Via Prague

Conversations

A Story by James Tressler

Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source,
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from.
It is most us.'

Robert Frost, “West Running Brook”

“For better or worse, it is in conversation with others that we listen most to ourselves.”

-- Anonymous

Sugit left for the migrant camp in Ostrava this morning. When he left it was very early and even though I was really awake I pretended to be asleep as he dressed and packed his overnight bag. Sugit is not happy about going. Islam has already been at the camp for three weeks, still waiting to be issued a visa. Sugit came to the flat after Islam received orders to report, and now Sugit too had to go.

His brother, Nikash, is at the flat now. This morning when I finally got up, after Sugit had gone, he was in the bedroom checking the news from Bangladesh on Sugit’s laptop (Sugit left his laptop and mobile phone because they aren’t allowed at the camp).

“Ah, today you fight!” Nikash said cheerfully.

“Fight” is a term we use for work. I think it was Islam who started it. “Every day we must fight,” Islam would say. “Without fight everything is finished.”

Usually Islam said this in the afternoons, when he headed up the street to the bar where he worked as a cook. The phrase certainly applied to Islam. He never had a day off and usually worked until midnight, though it’s true his work in the kitchen wasn’t too demanding. Most of the customers at Konspirace were young people from the neighborhood who went to the bar to drink beer and smoke joints of marijuana mixed with tobacco.

It’s too bad really because Islam is a good cook. It’s not his profession (in Bangladesh he had a mobile phone business, and has traveled to China, Russia and Singapore; the business, he told me, went under because of taxes), but he is capable of making very good simple curry dishes, chicken or beef or fish over rice. At the flat he always invited me to share whatever he cooked.

I’m not much of a cook myself, but when I tried offering my own dishes, usually canned goulash or take-away Mexican from a restaurant on Krymska, Islam always politely refused. Sugit and Nikash usually refuse as well. “We prefer to eating food from our own country,” they said.

Nikash just returned the other day from the migrant camp, where he was issued a 30-day visa. I’ve never actually seen the camp myself. It’s a few hours’ train ride east of Prague , near the Polish border. The detainees are of varied stock, Russian, Ukraine , Mongolian, Vietnamese, Southeast Asian. There is one pay phone at the camp, so you call there and whoever answers takes the name you request and goes and finds the person. Usually we called Islam from Sugit’s laptop and took turns talking to him. Once I asked Islam about the camp and he said it wasn’t too bad. They had volleyball and other sports, and there was plenty of space and not overcrowded. But still, you’re not allowed to leave and, except for the pay phone, no contact with the outside world. The think Islam hated really was the food. He doesn’t really care for Czech food.

“Ah, James, life is very difficult,” Islam said. “Every day we must fight. Fight for oil, fight for food, fight for visa. Home is best.”

I first met Islam at Konspirace, a pub in Prague ’s Vrsovice neighborhood. It’s interesting to look back at the circumstances in which we met, interesting because so much of what I like about Prague , as well as the many problems I had there, began in pubs, Konspirace in particular. So you could say meeting Islam there, especially since he doesn’t drink, was if not ironic at least a happy accident, like two people caught in a fast-moving stream. You might not share the same destination, but for a little while, before the current shifts, you help carry each other along.

I had been sharing a flat with a Czech woman who worked for an Irish real estate company in Prague . One day, after I’d been living there nearly a year, I came home and found all of our possessions sitting out in the hallway. The locks of the flat had been changed. The woman it turned out had not paid any of the rent. The money I had given her had evidently gone to pay her other debts. To her credit, the woman gave me back my deposit and tried to help find me a place to stay temporarily.

That night I went to Konspirace to have a few beers and forget about everything for the evening, and when Islam heard about my situation, offered to let me stay with him. He arranged to have a bed put in the kitchen. The rent was 10,000 crowns per month, which we split fifty-fifty.

“It is good,” Islam said. “I helping you, and you helping me.”

Most Americans you meet in Prague are English teachers. Thanks to globalization and the collapse of Communism in Central Europe , a real and constant demand for teachers has held steady for the past two decades. So you’ll find old-timers, who washed up on Prague ’s shores in the early Nineties, just after the revolution, and those who came in later waves. Only a small core stay; the majority are young people fresh from university who are looking for a gap year of travel before applying to grad schools at Columbia or UCLA or the London School of Economics, wherever. The ones who stay tend to be types like me – drifters, restless thirty-somethings who are usually running away from something back home (debt, a broken relationship, mid-life crises) or else desperately in pursuit of the great European expat experience – to the envy of married, job-bound colleagues and friends back in the States.

