May 14, 2010

 

Going back. Again. To visit family and friends; the dead and the living. This country and its people of this country still have me on edge. There is news of the rise of the “Jobbik Party (the Righter Party); Jobbik meaning righter than the right. It also means better and it also implies more correct. Its uniformed Hungarian Guard patrolling the streets have me on edge. Again.

 

Hungary, something is eating you. I can’t resist the pun. Actually, it is the first line of a poem of mine from my first book Szerbusz published in 1974 (Hello/Goodbye). I wrote it after my second visit back in 1972 after my family’s escape in 1956. And it’s still true thirty six-years later.

 

Alexander Zaitchik of The Faster Times.com in July 12, 2009 wrote “The Jobbik Party was founded in 2003 on a virulently anti-Roma (Gypsy) platform that encourages nostalgia for Hungary’s history of far-right parties stretching back to 1930s, including Gyula Gömbös’ Hungarian National Defence Association and the Arrow Cross movement, which received direct funding from Nazi Germany.

 

In 2007, Jobbik even founded its own paramilitary outfit, The Hungarian Guard, which wore fascist uniforms while marching through Roma neighborhoods. The Guard was (finally) banned last month by the government. In response, Jobbik party activists gathered on Budapest’s Elizabeth’s Square over the July 4 weekend to protest. Not surprisingly, things turned violent. More than 100 protestors were arrested and 20 injured in clashes with police.”

 

I tell you, to have such a country of birth kick you out of your cradle and not allow you to call it your mother(land), your home, is a strange blessing.

 

 

June 1, 2010

 

The day morphs into day— a day later. There is a thin string of horizon red, a theory of new beginnings strung across the sky at 39,000 feet, a bloodless slash outside my window stretching like a scar from the old world to the old world. I am flying to visit ghosts.

 

My mother and I are going to Debrecen for the unveiling of her sister’s gravestone. And later, a day or two after that to Hajdunánás, my birth town, to visit her husband’s father’s (my grandfather’s) grave and then to Hajduhadház to her father’s (my grandfather’s) gravesite.  

 

“Flying always scares and amazes me.” This is what I write in my travel journal every time I fly. It’s worth remembering and noting these emotions. Anyone who isn’t afraid has lost the capacity to be awed.

 

The headsets filled with music, the TVs set into the back of seats too closely packed, and the plastic-wrapped bad food served do what they can to distract us from thinking the worst. However, at the first rattle of turbulence, we all look for our inner Mommies and Daddies.

 

I watch Alice in Wonderland and Ghostwriter. They get me across the almost night over the Atlantic.  

 

Over Ireland, I eat breakfast. I can’t believe Air France would serve such weak coffee and rubbery rolls.

 

 

June 3, 2010

 

Debrecen is a city: beautiful in its past, bustling in its present. The multi-storied concrete and glass stores and little-hole-in-the-wall converted houses are full of cute, ugly, essential merchandise. I stroll its principal artery, Piac Utca (Market Street) where my grandfather (on my mother’s side), used to bring his horses to sell. Now it is filled with  boutiques of western (made in China) brand names and kiosks of foods and their wonderfully rich sweet smell. I am unable to resist the terrace of Eve’s Café Lounge.

 

At a nearby table, three young men lounge. All three sport differing degrees of long blond hair. They are good-looking and healthy. One, wearing a black T-shirt, slouches with a certain confidence while the second, in white, smokes with the seriousness of the young. The third sits between them in a brown suit jacket with thin orange and blue horizontal stripes and listens intently. I can’t make out what they’re saying. At first, it sounds like Hungarian but spoken too fast for my Canadian-Hungarian ears to be sure. Soon a fourth, with an armband tattoo, joins them and all four begin an exchange in fluent but accented English. After a brief conversation about working out, he leaves and they return to their foreign-tongued chatter. German? No, too many dark vowels. Maybe Polish or Russian, I’m too far away to tell for sure. And besides, two young women sit down at the table next to mine and begin in Hungarian about work and boys they know. Their rapid talk is also difficult to follow. I feel like an outsider with a faulty universal translator.

