a rage for nothing. It’s important. We’re calm when others are calm. One must at least maintain the appearance of calmness; a little politeness is needed, some distance, in order to share the planet without colliding with each other. This appears to be very Confucianist, very “politically correct.” Kong Zi’s ambition was to correct our nature, to suppress our instincts. It’s what makes him detestable, and also eternal, for our nature doesn’t change.

  Here live a so-called uprooted people. They no longer recognize it, having quickly fenced in their land, but the others know it. Those from older continents don’t forget the matter of age. When the future is uncertain, the past serves as a map. I’m glad to find myself among those who can’t look back, who are thrown into the unchartable present. Are you even able to tell who are the real natives here? In the beginning there was desert, like Shanghai one hundred years ago. And the archaeologists tell us that two thousand years is but the blink of an eye. Two thousand years of civilization, a shooting star. And how long will I remain on this earth? Why should I give myself so many worries, ask myself which land belongs to whom? The answer is—the children. My little ones keep me from sleeping serenely. They carry my genes, they’re visible. They’ll be asked the question: but where do you come from? I already see a shadow covering their young faces; I sense their disarray. And I feel responsible.

  Canada is Bethune’s country. (But don’t believe that Bethune represents this country. Nobody, no matter how grandiose his or her destiny, can ever represent anything.) You would be surprised to know that he’s almost unknown here. A modest statue in downtown Montreal and a film about him, that’s all. Yet he’s not only a Chinese hero; he didn’t only save the lives of Chinese soldiers, those who very often found themselves under fire not for some ideal or other but simply because they were trying to obtain something to eat and to wear, in exchange for their young blood. Bethune also worked for his compatriots. He fought in concrete terms for universal health care, for one of the best systems in the world in his era, even better now (despite the current problems), better than in China in any case; for which the Canadians rejoice while complaining, and which those without papers dream of while dying in the boats. But Bethune is gone. On the other side of the ocean, a quarter of the human population knows him; in his native country, he has disappeared. There are some who believe he committed suicide, or that he was suicidal in throwing himself into the vast Orient.

  As though to mark the end of my wandering, according to custom, I went to sing a solemn tune in front of a magnificent maple leaf. The ceremony reminded me of my childhood, when, before the morning exercises, we stood in rows in the school’s large yard and, with our noses in the air, witnessed the raising of the flag with five stars, our little ears filled with the national anthem. I almost cried. I let out a sigh of relief, saying to myself: it’s done, I made it, I will never again have to walk like a heroine on an arid path and under the indifferent sky; I’ll be able to huddle up against my little lamp in my little nest, in peace. I was thirty years old that year. I had the impression of entering into a family where the parents are invisible, where the unknown brothers and sisters communicate in secret codes, where I was more fragile than ever, and had an overwhelming desire to please. I felt as if I were only three years old, there were still so many things to learn, to discover.

  And in 1992, my first book was on the shelves in bookstores. It carries my name, but so many others lent a hand, among them Professor Yvon Rivard, the writer André Major and the editor Pierre Filion. I’m eternally grateful to them. I don’t have to tell you what this event means to me. I think I am more myself when writing. I thank all those who accept and sometimes appreciate the real me. It wasn’t a dialogue or a message, like you and many others thought. I don’t have a message to deliver, any Chinese curios to display. I don’t address myself to the outside world; I head for the inside. I want simply to get closer to my self, to explore as well as can be expected its evanescent and constantly renewed reality, to descend again and again into the depths of my being, into the depths of the land where boundaries aren’t drawn, where even language is no longer important because you’re approaching the essence of language. It happens that when the words flow well, I no longer know in which language they’re coming to me. I’m transported by the mechanical and almost unconscious gesture of typing on the keyboard. And it’s in this state that I hope finally to be able to meet the Other.