Take me, for instance. I was a journalist at a small daily in Northern California before applying to a school in Prague that trained teachers.

Islam couldn’t understand why I came to Prague .

“You are from America ,” he would say. “There you can work. There you can make money. If I am you I would America . Home is best.”

Of course he knew about the recession, the crisis. We often spoke about it in the evenings at Konspirace, when he came out and sat at my table, especially after Lehman Brothers and later GM filed for bankruptcy. But still, in Islam’s eyes, one left one’s home if it was a country like Bangladesh , very poor and saddled with a corrupt, inefficient government. To him, America represented an ideal destination, a place you went to not away from.

But he liked Prague .

“Here you can turn on cooker and everytime working,” he said. “Electric, fine. In my country, maybe working one day, maybe not. Very difficult life.”

Islam’s goal was to live in Prague a year or two, a few years, start a business, a restaurant, hostel, make money and eventually return to Bangladesh . He has a wife and daughter there, and he sends them money. Recently his wife filed for divorce. Islam had a Czech girlfriend who he was hoping to marry because he hoped it would expedite getting permanent residence, which would allow him to get a business license. But in the end his girlfriend wouldn’t do it. She said she had been married before to an Italian man who left her and ran up a lot of debt on her credit cards, debt Islam has helped her repay. She also had bad kidneys and spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals. Islam helped pay those bills too. So he was really angry and disappointed when the marriage plans fell through. But he could see the girl’s side of it, too.

“Ah, life is life,” he said. “Every day must be fighting. Without fighting all is finished.”

But then Islam had a falling out with the owner at Konspirace. The owner, who was usually content to smoke joints behind the bar, seldom paid Islam in full. Instead each day he gave Islam a portion, whatever he could manage. Islam, easy-going as always, had kept track of what was owed. In time, pressured in part by his other problems, he presented the manager with a bill for 16,000 crowns in unpaid wages. The manager put him off and put him off, and finally, in frustration, Islam quit. He went back a few times after that but was never able to collect any of it.

And then, not long after that, he got orders to report to the migrant camp.

Sugit returned from the camp late that same day. I was asleep when he came in and didn’t actually know he was there until the next morning. Sugit and Nikash, the two brothers, shared Islam’s bed, while I kept the bed in the kitchen. A thin curtain covered the door to the bedroom.

The brothers are very similar in height and build, short and compact. Also they are very close. “Nikash is for me like my right arm,” Sugit once told me.

But their personalities are different. Sugit, the older brother, has a reserved, serious demeanor (unless he’s had a few beers) while the younger brother, Nikash, has a bright smile and playful eyes and likes to laugh a lot. They’re both Buddhists, though they are not strict practicioners. Nikash studied Buddhism at a university in Sri Lanka and later became a professional hair dresser. Occasionally he consented to cut my hair. In Prague he was working at a hotel until he began having problems with his visa. Sugit worked for a Korean potraviny near Namesti Miru.

Sugit worked everyday, although every now and then he had Monday off. On his free day he usually met with his girlfriend, went out for a meal at an Indian restaurant, and then got drunk at the flat. Nikash also had a girlfriend. She was from Thailand and was really shy and sweet. They communicated in English and he called her “Honey” and she called him “Honey.”

That morning the brothers were in a good mood.

“James!” Nikash called from the bedroom. “Today you fight?”

I had a couple of lessons in the afternoon.

“Everyday must be fight!”

I asked Sugit about the camp.

“Very bad,” Nikash said, answering for him. “Communists here come back to power. They don’t want foreign people. They want us go out.”

This was Nikash’s theory. Recently in the news the Czech government had suspended issuing visas to Vietnamese applicants, and there were also reports of expulsions of illegal workers in some of the factories. A lot of that had to do with the economic crisis, perhaps, and to stem the tide of foreign workers; but also since joining the EU a few years back, and then the Schengen area, the Czechs were looking to crack down on illegal immigrants. Nikash’s reference to Communists came from the recent appointment of the new prime minister, a former Communist.