 

I shut down my eavesdropping and focus on my sweet cappuccino and Dobos torte. Dobos is my favourite Hungarian pastry. Each slice has a crunchy caramelized icing top layer that can test the strength of you teeth. Underneath this glaze are alternating layers of cake and chocolate cream. The fact that it requires nine egg whites, eight egg yolks, one cup white sugar and 1½ cups of sifted all-purpose flour, among other ingredients, hard to come by in Communist 1956 Hungary, made it a once a year treat. Now it’s everywhere and I mean to get my fill. This one is a bit dry. Makes me all the more determined to find the “perfect” Dobos.

 

Back at the Thermal and Wellness Hotel, the elderly arrive in droves for the baths— to soak their aching muscles and bones in 34-to-40 degree hot springs. This is their reward to themselves for their years of hard work. Meanwhile, on the second floor, the young are crowded into “The Afrika” conference room for an Amway convention; a pyramid of hopes dreams, and schemes for a quick buck.

 

Along with the old, I’ve soak my body and now sit in the lobby, watching and reading Gogol’s Dead Souls.

 

 

June 4, 2010

 

   Another rainy day. A bowl of greyness domes Hungary. It’s been raining the whole month of May. And because Hungary occupies the low-lying areas of the Carpathian basin, two-thirds of the territory consists of plains 200 metres below sea level. And now now a large portion of it really is. Civilians, soldiers and police are working day and night sandbagging but to little avail.

   Gyuri, my cousin’s husband, takes me to see his basement. He is a motor-mouth of commentary, anecdotes and curses. He is hustle and chutzpah epitomized. The basement is his current project. Actually, it’s not really his basement, it’s the basement of the synagogue of Debrecen. He has decided that the synagogue needs a weight room and playroom. He has, more or less on his own, excavated and cleaned it up, and is converting it into an exercise area.

   “The board is fighting me, telling me it can’t be done. For me, ‘no’ means ‘When will it be finished?’  Not only did they say it couldn’t be done but were actively trying to block me. That was just the extra incentive I needed. They wouldn’t help, so I got all my Christian buddies to help. We cleared the years of dust and dirt out of this old, dank coal- bin basement of this 100-year-old synagogue. And look at it now!” 

   They had scraped down the walls to the original bricks, re-pointed, poured a cement floor and installed new wiring. All this with volunteered christian-brawn and hustled material.

   He is after the young Jewish kids who are the first generation of post atheist Communism:  “Get their bodies and then you’ll get their faith” is what I told the rabbi. He may know the holy books and the wisdom of the old, but he knows shit about the new.”

   This wouldn’t have been possible during Communism. Now it is but there is a smell of neo-fascism on the rise. Hungary has a long tradition of anti-Semitism. In fact, it has a long tradition of anti-anything that isn’t “dyed-in-the-wool” Hungarian.

   I remember. I was seven in 1956, and in my village, the revolution was about mobs roaming the night looking to loot and burn Jewish homes. I remember fleeing with my Holocaust-surviving parents.

   Again  and this time, I am 62 and back.

   “The basement door was supposed to be painted brown but the synagogue wouldn’t spring for the paint. A Jew getting money from a Jew? Forget it. Why buy when we have lots of white and blue, they said.”

   So Gyuri painted on the the door the flag of Israel. It’s his defiant “Fuck you” to the board and the fascists. It’s his declaration of “Never again!”

 

 

June 5, 2010

 

I am a Jew. I’m in a country that won’t let me forget it. I didn’t come looking to flaunt it or find it but I was reminded of being one before I left Canada by the news of the Jobbik Party’s activities.

