Courtesy of a purchase from Banana Books in Long Beach, Washington
This was a hard book to read. I had to take a few breaks from it. It’s well-written and riveting, of course. (Part of why it was hard to put down, too.) At times the main character becomes so sad his bones ache.
When Ishmael Beah was 12 years old, he left home with his brother Junior and some friends to go to a talent show in another town. They were amateur rappers and kept cassettes of Run DMC and other popular American groups in their pockets. They had no way of knowing that this talent show and those tapes were about to save their lives.
Young Ishmael had already been through some trauma–his parents had divorced and he was living with his father. But there was worse to come. Much, much worse.
Tribes of Sierra Leone: Ishmael and his friends know all the 18 languages spoken in their country
While the group of kids was walking to the next town, murder, rape and civil war were breaking out right behind them. Literally. They arrived to find that school and the talent show had been cancelled. Their hometown had been attacked and their parents and little brother, who lived with the mother, had fled. The town was on fire. They had nothing to go back to, but they tried anyway. After seeing the refugees on the road, however, they realized if they went back they would just die too. So they had to flee forward.
This beach is calm, but Ishmael came to one where the waves hit the sand so hard, they threw particles of sand high into the sky.
They ran from the civil war, but it followed them. After several encounters with hostile and suspicious villagers who tried to kill them before realizing they were just little boys, Ishmael and his brother got separated.
Ishmael kept running. The rap tapes in his pocket and his ability to moonwalk convinced many a murderous village headman that he was, in fact, a child. But finally the tapes were taken from him and burned as he was captured by government forces and made into a soldier. A child soldier. He was forced to torture and kill many rebels, some his age or younger. He was fed marijuana and cocaine daily and of course became addicted.
Ishmael’s village
“We were on our way to attack a small town that had ammunition and food. As soon as we left the coffee farm, we unexpectedly ran into another armed group at a soccer field adjoining the ruins of what had once been a village. We opened fire until the last living being in the other group fell to the ground. We walked toward the dead bodies, giving each other high fives. The group had also consisted of young boys like us, but we didn’t care about them. We took their ammunition, sat on their bodies, and started eating the cooked food they had been carrying. All around us, fresh blood leaked from the bullet holes in their bodies.”
Eventually UNICEF got ahold of him and freed him from the army. He was deprogrammed and detoxified, a painful and lengthy process. Of course, he was still traumatized. I don’t know if I could get over something like that. But Ishmael was lucky. He had a living half-uncle who cared, and who took him in as a member of his family. This uncle was a kind man, who treated Ishmael as his own son.
But then the war came to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and his uncle got very sick…all the hospitals were closed and it became impossible to get medicine or even food. After his uncle died, Ishmael realized he had to get out of Sierra Leone. It wasn’t just the famine and the civil war. If he were recaptured by government soldiers and he refused to rejoin them, he would be killed. If the rebels got ahold of him and discovered he’d been a government soldier, he would be killed. I think he was 16 years old at this point.
Why. WHY would adults, the descendants of slaves from all over Africa, make slaves of children? It is cruel and barbaric and evil and it makes no sense. But it happened, and is no doubt happening today. I hate this. I know you hate it too.
Well, Ishmael survived to write this memoir, of course. And he was eventually rescued by a woman in New York who adopted him. She had met him when he came to the U.S. to speak to the United Nations about the war and what it was doing to the country’s children. If I had a criticism about this book, it would be that it ends abruptly. You’re with Ishmael through some hair-raising horror, and with him on the bus to Guinea, the only safe country around Sierra Leone at that time (Charles Taylor was doing terrible things in Liberia) and you don’t know if he’s even gonna make it out, and then suddenly he gets to Conakry, the capital of Guinea, where the Sierra Leone ambassador lets SL refugees sleep in the Embassy if they have nowhere else to go, and you breathe a sigh of relief and–THE END.
Conakry, Guinea
There’s no mention of how, having entered Guinea illegally, which he mentions will turn out to be a big problem later, he makes it to the U.S. Or about his mother adopting him, beating the pants off American kids at paintball after having been a child soldier, about his troubles being a child again, or as he says, enjoying the little childhood he has left.
I guess my problem with the book is that I didn’t want it to end! So, not really a problem. (A first world problem?) There are a few scenes in the first chapters of the book about Ishmael having flashbacks and nightmares in New York, but at that point you haven’t lived through the bad stuff yet so I couldn’t really appreciate them.
Anyway, hats off to Ishmael Beah for surviving. I am so sorry that all this happened to you, kid. Maybe the reason Ishmael alone, out of all his family, lived, is because he was supposed to tell his story. Our job is to bear witness, and do what we can to help from far away. Even when it hurts to watch.
Courtesy of a special order from Auntie’s Bookstore
A Little History: It isn’t essential to know that the country of Moldova used to be part of Romania, but it helps. Ukraine also borders the two. Part of Moldova has since broken away and is now the (unacknowledged) country of Transnistria, populated mostly by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians.
A Little Historical Novel: Moldova sucks. That’s the first thing, says this narrator, that a Moldovan will tell you–right before he tries to pay you 4,000 Euro to smuggle him into Italy so he can live “the good life”. Why, you might wonder, don’t Moldovans stay home and try to make Moldova into a better place? Well, for one thing, according to Our Hero, no Moldovan has a high opinion of his fellow “knuckle-headed knuckle-draggers” without culture. They’re lazy, sneaky, lying cowards. Beaten down by decades of Soviet collective farming, and consumed with resentment, the citizens of Moldova, in particular the village of Larga, just want to get to Italy.
