Please tilt head or computer and read

Fortunate circumstance allows me to assemble these titles on my own bookshelf for this group picture to be presented during a wee presentation later today on engaged writers from the USA. Preparation of said presentation has robbed me of the time to post thoughts here on just how these (and many other titles) books occupy common ground.

I have called upon the reader to enlarge a photo and read on 1 previous occasion, in March 2009, with the embedded text Salt Lake City Again.

Your Daughter is with Us Pt.6

This is the story of a few Parisians, some of Chinese origin, others of French and mixed parentage. Some of the Chinese are or were undocumented, others have forged their way into French society. Some are blood relatives, others are bound by official documentation or unspoken agreement, pressure from and loyalties to distant dons.

I first met them through French friends of mine, a couple in Paris, long-time residents of the building where the drama unfolds. Occasionally I visit these friends; unfailingly they are gracious hosts. I started to write about them when I met one of their (now former) neighbours, a little girl I call Hua.

Previous posts about Xiao Hua’s life in Paris can be found here:

Pt 1 - May 31, 2007
Pt 2 - June 25, 2007
Pt 3 - September 14, 2007
Pt.4 – July 21, 2008
Pt.5 - May 14, 2009


As mentioned in Pt. 4, Hua and her family have moved house. My friends now have use of the space (once home to Hua, her parents - or at least the people now legally recognized as her parents - and then also to a baby brother), the room under the stairs originally used as a sweatshop, and they harbour resentment towards the French couple who they see as having sided with the landlord who evicted them. They don’t know that the wife negotiated to make sure the Chinese family received a pay-off in exchange for leaving.

Their story so far is better than many others. Not long after Hua’s detention, French police entered a first-floor apartment in the same neighborhood in search of a thief and/or stolen goods. A middle-aged Chinese woman on the premises jumped out of the window to avoid the police. She died in custody the next day.

Hua is now a young teenager. My friend runs into her only very occasionally on the street. The girl’s father turns up from time to time, looking gaunt, in a wheelchair. He has been ill for the past couple of years and a hospital resident, receiving treatment for tuberculosis – making him unable to work, but he has attained legal status in the country, at least temporarily. The status extends to his children, but not his wife. Last summer he went to China for two months with the children. He could never pay for the travel on his own, so one assumes he was performing a service for the network which brought him and the children out of China. Even as a sick man he was seen in Paris selling trinkets from a blanket on the pavement, perhaps encouraged to do so by influential figures in his daily life.

Meanwhile, the noise from the Chinese family upstairs (with windows opening onto the courtyard outside my friends’ apartment), introduced in Pt.5, dropped a few decibels when the (illegal) back-room gambling space where the father hosted games on Saturday night was moved to the street-side, the front. The back room is now the terrain of the 3 little sons. The oldest is about 9, and they are nearly identical, happy to communicate with my friend downstairs, squealing with delight when she responds to their proddings with ‘ni hao.’

The father is a professional gambler and a wife-beater. There have been fewer violent incidents since the night when my friend called the police. But the father does not like her. The boys, on the other hand, know that she intervened, and continue, when not pulled back inside by the mother, to greet my friend.

As mentioned previously, they all inhabit an old apartment complex with several stairwells rising inside two five-story buildings set back from the street, home to many dozens. A stone lane runs from the street door past older and lower row-homes straight back to the last stairwell. The key code to the street door had been passed around, and the dark area just inside had become a favourite haunt of local (Chinese) prostitutes and their Johns for their brief encounters. Before that, a brothel had flourished in one of the upstairs apartments, and the young women would chat and laugh with abandon as they came and went.

Eventually the landlord renovated the door area and supplied a new code. The prostitutes have stayed away. The entire building complex has had a facelift in recent months: outdoor walls and stairwells have been sanded, resurfaced, varnished and painted. Toxic fumes and dust plague the residents, but it’s good for the property.

Some good things about disasters

I saved the receipt from the Glasgow green-grocer to remind me of Marta’s accent. She was a new resident of Scotland from Poland, working for Asians, and I imagined hearing all of that when she spoke. Throughout that neighborhood, commerce was being livened up by more new Britons (see LBN post Those Persians 25 March 2009). Eastern Europe used to be far away, but EU-member Poland in particular has been exuding a country-next-door come-hither aura.

This is not unfamiliar to me: Polish surnames (some Jewish, some not) were common at my grade school near New York City. Later on, Joe, the handy-man at my college dormitory, was Polish, and

He took care of his girls.

Under the circumstances this was a near-heroic stance: some of the local farmers in the New York countryside blamed crop failure on the young female students (offered as a postscript to recent remarks by an Iranian cleric who blamed natural disasters on scantily-clad, promiscuous women, statements which conjured up the images of Joe and Marta), girls who wore strange clothes and often spoke in loud tones, emphasizing their urban origins and accompanying disregard for country life. Joe was a Catholic family man, the son of pre-WWII immigrants. He turned up regularly with kielbas, as he called it.

Only the real Polish sausage for my girls.