 

And now that I am here, I am very aware of being one. And it’s magnified by Israel’s military action against the Gaza flotilla. It’s the main nightly news after the flood. I am conflicted over Israel. I understand with a child-of-holocaust survivor sense its desire to exist, survive, thrive and live in peace. However, with the same child-of-holocaust survivor’s sense, am angry and ashamed of its government’s action with its flotilla raid, its wall, its apartheid policy toward Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and its inability to stake the moral high ground and act with remembrance of “never again”. The “never again” should not only be a rallying call for its own defense but it should also be the way to treat others.

 

I know. A country is not a human being but a complex geo-historical, political, economical organism with sensors that respond to stimuli: light, sound, heat, cold, hunger and danger. It has at its sole purpose existence and survival. But a country does consist of human beings and therefore is not only a complex geo-historical, political, economical organism which responds to stimuli: light, sound, heat cold, hunger and danger and that has at its sole purpose existence, survival, but to continue to do so, it also has consciousness and a conscience.

 

Relatives arrive from Israel for the unveiling—a Jewish tradition of dedicating the gravestone of someone recently deceased. Over the welcoming lunch, the topic of the raid on the flotilla comes up. They, with the assurance of Sabras declare that the people on the flotilla were terrorists who were shipping weapons to Hamas. I ask what their proof is.

 

“The government said so and the video on the news showed it,” Miri says.

 

When I mention that other videos and accounts contradict it, they claim that those ones were doctored. For them, it’s Israel right or right. The only thing they were disappointed in was the military operation.

 

“They botched the job,” she says.  

 

They feel that Israel has lost its military superiority.

 

“They used to do it so much better before,” she says.

 

There seems to be no way to resolve this, no desire. The conversation turns to the Jews in Israel and my relatives lament the lazy black Jews, the ones from Ethiopia who don’t work and expect the government to support them. They are also critical of the dirty Russian Jews who make a mess of everything.

 

They ask me in an accusatory tone why I haven’t been to Israel. I can’t tell them I have the same unease about going there as I have about coming to Hungary.

 

We share a good lunch and reminisce about my aunt whose gravestone we are going to unveil tomorrow.

 

 

June 6, 2010

Part 1

 

The unveiling is today. It is 35 degrees Celsius outside. I have not been able to sleep through the night since we arrived. The air-conditioning only wets the carpet and cools nothing. I toss and turn and wake and stay awake. I get dressed, put on my brand new, never before worn, bought for this occasion, suit and tie. My mother, who has spent most of her life behind a sewing machine, laments my lack of appreciation for fine clothing, guilted me into getting this suit. Did I tell you that it was 38 degrees Celsius outside?

 

Though sweating profusely, I am glad that I am wearing the suit. I escort my mother, dressed in her finely tailored clothes, through the narrow aisles between old and crumbling gravestones to her sister’s. Magda’s is of dark granite in the shape of an open book with her and her husband’s names and dates on facing pages. I can feel my mother sag when she sees it. Magda was the last of her family. She was the oldest. The youngest Edit, and her mother died in Auschwitz. Her father died in 1972. She is now, at 85, the only one of that generation left. We gather around the stone and the Rabbi says Kaddish. I feel my mother’s hand tighten around mine. The service doesn’t last long. Once over and the crowd dispersed, my mother walks over to the stone and caresses it. Stroking it, she leans over and kisses it as if it were Magda’s head, and begins to sob.

 

Magda was the older sister, the one my mother worshipped, the one who knew how to cook. She was the one, who in Auschwitz, allowed my mother to have a bite of the piece of bread she saved for the next day, in case of who-knows-what, who stood up to the SS guard when he was yelling at my mother and who was slapped over and over again for interfering.  Magda was her strength when she had none left, and now she was gone. Before we leave, my mother grabs a handful of earth from the grave and puts it in a plastic Provigo shopping bag.

