We did not say "Hello? Is anybody there?"

I was really looking forward to the heat of the Florida Everglades, to seeing a 'gator or two, and to talking to the locals in one of the few towns around. We drove into such a town center one day.
“We’re all white, five-hundred and thirty-six people, and twenty-five blacks.”
“No Seminole?”
“One [man], and his wife is white.”
We could tell that conversation was going nowhere, even just a minute or two after wandering into the town hall office which was located at the end of a hallway with doors opening onto a playschool, the one-room local library and other civic sites. They had all been united into a tiny, eloquent municipal mall in this large, solid building. Outside the front door, columns and flowers adorned the front steps, which we quickly saw again. No one asked where we were from or how we liked it there, poised at the end of a road which led back into the old route running between Miami and Naples. Up-scale properties are close by, and landscapers sometimes take their customers into the Everglades to select plants for their gardens from the steamy plantations.

But this felt more like a frontier town, with swampland behind it and the Gulf of Mexico in front. Normally there are boat services for ricocheting through the water around the coast islands. There was nobody at the docks or at the ice cream stand.
We tried to acquire a cool drink at a local restaurant, where a large sign on one of the club doors caught my attention. Considerable time and energy go into arriving at that door, and when you do, you read the sign and get the feeling that they don’t appreciate all the effort that has gone into your trip. I was left wondering what was most important about the club’s history, whether rowdy sightseers had disturbed the atmosphere in the club in the past, or whether burglars had caused damage. Was a dress code firmly in place? I posed all of these questions in an e-mail, but so far there has been no reply.

Nobody Asked

My bicycle remained unused and inert while I was out of town. The tires needed air, so I stopped at the pump hanging outside of the bicycle store around the corner from where I live. Anyone can use it. I forced the kickstand down with my right foot and squatted to unscrew the tiny, black cap on the valve, coming face to face with a poignant world on the tire, its hub, the spokes: ladybugs stood out on the chrome center, tiny spiders hurtled through the dark, oily recesses of the chain guard. These and more bugs I couldn't name had colonized my bicycle in my absence. They would be forced to take refuge on the inner fender, I imagined, when I took off and built up moderate speed. I unhooked the air hose from the wall and bent down towards the valve as I connected the pump with the tire - and then I was knocked backwards by the blast of an exploding inner tube.

To passers-by who provided commentary, it sounded like gunfire, an attack. I felt the air pressure hit my body, finding it strange how even such a small blast could have a physical impact. A young woman came over to see if my ears were alright, explaining as she walked off that "these days you don't know what might happen." An elderly man said that he had been through 'the War' (WWII) and was used to everything, but that people today in Holland were only just starting to sense a connection between their own circumstances and today's far-off battles. I referred to internet options, both for getting news on wars and for getting closer to the war. Web-pages advertise jobs galore in Iraq, for example, such as on http://iraq.jobs.monster.com/ Car repair could just be a growth sector.

We chatted as I walked my bicycle in the direction of the repair shop. He was retired, receiving a pension. I mentioned this year's revelation of Dutch retirement funds being invested in companies producing cluster bombs. The money came from salaries paid to a wide range of professionals, including many thousands in the public broadcasting sector. The man shook his head and told me that he was proud that his tax money was going to pay for today's wars, because at least he knew where it was being spent, because with internet and all: "these days you can't tell where your money is going." We had different perspectives on whether or not it was a good thing to produce cluster bombs, but agreed on a bottom line: people expressed indignation about their money being used to support the arms trade, but nobody paying into the fund had bothered to ask until now.

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.

Thanks for Calling

Several years ago, I found part of Steve Walker’s boarding card in a hotel room.