Another encounter dates from the more recent past: one day I called my bank in Amsterdam to ask them to verify whether or not their internet banking system was experiencing an interruption of normal services. The customer service representative was very friendly and sounded sincerely apologetic about the breakdown. She spoke Dutch with an East European accent, and, yes, she confirmed, she was working out of a call center in Poland, one of Western Europe’s destinations for near-shoring (out-sourcing and paying lower wages) operations. This woman was delightful, in possession of a sweet voice and a willingness to depart from the call center script. She had been drafted from the population of new Dutch residents of Polish origin (and that story is not all peachy: see LBN post I Promise You 31 December 2008) to go home and earn a living there speaking Dutch. I hope she didn’t lose her job as a result of our conversation.

Invigilation, Anarchy and Civilization

Laws and constitutions are subject to interpretation, that much we all understand by now. But when a Dutch lawyer confessed to me that nobody in Holland really knows exactly how many laws there are to begin with, because they’re all rumbling around in profusion on computer chips in The Hague, I wondered if this was an aspect which could at some point spawn unforeseen complications. Breaking the rules is a matter of pride in this country – so it would be nice to identify the limits - perhaps not nationwide, but certainly in Amsterdam, where violation of most recognized codes of behavior has become a code in its own right: hurtling along a crowded sidewalk on your bicycle, tossing a still-burning cigarette butt in the air. I’ve been confronted with challenges to the system, not only as a civilian on the street, but as the enforcer of exam roles, the protectress of the honest and the good. I have performed as the invigilator.

While presiding over distance-learners as their invigilator, I was often in one hall with dozens of individuals from various Dutch Provinces, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Thailand China, Pakistan, Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Most exam candidates were prompt, if not early, settled at their assigned desk in a state of concentration. Usually a small knot of desks in the middle would be empty until 5 minutes before the exam began. Suddenly the door would burst open and a noisy group of adult males – accountants doing the compulsory refresher course – would rush in to find their numbered seats, come to register at the front desk without the required papers, inquire whether it’s really necessary to sit at the numbered seats, smirk and roll their eyes at the reply, ask us to look up their seat numbers, slouch back to their seats, transfer plastic-sealed snacks and water bottles (allowed) from their bags (not allowed) to the desktop, etc. On one occasion, a young woman presented an expired (not allowed) passport as her photo ID, and returned triumphantly when the exam was over to show me the registration papers which stipulate that a photo ID is indeed required – but the word valid didn’t appear anywhere in the text.

Most of the candidates were impressive: young adults holding down full time jobs while they studied, preparing for promotions or for assignments overseas. The hours of quiet had great appeal, linked by a few sounds only: papers sliding on desks, the clicking of pens and soft tapping on calculators, the rare sniffle or sneeze.

Occasionally there was someone like the au-pair from New Zealand, sitting for ‘Chinese Literature and Society’. She finished early and as no other candidates were present that day, we talked. As a believer she had joined a Christian Church and had learned Dutch from reading the Bible. I told her about learning Dutch from reading newspapers when I first came to Amsterdam. When I started speaking the language, I sounded like a walking front-page article – full of a syntax which is effective in print, but less than convincing when applied in conversation. She told me yes, her Dutch did echo Scripture, but that she didn’t mind, and neither did most of her partners in conversation as they were members of the Congregation, too, where by the way she planned to linger for the foreseeable future. There was little to go back to, what with the Maori’s being coddled by the government and the foreigners getting all the breaks. I was sure she would fit in somewhere in NL, perhaps with the political party whose leader is now on trial for inciting hatred and discrimination. The nanny was uncertain about whether her visa would be extended and had decided to get a head-start on Chinese civilization in case she gets sent home – at least the Chinese are coming down and creating jobs, not just claiming them.

Distinctive Breeds

[please see video below text]

A departure board of the old, clattering kind: few lights, great sound – hanging in the Gare du Nord, the train station where passengers heading north bid Paris farewell. People arriving from the north must weave their way towards the street through the crowds, staring upwards at the display until their train’s track number spins into view or recording short videos until the jostling is too much to bear.

A daughter of train-commute culture, I participate in the rail dynamic in general and the Amsterdam-Paris transfer in particular with profound pleasure and some fluency – most of the time. Things got off to a bad start on one occasion, but good fortune was eventually restored, by a number of people, I should add.

The taxi which brought me to the Gare that day pulled up to the main entrance with some speed. I was on the late side and had imagined gathering my bags and setting out swiftly towards the train in an unbroken flow of motion, but this strategy involved backing out of the cab, effectively blocking from my view a small raised yellow barrier next to the taxi lane. The painted mound tripped me and I crashed bags and all, breaking the fall with my left arm.

I still wanted to catch that train, but as I shuffled off, a Porter rushed over and explained that MANY complaints had been filed about the treacherous yellow dividers. They were meant to protect pedestrians on the other side but ended up felling incoming taxi passengers. This eloquent young man of West African origin convinced me that I should at least go to the hospital next door and have my arm checked. He would escort me there after accompanying me to the ticket office to report the accident and secure passage on a later train.

I went along with the plan, and once I was seated under the neon lights of the Emergency Room waiting area, the Porter and I waved goodbye. A handsome medical team from Colombia, Algeria and Senegal x-rayed and bandaged my arm with great alacrity and good cheer - while coping with several regular 'patients' running amok in the hallways in white robes, dashing in and out of the examination rooms; harmless, it was explained, people in need of tea and attention and a place to go more than any medical treatment - and I was sent back to the Gare, supplied with a ticket for first-class and ushered onto the train with apologies and small bows. A man seated across the aisle had witnessed the fuss. He jumped up with a twinkle in his eye to help me store my luggage. A conversation began. It wasn't long before I understood that I was in the company of an International Cat Show Judge, the author of articles and books on distinctive feline breeds. In the hush of our comfortable compartment, I heard stories about the nitty-gritty of Cat Show politics as our train moved north.