  The publication of my first book marks such a meeting. A meetin
g with rare beings, of course: we can’t hope that everyone will read our book, and in the same way. Above all, a book, like everything else, has its limits. But this meeting took place, I’m sure of it. It’s easy for us to describe our solitude, because it’s fundamental and constant. But how do we describe an instant of real happiness so short and intense? It resembles a spark, which seems to combine all our hopes within it, our past desires as well as our present momentum, and which therefore has the power to illuminate our entire life, past and future. Even though quickly extinguished, the tender memory of this spark will stay with us to warm our hearts in difficult times.

  And difficult times—you’ve guessed it—are never lacking. Shortly after the happy events (the diploma, the book, my citizenship, etc.), something happened that made me fall from the cloud where I had taken refuge.

  I was invited to a conference, this time as a Canadian writer, travelling for the first time on a Canadian passport. My Chinese passport was no longer valid. In the past, it had aroused a lot of attention, which I could understand, but this time I thought I had nothing to fear: I had one of the best passports in the world. I had forgotten the fact that my birthplace is indicated on my passport, that the sign of danger is written in my facial features.

  Upon my return, during a stopover at the airport in Toronto, I was stopped, questioned and searched. That day, arriving in Toronto, I had rightly noticed a strange atmosphere at Customs. At the entrance booth, this extremely visible post, those charged with examining pockets and bags were uniquely “people of colour.” And the search area, most of the time, was also reserved for “people of colour.” I didn’t see, in fact, one single person “without colour” on their way there. This situation is not entirely unfamiliar to me, but that day it was showing itself with striking clarity. A coincidence? The politically incorrect? The politically correct? In either case, I suddenly understood that there exists a solid, well-thought-out policy concerning immigrants, applied by an infallible machine, supported by an immense and ancient belief. And this policy can sometimes concern me—even me. The policy is always carried out with more rigour towards the apolitical or the politically weak, because it’s less risky.

  First I was asked what I could be doing “all alone” on this trip, which left me speechless. I became stupid under the shock, the way an animal freezes when faced with imminent danger. Then I was shown a secret door. I walked through it. I was in a dark room without windows. Prison could not be far away. I was shivering.

  A police officer was waiting for me there, a very large man, and armed. His voice, hard as steel, prevented me from collapsing. “Put it here!” he said to me. He wanted me to lift my suitcase onto a kind of shelf, at a height that allowed him to touch it without bending his magisterial back too much. “Open it.” And as I hesitated, he repeated, “Open it!” He didn’t say please. It was therefore a familiar way of speaking. Not a familiar Quebec way of speaking, natural and simple; but a familiar French one, replete with provocation, insolence and contempt. All those who survived the Cultural Revolution would recognize this tone without fail. After having put his immense hand into my intimate belongings, in vain, the policeman contented himself with saying, “The door is over there.” And he moved away, his back very straight and his head high.

  I had time, alas, to notice that he was almost handsome. The muscles of his face seemed firm, full of conviction and assurance. I had hoped to find the marks of stupidity or monstrosity on his brow so that I could despise him. And that face without fault brought me that much more sorrow. As soon as I was liberated, I ran towards a mirror. Can you guess what I saw that day in the mirror? Stupidity and monstrosity. And I collapsed awhile on a bench, body and soul downcast.

  My friends here will think me hypersensitive. They will tell me that this can happen to anyone. They will even give me examples. They don’t understand. What I experienced was an authentic situation, where an authority and a subject, one armed and one disarmed, a man and a woman, faced each other without witness, in private, in a naked and unequivocal condition, and unveiled their inner selves without scruples or pretence; where each word and each gesture was charged with a profound tension, inexpressible but obvious to both. This kind of tension affects not only our reason; it first touches our senses. It’s then we’re sure of the thing. Only those who have known this kind of experience will understand what I mean.

  That year, 1992, my new life was only three years old. I was desperately fragile. Sadly, childhood experiences are hard to erase, and the memory of this brutal encounter with a police officer at the airport will accompany me to the end.