Where, they imagine, the women can clean house for rich Italians with villas. If they’re lucky, the homeowners will marry them. The men will work as day laborers, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. They’ll be paid a thousand Euros per month. Even the President of Moldova is scheming of illegally immigrating so he can open a pizzeria in Rome. (Moldova is the poorest country in Europe.) He wears hand-me-down clothes from the President of Azer-Baijan and falls asleep in the middle of giving his own speeches.
The irony is that Moldova, of course, used to be part of the Roman Empire, which once came marching to them. Now all they want is to go to Rome. This little sarcastic, sardonic, witty novel is full of irony. It is savagely funny. Although it is full of violence and death, I understood it to be allegorical and was not attached to the characters–it all seems removed from them somehow. Which allowed me to enjoy the humor without getting too upset or outraged by the violence.
(Completely unlike the recent non-fiction books on this blog set in Lithuania and Sierra Leone.)
And a Tractor Named Joe
O.K., that isn’t really the tractor’s name. It has several incarnations, one as a plane and one as a submarine. It even, at one point, receives a Christian burial. All in the service of getting its master to Italy.
“Old Man Tudor and Serafim returned in the evening, tired and angry…Serafim kicked a can of Coca-Cola that had just been tossed from the window of a speeding car.
“Stay put, you say. What awaits us here? Dirt, poverty, a whole lot of lousy nothingness. And how quickly everything went to pot. All in the 20 or so years since the Soviet Union fell apart.”
“Under the Soviets, things were bad, too, it’s just that you’re young and you don’t remember anything,” said the old man, pedaling harder and barely opening his eyes. “But I remember. Dirt, poverty, and a whole lot of lousy nothingness have always been here.”
“I’ve got to go to Italy,” Serafim said.
“Itay, Italy, you keep chirping,” said Tudor, getting angry. “Better you tell me this: Have you heard about Maria hanging herself?”
“Yeah, Serafim sighed. When are they burying her?”
“First they’ve got to take her down.”
“What? They haven’t taken her down yet?”
“She’s been hanging on the acacia tree for three weeks,” the old man said sadly. “Her husband doesn’t want to take her down. Her swaying body has a soothing effect on him, he says.”
“Tfu,” spit Serafim. “Inhuman.”
“We’re all human,” admitted Tudor. “We’re all people. We’re all little persons. He should be pitied. The man’s lost his tractor.”
What’s So Funny?
Moldovan author Lorchenkov undercuts his characters and their scheming with a deft and professional hand. This is one of the finest comic novels I’ve ever read, but I can’t tell you all the details–there are a few surprises 75% of the way through that will blow doors off the barn.
Some of the humor is situational–all the plots the villagers use to try to get to Italy and how they’re rarely successful. Plus the sheer ridiculousness of the last days of the Communist Party’s chokehold on the village. (Beneath the laughter there are tears and some murderous intentions for past wrongs–one young man can’t let go of his rage at the Commune Chairman for sending his grandparents and parents to Siberia decades before.)
Some humor comes from comic characters like the “asocial element” Petra Ivantsok, who is a professional pickpocket in Larga. When he goes to pieces from the beatings the villagers give him for stealing valuables from trolley passengers, he files for a pension from the Communist Party, and gets one. When they discover their mistake, rather than admit they were wrong, they increase it. (The other “village idiot,” Dygalo, who moonlights as an agronomist with a PhD in Agricultural Sciences, is so injured by hearing about this that he dies.)
This book was good to the last drop, and I have no doubt that I’ll be reading it again.
Rating: Five Italian textbooks with the covers torn off!
by Appollo & Lewis Trondheim courtesy of Banana Books in Long Beach, Washington
(I’m not sure if, when I purchased this book, I was thinking the island belonged to Madagascar or Mauritius or possibly the Comoros. But I was wrong. It’s classified as “France”. Please read anyway!)
This graphic novel knocked my socks off. Knocked. Them. Off. That’s right, I’m sitting here blogging to you barefoot, just like the sailors en route to Bourbon Island from Paris.
In 1730, an ornithologist named Robert (I called him Robear in my head) accompanies his mentor to Bourbon Island in the Caribbean. They’re looking for the dodo, even though the islanders tell them they haven’t seen one for 10 years. What they find is an island seething with intrigue. A pirate has been captured in nearby Madagascar and brought back to Bourbon to hang. His nickname is “the Buzzard”.
A Pirate’s Life For Thee
Cannons on the beach at St. Denis, the capitol of Reunion Island
But there is something you may not know. Bourbon Island was settled by retired pirates–many of whom were granted amnesty in a 1704 deal with the governor. Some are Buzzard’s former crew, some are not fans of Governor Dumas…some have become coffee plantation owners and don’t want to upset the mango cart.
The island of the novel is a wonderful mix of pirates of many countries: French, Dutch, Swedish, English. There are free men and women of color, slaves from Madagascar and Mauritius, Maroons who have escaped slavery and live in free villages in the highlands.
(I got the impression of a very Disney-like Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which I’ve always loved. There’s even a scene where two ships are shooting at one another under the infamous Jolly Roger flag…)
I’ve read about the Maroons in other books, primarily in The Pirate’s Daughter (Jamaica). This book, however, finally told me that the name doesn’t have anything to do with The Color Purple. It comes from a French word meaning to revert to the wild. (Hence, shipwrecked sailors could be “marooned” on a desert island). Cool, huh?
What Was So Great About It
I love, love, LOVED the characters in this graphic novel. The geeky, naïve Robert, eager to hear pirate stories, is drawn as a big-billed bird that reminded me of Gyro Gearloose, the wacky inventor relative of Scrooge McDuck. The brave and beautiful slave Evangeline, who is hiding a dangerous secret.