I remember the jovial Cat Judge and the concerned Porter whenever I pass through the Gare du Nord. Usually I pause to get a feel of the motionless crowd and read the departure board, even though the track number for Amsterdam doesn't seem to vary. The public announcements have been updated to include an English-language health warning about flu symptoms, an audio nod, I believe, to the warm-hearted medical staff next door.

Both Sides Now: Muoslak Muo?

Should this be your first encounter with the person of Oum Kalsoum (that's her at the mic in the above picture), you may want to look her up, and for that purpose you have numerous options, including : Umm Kulthum, Om Kalthoum, Oum Kalthum, Omm Kolsoum, Umm Kolthoum, Um Kalthoom) (Arabic: أم كلثوم ). Egypt’s most celebrated singer crossed the river in 1975 at the age of approximately seventy-five, give or take a few years, interrupting the workings of government in Cairo during three days of national mourning.

Certain elements are not what they first appear to be in the person of Oum Kalsoum. That’s how she got started: her father, an Imam at the mosque in their small village, dressed his pre-adolescent daughter as a boy so that she could mingle freely and practice with males instructed in religious song. Dad thought she was better than her brothers, and the deception paid off: she went on to become the greatest female vocalist of her time in the Arab World.

Amsterdam’s Royal Tropical Institute used to stage a monthly open-mic talent night. On one such evening, I watched a gifted Oum Kalsoum impersonator whip a crowd of men of Middle-Eastern origin into a clapping, cheering frenzy. The applause trickled off to a confused, out-of-sync splatter as the audience gradually realized that the impersonator was a man. After a few tense moments, the singer struck another great note, and the audience, either convinced by the talent or just determined to prolong this good night out, rose up to the occasion and began to sing along and sway in rhythm again.

With this idea in mind (the idea that initially comes to mind is ‘opposites which attract’ as a relative concept, subject to amendment as circumstances change), I was charmed by the image of Oum Kalsoum lyrics floating in two languages across a screen in illustration of her improvisational virtuosity and unparalleled ability to sustain notes. The original Arabic lyrics move from right to left, the English lyrics from left to right (okay, backwards, but the impressive timing is the same).

The screen occupied a small rectangle of space in an exhibition in a European capital devoted to Oum Kalsoum. As reflected above, the display/audiovisual array was complex: photographs, recordings, film and print documentation, clothing items, current fashion from the Middle East inspired by her look and, touchingly, even the vintage microphone and radios that carried her sound live to millions back in the day – it was all there. And all off-limits for photographers. Somehow this clandestine still from the video for musicologists reached my files. She was, by the way, born as Fatima Ibrahim al-Sayed al-Betagui. What happened after that is the stuff of musical magic, cultural cooperation and rivalry, intrigues, geopolitics and global wars, all on a large but also small, intimate scale.

A Dish Towel in the Sun

My parents were married on September 10, 1938, after a whirlwind courtship in and around Toronto, Canada (Mom) and New Haven, Connecticut, USA (Dad). Her mother was critical of daughter Mary swanning off with an uncivilized Yank; the family of Alfred was disdainful towards the import bride with no previous exposure to New England protocol.

But Mary was swept off her feet by the bold young lawyer and punster who appeared out of nowhere as the Best Man at a wedding where she was the Maid of Honor. Alfred fell for the sparkling Toronto lass, an avid reader and lover of jazz, eager to escape her mother’s sharp scrutiny with emigration to the south.

Family friends from the early years of their marriage would later recall how Mary was a gracious hostess who would rather curl up with a book than clean the house, while Alfred drew praise for his gardens and succulent meaty treats prepared on outdoor stone grills built with his bare hands.

Mary’s Scots-Canadian temperament did not always blend well with the formalities enjoyed by her in-laws. She missed her Uncle George, a shy Ontario farmer who still spoke with a brogue which she never tired of imitating. Her mother inadvertently encouraged her to hone her natural beauty by asserting that she had none; Uncle George offered her blissful hours rumbling along on the back of his horse-drawn wagon carrying fresh peas to market.

Alfred would also show off the odd pumpkin or tomato that appeared in the green zone, but his love lay with flowers. You’d think this might have given more pleasure to his father, a professor of Forestry and planner of urban woodlands. Bare-chested in the summer, protected by layers of flannel and wool in the winter, Al hacked his way through thicket and bush with an enormous machete.

The parents catch up with me from time to time: on a restaurant sign mimicking Dad’s handwriting; on a common dish towel with tips for Scots pronunciation. Their anniversary falls in late summer, on September 10, a fortuitous day in some ways for many of us.

Your Daughter is with Us - Pt.5

When asked why I choose to live in Europe rather than in my native North America, I have on occasion been known to reply:

Things didn't work out that well over there. We're all coming back.

Just kidding! Some people laugh with me. Others are alarmed. Let's face it, this is basically an out-emigration continent, and it can take a while for both immigrants and natives to adjust.

