Escape to the Simplest Words

I live in the North Tower of one of the largest hotels. There is also the South Tower and the hotel is known, among other things, for the arrest of one of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards if my memory doesn't play me false, and I think he was arrested for using drugs. Legend has it that he got off scot-free thanks to the intercession of Mme. Trudeau, the then Canadian Premier's wife, who was one of his fans.

I have mentioned the opposite shore. I can't see it, but they say that in especially clear weather the shoreline becomes vaguely discernible. It is Buffalo, New York, otherwise known as the American Dream. All right, about that later. I have to get there first.

It is my first visit to this continent in the heart of the New World which some back home regard with veneration verging on blind and silly affection ("You will see how one can really live and enjoy himself there!") and others with a touch of irony ("It's all a sham, nothing human, just prosperity and hockey, it makes me sick!"). Perhaps the best way to make the first visit is by sea, following the trail blazed by the world's most reputed rascals and adventurous ОmigrОs, reliving old family stories about Transatlantic crossings made by people desperate to find jobs and a bit of luck, carrying with them small bags with Ukrainian soil, traveling fourth class, sailing past the Titanic's tomb deep below. If I had a choice, I would have traveled by sea, boarding in Genoa, for example, and spending a long time amidst the dreadful oceanic desert, slowly passing time zones, finally disembarking and setting foot on this land of happy locals.

Alas, I had no time for this luxury, I had to arrive in time for great accomplishments, because some bumpkins in this "provincial" Toronto (muddy York, as the locals say) were staging one of the world's largest and most prestigious literary festivals. At one time or another it saw celebrities like Erich Jandl, Umberto Eco, Alberto Moravia, Mario Vargas Llosa, Saul Bellow, Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Ihor Kalynets - names I can think of at the moment. Others are fished out of information channels: Oksana Zabuzhko, Leonard Cohen, Tomasz Wenclowa, Kenzaburo Oe... Toronto is fond of literary stars and welcomes all of them for public readings.

Emigres seem to be held in special esteem. Perhaps because the whole country is like that, made up of them. A writer making up his mind to emigrate and perhaps disown his mother tongue, change himself otherwise, start from scratch (on a blank page, as we say), with the simplest of words and judgments ("I have three novels. I have also written many nice poems. I think that my literature is very good," spoken in stilted heavily accented Ukrainian). A dramatic change in life, sometimes turning into low comedy, but most often real tragedy.

This year's festival readings are held with always an empty seat on the podium displaying a photo of the prominent Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer. His books cannot be published at home, banned by the authorities, and his Buddhist clean-shaven head can part with his body any day. Thousands of signatures have been collected, demanding his release from prison, but the Indonesian government remains silent. This empty seat symbolizes all the other literati denied the freedoms of expression and movement. There appears so many of them and we seem to have forgotten our recent past.

Latter-day literature has an amazing geography, a Great Atlantic Migration in the literary domain as men of letters mostly immigrate to North America from Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka or Haiti. For example, the Chilean, Ariel Dorfman, one of the prominent Latin American prose writers who fled the Pinochet regime. His is a story of Spanish turning into English. There are many such examples. Also, he remembers that his grandparents used to live in Odesa.

In contrast, the Canadian Scott Simon decided to immigrate to Morocco where he owns an farm and has lived there for 20 years. Canada became too narrow a place for his aesthetic and homosexual escapades. Canada underestimated him. Living in Canada was hard.

"Aren't you planning to emigrate?" I was asked by the London-born Algerian wife of the Somalian author Nuruddin Fara (currently residing in the US).

I thought it over for a while and said: "Would this make any sense? We have freedom of speech, for the first time in our history. The state shows no interest in us, thank God. One can write a great deal. I am not against traveling, but I like to return home."

"Oh, you're a patriot, aren't you?"

I thought there was a touch of irony to her voice. Or was it sympathy?

Sympathy. I hate the word, so I just silently stare out at the lake and farther to the horizon below which stands the mysterious America.