The dread pirate (retired) Jo Pitre, a grumpy Scot who returns to his Madagascaran wife just in time to prevent her seduction by a skanky village priest. (“What? His wife is a woman of loose morals? Perhaps we should pay her a visit.” Ha ha ha.)
The illustrator Appollo can only be described as extremely talented, charming, eccentric, witty, quirky, unique…and of course, pictures are worth 1,000 words.
At the back, Trondheim has written “Notes” to the reader: About Libertalia, the Pirate Republic on Madagascar, (perhaps a myth put about by Daniel Defoe) about Interracial Mixing on Bourbon (permitted for decades, then outlawed), about a Governor Desforges-Boucher who served on Bourbon in 1724…
“The Governor clearly knew the various inhabitants of the island very well and painted a portrait of them that was exceptionally mean–as well as remarkably funny.” One of the things he says is that all buccaneers are given to swearing, since without it, they just wouldn’t be horrid enough. LOL
Yer Not Gonna Laugh Out Loud
Wacky drawing and word humor aside, this is not a lighthearted, laugh-out-loud comic. The humor is sardonic, dark, and exceptionalloy dry.
Here is Robert arguing with Virginia, a young girl his party has found unconscious in the jungle.
Modern-day coffee company on Reunion
Robert: “You’re mistaken about pirates. For the most part, they’re decent people. Their purpose is not looting, but living free. Have you heard of the pirate republic of Libertalia, in Madagascar? Can you imagine? A republic! No King. Living free.”
Virginia: “My father was a pirate, and he exploits over 200 slaves on his properties. For those slaves, freedom means something. Flesh-and-blood people who are oppressed, whipped, mutilated…not murderous pirates.”
Robert: “The crews of pirate ships were made up in large part of Negroes, you know. Former slaves, in fact. So you know, Miss Lesson-Giver, you should find out about things before bad-mouthing them. Without me and Jacques, you’d be carrion for vultures.”
Virginia: “There are no vultures on Bourbon, Mr. Ornithologist From Paris.”
RATING: Yo ho ho and 5 bottles of rum!
PS–Do whatever you can to get your hands on this book, me hearties! Just sayin’.
Courtesy of Banana Books in Long Beach, Washington
After reading about the horrors of the Holocaust inThe Search for Major Plagge, I had to switch to something cheerful. Enter the charming wackiness of ichthyologists in hot pursuit of their passions in A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth. Ironically, this book also starts in 1938.
Just as Europe was bracing for what would become WWII, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of South Africa, a fossil fish was going about its business, neither knowing or caring that the human world “knew” it to be extinct.
The Lady Curator
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was the young head of an obscure museum in East London, South Africa. Like animal advocate and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, she collected everything she could get her hands on, including fish. She had an agreement with the captain of a trawler, a commercial fishing boat, that if he caught anything unusual, he’d let her know and she’d identify it for her museum.
Three days before Christmas in 1938, as Gone With the Wind was opening in America, Latimer went down to the docks to look at a pretty, blue, 5-foot long fish she’d never seen before. It had four fins like arms and legs. It weighed 127 pounds. She knew immediately it was rare and possibly precious, and she had to get an expert in to look at it. That meant she had to preserve the fish despite the tropical heat. But how? No ordinary family had a refrigerator. She thought of the morgue, but they adamantly refused to take on “a stinking fish”. She tried the town’s “cold storage”, but they also refused, saying that the fish could give off gasses, and might contaminate the food. She was out of options. Reluctantly, she took the fish to the town’s sole taxidermist and had him stuff it.
Then she contacted South Africa’s preeminent ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, on holiday several hundred miles away. Upon arriving in East London, he was able to identify the fish as a coelacanth–a fossil fish with a bony exoskeleton–a fierce predator thought to be as extinct as the T-Rex, as dead as the Dodo. Coelacanths are thought to have been around for 75 million years.
Old J.L.B. nearly wet his pants with excitement on seeing this fish. For the next 14 years, he tried to find another one. First, the outbreak of World War II put a stop to his plans. (He was exempt from service due to his WWI injuries, but commercial fishing came to a dead halt and belligerent ships plied the waters). After that he tried offering a 100 British pound reward for another coelacanth with its insides intact. He and his wife tried looking for the fish’s habitat themselves, but with no luck.
Until one was hauled in by a native fisherman in the Comoros Islands. And another race against time began…Again, it was just before Christmas. Again, he was hundreds of miles away–this time in another country. Could he beat the French (in charge of the Comoros) to the prize?
An Adventure in the Spirit of Indiana Jones
Or perhaps Clive Cussler. This is no dry, dusty tome about a boring subject–fish. It has controversy, drama, and eccentric characters galore. The controversy comes in because of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution, which had gained exactly no purchase in South Africa. The government refused to allow anything from The Origin of Species to be taught in schools (right up until the 1990s, in fact.) And unfortunately, this fish looked a lot like a transition fossil–the “Missing Link” that would show how fish crawled out of the oceans to sprout legs and lungs and become reptiles, apes, and then humans. (Or as we said back then–Man.)
The Smiths received a lot of letters from religious fundamentalists, which J.L.B. kept in what he called “the crackpot file”.
Despite knowing that I probably would have disliked J.L.B. Smith intensely in real life, like many eccentrics he is delightful to read about. A socially awkward genius who didn’t bother with the niceties, Smith married a much younger woman. I don’t think his ego could have tolerated a strong female his own age. Described as a slight man with a fragile body, I read between the lines that he probably had a Napoleon complex.
