Malena's story
Tue Jun 19, 2007 at 05:44:51 PM PDT
I met Malena on the flight from NY to Prague. She's a sixtyish lady who had the window seat next to me. I was so tired on the trip that I don't recall what prompted the conversation, but I'm glad something did, for her story was worthwhile. It turned out we had a few things in common. She was a geologist prior to her retirement and has lived for the past forty years in Pittsburgh, PA, the locale of my childhood. Her husband, who died a few years previously was a marine biologist. Back in 1967, she and her husband were newlyweds in Prague and had just bought a new apartment to begin their life under the oppressive thumb of the totalitarian government. Malena's husband was invited to Paris for a scientific conference and he decided to take his young wife along. Before leaving, he was invited by the secret police for a little pre-briefing.
It turns out they had a whole laundry list of spying he was "requested" to do in the interest of the state. Though he was appalled at the suggestion, he played it cool and said he would gladly comply. Upon arriving in Paris for the conference, Malena and her husband immediately reported to the French embassy where they sought asylum- turning their backs on family, friends and homeland. Their scientific colleagues helped them with the resources to start a new life in America, where Malena's husband succeeded in getting a scholarship to attend the University of Pittsburgh, and that was that..
I said it must have been very exciting and scary. Malena said it was indeed both of those things, but also very sad. Since Czechoslovakia was firmly behind the iron curtain at the time, there was no prospect that they would be able to see or communicate with their parents ever again. As it turned out, twenty-two years later the Velvet Revolution occurred and the despotic regime crumbled, whereupon they were able to return to visit their parents and they bought a new apartment in Prague for the purpose of visiting them regularly. A heroic and ultimately happy story- at least until the old gent passed away, but such is life.
Though I didn't prompt Malena to bring up politics, she offered her revulsion of the current American president and his recent performance at the G-8 summitt where he was caught using the "S word" in public. She hadn't heard about his spontanious backrub of the German Chancelor Angela Merkel and when I described it she looked like she was ready to spit nails. Interesting how one who has lived through true totalitarianism can recognize a fascist in democratic clothing pretty much instantly. She said she was very concerned about the upcoming elections and said that if they were stolen again she felt certain democracy in America was in mortal peril. Again, none of this was prompted, it just spewed out with righteous anger.
Malena's story got me thinking about the nature of borders. I was thinking specifically about the hardened border of the iron curtain, which had so sadly deprived Malena of direct familial connection for most of her adult life as a direct result of she and her husband's heroic action. During the cold war people were routinely shot for trying to breach this boundary. There's a section of beautiful mountain woodland on the Austrian border of the Czech republic that was once a no man's land, to set foot upon it was to risk immediate death at the hands of the border guards. Now it is a lovely place to hike and smell the wildflowers.
Thinking of this and of Malena's story, it seems obvious that it is a bad thing to militarize a border, to erect fences to block the movement of people from one side to the other through threat of deadly force, yet that is exactly what continues to occur in troubled regions of the Earth and is indeed the plan of the current U.S. government for our border with Mexico. How can politicians be so blind to the lessons of history to advocate such a sorrowful solution to an admittedly difficult problem? I can't recommend a better approach other than to realize that the erecting of such a fence is an admission of terrible failure of imagination. Anyone advocating this approach should consider their public careers to be shamed and resign immediately. Failing that- let's vote the bastards out. For Malena and her beaux.
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