 

Part 2

 

Later, my cousin Edit, the one who was named for the exterminated sister, tells me that her mother’s second husband, who also lies in the same cemetery, bought twin plots, so Magda would lie next to him. He even had her name engraved on the double stone he had made for himself and her. Only the death date needed to be added. After he died, Edit asked her mother who she wanted to lie next to. Jewish law states, it has to be the most recent husband. After much soul searching, she decided to lie next to her first husband the father of Edit and Pityu. Edit says she was going to do it that way anyways. She has decided to have her mother’s name removed from the second husband’s stone and sell the plot.

 

I guess the second husband will be surprised when he sees who has come to lie next to him.

 

 

June 7, 2010

Part 1

 

Gyuri who has become my window and doorman into Hungry’s psyche, is taking me to meet a professor of linguistics at the University of Debrecen. “I want to show him that I know professors too,” he says.  Gyuri winks at me before we enter his office.

 

We have a cordial phatic conversation about language, academic life, and educational reforms. Gyuri who is no scholar, except in the hustle of things, mentions in his “of course” voice that the new rector of the university is related to my parents’ friend in Montreal. And that he, the rector, is Jewish. Gyuri, wearing his “chai” necklace, never misses an opportunity to boast about the Jews in Debrecen and their accomplishments. Suddenly the professor, who is also Jewish, lowers his voice and tells Gyuri to do the same. He informs me that the rector does not want to publicize his religious background. And we shouldn’t talk too loudly about it because it’s dangerous.

 

Again.

 

A chill descends on the conversation and we soon leave.

 

“A prick with a hat,” Gyuri says about him as we leave. “His kind of attitude is what is dangerous.” He drives to the synagogue where he introduces me to Tibor, a young Christian man who volunteers as a self-defense instructor.

 

 

 

 

 

Part 2

 

Tibor turns out to be a budding actor as well, and once he finds out that I’ve written plays, he invites me to a rehearsal of his group that has made it to the finals of the regional district talent show. In the humour category, they are presenting a couple of Monty Python skits in Hungarian. This I have to see and hear.

 

I arrive late. Rehearsal is in progress. The space is small, humid and filled with costumes on racks. Two men and two women sit in the centre in a semi circle— still, legs crossed and holding imaginary wine glasses. Standing before them is a salt-and-pepper haired man talking a 100 kilometers a minute. He sees me, falls silent and stares intensely. “Yes?” he asks arrogantly. Tibor, one of the four who is sitting still as those silver painted statue street performers, says softly that I am the “writer and playwright gentleman” whom he invited.

 

Immediately, the director jumps up and in a melodramatic manner, walks over, bows and shakes my hand. We exchange introductions. He has the eloquence and tone if not the fashion sense of Oscar Wilde. He then returns to his directorial task of interrupting every move, every line, every gesture, and every breath every actor makes. He gives every one six or seven directorial comments at once, lacing them with a sarcasm that only Hungarians are capable of.

 

 “My dear little son, an analphabet oxen is capable of a stronger gesture. No, Dearie, don’t separate the words like a stuttering idiot. Pause…don’t pause…no no, didn’t you ever listen to your mother, perhaps that’s the problem…that you listened to your mother. Listen to me. Again children I ask you nicely, say your lines with a sense of aristocratic snobbishness that only the British are capable of. Oyyyyyayayyy you are mules, you all lack that British air. Let me show how you do it, how you say it. Let me ask our distinguished guest to tell you how badly you do it. My dear Sir, how do the Americans say ‘Mrs. Perkins’?

 

I am taken aback and try.

 

“No my dear sir, the British don’t pronounce it that way. They do not pronounce the “R.”

 

“But you asked for American, not British,” I manage to say.

 

He pauses, stares at me and is off on a tear about other faults.

 

My head hurts, my jaws clench, my shoulders tense, my ass tightens, my legs cramp and my toes curl.

 

He interrupts his criticisms and berating with putdowns about Hungarian actors, and information that sounds as if he is on intimate terms with the Pythons. The rehearsal is about him; he is the skit.

