Letter to a friend

 

Dear Friend, 
Do you remember? One brilliant summer day back in 1968  in Chicago, USA I was visiting some English friends, and with tea and cakes being served you casually asked "Jerry when are you going back home" Ouf... it was like a knock-out blow. Home… I had only just emigrated to the USA, so did you perhaps mean Poland - the thought raced through my mind. Home… where is home? I was 29 at the time and I had never asked myself that question – never gave it any thought; there was no need; I knew where my home was. I was an Essex boy from Kelvedon! That's where I grew up; went to primary school, to secondary school in Witham... That's where we made fun of teachers, had daily fights with big boys, skived from school, played in haystacks; roamed the countryside, picked peas and strawberies on farms; so hated Guy Fawkes that we burned his effigy in massive bonfires every year; chased pigs, beheaded and plucked chickens; pulled apart unexploded shells... that was HOME! Or did you really mean… Poland?

And then at another get-together a few years later, you again asked casually "Jerry when are you going home". By now, I was a little more sophisticated: university degree, profession, job, brand new car... By then I had moved upmarket, "up-class" I had savoured the USA - nearly six years of fascinating, exciting and challenging life - yet I returned to the UK. Three years in Paris: the best years in my life - yet I returned Home!  

And on yet another occasioin a few years later you asked me the same question for the third time! By then I knew Poland very well; I had been there many times; had my own consultancy business there... Yet my Home was still in the UK; in Richmond-upon-Thames, in London! You knew... but did you really mean… Poland? And this time I suddenly felt like Peter the Apostle who thrice denied Christ. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am denying what is obvious to you, obvious to the world: I am denying my roots! Perhaps I do belong to Poland; am Polish? Was I, at that moment, standing on the brink of a great discovery, or was it to be the edge of a precipice? Have I quite unconsciously been carrying a chip on my shoulder for so many years? I had to find out.

So thank you my friend. You have launched me on a quest for identity by following the footprints in the land of our fathers.

X. Postawski

FOOTPRINTS

in the Land of Our Fathers

Ask a man deported to Siberia - you will get one answer;

ask a Party member - you will get another;

ask a man executed for his views - you will get…silence,

the safest option practiced in the land of our fathers.

History is how we see it; as it is embedded in our memories, in our heart and mind; as we have lived it. And in the land of our fathers history shows that mankind is capable of the utmost brutality - inhumanity of man to man. And perpetually we look to hang our sins on… not us.

What would you do if for centuries you had been in bondage, discriminated against by birth, race, religion, tradition… denied even the basic human dignity?

How would a mother react if she saw her baby’s head smashed against a wall?

What would a father do if he saw his daughter raped, her breasts cut off and knifed? How would a son react if he saw his father axed to death, his genitals cut off and showed into his mouth? What would you, what would I do if we saw people herded into a church, doors bolted and all set on fire?

Would you, on the verge of starvation to death in a Soviet lagier, snatch an inmate’s feeding bowl, or share your last crumbs with him? And yet…

Who would volunteer to replace a lamenting father being led to his death by the Nazis? And yet…

Would a Cristian drown in a river to save a Jewish child? And yet…

And yet, in the same land of our fathers, take a moment, look… and there is peace, beauty and wonderment around us. Look into the eyes of a child; see that spark of innocent life, that intoxication with the beauty of the world around? Who dares destroy this vision, this dream, this life…?

Mankind… that is me, my closest friend, you… in the land of our fathers.

Copyright Jaroslaw Kubica © 2009

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