  Since then, I have been on the road again. Those who don’t understand my condition would think that travelling is second nature to me. Sometimes I have to stop at borders and take out my Canadian passport, hesitating. Now I myself have doubts about this passport, which I’m no longer proud of. It doesn’t seem to have the same value as the Canadian passports of others. So fear seizes me each time. And after each customs interrogation I need to sit down for a moment.

  I’ve decided not to send you this letter, my dear friend, so that I’ll no longer receive letters from you. I have written it in a language that you don’t understand. (Here is one of the uses of knowing other languages.) Your letter touched me to the core, and it forced me, maybe a little too soon, to make a stop on my journey. I’m trying to see clearly what I could have had and don’t have, what I could have given and have lost, in the past as well as the present, in your land as well as others. I don’t like to show you such an outcome, as you would take it as proof of my failure. But I’ve neither failed nor succeeded. I don’t speak in those terms. I’ve lived moments of joy, moments of desolation and years of solitude, that’s all. If I had lived in another place, if I had stayed in Shanghai, the outcome would not be any better—probably worse.

  It’s important to me to be able to choose. I lived a long time in China, but I didn’t choose it. I even had difficulties getting out, given the circumstances at the time. There’s the nub of the problem. Now, at least, I live in a place of my own choosing. I even had the audacity to reproduce here. Sometimes I ask myself if a woman has the right to give birth when she hasn’t even acquired solid ground, but I’ve never regretted making my children Canadians. They won’t have an ancestral culture to vaunt and defend. And they won’t be likely to go anywhere else permanently, because I believe they won’t find another land that will be more favourable to them. Everything is relative. You say I’m not objective. Maybe it’s true. You can’t stay objective towards a place where your shell if not your soul has found its rest for years already. What vagabond doesn’t dream of a roof, of a nest, of a grave? And as long as there are children, there’s hope.

  So, twelve years after the fall of my shell on this land, I am still walking towards it. I don’t walk from one country to another, but from one place to another. The word “homeland” left my vocabulary the moment I left Shanghai. I don’t have the desire to confuse my own fate with that of an entire nation. I wouldn’t do it under any circumstance. I’m alone on my path. Patriotism of any kind troubles me, because I’ve suffered from it. Throughout my childhood I was isolated from the rest of the planet in the name of patriotism. I was searched like an enemy, a spy or a drug trafficker at the Toronto airport by a man who without doubt was patriotic to the bone. Spare me all this.

  If a second birth is nothing but a play, I intend to perform it right to the end. Maybe I have two identities, as I’ve been told, but I have only one passport. It’s an important fact. Concrete facts make us who we are. Roots are a luxury that beings like me can no longer dream about. We aren’t able to keep them long in our pocket because it inevitably becomes worn with time, as our memory develops gaps. We become shifting trees whose roots cross over and around each other and lose themselves. We are transformed into a different species. Maybe it’s what we always were, from the beginning, even before our voyage. And this new species, each day growing in number, rolls along
a road that is, after all, solitary and ancient, without a precise destination, contented by approximations, because its own identity is constantly being formed.

  But I need a reason to continue. I want to know where to go, precisely. I want to take daily steps. So I try to think that each day I’m approaching the land to which I will entrust my children, although I must still return to my own shell to fulfill my destiny. I think I’ve left my birthplace behind me and now I’m approaching the place where my journey ends. I’m glad to know approximately where I’ll finish; it’s not always evident amidst the dust of the road. I hope that wherever I’m put to rest, there won’t be a flag or an inscription or a flower, but that nearby will be the sea, the sand, and grass without name.

  Translated from the French by LEXique Ltd.

  Moses Znaimer

  D.P. WITH A FUTURE

  IT IS DIFFICULT TO be sure whether what we think of as our earliest memories are actual memories or stories we were told when very young. Perhaps a picture of such a story forms in the imagination of the child and, over time, takes on the detail and gravitas of memory. As is the case with many Canadians today, my earliest memories—whether they are in fact stories told to me long ago or images that are truly remembered—have to do with the passage from a troubled place to a place of refuge.