 

After a half hour of this I can’t take anymore and excuse myself. He looks over, thanks me for coming, asks me back and promises not to interrupt as much. Before I can say goodbye, he is back abusing and performing instead of directing.

 

I walk back to the synagogue to meet with Gyuri. I enter the courtyard to find him and eight others in a circle breathing deeply, practicing “smiling Yoga.” The group leader smiles and invites me to join them.

 

Later I find out that a few years back, the director got so caught up in a psychodrama class for preteens that he almost choked a twelve year old boy. He was banned from directing kids.

 

 

June 11, 2010

 

Part 1

Budapest

 

The heat is oppressive, a punishing 35 Celsius, again. The up side of this heat is that the flood which had a large portion of the country underwater is receding. After a month of rain, only the tourists are complaining. And to add to the country’s woes the new government’s first financial statement has the forint (the Hungarian currency) in a freefall.

 

I am sitting here under a parasol in Heroes Square in Budapest contemplating this and having a delicious cappuccino.

 

There is not much a tourist can do in such a heat except,  perhaps sit in a cafe and watch people hustle by. And write. Not a bad life if one can afford it. At this moment, with the forint tumbling, I, with my American, dollars am quite well off. I order a second cappuccino.

 

The financial mess was triggered by a member of the recently-elected conservative party (FIDESZ) when he declared that Hungary is on the ledge of bankruptcy. (I love the use of imagery by Hungarians). That sent the forint tumbling by 15 percent and the people, two thirds of whom voted for the party, screaming for their heads.

 

It’s not unusual for incoming parties to declare soon after their election that they’ve just seen the books and discovered that due to the lies and mismanagement of the previous government, the new government cannot keep its promises. Of course it will mean cuts to programs and institutions that they were promising to strengthen. This is the normal and accepted way of breaking promises in politics.

 

I have heard these lies a number of times in Canada. But I have never heard the incoming finance minister announce the imminent bankruptcy of the country. If he did, he would be strung up by his new shoe-laces. But this is Hungary, the land of poets and politicians, both given to hyperbolic hyperboles!

 

The outrage can be heard everywhere. Not over this “fact” but because the people are convinced that this was a deliberate act to manipulate the money market. The people of the “food market” are convinced that there is collusion between the politicians and the cowboy capitalists who were warned in advance and who cashed in. One person I chatted with at the café said, “It’s enough to make one yearn for communist heroes.”

 

 

Part 2

 

In Search of  Bari Karoly.

 

In the 70s, when I was just starting to write poetry seriously, (seriously, as only a young writer starting to write can) I returned to Hungary. While I was there, Gyuri, as a gift to a budding poet, stole from the Debrecen Public Library Elfelejtett Tüzek (Forgotten Fires) by Bari Karoly. This seventeen-year-old Gypsy poet’s first book sold over 100,000 copies. He was the poster child for the country’s attempt to integrate the gypsies into Hungarian Communist society; to show that they were more than just thieves.

 

I tried to read it but my Hungarian was rudimentary.  I thanked Gyuri for his kindness and tucked the book away.

 

Once home, wanting to know what kind of poetry could sell so many copies, I bought myself a two-volume Hungarian/English dictionary and began a couple years of on-and-off translation. The topic was Gypsy life; the themes were of lamentation, celebration and anger in a language that was stream-of-consciousness (a poem was often one long sentence) in a thick weave of images in a lyrical/surrealist-like Hungarian. His Hungarian was Gypsy Hungarian. It was as if he was translating his Gypsy language into Hungarian and I was trying to translate that into English.

 

I finally translated a couple of poems to my satisfaction and, on a whim, sent them to his publisher. I got my father to translate my cover letter to him into Hungarian. My father took great pride in making it “elegant.”

 

To my surprise, Karoly answered. So began a correspondence that resulted in a literary friendship and a connection with a friend of his who was teaching at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. This led to me being invited to contribute to a Bari’s Selected in English. I even came to Hungary to meet him and spend some time with him to get clarification on some of his phrasings, imagery, Gypsy references and myths/legends.