That morning I got up and showered and dressed for work. Sugit and Nikash were heating up rice left over from the night before. They invited me to eat but I was on my way out.

“Every day fight!” Sugit said. “Without fight there is no food. No beer. Nothing.”

The other place I went in the evenings on Donska Street was the Rozjeta Zaba, or “Squashed Frog.” It’s a dark cellar-type pub with four rooms, table football, and a computer at the bar where we usually opened YouTube and selected music videos. There was also a juke box and sometimes the owner, Jirka, told us to use that, especially when once in a while a man from the juke box company dropped by. On Sunday nights there were movies, and on other nights we watched hockey and football matches, and occasionally there were table football tournaments, which were very popular.

That night after finishing teaching I dropped by. Jirka wasn’t working. Instead it was Adela, a plump, sweet-natured girl from the neighborhood. My friend Kuba and his girlfriend Lenka were sitting at the bar playing hip hop and reggae videos on YouTube. Sandra and her brother Zdenyela were seated at the big booth with some people I didn’t know. A giant black dog sniffed the floor at their feet.

“Hi man,” Kuba said as we shook hands. He worked at a computer and television shop near Strasnice, and Lenka worked in a small shop up the hill near the park in Vinohrady. We liked to meet and listen to music and drink beer after work. Often Kuba bought shots of rum or slivovitz and passed them around. He was really easygoing, and had learned English through movies and listening to hip hop. Adela brought over a pint of Svigany, a good draft beer, and then other people came in; Ondrej, who worked at a car parts company; Honza and his long-time girlfriend Abra. They’d broken up and she was engaged to another guy, but they were still good friends. Then Alex came, and a young girl with long dark dreads. Her name was Bara.

“So what about your visa?” Ondrej asked, taking off his jacket and hanging it on a hook near the bar.

“Still waiting,” I said. I’d recently been to Dresden to reapply. My visa woes were common knowledge in the neighborhood. A year or so before, on a night partying near Karlin, I’d got too drunk and kicked a passing car. The guy’s girlfriend called the police on her mobile, and I was taken to the local jail for the night. After having paid a stiff fine, my visa renewal application had also been rejected. Since then, I’d launched an appeal with help from one of my students who was a lawyer for the government, and had also on a parallel level started at the beginning and applied for a new visa. That’s why I’d gone to Dresden .

“Do you think there is any chance?” Ondrej asked.

“Uvidime.” In Czech that means we’ll see.

“Yes, I hope so. If not, you will go back in America ?”

“Probably. We’ll see.”

Honza came up to the bar to get beers. He said hello and went to the computer and requested one of his favorites, “Black Betty.” Lenka put it in the YouTube pipeline. There were two or three other requests ahead. The weather had been good the past few days, and everyone looked sun-flushed and healthy. Summertime in Prague means that a lot of people go to festivals outside the city, or else camping in the countryside or time at their weekend cottages.

“I have been at my country house,” Ondrej said. He was not drinking beer that night. Instead he ordered a lemonade and rolled a joint.

Kuba and Lenka went over to the table football for a game. Ondrej and Zdenyla joined them, so I sat at the bar and drank beer and listened to music. “Last Song,” by the Swedish hip hop band Loop Troop, was playing. It was a Zaba favorite, and Kuba and Lenka, myself and some others sang along. “If I die tomorrow yeah, yeah, yeah/Feel no kind of sorrow, no, no, no, no, no/Smile at my memories, yeah, yeah, yeah/And pray for my enemies!”

The bar was pretty crowded. A party was going on in the back room, and Adela was busy serving beers and plates of pickled cheese and bread and hot wings. I got up to watch the table football. Kuba took his play very seriously and kept his eyes intent on the action.

The bar felt warm and friendly, like in the villages outside Prague . Adela brought me a fresh pint and I drank the beer and watched the game awhile and then went back to the bar.

Presently there was a tap on my shoulder:

“I thought you might be here.”

It was Liam, an Englishman about my age who also taught English in Prague . He grinned.

“Back on the piss,” he said. “Managed to stay off it six months this time ‘round.”

“Yeah, long time!” I was glad to see him. “How you been?”

“Good.” His eyes roamed the bar. “Been exercising, working. But now the spring is here and I get the urge. I’d like to have a holiday.”

“You’ve been saying that for two years.”