An update from friends a few hours down the road in France: Hua was nine years old, an undocumented resident of Paris, when police picked her up in the metro and took her into custody a couple of years ago, triggering a recovery effort by French neighbors and social activists who succeeded in reuniting child with (undocumented) parents before the day was done.

Episodes 1-4 about Hua’s life in Paris are here:

Pt 1 - May 31, 2007
Pt 2 - June 25, 2007
Pt 3 - September 14, 2007
Pt.4 – July 21, 2008

Hua's release, on that first frightening night, became possible when the Chinese-made document declaring little Hua to be living in the company of her legal parents was declared acceptable by the French authorities responsible for minors. The 'document' was certainly as valid as the flimsy ‘lease’ provided by the French landlord. Nevertheless, when the landlord decided things were getting too hot under his feet, he forced Hua, a new baby brother and her parents out of the shack under the stairwell of the apartment complex.

It would have been hard to relocate to something worse. And indeed, they moved to a place with more light, and then moved again, to a place with two rooms, allowing the parents to rent out one of the rooms to a single Chinese man. Hua continues to attend school and her French has improved enough for her to describe her displeasure with the fact that she is now, at age 11, home alone in the afternoon and evenings (her mother works until late in the evening and the father has been hospitalized), taking care of her baby brother while in the company of this male lodger. She doesn’t like him very much. She didn’t say why.

Meanwhile, my friend, who still lives in the building where Hua and her parents lived until the baby was born, has befriended a pair of little Chinese boys who live upstairs in an apartment with windows opening to a view of my friend’s door below. The boys have discovered that they can come and chat with her if she is at her ground-floor window, but more importantly, that she will help if their drunken father begins to beat up their mother. My friend once called the police on him, and believes that her presence might not save the mother from beatings, but it might keep her alive. The boys no longer feel trapped and alone upstairs when violence breaks out – they can fling open their window and call down to their new French friend.

Immigration issues are sticky wickets all around Europe, and with elections for the European Parliament coming up soon, the anti-foreigner temperature is rising. On this blog, on March 3, 2008 (see: A Win-Win Situation), I stated that the right-wing Dutch PVV Freedom Party was losing some of its steam. I was dead wrong! A recent poll of political parties positioned the PVV as the FRONT-RUNNER, the largest party in the Netherlands. Polls can be off the mark, but few will dispute the staying power of this anti-immigration anti-Islam group. If the poll is accurate and if the PVV does expand to the point of qualification for inclusion in a government coalition - who knows what will happen? A number of (centrish and leftish) parties have vowed to never enter into a coalition with the PVV, the Dutch variant on anti-foreigner fevers registering throughout Europe.

If only there was more time. My native North America has its own new immigration problems to solve, but some of the old ones worked themselves out. If people just pile in decade after decade, stuff happens.

In New York’s East Village I lived on a Ukranian block where the women wore headscarves while scrubbing the front steps of our apartment buildings. Baseball games were organized during quiet hours on the street by the tiny Puerto Rican grocery store mid-block. We were all watched over by the self-appointed neighbourhood guards, the Jamaican Rasta’s, who scared off purse-snatchers and other ne’er-do-wells at all hours of the day and night.

These were old tenement buildings originally constructed without any sanitary facilities. Rodent control experts occasionally made the rounds. I was in a conundrum one day when I couldn’t get one such expert, a huge, friendly guy now living in a New York suburb, to leave, after he performed his anti-rodent duties. His reluctance to depart had nothing to do with me (or the mice) – he was overcome with nostalgia. The big man shed tears at my table as he described having grown up in a railroad apartment similar to mine, with the whole family jammed into two rooms. He came through the rough & tumble well and did what most do: he emigrated to a more spacious environment nearby, with an entire house for his own family, and a lawn to mow.

It's just not the same as being all close with your family and neighbors, all the time, and those stories of making do with less are not very interesting to my kids.

Maybe later on, when they’re bigger?

That, too, takes time.

English as Accessory

Learning Dutch involves making choices. Depending on where you live, you may or may not want to take on the local accent and vocabulary (regional dialects are another issue altogether). Differences in pronunciation can be significant – perhaps less for foreigners more accustomed to adjusting to new sounds than for, let’s say, Dutch TV-makers, who are prone to adding subtitles when non-mainstream native Dutch speakers are on screen.

Students of Dutch familiar with English, German, Swiss-German and Danish have a head-start in the language-learning process in the Netherlands, but newcomers who don’t speak English at all may be at a disadvantage. Knowing which English words or phrases to use, and when to do it, adds a certain je ne sais quoi to one’s Dutch.

Consider these few random examples encountered in recent weeks:

The nation’s leading evening newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, stays high-brow in an editorial on Holland’s faltering judicial system by referring to something rotten.

Their morning tabloid edition targets the mobile generation with the name NRC Next.

The need for speed also peppers the speech of a producer of a jittery prime time talk show, where, as the producer concedes, haste can unhinge a script, but it’s TV and there’s never a dull moment.

Streamlined modernity shapes the program title InFocus (an example of how English words are sometimes combined into one for the Dutch variant) and its Update from the Muslim Broadcasting Company (in a system with Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Humanist and other secular broadcasting organizations).