 

By that time, I had already published Szerbusz, my first book. It had a number of poems dealing with my encounters and response to Gypsy life. I felt a sympathetic connection with them and Karcsi (the intimate version of Karoly, used by friends). I felt this connection because I had been breastfed by a Gypsy wet-nurse. Romantically, I felt that I had, if not gypsy blood, then gypsy milk in me. Also as a Jew, I shared the experience of discrimination. And we were both poets.

 

Something happened. After the publication of his Selected, we drifted apart; the letters got shorter, fewer and farther apart until finally, they stopped altogether. There was no one thing in particular. Life, I suppose, got in the way.

 

I am back, in Budapest and on a whim, decide to look him up. His old address and phone number long lost, I begin the detective work. The most obvious is the internet. His name is there but only a brief bio and a list of his books. There is no other clue as to how to get in touch. I then decide on the ancient reference book, the phone book. But first I must find a phone book. In Budapest, the keeper of phonebooks is the post office. Now I have to find a post office. I get my waiter at the Heroes Square cafe to direct me. After ten minutes of zigzagging in 38-degree Celsius heat, I find a little corner post-office and a phone book. There is only one Bari Karoly and it’s the wrong one. Calling information does not help. I then get the bright idea of finding a copy of his latest book and contacting him through his publisher.  I ask a woman on the street to point me towards the nearest bookstore. She doesn’t know of any. Hungarians are famous, in Hungary, for being  literate, and this woman doesn’t know of any bookstores!? And on top of it, she admits it! A young man unloading a truck, overhearing us, politely interrupts and tells me he used to be a delivery boy and knows the city like the back of his hand. He gives me the street number of a bookstore. It’s on this street.

 

Off I go in the direction he points but I notice that the numbers are going the wrong way and turn back. The young man is nowhere to be seen. I don’t find a bookstore but a book distribution center.

 

A long grey-haired and bearded man with a son in Toronto (in Hungary, you don’t get information without a stor) has heard of Bari and tells me that there is a bookstore about fifteen minutes away that would have his books.

 

I stroll along the boulevard that is really a European boulevard with sophisticated boulevard trees and Hapsburg houses. I pass a building that has, at eye level, convex oval shaped cameos embedded in the wall. They are the size of the palm of my hand. Embossed on each are photographs. They seem to go on forever. Around the corner of the building, a plaque explains that these are photograph-cameos of men and women who were killed or executed during the 1956 uprising. They are of all ages and all sorts of occupation. Suddenly, the boulevard no longer evokes the belle époque café society and the pock marks in the building are no longer a sign of old age but the bullet holes and the courage and the blood shed for freedom.

 

Part 3

 

The Millennium Bookstore is located on the Octagon. The store is located on one of the octagon-sided intersections. I octogoned it and found it on the last side. They didn’t have any of his books but the clerk said there was a store five minutes away that was sure to have them.

 

The Writers Bookstore faces two little parks and in each is a statue, larger than life, of a famous Hungarian writer. Try finding one such park in the entire country of Canada!

 

The Writers Bookstore is filled with serious books, magazines, calendars and postcards. The second floor has wall-to-wall bookcases and its center is filled with café-like tables and chairs for readings.

 

I ask for his books but they are out of them at the moment. Wanting to be helpfull the cashier gets me his publisher’s address and phone number. The address is quite a distance outside of the center of Budapest and I can’t make it today, but I figure that the phone number should help.  

 

I decide to browse. While doing so, I overhear a young man tell the cashier that he would like to place some of his poetry books. It reminds me of my early days in Montreal, when my fellow Vehicule poets and I tried to get bookstores to carry our first books.

 

On the way out, I approach him and introduce myself as a poet from Canada and ask if he would he like to talk a bit. We sit in the Ady Endre square with Ady’s huge statue looking down on us. The place stinks of piss. We talk a couple of minutes but soon neither of us can pretend not to smell the rancid stink. I ask him if he has time for a coffee. He says that he has the time but not the money. I have both. We go to the Trattoria coffee house.