“I know but I mean to this time. Been studying to get my driver’s license. If I can I’d like to rent a car and maybe drive down to the coast. Italy maybe, or get over to Greece . We’ll see. So what’s new with you? Didn’t get over to Turkey , I see.”

“That fell through. The crisis.”

“Ah ha. Right. You were probably just sitting in the pub and couldn’t be bothered, I’ll bet. Did you ever get your visa sorted?”

“Still waiting.”

“Uh hm.” He signaled to Adela and when she came over Liam ordered a pint. “So have you given any thought to going back to America then?”

“Sometimes. I may have to go back if I can’t get the visa.”

“So they denied you then. Something about kicking a car, wasn’t it?”

“You remember.”

Liam was half listening. His eyes worked around the room.

“Know if anyone’s got any weed here?”

“Not here. There’s a place down the street though.”

“Konspirace didn’t have any. You say there’s another place? Well, if I gave you some money would you go down there and get me a gram. I mean, they know you, right?”

He gave me 250 crowns and I shuffled down the street to the other bar. It was a tiny, very smoky place and I generally didn’t like going there. The owner was my neighbor, but he wasn’t there. A young girl was working and she just took the money and handed me a small bag without saying anything.

Back at Zaba I saw that Vick and Vratya had arrived. The big booth had just been cleared and we sat down there, along with Liam.

“Did you hear?” Vick asked. He was born in the Czech Republic but his parents emigrated to Canada when he was a child. But eight years ago he returned to Prague and was working in the mail room at Exxon’s office at Flora. Vratya used to work in the mail room too but when his contract expired it had not been renewed.

“The doctor called today,” Vick said.

“And?”

“The test was positive. Just barely over the limit.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah. He said I probably had a smoke three weeks ago.”

“I told you it stays in your system thirty days. So what happens?”

“Tomorrow I’m going to talk to my new supervisor. Be honest and just tell them, ‘Hey, OK, sometimes I smoke a little,’ but I really need this job, I want to be with the company long term …”

“It is an insanity!” Vratya broke in. “This is for me biggest problem in Czech Republic . Our laws here have any insanity! I want to leave for other country.”

“It would happen in other countries too,” I said. “Like with me and the visa.”

Vick was rolling a joint and thinking.

“Can you keep your job in the podatelna?”

“No. Contract’s already expired. I don’t know … maybe they could give me some kind of probation, with testing every few months.”

Liam, who had been listening while rolling his own joint, broke in with a chuckle.

“Right and here you are skinning up and smoking spliffs!”

“I know, right?”

Vratya, or Danny, as we call him, laughed too. He had a face that vaguely resembled the young Ringo Starr.

“Ah Vick,” he said. “The answer is perfect for you!” He was quoting his favorite Bad Religion song.

The joint, or rather, joints, went around and even up to the bar. Ondrej had rolled another one too and was looking to pass it. Vick took it and hit it. The bar was very smoky and crowded. Adela got up on the counter and opened a window. It was early evening outside and though nearing nine o’clock, it was just starting to get dark.

Vick looked at his watch when the joints were dusted.

“I’m out of here,” he said. Vratya rose with him, so I got up too.

“Oh, we’re all leaving together then?” Liam asked. He went to pay at the bar and I followed him.

Outside the guys were already heading up to the tram stop. My flat was down the hill near Grabovka Park . I waved the guys good night and headed home.

Sugit and Nikash were cooking together. Sugit had just got home, and Nikash had cooked a chicken. The flat smelled warmly of curry and boiling rice. They invited me to eat with them, but I was sleepy. They made an effort to be quiet as they finished preparing the meal while I undressed, got into bed and closed my eyes. I wasn’t really drunk, just full of beer and feeling heavy-eyed. The brothers took their food into the bedroom and shut off the light in the kitchen, then drew the curtain over the door. In the dark I tried to sleep but couldn’t stop thinking. It was a nice evening at Zaba. You behaved reasonably and didn’t cause any trouble. Not like that time after the Obama victory when you got sowsed and screamed at people, calling Kuba the Son of Stalin. He eventually forgave you for that, but it took a while. It was too bad about the visa. That damned visa. But you should have known you couldn’t just keep getting away with behaving the way you did. You had so many chances, so many warnings. Like the time on the metro when you got in a fight with that big Czech guy and he ended up smashing your face in. Everyone on the metro was looking at you while the blood poured from your swollen lip down to your shirt. Or the time with L—when you told her to go back to Slovakia and shoved her onto the platform at Museum. That next morning, when you met, penitent and went for a walk along the Vltava and L cried and said some people had helped her onto the train and asked if they should call the police. Or even at Konspirace, where you thought you could hide from it, it had followed you and eventually caught you there too, when you shoved that guy at the bar and he caught you and gave you a black eye that lasted for more than a week. You’re lucky Islam was there that night. He came out of the kitchen and told you to go home. And in the morning he lent you his dark glasses. You wore them the next day on a trip with your students to Terezin to see the concentration camp.