A music sector network opts for misguided word play (that’s when it gets irritating) in framing their discussion Copyright or wrong… on authors’ rights.

Clearly a wrong decision was made when a woman named ‘Lies’ (Dutch pronunciation = ‘Lease’) created a store name by combining her own name with an English-language description of the business, resulting in Lies. For Kids. Good luck there!

I am, however, grateful to the Dutch journalist and author John Jansen van Galen who offers splendid isolation as an option for this country’s noisy right-wing PVV Freedom Party.

Those Persians

A professor of Iranian origin now working in the Netherlands introduced Persian culture as 'the place where Asia kissed the Middle East.' I'm sure he said 'kissed.' He may also have said 'embraced' in the next sentence or two. It's possible that he also referred to China kissing Turkey. What's absolutely certain is that he referred to a mutual acquaintance of South Asian origin with significant disdain, more or less attributing this person's abrasive - as he saw it - personality to ethnicity. It struck me at the time as ironic that while pressing the point of a multicultural or pluralist tradition in his homeland, where there had been a unique and extended period of ecstatic cultural exchange and expression, he also illustrated some of the residual irritations that can remain visible, like scar tissue, when personalities clash.

Kavir is (was?? has the global crisis closed it down??) a pluralist Persian culinary zone in Glasgow, offering Carrot & Persian Ice Cream Milkshakes, Persian herbal tea and all variety of smoothies. I found their sign rather alluring, and I hope they've not had to fold. My Persian connections are scattered, but detailed, and luckily for me, publicity around an exhibition at the British Museum on 17th-century Iran draws another epic description of Silk Route dramas in centuries past in the days of glory in Isfahan, where, as it happened, the going currency was a silver coin mined by slaves of Spanish conquistadores, but manufactured by the mercantile Dutch. Who's kissing who, I mean, really?

My first Iranian connection was probably during my grade school years in New Jersey, when I played with the daughter of a carpet importer. After that, on my first flight from West to East, the standard pre-landing announcement from the cockpit was slightly amended to Ladies and Gentlemen, we will land shortly at Teheran Airport, where the local time is 1500 years in the past.

In contrast: I received a congratulatory card on International Women's Day once and only once - from a forward-thinking Iranian exile in Holland. And in the new Millenium, I was witness to the bizarre application of a dynamic, modern survey of the pro-active and largely successful Iranian minority in the Netherlands. In academics and many other fields, (Dutch-) Iranians are forging ahead.

Nevertheless, it was a bit of surprise when a Canadian friend was drawn into this survey as being one of them. Amsterdam city records showed his mother's place of birth as being Teheran, where she indeed first appeared on this earth as the daughter of English oil company employees temporarily residing in Iran. He was thereby classified as an Iranian in Holland, and when the survey of his lifestyle and habits was done, there was no way to clarify his true background. I know, because I sat in as a witness.

It was quite a shock to see that the barrier to providing accurate information was built into the software on the laptop provided to the interviewer by the marketing company being paid by government and/or city funds (taxpayers) to generate useful data on Holland's new demographics. The Canadian interviewee repeatedly explained the circumstances of his mother's birth in Teheran, but there was no way of recording this history. Another strange question concerned the subject's social life: do you spend more time with your own group (Iranians) or with Dutch people?? He asked: what about everyone else? But there was no way to file accurate details.

Te gek voor woorden - too crazy for words - an expression which I now can hope to learn in Farsi, thanks (to end on a high note) to the recent publication of a Compilation of Idioms in Dutch & Persian. The book's author is a Teheran-born long-time resident of the Netherlands and a certified interpreter and translator. Farsi, as it happens, is Iran's official language - but there many dozens of others.

I Promise You

Some good news in the final weeks of 2008: this Polish-language sign was removed from the window of a store in my Amsterdam neighbourhood. I do not read Polish (please see http://lifebeforenews.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-vocabulary.html) but upon inquiring inside was told that it warned potential shop-lifters of the presence of security camera’s. Theft had become a major problem for retailers in 2008; a majority of those caught came from Eastern Europe. Polish was selected as the most effective language of deterrence. I will eventually ask why the sign was removed. For the moment, I’m banking on a cheerful explanation: robberies were down/the shop-owners decided not to stigmatize Poles/the sign did not enhance the Holiday mood.

The Holiday Season began to gather steam for me in the post-Thanksgiving and Sint Maarten period, as Dutch Muslims were gathering for the Eid al-Adha and others had just celebrated Sinterklaas, which I acknowledged at a weekend dinner party held mostly in anticipation of Chanukah at the home of a non-observant Jewish friend who grew up celebrating Christmas in Pennsylvania in the USA. There are those who would launch the winter celebrations in October with Halloween, running straight on past Chinese New Year (I have been advised to muster up lots of patience for the Year of the Ox) beyond the Ides of March and, why not, into Easter.

At the dinner party, we had a heated discussion about whether the City of Amsterdam is acting wisely in reducing soft-drug trade and red-light areas for prostitution. Arguments were made for protection of and health care for prostitutes to prevent their disappearance into illegal brothels where trafficked women (most are women, majority trafficked) and men from all over the world are held against their will. The economy of Amsterdam is fed not just by museum-goers and lovers of Indonesian food, but also significantly by soft-drug visitors from neighboring countries, Brits on wild weekends, and by hooker-gawkers from around the globe, including families who link hands with grandparents and kids, stroll by the windows and stare at the women as though studying an amusement park theme. Visitors also have a chance to stroll around sex-shops, such as the one just visible in the photo above, across from the store that had displayed the warning sign in Polish.