 

He shows me his first (self-published) book “Mots Vagy Soha” His nom de plume is Mots Tamas. His title is a play on one of the lines from Hungary’s national poem (yes Hungary has a national poem) by Hungary’s most famous poet Petöfi Sándor. It’s a poem about fighting for freedom.

 

Talpra magyar, hí a haza!
Itt az idő, most vagy soha!
Rabok legyünk vagy szabadok?
Ez a kérdés, válasszatok!,

 

Arise Hungarian, now calls your home!

Now is the time, it’s now or never!

Shall we be slaves or shall we be free

This is the question, choose!  

 

I ask him if he also meant to play with the French word “mots.” “No,” he says. He neither speaks nor writes French, but he is greatly pleased with this coincidence.

 

He might be the new Bari.

 

Then a strange metamorphosis occurs in him and gives me a very hard stare. He tells me that he knows of conspiracies and that he is in danger. He tells me he wants to leave this “stinking country”. He wants to become a flight attendant and fly.

 

I pay and head off to call Bari’s publisher. No answer.

 

Part 4

 

After a tour of the Beaux Arts Museum, I lie under the vinegar tree contemplating the paintings I saw: Medieval paintings of martyrs as pin cushions with arrows sticking into them, martyrs as logs with axes cleaving their Friar Tuck bald heads and Christs, by the painting load, in period costumes and nailed to crosses.

 

I fall asleep and hear voices.

 

Hello she says

Hello I say

How are you? she asks 

Fine, and you? I say.

 

We are having this conversation in English but she has an accent. Then I realize I am not asleep or dreaming.

 

I open my eyes, sit up and look around. There, sitting on the grass, leaning against the same vinegar tree, is a woman, quite real.

 

“I am Iranian” she says. “I am visiting my daughter who is studying in Hungary.”

 

She is dressed in modern western dress and says that she is a psychologist who is no longer allowed to practice because of the Regime. Her daughter then appears and after a round of hellos begins to rage against the “bearded idiots” and the “stolen election”.

 

When I tell them that I am from Canada, she becomes excited and says that she hopes to end up in Vancouver to teach physical education.

 

“There, boys and girls are not separated and there is no need for martyrs.”

 

We leave Heroes Square and part with “See you in Canada.”

 

 

June 12, 2010

 

The morning began with my mother waking me to say that she wasn’t feeling well. Her upper arms and ankles were both feeling fire and were numb and she has chest pains. My mother had had a 5-bypass operation  thirteen years ago and has been living with 50% heart capacity ever since.

 

I called my cousin Edit who said she would call Gyuri who used to work at the hospital and knew people. Quelle Surprise! Gyuri was the chief electrician at the hospital for about thirty years and has accumulated enough favours to get whatever he wants. Anytime a doctor or an administrator wanted a heater or a fan or even a second outlet and didn’t want to wait for the five-year year plan to kick in or the bureaucratic  paperwork to wend its way through the maze, then they contacted Gyuri. He was also available to come through for some needs outside of work. He could hustle you anything, and usually for free. Well, maybe for a favour somewhere down the line.

 

So he called in a favour  and one of the chief doctors called for an ambulance which was there within ten minutes.

 

The Clinic was about ten minutes away. A turn-of-the-century complex, it had an old- world seriousness and charm about it. It had arched stone entrances, high ceilings, immaculate tile floors, large wooden windows and doors with brass handles. Everyone, from orderlies to doctors, was dressed in freshly pressed white.

 

We were ushered in to see a heart specialist whose first question was “How are you paying for this?” I said she had insurance and we were Canadians who had universal Medicare. She responded a bit roughly that it wasn’t insurance she was asking about but how were we going to pay for the treatment in the hospital.

 

“Cash,” I replied.