… And so you sought out the Zaba, but even there it had found you, the sickness that turned into rage and violence. You’d never been that way in America . Well, it just before you left it was starting. Looking back, you can see that now. You felt like you needed to shove people, to make way, to turn on things and people. And that was all well and good until people started to turn on you and start shoving back. Well, can’t say you blame them.

…That night in Karlin, when you kicked that car you were kicking at something else. That’s the way it always was. Nobody could understand it. The owner of the car sure didn’t. At the police station when they put you in the cell, the owner came back and was like, “Just give me 10,000 crowns!” He had regretted getting the police involved at least. Except you didn’t have 10,000 crowns, and you were too drunk and gone to have any sense of what was happening. You should have known better, should have known that sooner or later it would come back and haunt you, when you went to renew your visa.

But then, think of Islam, sitting in that camp. Do you think he has it easy? He’s never done anything wrong and they won’t give him a long-term visa. And Nikash and Sugit. Nikash just got back from the camp and now he has to report back again next week. “Life is Fight.” Well, it is and they’re fighting to stay. Maybe they have a chance. Your case may be final, but that doesn’t mean theirs is. “Ah, life is life,” Islam would say. “Every day must be fight. If I am you, I would in America . Home is best.”

In the next room I could hear the brothers talking in Bangladeshe on one of the free Internet calling services. They were calling the migrant camp. I heard them ask for Islam, explaining in Czech and English. They had to make the request many times. Finally Islam came on the line. I got up and went into the bedroom.

“James is here,” Sugit said, and handed the headset to me.

“Islam!” I said, feeling the need to speak loudly.

“James!” he sounded far away. “How’s going your life?”

We talked for a minute or two. There was nothing new to report. Islam was hoping to be back in Prague soon.

“I coming, I don’t know, one week, maybe two weeks. Waiting for court. Maybe they give visa, and then I coming. And you? Fighting is good?”

“It’s OK. Must fight.”

“Difficult life, James,” Islam laughed, his voice still faint.

“OK. Here is Sugit now.”

“Sugit? OK, James. Take care!”

“See you.”

The next morning went quickly. I had an early morning class at a government office near the Dancing House, then afterward had lunch at the Globe. Aiden Greenworth, an Englishman from Hull City and long-time Prague denizen, was there with a plastic bag of white poker player hats. The visors were tinted a garish red. As always, Aiden had bags under his eyes, and a look as though he’d slept in his clothes.

“Guy’s giving me 50 crowns for every one,” Aiden said, joining me at the table. “Sold seven yesterday.”

“Where?”

“Karlovo Lazne. But you know, I think the guy just gets them at a Chinese or Vietnamese market. I’m a little worried they’ll give me trouble. That’s just it, you know. I could’ve done it myself, but instead someone else did and is paying me 50 crowns a visor. The Chinese, speaking of which –“ he laughed. “I used to say this about the Americans. I have an idea and then sit on it and, and – well, now it’s the Chinese.”

“I saw Grub yesterday with his dad over visiting. Told his dad he should help Grub buy a new passport. His dad was like, ‘I’m afraid he’ll just blow it on booze and dope. Grub has chosen to live the life he leads, even if others don’t approve,’ you know …”

“Yeah, that’s where I understand where Grub’s coming from,” Aiden said, rubbing his eyes. “I mean, when I finally got my passport I said, ‘OK, I got a passport! Great! And? And?” He looked at me. “And? I’ve got no food!”

“A rohlik costs one crown apiece,” I offered.

Aiden looked toward the entrance. There’s a book shop in the front part of the café.

“True,” he said, still watching to see who was coming in. It was somebody he recognized from the Prague Film College , where Aiden has acted in numerous student films. Aiden waved at the guy and said something, then turned back to me.