Still at the dinner party, a gay man, a long-time resident of Amsterdam, said he fears that a conservative crackdown on prostitution would damage the local economy and eventually result in correspondingly conservative anti-gay backlash-legislation. So!..If you plan to visit Amsterdam in the New Year, even as a one-day cruise ship visitor or a transit passenger at Schiphol Airport, do enjoy the architecture, museums, music, harbour ferries and good coffee! The city is already transitioning into a revised self – which would include less exploitation of women from far-off lands – it just hasn’t yet decided how to pay for it, what with so much money being allocated to over-budget transportation projects and the like. Give a call if you pass through town. I promise to show you a good time! Happy 2009!

Banned Substances Pt.1

The car stopped just short of the main drag in the old Cuban district of Tampa, Florida. I wanted to visit and walk along in search of José Martí, the Cuban poet and revolutionary who lived in a number of foreign locations in the final years of Spanish colonial rule in his homeland in the late 19th-century. Tampa was one of the most fervently revolutionary sites on Martí’s itinerary, and it was here that he participated in organizing the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The movement was financed in Tampa by cigar revenues, and, however briefly, by proceeds from baseball game ticket sales in Cuba. Appropriately, when the decision was made in Florida in 1895 to launch the revolution, the orders were smuggled into Cuba inside a cigar.

The USA was backing these liberation efforts with significant enthusiasm, and the Cuban Liberation struggle evolved into the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders set sail from Tampa before thundering ashore in Cuba and helping to win the war against Spain, so a main street in this Tampa neighbourhood today bears their name.

My elderly Florida cousin was happier showing me the new Malls, and who could blame him in the heat. He stayed in the car while I strolled down this road of historic importance. I seemed to be the only person on foot. In fact there were hardly any other people at all, and many of the storefronts were boarded up. A Cuban sandwich shop attracted some business, and there was one other brightly lit up establishment: the Santería store.

Several wooden steps led up to the screen door entrance. I entered, all smiles, and asked the woman behind the counter if they sold any José Martí souvenirs. She found one article: a paper cocktail napkin. While I studied the merchandise, a car pulled up outside and jerked to a halt as the hand brake was applied. The driver was a young man who bounded up the stairs and then closed the door carefully and quietly as he came in, evidently completely familiar with local etiquette.

Greetings were exchanged, and he proceeded to ask the woman what he could buy to definitely score on his date that evening. The girl was really worth it, he explained, and he didn’t want her to get away. The shop-keeper listened and nodded, recommending various jars and containers which were in stock. He paid for one of the love potions, ran out to his throbbing car and laid some tracks as he drove off. When the sound of the music blasting out of his car faded entirely, there was not a sound in the Santería store.

Inspired by his absolute faith in the shop-keepers advice, I walked back and forth examining everything on the shelves, and finally came up with two items which were light, unbreakable and easy to pack: Get-Rich-Quick household cleaning solution, and Powerful-Indian-Household Blessing Domination Powder, with a bilingual label, good illustrations and a handy prayer for happiness and victory-over-enemies on the back.

Things being how they are between the United States and Cuba, I was not surprised to see that the powder was from Chicago, but still a tad disappointed. Tampa and Cuba share a great heritage when it comes to contraband. After liberation from Spain, Cuba became one of the main transit points for illegal immigrants from Europe and China. Business was controlled by figures referred to as “Kings.” Small craft delivered people and goods to many Florida inlets, but Tampa was at the hub. The smuggling of whisky and narcotics was a profitable activity in the 1920’s, and Spirits Submerged There is the stuff of newspaper stories about deliveries hidden temporarily in the waters between Cuba and the USA.

Marx got a laugh: Your daughter is with us Pt. 4

Pt 1 - May 31, 2007

Pt 2 - June 25, 2007
Pt 3 - September 14, 2007

Things have been developing favorably for Hua and her family in Paris since their brush with the law some time ago. It was almost a blessing in disguise: when daughter Hua was picked up on the streets and turned over to the police, concerned French neighbors rushed to the aid of these illegal immigrants from China, and suddenly the parents had a new and native source of moral and legal support, outside of the extensive Chinese network. Up to that time, Hua’s parents had been at the mercy of middle-men, such as the ‘Uncle’ figure in their story. The French Solidarity networks say that while authorities will not deport children on their own, they will on occasion wait outside of schools and detain parents who come to meet their children, probably another explanation of why the newly-arrived Hua had to walk home from school alone, as she did on the day when she was spotted by authorities.

Since then, the father has received treatment for a serious illness and appears to have recovered, Hua has a baby brother and, having been forced by the shady landlord (please see LifeBeforeNews September 14, 2007) to leave the premises, they have all moved, presumably with the aid of the local French support group, to a larger home with ‘more light.’ As far as I know, they have occasionally dropped by to greet my friends, who now have access to that almost windowless space that was once home to this Chinese family of three (and then four). The young mother seems optimistic, no longer leaning backwards in a defensive pose when spoken to in French, as she had on the evening of Hua’s detention.