 

Then began a seven hour journey of tests: heart, lungs, blood pressure, blood works, chest, ultrasound, intestines, urine and the sitting in hallways. My mother began to feel better. Just by being seen she began to relax and said she was starting to feel better. They discovered some of the causes of her pain and then began to write a prescription. But before he did, the doctor asked me to get the cash and pay.

 

We returned to the Thermal and Wellness Hotel where word had gotten out about her. Everyone and from the doorman to the manager came to inquire about her well-being and made sure that she got two extra bottles of water a day. I suppose this was normal as this was the Thermal and Wellness Hotel.

 

 

June 13, 2010

 

It’s Turkey Day in Debrecen. It’s 34 degrees Celsius. It’s hot enough to make you hallucinate.

 

The turkey is the city’s bird and today there is a fair in the city square with all sorts of turkey-based dishes made on the spot by individuals and organizations. I hear that for the first time, the Debrecen Jewish Congregation is participating. They are serving “sholent” with kosher wine.

 

 

 

June 14, 2010

 

“Persze” (pronounced pair-say)

 

In every culture, there is a word, a phrase, an expression that captures the character of the people. Persze is the word I would say best describes the Hungarian character.

 

Its literal translation is of course. Of course is, of course, a confirmation of an act or an idea. It is also a reaffirmation of the obvious. One plus one is two, of course. The world is round (for most of us anyway) of course. The use of persze is universal. However, for Hungarians, this is just the beginning. Persze, is used as often as “you know” or “like” in English. It is the reply given by Hungarians to make obvious to the person making the statement that, no matter whether it is true or not, the listener is aware of the obviousness of the statement being made by the speaker. Whether you are explaining string theory to a Hungarian or telling them where they can get the best ice cream in the world he will inevitably reply persze. Not only is he saying persze but the entire country is saying this to you. National honour is at stake here. Never be it said that a Hungarian doesn’t know something. How can they not?! It is inconceivable. It is not in their nature. Persze.

 

Hungary is a small landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, with an area of 93,030 sq km (35,919 sq mi), extending 268 km (167 mi) N – S and 528 km (328 mi) E – W. Comparatively, the area occupied by Hungary is slightly smaller than the state of Indiana. It is bounded on the north by Slovakia, on the north-east by the Ukraine, on the east by Romania, on the south by Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia, on the south-west by Slovenia, and on the west by Austria, with a total boundary length of 2,171 km (1,349 mi). It has a population of 10,020,000.

 

It has lost most of the wars that it has fought. It has been successfully invaded by a number of its bigger neighbours and much of its former territory has been annexed by its neighbours as punishment for being on the losing side. Hungry was on the wrong side in both World wars, and it hasn’t had a decent soccer team since the failed revolution in 1956 when my parents and I left.

 

Perhaps it is because of these defeats, Hungarians know everything. Persze.

 

And it’s not only the word but the way it is expressed that reflects and defines Hungarians. There is a tone of conviction in the way that it is expressed that makes persze cocksure, unequivocal, powerful and irritating beyond belief to those who are not Hungarians. It is said in a way that suggests to the sayer that he is an idiot (persze) for stating something that is so obvious. In fact, he should be ashamed of himself. But unlike most Canadians, the Hungarian receiver of this put down does not take it as an insult. He, persze, will be saying persze in the same way when he has his turn to say something that is as idiotically obvious. Persze.

 

 

 

July 15, 2010

 

Turbulence at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic. In this turbulence, in this second-hand air, buffeted by puffed-out cheeked clouds, I remember the middle of the night, holding onto my parents’ hands. There was only total mud, each step into the sucking mud. There was only total darkness— except for one light in the sky in the distance, and us trudging towards it in circles, in circles, in circles, the light fixed, forever far away.

 

We were in no man’s land, escaping from my country of birth, trying to get to the light.

 

Staring out the window, I long to be home.

 

 

First appeared in Poetry Quebec 2010, Issue # 5