But his ill health too was interesting. At the outbreak of WWII, J.L.B. was given 5 years to live. He immediately decided to defy his doctors by going for long walks every day of at least 4 miles or more, and by changing his diet. He also refused to ever wear closed-toe shoes.
The Diet Debacle
As a person with gluten intolerance and diabetes, I wanted to know more about this life-saving diet. Unfortunately author Weinberg let me down.
“He refused to mix his proteins and carbohydrates,” she writes. (Why? When you eat carbs without proteins, your sugar shoots straight up and then straight back down. Combining carbs with proteins as my doctors advise, rounds out the curve, making it gradual and gentle.)
“He never ate meat with vegetables, or bread with butter and cheese.” (Um…meat is a protein but vegetables are not carbs, unless you mean peas/carrots/corn.)
“People thought he was crazy. His sandwiches, remembers Jean Pote, used to consist of two pieces of cheese with some apple wedged between them. (Hello, apples are carbs! Fruit has fructose–a fruit sugar–a carbohydrate, and LOTS of it.)
This inaccurate reporting made me wonder what else the author had gotten wrong. How far could I trust her? I kept reading, but with a shaker of salt, occasionally fact-checking for myself on the Internet.
Ironically, old J.L.B. Smith got some things wrong himself, including the name of the black man who actually caught the second coelacanth. I won’t give that name here, but the fisherman’s real name was Ahamadi Abdallah. Smith also thought for a while that this second fish was a different species of coelacanth, before realizing that the dorsal fin and tail were only different from the first fish due to a shark attack.
Fun Fact: Grande Comoro, the largest of these islands, boasts the mountain of Karthala, the largest active volcano crater in the world.
by Michael Good Courtesy of a purchase from Banana Books, in Long Beach, Washington
He was an intelligence officer in the Wehrmacht. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932, way before anyone “had to”. A veteran of WWI who walked with a limp, he was a true believer in the promises of Adolf Hitler. He loved the Fatherland and wanted to Make Germany Great Again.
Until.
Until he was stationed at a vehicle repair facility in Vilna, Lithuania, in charge of handing out starvation rations to the Poles and the Jews. Until he saw children in the Vilna Ghetto shot, clubbed, and brutally murdered. Until he saw the Nazis retaliate against escapees, executing 36 women when 1 couple ran away. Until he saw the SS hang not only this couple, but the young child who ran to them from the crowd, calling “Mama! Mama!”
Yes, right then, Major Plagge started to change. He started to do what he could to resist the Nazis, although he would always feel it wasn’t enough. He started employing more Jews. He started handing out work permits to Jews who weren’t even technically skilled, claiming they were “essential” to the war effort. He started serving an extra meal at the factory of hot soup. He started hiding Jews in the workshop. He started to become what he always was–a decent man. The Good German.
He wasn’t the only one. Another Wehrmacht officer in Poland was actually executed for helping the Jews. He too ran a vehicle repair facility. Just another reason why the liberating Americans drew a distinction between the often honorable and decent Wehrmacht and the sadistic cowards in the SS.
The Good Family of America (Formerly Gdud of Lithuania)
The Vilna Ghetto
Dr. Michael Good, MD, the author, is alive today because of Karl Plagge. Michel’s mother Pearl was a child in the Vilna Ghetto. She would have been murdered were it not for Major Plagge. The very last thing he did for her and her family was to warn them, at the end of the war, that the SS was going to liquidate the camp and if they wanted to live, they better hide. They did, and they lived.
Against the awful numbers of Jews who died in Lithuania during the war (shot at Ponary, gassed, sent to Auschwitz and Treblinka, clubbed, starved, killed by disease and poverty) what Karl Plagge did doesn’t seem like much. But to the individual people he saved, it was everything.
Gate of the Dawn in Vilna
At the beginning of the war, Lithuania had a huge Jewish population. About 550,000 people. Vilna itself was 40% Jewish–a cultural center of learning, trade, and history dating back to the early Middle Ages. By the war’s end, only about 2,000 Lithuania Jews were still alive. Of these, Karl Plagge had managed to save 1,000. Half of the survivors owe their lives to Karl Plagge. It boggles the mind.
At the beginning of the War, Michael Good’s mother Pearl had 33 living members of her family. At the end she had 11. Eight of the 11 were alive because of Karl Plagge. One additional member was saved by Plagge but didn’t make it in the end. (Michael’s father and paternal grandfather saved themselves by hiding in the forest. Because this grandfather had been so generous with his non-Jewish neighbors before the war, every Lithuanian and Pole who knew them gave them food or shelter when they could.)
The Questions About Major Plagge
Michael Good and his parents wanted to thank Karl Plagge. There was no Internet yet, so the search was hard and took a long time, but they reached out to other survivors of the Vilna Ghetto. They discovered that many had been seeking Major Plagge for a long time. What had happened to him at the end of the war?
Did he go through a De-Nazification hearing, like so many camp commandants? Was he hung as a war criminal, like so many SS and Wehrmacht officers? Was he really the hero that Pearl Good (formerly Perla Esterowicz) remembered? Was he just being nice to his workers so he could get more work out of them? What WERE his motivations? Was he still alive? Did he have children or grandchildren who could be thanked? Did Karl Plagge get arrested by the Soviets, and “disappeared” into a gulag like the Swedish hero Raoul Wallenberg (who saved 10,000 Hungarian Jews)?
This book will keep you reading LONG into the night. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. I wanted answers, just as Michael Good did.
Taking Liberties in Lithuania
Why the Polish connection in Lithuania?