The parents and the uncle were very grateful to everyone for Hua’s return home that night. The next day, the mother brought me a thank-you gift: a pair of shoes. Many people had helped the mother since her arrival from China four years earlier, and numerous shoe-boxes and bottles of whiskey had been distributed around the building. The ‘Uncle’ (eventually confirmed by the French Solidarity workers as the middle-man) made sure she was well-stocked.

The solidarity worker wanted to talk to the mother alone, without the ‘Uncle’ around, even though he, rather than the parents, was the one to comfort Hua in her fear and confusion after an evening in lock-up. This image stays with me: the rough-skinned tough guy, marked as the corrupt boss with power over illegal workers, cradling a scared child in his arms while the couple identified as the child's parents sat in frozen indifference across the room. The remarkable scene raised many questions for the onlookers, including me, the Police social worker and the French woman who had rushed to their aid.

It was this same solidarity worker who was involved when the living space was to be vacated a year later. She was as gruff and suspicious of those outside her network as Hua’s mother was buoyant, always smiling and ready to take the next hurdle.

When the moving trouble started brewing I was in the audience at the PICNIC ‘information event’ in Amsterdam, where a speaker from Beijing was presenting a project on the creative merging of cultures. He laughed along with the audience members when a statement about freedom passed across the screen. No questions were asked there either.

Peace without Printed Matter Pt.1

Free local newspapers, advertising brochures with shopping coupons, neighborhood weeklies, take-out menu’s and single-sheet ads for everything from chimney-sweeping and fortune telling to computer courses are plunked down on adjoining treads of the stone staircase leading up from the sidewalk to the front doors of four apartments, of which one is mine. In this country we have the option of pasting “Yes” or “No” stickers on the outside of mail slots, indicating acceptance or refusal of unsolicited printed matter. Some people are happy to find all of the above-mentioned stock lying inside on their door mat. The refusals can mount up, visually represented by the piles of paper cluttering the steps. Strong winds carry the loose sheets up and down the street. Paper, plastic bags, candy wrappers, cigarette butts and fallen leaves are blown to shelter behind the wheels of bicycles chained to the stands allotted by city authorities. Counter-gusts send a similar trail into shrubs and sturdy stems in the narrowest of strip gardens, created by removing concrete sidewalk tiles from the ground where the pavement meets the apartment building walls.

When advertisements from nearby stores lie on the steps for days, I have been known to carry the damp, dirty bundle over to the shops in question to point out that their expensive printing project was not going according to plan, and to ask them if they might renegotiate distribution contracts to include instructions that printed matter not be left in the open air. So far almost no one in the stores - however stressed by the environmentally-unfriendly evidence - has felt able to identify the point of origin of delivery, much less exert any influence. I abandoned that effort.

One day, as I walked down the street, I saw a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with printed matter. She was a middle-aged Dutch woman, very engaged with her work and completely open to conversation about recycling and keeping the streets clean. Apparently she had been instructed to leave bundles of paperwork halfway up the steps from the street, thereby encouraging residents themselves to retrieve items of their interest as they walk up to the apartment entrances. Going all the way up the stairs to check for “Yes” and “No” stickers on the mail slots was too time-consuming. And finding lots of “No” stickers would mean that she - with back troubles - would be stuck with excess matter at the end of her route, and it would all be thrown out anyway, so why not leave it on the steps, allowing residents who didn’t want it there to cart it off to the nearby paper recycling bins? She understood my point of view, however, and promised, whenever possible, to not leave papers lying around. I see her from time to time, but I’ve also noticed that certain kinds of hand-outs are now delivered by persons of foreign origin, badly dressed, thin - possibly undocumented workers, earning a pittance by handing out flyers. Most recycled paper from the Netherlands is sold to China for the immensely profitable recycling industry there, which, I now understand, is enormously polluting. The family behind China’s recycling industry has accumulated great wealth. I still do recycle, although I'm not sure why.

Your Daughter is with Us Pt.3

In parts 1 & 2 (see May and June archive) Hua was introduced as the 9-year old illegal Chinese immigrant, picked up by police on the streets of Paris, taken into custody, and released into the custody of her parents that same evening thanks to the intervention of alert neighbors and experienced social activists in the ‘quartier.’ An estimated 50,000 illegal children are in France, where solidarity with their plight is strong in this country still saddled with the memory of Jewish children lost through collaboration with the Nazi’s. Hua and her family - now four in total, following the birth of a baby boy - still live behind the last door on the ground floor of an old apartment complex at the end of a stone lane which extends from the street and runs past several stairwells providing access to separate buildings.
Hua lives with her brother and parents in a space owned by an absentee but not unknown landlord, who lives well renting properties - at least 80 others, he says - such as this box-with-a-skylight and other more conspicuous and more profitable premises in the red-light district. They won’t, however, be there much longer: the landlord is selling the property, claiming that electrical and other features are sub-standard. Selling allows him to avoid either a fine or the costs of renovation. Acknowledging the defects allows him to evict, and illegal tenants have no recourse.