I had been surprised to find the stub on the floor of the large closet when I pushed open the folding doors. The room appeared to be spotless, with only this fairly substantial paper scrap on the floor. It seemed to me - in this new era of heightened security - to be a significant discovery. Steve, the passenger, had evidently stayed in this same room a few days earlier, and the stub confirmed that he had flown into town. I say 'confirmed' because of the hand-written number covering the printed data, indicating the positioning of ground crew at a point where they observed progression of passengers into the actual body of the plane, as the only physical alternative to either remaining in the Gate area or vanishing back into the airport with a boarding pass, intact or otherwise. Passengers with hand-written numbers on their stubs were presumed to have boarded the flight and disembarked at the destination.
The most likely conclusion to be drawn after finding the stub on the closet floor was that he had stayed in this room. The chances of someone else having acquired his boarding stub were slim. Printed data included his name, date, origin and destination, so I found a telephone number for a person of his name in the location of 'origin' and I called him. I didn't call him to have him either confirm or deny having stayed in the hotel; I called him to ask whether he objected to me posting the image of a boarding stub with his name on it. He could have suspected a scam or a call center and slammed the phone down, or he might have wanted to keep me on the line long enough for a trace. I had no way of knowing.

Instead, he listened to my introduction and said yes, he had a moment for a conversation, and no, that wasn't him in the hotel room, and he had no objection to the transfer of printed data which didn't actually refer to him. Steve was relaxed, uninterested in internet activities. He laughed, and bid me farewell with the words ‘take care.’

He was very friendly, and I could imagine him using the stub as a bookmark, perhaps leaving the paperback on his seat by mistake, or giving it to the person seated next to him, who then checked into the hotel and left the stub behind in the closet.

No Vocabulary This Time Around

Finding myself illiterate in Poland, I followed a color scheme. Racially, Warsaw appeared to be almost completely white, like me. The parks added a strong element of green.

In the late 20th-century, multinationals had moved into office buildings around public spaces, and the adjacent hotels for business travellers were marketing those recreational zones. The welcome folder in my room included the message that jogging was possible next door in the park. One day, after returning from a meeting, I changed and trotted on out, only to discover that the circuit was very short, and that nobody else was on it. Instead, locals strolled or sat on benches. Others moved briskly along the paths, carrying briefcases, books, shopping bags.

Also green was the luminescent soaking fluid poured into the footbath at a mid-town beauty salon, which I visited during a lunch break in an effort to mesh with daily routine. The manicurist was wearing bright green open sandals. Features on her face, chest and toes seemed to be pushed into points. Her lips were also pursed into a cone. The apron she wore was absolute white, and her hair was bleached to match. She spoke to me in Polish, trying to determine the color of nail polish to be used. I wanted clear polish, but I had trouble convincing her on that point, and finally, after giving me a slow once-over, she made a final offer: "Blue-ski?"

I remembered my friend, the manicurist, while strolling through Warsaw Airport on the day of departure. Turning back for a final look at a gleaming shop, I saw vacuum-packed sausage being sold by women in uniform. Their platinum hair glistened; their long nails were flawless and blue.

So Far This Much is Known - Not Allowed to Show You Pt.2

I had written to the bank requesting a translation, should they have it, of an Arabic text on a plastic file given to their clients. In response, the bank sent me another product for clients: a paper file (which tucks inside the plastic one) with relevant design background information on its inside cover. Eight examples of bookkeeping techniques throughout the ages are depicted, including the 11th-century Egyptian customs book with the Arabic text. Five or six lines of introductory text accompany each image. I thanked the Communications Department for the reply and repeated, very gently, my interest in viewing an actual translation.

The response from the bank was that the translation had already been sent to me. In the bank's view, the summary is the translation. I don't expect to hear from them again and may never learn about the full content of the writing on the plastic file. At this stage I am proceeding on the assumption that the bank does not have a translation of either the Arabic text or the Hieroglyphics on another image I inquired about: the hat-shaped papyrus scrap, which, as it turns out, is not papyrus at all, but an unglazed pottery shard known as an ostracon, from the Greek 'ostrakon' meaning a shell or earthenware fragment used as a voting ballot, among other things.

According to the bank's blurb, the Egyptians used these shards for taking notes. The terra cotta roof-tile fragments which are smashed onto the streets of Amsterdam by heavy wind storms in the winter are sometimes quite beautiful, but I'm pleased that I do not have to carry them around as my notepad. In the old days, papyrus cost money, whereas an ostracon could be picked up off the streets anytime you wanted to jot something down. The actual hieroglyphics in the bank design seem to constitute a note declaring Taurine's intent to repay his debt to Papnoute. That's all I know.
Both the ostracon and the customs book images are on my computer, and perhaps one day I'll learn more.

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.