This country has had a long hard fight for independence. It first became aware of itself as a nation around 1200, when it coalesced into the Duchy of Lithuania and got its first King. In the late Middle Ages, its ruler and the ruler of Poland got married, so for a few hundred years, the country of Poland-Lithuania was a thing. Later on, the Germans and the Russians fought over it. When Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, he and Stalin split Lithuania. Hitler got Poland and Stalin got Lithuania, and Vilna, the capital, was Polish. Then Hitler attacked Stalin and the Red Army took Lithuania back. And Vilna. (And of course, after WWII, Lithuania was eaten by the Soviet Union. It only got its country back in 1993.)
So, as this book opens, the author’s aunt and uncle are running out the back door of their house as the NKVD are breaking down the front door. (That’s the precursor to the KGB.) The Soviets wanted to arrest the Jews and take them to Siberia. IRONICALLY, they would have been better off in the Salt Mines of Siberia than in the Vilna Ghetto under Hitler.
If I’d found a Lithuanian equivalent to the idiom “Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire” I would’ve inserted it here.
After reading this book and consulting my phone, I know a lot more about Lithuania now than I did. Here is one fact: Before WWII, Lithuania was a mostly Catholic country, while Estonia and Latvia were mostly Protestant. I don’t know about now.
This book was a cracking good read, and you will get all the answers you want in the end. No spoilers from me, however!
From the website of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Memorial in Israel, the Righteous Among Nations award, which was bestowed on Karl Plagge and others like him:
“Attitudes towards the Jews during the Holocaust mostly ranged from indifference to hostility. The mainstream watched as their former neighbors were rounded up and killed; some collaborated with the perpetrators; many benefited from the expropriation of the Jews property.
“In a world of total moral collapse there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values. These were the Righteous Among the Nations. They stand in stark contrast to the mainstream of indifference and hostility that prevailed during the Holocaust. Contrary to the general trend, these rescuers regarded the Jews as fellow human beings who came within the bounds of their universe of obligation.
“Most rescuers started off as bystanders. In many cases this happened when they were confronted with the deportation or the killing of the Jews. Some had stood by in the early stages of persecution, when the rights of Jews were restricted and their property confiscated, but there was a point when they decided to act, a boundary they were not willing to cross. Unlike others, they did not fall into a pattern of acquiescing to the escalating measures against the Jews.
“In many cases it was the Jews who turned to the non-Jew for help. It was not only the rescuers who demonstrated resourcefulness and courage, but also the Jews who fought for their survival. Wolfgang Benz, who did extensive research on rescue of Jews during the Holocaust claims that when listening to rescue stories, the rescued persons may seem to be only objects for care and charity, however “the attempt to survive in illegality was before anything else a self-assertion and an act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi regime. Only few were successful in this resistance”.
“Faced with Jews knocking on their door, bystanders were faced with the need to make an instant decision. This was usually an instinctive human gesture, taken on the spur of the moment and only then to be followed by a moral choice. Often it was a gradual process, with the rescuers becoming increasingly involved in helping the persecuted Jews. Agreeing to hide someone during a raid or roundup – to provide shelter for a day or two until something else could be found – would evolve into a rescue that lasted months and years.
“The price that rescuers had to pay for their action differed from one country to another. In Eastern Europe, the Germans executed not only the people who sheltered Jews, but their entire family as well. Notices warning the population against helping the Jews were posted everywhere. Generally speaking punishment was less severe in Western Europe, although there too the consequences could be formidable and some of the Righteous Among the Nations were incarcerated in camps and killed. Moreover, seeing the brutal treatment of the Jews and the determination on the part of the perpetrators to hunt down every single Jew, people must have feared that they would suffer greatly if they attempted to help the persecuted. In consequence, rescuers and rescued lived under constant fear of being caught; there was always the danger of denunciation by neighbors or collaborators. This increased the risk and made it more difficult for ordinary people to defy the conventions and rules. Those who decided to shelter Jews had to sacrifice their normal lives and to embark upon a clandestine existence – often against the accepted norms of the society in which they lived, in fear of their neighbors and friends – and to accept a life ruled by dread of denunciation and capture.
“Most rescuers were ordinary people. Some acted out of political, ideological or religious convictions; others were not idealists, but merely human beings who cared about the people around them. In many cases they never planned to become rescuers and were totally unprepared for the moment in which they had to make such a far-reaching decision. They were ordinary human beings, and it is precisely their humanity that touches us and should serve as a model. The Righteous are Christians from all denominations and churches, Muslims and agnostics; men and women of all ages; they come from all walks of life; highly educated people as well as illiterate peasants; public figures as well as people from society’s margins; city dwellers and farmers from the remotest corners of Europe; university professors, teachers, physicians, clergy, nuns, diplomats, simple workers, servants, resistance fighters, policemen, peasants, fishermen, a zoo director, a circus owner, and many more.
“Scholars have attempted to trace the characteristics that these Righteous share and to identify who was more likely to extend help to the Jews or to a persecuted person. Some claim that the Righteous are a diverse group and the only common denominator are the humanity and courage they displayed by standing up for their moral principles. Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner defined the altruistic personality. By comparing and contrasting rescuers and bystanders during the Holocaust, they pointed out that those who intervened were distinguished by characteristics such as empathy and a sense of connection to others. Nehama Tec who also studied many cases of Righteous, found a cluster of shared characteristics and conditions of separateness, individuality or marginality. The rescuers’ independence enabled them to act against the accepted conventions and beliefs.
“Bystanders were the rule, rescuers were the exception. However difficult and frightening, the fact that some found the courage to become rescuers demonstrates that some freedom of choice existed, and that saving Jews was not beyond the capacity of ordinary people throughout occupied Europe. The Righteous Among the Nations teach us that every person can make a difference.