Before Hua and her family lived there the space was a 24-hour work space for seamstresses. So now, for the neighbors, the idea of a noisy sweatshop with new streams of human traffic replacing the family is unappealing. Hua’s mother told me that she hopes to be able to stay in the neighborhood so that her daughter doesn’t have to change schools. I told her I understood her predicament, having faced deportation and eviction notices in the Netherlands when I was a new immigrant there.

Your Daughter is with Us (Pt.2)

In pt. 1 (see May 2007 archive), the young Hua was last seen walking, nearly skipping, down a boulevard in Paris, hand-in-hand, with a tall police officer. She had been found alone on the street, or perhaps inside the metro, it wasn’t clear, and with no parents at home to receive her, she was taken into protective custody by the authorities who said she would be held at the Office for Minors.The neighbors witnessing her departure agreed that the law preventing the police from turning Hua over to non-parental adults was a good one.

But the neighbors also knew that the parents were illegal aliens. When the father arrived, he struggled to understand where his daughter was. He understood almost no French. One neighbor had called a businesslike woman to the scene: a representative of a local solidarity network, offering support and assistance to illegal aliens. She was good at sifting through incoherence and despair in search of factual information, anything which could be used to weave a story. No story meant anonymity and deportation. This woman’s network operates as a buffer zone between the shady practices of human traffickers and the grim world of detention cells.

Hua’s mother rushed in, and the ‘Uncle’ appeared. The more that was said, the more muddled the tale. The ‘Uncle’ produced the parents’ passports (and collected them again at the end of the evening). The solidarity worker called the Office for Minors and spoke to the social worker, who promised through the phone that the girl would be returned to the parents if they could show papers proving their status as father and mother. The social worker, proceeding on the assumption that the parents were illegal, also promised that no immigration-related questions would be asked. The social and solidarity workers shared the view that it was better for the little girl to be returned to her only home in Europe, with the people who were possibly her parents, than to remain in police custody, terrified and alone.
The social worker kept her word: the English-language Chinese-stamped ‘document’ identifying Hua as the daughter of the two Chinese adults present was accepted as valid, vague accounts of the parents’ work in ‘sausage sales’ were polished up for a report drawn up for the Office for Minors files, and signatures were collected from the mother and me, registered as ‘official interpreter’ for the occasion.
Little Hua entered the room, burst into tears and collapsed into the arms of the ‘Uncle,’ who comforted her and whispered soft words over the side of her head. Until that moment, he had been allocated the role of the scheming trafficker in the story. The solidarity worker and I had been exchanging subtle furrows of the brow as the evening wore on, but now, we watched him in the role of affectionate elder.
The ‘parents’ barely reacted to Hua’s return. Although relieved not to have been handcuffed upon arrival at the police station, they were still cowering from all the questions posed, unable to hide their anxiety. The social worker and the police who offered full assistance in arranging Hua’s return continued to lean towards the ‘couple’ and to repeat ‘Don’t be afraid!’ in a language the parents did not understand, in loud tones that made them lean back to avoid the sound, eyes wide open in fear. The message conveyed by their body language was insulting to the helpers, who could not tolerate being viewed as mean people. But rather than express anger, they displayed sarcasm, indifference; resignation to their inability to set anyone at ease. As Hua and her entourage were hurrying out of the Office for Minors that night, eager to treat their helpers to late evening refreshment at a fast-food restaurant, the police guards at the door had simply looked bored - this happens all the time.

Your Daughter is with Us (Pt.1)

Hua was a nine-year-old girl from Eastern China who had joined her parents in Paris just two months before we met. I was their neighbor, and they passed by my window twice a day. Her mother described, whisking a clenched fist over an outstretched palm, how she paid twenty-thousand euros for the necessary travel documents. Hua lived with her parents on the ground floor of an old apartment complex with several stairwells rising through two five-story buildings, home to hundreds. A stone lane runs from the gate at the street straight back to the last ground-floor door. In the evening, before the parents got home from work, there was often a knock on Hua’s door, and a voice echoed back along the lane. Hua? Are you alone? Have you eaten? Hua managed the five-minute walk to and from school alone, doing homework or sleeping until somebody came home to cook. The neighborhood has a leftist legacy, and the primary school, named after a Latin American revolutionary hero, offers a special adjustment class for the new arrivals who do not yet speak French.
One day Hua forgot to take her key. She couldn’t go home, so she decided to look for one of the three people she knew: her parents and an ‘uncle.’ She negotiated a route into the metro between the Chinese squatting in line for the sidewalk pay phones, Africans in flowing dress, Jews and Muslims opening their couscous restaurants and shops. Somehow in the jostling mass, this small, silent girl caught the eye of a transport system employee, who placed Hua in police custody. Hua lead three male officers back to her door, where they waited for the parents to return. The Police were firm about not leaving the girl behind in the care of friendly and concerned neighbors who appeared on their way home. A light rain fell; everyone waited under the stairwell arch near the letter boxes. A stoic Hua leaned against the wall, unable to understand anything that was said until I happened to come down the lane and speak to her in elementary Chinese. Hua explained that she had left her key inside, and that her parents would be home soon. I got a hint of a smile when I showed her pictures on my laptop of me in China.
The police scribbled a note to the parents (‘Your daughter was found alone in the metro. She’s with the police. Call this number’), slipped the paper into their mailbox and left. Hua’s black ponytail swung over her bright red backpack as she trotted along, keeping pace with the tall officers.