“There were different degrees of help: some people gave food to Jews, thrusting an apple into their pocket or leaving food where they would pass on their way to work. Others directed Jews to people who could help them; some sheltered Jews for one night and told them they would have to leave in the morning. Only a few assumed the entire responsibility for the Jews’ survival. It is mostly the last group that qualifies for the title of the Righteous Among the Nations.
“The main forms of help extended by the Righteous Among the Nations:
“Hiding Jews in the rescuers’ home or on their property. In the rural areas in Eastern Europe hideouts or bunkers, as they were called, were dug under houses, cowsheds, barns, where the Jews would be concealed from sight. In addition to the threat of death that hung over the Jews’ heads, physical conditions in such dark, cold, airless and crowded places over long periods of time were very hard to bear. The rescuers, whose life was terrorized too, would undertake to provide food – not an easy feat for poor families in wartime – removing the excrements, and taking care of all their wards’ needs. Jews were also hidden in attics, hideouts in the forest, and in any place that could provide shelter and concealment, such as a cemetery, sewers, animal cages in a zoo, etc. Sometimes the hidingJews were presented as non-Jews, as relatives or adopted children. Jews were also hidden in apartments in cities, and children were placed in convents with the nuns concealing their true identity. In Western Europe Jews were mostly hidden in houses, farms or convents.
“Providing false papers and false identities – in order for Jews to assume the identity of non-Jews they needed false papers and assistance in establishing an existence under an assumed identity. Rescuers in this case would be forgers or officials who produced false documents, clergy who faked baptism certificates, and some foreign diplomats who issued visas or passports contrary to their country’s instructions and policy. Diplomats in Budapest in late 1944 issued protective papers and hung their countries flags over whole buildings, so as to put Jews under their country’s diplomatic immunity. Some German rescuers, like Oskar Schindler, used deceitful pretexts to protect their workers from deportation claiming the Jews were required by the army for the war effort.
“Smuggling and assisting Jews to escape – some rescuers helped Jews get out of a zone of special danger in order to escape to a less dangerous location. Smuggling Jews out of ghettos and prisons, helping them cross borders into unoccupied countries or into areas where the persecution was less intense, for example to neutral Switzerland, into Italian controlled parts where there were no deportations, or Hungary before the German occupation in March 1944.
“The rescue of children – parents were faced with agonizing dilemmas to separate from their children and give them away in the hope of increasing their chances of survival. In some cases children who were left alone after their parents had been killed would be taken in by families or convents. In many cases it was individuals who decided to take in a child; in other cases and in some countries, especially Poland, Belgium, Holland and France, there were underground organizations that found homes for children, provided the necessary funds, food and medication, and made sure that the children were well cared for.”
Post Script-
As an American, I never really understood the persecution of the Jews in Eastern Europe. (Most Poles had a special hatred for them.) But to me, Jews, they’re just like us! Michael Good finally validated my thinking:
“My parents have always insisted that Poles and Lithuanians could readily identify someone as a Jew, even at a distance. They claimed that the Poles and the Lithuanians had a “sixth sense” that could tell a Jew from a Gentile. I never believed this, as (bolding mine) here in America, most of us cannot tell a person’s ethnicity and/or nationality by looks alone. We often cannot tell a Jew from an Italian or a Pole, etc. Of course, if a male in Vilna was under suspicion, the SS or Lithuanian police could always check to see if he was circumcised…”
courtesy of a special order from Auntie’s Bookstore
PRELUDE: Years ago, our manager at the bookstore was a man who had parachuted into Grenada during the U.S. invasion of that Caribbean Island. I never understood why. He couldn’t explain it! This book won’t tell you, but Wiki says it was to prevent Grenada from becoming BFFs with Fidel Castro. They would have been his neighbor. They’re in his hood.
But the U.S. invaded and saved the day. So now, Grenada’s healthcare sucks and poverty is rampant. You know, good old capitalism. Way to go, USA. I feel it is adding insult to the injury caused by bringing Africans from all over that continent to Grenada as slaves originally.
Praisesong for The Novel
A black American called Avey Johnson goes on a cruise with two friends (but one is more like a frenemy, or maybe an annoying relative!) I didn’t understand why they were friends. Anyhoo…
Unsettled by dreams, Avey gets off the ship by herself and decides to “go native”. She meets an old man in a rum shack who takes her on “the Excursion” to Carriacou–a yearly pilgrimage that people who live in Grenada always make back to their home island. Because of the way Avey looks, people keep mistaking her for a Grenada native, and speaking to her in Patois, which, as New Yorker, she cannot understand.
She’s violently ill on the boat, purging herself of many things, then experiencing a kind of rebirth on the island as she is bathed like a baby by the old man’s daughter, and given healing herbs and made whole again. Well again.
For Lo, the Past Ye Shall Always Have With You
Carriacou Island, the destination of The Excursion
Avey dreams of her grandmother, a mystic who lived in South Carolina and was more like these islanders than either of her parents. Her grandmother used to tell her a tale of a slave ship arriving in South Carolina full of Nigerians, and how they came ashore and then just turned and walked away, back over the water.
I kept thinking the whole book was an allegory, the scenes a mixture of those times and these times, and it was so skillfully done. This author has a very light touch. I was thinking slavery and sugarcane, colonial masters and plantations, tribes living close to the earth in Africa and close to the water on the islands. Black life now, black life then. City people and country people. And a drumbeat connecting them all.
A Small Scene
Here’s Avey running into the old man as he’s closing the rum shop to go on The Excursion. She’s just about gotten sunstroke/heatstroke from walking too far down the beach from her hotel without any water:
“And what you is? What’s your nation? He asked her, his manner curious, interested, even friendly all of a sudden.
“Arada? Is you an Arada? He waited.
“Cromanti maybe? And he again waited. “Yaraba then? Moke?
“On and on he recited the list of names, pausing after each one to give her time to answer.
“Temne? Is you a Temne maybe? Banda?
“What was the man going on about? What were these names? Each one made her head ache all the more. She thought she heard in them the faint rattle of the necklace of cowrie shells and amber that Marion [her daughter] always wore. Africa? Did they have something to do with Africa? Senile. The man was senile. The minds of the old…
“She darted a frightened glance toward the door. She might be safer out in the sun.
“Manding? Is you a Manding like my mother, maybe? The Long-Foot People, we calls them.
“Wait! A smile began to work its way through the maze of lines around his mouth. Don’ tell me you’s a Chamba like myself…? He waited, the smile slowly emerging, his arms in the frayed shirt poised to open in a fraternal embrace.
“…I…I don’t know what you’re talking about…I don’t know what you’re asking me…
“I is asking if you’re a Temne, Mono, Arada or what? He had lost patience with her once again…”
WHY I LOVED IT
I love this scene because it’s funny, but it’s also deep. The old man sees that she looks Island, and thinks she is from there (which she is, but only several generations ago). She’s American now. She has the American attitude towards the old–not that they’re wise, as the old man proves to be, but that they’re senile, which makes her afraid of him!
I love the recitation of the tribal names (and the dance that he urges her to go to after the Excursion, which the remaining tribal members doing their special stomping around). I enjoy finding out about groups of people and languages new to me. This book felt natural. It’s not preachy, but it is sometimes melancholy, as any history about a person, no, a people, cut off from their roots has to be. It’s easy to read, and easy to enjoy.
One of the mysteries of the modern world, at least for young Americans, is how families and dynasties manage to pass on their wealth and their cultural knowledge. For me personally, the triggering town was a trip to visit the American South in my late 20s–I was baffled by meeting people who were working the same jobs their grandparents had (canning tomatos, fishing for oysters) and who could run across unexploded Civil War ordinance and feel a connection to it.
I, on the other hand, came from people with restless feet. Beginning in Denmark and Ireland, my people came to the Eastern shores of the New World and moved West with each generation. I don’t speak the same language my great-grandparents spoke, am not of the same religion.
The House of Yang, in this graphic novel, based in Manchuria, has endured for 8 generations and is ongoing. When Belle Yang, born in California and grown up Chinese-American, falls in love with the Rotten Egg, an American boyfriend psycho-stalker who shoots up her lawyer’s office and threatens to kill her, she must retreat to her parents’ house. It offers both protection and confines that she chafes against.
But she gets to know her father and his history better, and comes to terms with her creativity. Her father was born in Manchuria and escapes to Taiwan after the Japanese occupation ends. From there, he makes his way to America, where he feels he belongs, like he never has before.
What I Loved About This Graphic Novel
Gosh, so many things.
When I went through graduate school at Eastern Washington University, there was a Chinese man in my program. He told me that English to him felt very “flat” and one-dimensional. He explained that Chinese characters look like the idea they represent, so the Kanji for a book looks like a book. He said Chinese felt and looked three-dimensional to him, which of course was hard for me to imagine. But that’s why I feel that the graphic novel format, with illustrations that illuminate the characters’ emotions, are more true to the story. It feels like and extra layer. It was cool.
The Chinese man also told me that, in many parts of China, physical or mental handicaps are heavily stigmatized–that many village people considered the disabled to have done something awful to bring calamity on themselves (al la the Puritans) and so the village would shun them, lest it was catching.
In Forget Sorrow, Third Brother has to outrun the Communists as a Magistrate, and he gets frostbite in his toes. Some have to be amputated. He is never the same again. (Interestingly, a village doctor of Chinese medicine tells him that a Western doctor would have amputated his entire foot…) Third Brother is greedy, like a goose. He is selfish. He is a glutton. Nonetheless, the father character loves him. Unfortunately, Third Brother comes to a bad end, earned through his actions but not necessarily deserved. Chairman Mao is to blame.
I loved the complicated family relationships. The history that is explained–which I never learned about in American textbooks. Seniority is huge, but so is the grandparents’s “favorite son.”
Neither the Nationalists or the Communists are portrayed as totally good. Even Pearl Buck’s “red-beard” bandits have a good side–if you see them and fire a rifle shot, if they don’t want to fight you they get off their horses and walk. It was honest, it was raw, it was painful. Spectacularly good writing.
Some Caveats
It was sometimes confusing for me to try to figure out who was who and that was because so many of the characters had numbers instead of names, Chinese-style. I kept confusing Third Uncle with Third Brother, for example.
Just like the declensions of Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia are the thermoclines of family ties and societal ties. As the Communists take over from the Nationalists who take over from the Japanese, the fortunes of the House of Yang decline, decline, decline. But the peasants who have benefitted from their generosity over the decades do not have to reciprocate now that the tables are turned and the Patriarch has been labeled a “Capitalist”.
One of Belle Yang’s great-uncles is a Taoist, one is a staunch Buddisht. How will their philosophies affect their actions in time of crisis?
Who is selfish, and who is generous? And what does family really mean?
The Final Countdown
Seriously, I stayed up late reading through to the last page.
Somewhere in the telling of her father’s story, Belle Yang becomes strong. And that was absolutely satisfying, no matte how sad the tale of Forget Sorrow may have been. The phrase that she was named for, the phrase that she tried to write out of her father’s story. No more sorrow–just a happy life in America with the rest of us–modern people–looking forward to the new age.
Rating: Oh boy, did I love this graphic novel. Could not put it down. Five watermelons being sold by vendor Second Uncle with his knobbly knees and his philosophy of non-attachment!
FURTHER READING
From blog reader Marc Anthony, who lives in Taiwan:
“There are many Taiwanese works I admire, but if I had to choose the ones that really capture Taiwan’s people and cultures, I’d first strongly recommend Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes, which captures the essence of Taiwan’s deeply felt relationship between its people and nature. Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island reveals the silent pain Taiwanese still suffer from as a result of the fascist military dictatorship. And Wintry Night by Li Qiao traces three generations of. Hakka family starting from the Japanese occupation to the end of WWII. This book beautifully illustrates the sheer tenacity and indomitability of Taiwanese.”
courtesy of a special order from Auntie’s Bookstore
I can’t say enough good things about this novel. But just like the hairdressers at the fictional Khumalo Hair and Beauty Treatment Salon in the former Rhodesia, I’ll try my best. The novel opens with an ordinary day in the life of Vimbai, the best hairdresser in the salon. She has no idea her life is about to split wide open:
“I knew there was something not quite right about Dumi the very first time I ever laid eyes on him. The problem was, I just couldn’t tell what it was. Thank God for that…”
The Plot Thickens
At first, Vimbai is threatened by the new stylist, Dumisani, with his Hollywood hair that makes black women feel white. When the customers that always ask for her start asking for him instead. So when Mrs. Khumalo gives them ALL a raise thanks to Dumi’s negotiations, Vimbai is torn. But it isn’t too long before she also falls under the superhero’s spell. She does not want to like him, but she can’t help herself.
Like Alexander McCall Smith, Tendai Huchu is skilled at telling a small, close-up story that gives you over-the-shoulder glimpses of the bigger picture in an African country struggling to find its way after Independence. In this novel, tensions are high. The government is corrupt. The people struggle to earn money, the black market flourishes, inflation makes money worthless, and racial hatred is strong. Trying to get transportation anywhere is a nightmare.
Mrs. Khumalo’s salon in Harare is high prestige, which means some of their clients are government ministers. One is a woman. A black woman minister, I thought–yay! No, not yay. She’s a bigot who throws a fit when a white woman called Tina comes to the salon to get her hair colored. Tina’s ancestors were Dutch colonizers, but she was born in Zimbabwe and the country is now her home. The minister, however, has taken Tina’s land under the new laws–Tina inherited a farm, and the government took it. The minister owns it personally, though she already had 8 other farms. So Tina’s had to become a scrounger, a seller of beauty supplies and black market sugar and other items.
Vendors on Robert Mugave Street
To everyone’s surprise in the salon, Dumi stands up for Tina, insisting on her right to have her hair done at the salon, just as any other customer. Mrs Khumalo is not so brave. She says if he ever pulls a stunt like that again, she’ll fire him. And the minister summons a bunch of war veterans (thugs) to beat Tina if she doesn’t leave. But Dumi won’t be intimidated, although he does have to get Tina out of there for her own safety.
Vimbai is now starting to fall in love with Dumi, who has moved in with her. Unlike Vimbai’s parents, he doesn’t care that she’s had a daughter out of wedlock. He isn’t like the average man in the street who whistles and catcalls her as she walks by. He’s interested in her opinions and talks to her like a person. He is kind to Vimbai’s daughter Chiwoniso and generous with his things (he’s got a lot of money).
The novel’s surprises, which we learn about toward the end of the book, highlight some serious problems in Zimbabwean society: poverty, cronyism, classism, rape, child sexual abuse, racism, right-wing government extremism, and a legacy of lateral oppression left over from colonialism.
As in any good novel, this protagonist changes over the course of the book, growing emotionally and politically as she becomes closer to Dumi, and I loved it.
The Hairdresser of Harare is a good-hearted, feel-good novel about regular people with some serious problems, tragedy and heartbreak but, as we all hope it will do, it works out well in the end.
A note about the author: He’s a man! Who knew? I certainly didn’t. Readers tend to assume that the author has the same gender as the narrator, and since the narrator of this book is a female…I thought the author was. And of course, in an unfamiliar language you don’t know which names are male and which are female. If his name had been Bob or John or even Lazlo or Zoltan I would have known they were male names. Interesting.
SPOILER ALERT: RU LBGTQ?
No, but so what. I have LOTS of gay friends. This book was very disturbing for that reason. Read some chilling stats on the state of LGBT people in Africa.
by Ishmael Beah
When Ishmael Beah was 12 years old, he left home with his brother Junior and some friends to go to a talent show in another town. They were amateur rappers and kept cassettes of Run DMC and other popular American groups in their pockets. They had no way of knowing that this talent show and those tapes were about to save their lives.
Eventually UNICEF got ahold of him and freed him from the army. He was deprogrammed and detoxified, a painful and lengthy process. Of course, he was still traumatized. I don’t know if I could get over something like that. But Ishmael was lucky. He had a living half-uncle who cared, and who took him in as a member of his family. This uncle was a kind man, who treated Ishmael as his own son.
But then the war came to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and his uncle got very sick…all the hospitals were closed and it became impossible to get medicine or even food. After his uncle died, Ishmael realized he had to get out of Sierra Leone. It wasn’t just the famine and the civil war. If he were recaptured by government soldiers and he refused to rejoin them, he would be killed. If the rebels got ahold of him and discovered he’d been a government soldier, he would be killed. I think he was 16 years old at this point.
Why. WHY would adults, the descendants of slaves from all over Africa, make slaves of children? It is cruel and barbaric and evil and it makes no sense. But it happened, and is no doubt happening today. I hate this. I know you hate it too.
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