“Did Grub ever tell you about this Israeli bloke we met? Dressed in a real nice suit. I mean, one of his shoes could buy Eben a new passport.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Oh, just a place near Chapeau. But listen, man! He’s dressed like that and he’s ordering Grub and I around! ‘Get me a cigarette.’ ‘Give me another.’ ‘Give me a roll.’ Yeah right! Me? I had 37 crowns! Grub had nothing, and I bought 10 rohliky and some ham and we had this little meal. This Israeli guy kept saying, ‘I’ll buy you a beer.’ And he never did! Finally I said, ‘Man. Forget the beer, just give me some money. And he said he doesn’t have any! I said, ‘Grub, you know, man. Let’s get out of here.”

“So where are you sleeping?” I asked. I had only paid half attention to Aiden’s story. If you knew him long enough, the stories were all like that, diatribes, agitated rants, all delivered in his deep, cigarette-rusty Hull City accent, which in certain moods he traded for an exaggerated Cockney.

At my question, Aiden looked at me knowingly.

“Where do you think, man? The same place.”

“Where’s that?”

“ Prague .” He made a vague sweeping gesture. “The whole place. At least there’s nice weather.”

I had ordered a cheeseburger and home potatoes for lunch. When it came, I felt like a pig, so I cut the cheeseburger in half and offered a half to Aiden.

“Really, man? Yeah, I am hungry. Thanks, man.”

Later Aiden paid for his coffee and left, with the bag of cheesy poker hats, which he was going to try and sell over near the Charles Bridge . He returned a few minutes later because he’d forgotten his mobile phone, which the manager had let him recharge at the bar.

I went up to pay. The manager was an American guy, relaxed, late twenties.

“I’ve known Aiden a few years,” the manager said, in answer to a question I had as we watched Aiden leave again.

“He’s crazy sometimes,” I said.

“Yeah, but I like him though. I mean, he’s resilient, funny. Even if he is a bit crazy.”

In the evening I called up Vick to ask how work was going. He invited me to his flat, which just up the street from mine. We watched a Coen Brothers movie, ‘Burn After Reading.’

‘The offer for the promotion has been withdrawn,” Vick said. They sent him an email that day. A manager he’d hoped to talk to, to sort of throw himself at the mercy at, was out of town.

“So what now?” I asked.

Vick shrugged.

“Oh, look for work.”

We watched the movie and Vick rolled a joint. After the movie I could see he wanted to relax by himself, so I went out for a walk. It was a fine spring evening. After I left Vick’s I wandered over to the vineyard at Grabovka Park . There had been rain the week before and the grass and trees in the park were a rich, jungle green. The tentative vines on the iron stakes already looked well on their way. It was hard to believe that a month or so before the same place had been icy , bleak, desolate. A new stone pathway cut into the gently rolling earth, and a freshly plastered wall had been built. Two wheelbarrows presented a still life of that expired labor. I walked up and looked out and down the slope of the vineyard. You could see all the way to the Corinthian Towers , the glass of the towers shining in the dusk, near Vysehrad. You could see further to the flat office buildings at Pankrac. In the foreground a tram snaked through Nusle and disappeared. People – young people, sat on benches in the park or in the grass in circles, talking animatedly, and even far down the hill the echoes of the voices could be heard. You wanted to gather it all in; the whisper beneath the voices, the svetluska as they hovered and twinkled in the grass, the slope of the hill described by the growing vines, the wheelbarrows at rest, the fine mellow undying air.

I went and sat in the vineyard. The workers had all gone home for the day, and a gate had been left open.

“This is how things should have been,” I thought aloud, sitting with the vines around me. “This is how you should have gone about things from the beginning.” I was a bit stoned, but felt calm and rested. “Instead of hurling yourself everywhich way and at everyone and everything.”

But you can’t take it all in anyway. Selective elimination – isn’t that the secret of life and art? Really, look at the stones there on the new pathway, the stark strangeness of the new wall, it’s almost perverse nakedness. It could use some grafitti to fit in with the neighborhood.

Nikash was at the flat when I got home.

“I talk with Islam. He coming tomorrow.”

The whole place was clean. Even the mess of papers and books I’d left on the kitchen table for weeks had been carefully arranged and placed on my night table.

“Islam ask if flat is clean,” Nikash said. “You know he is like our big brother. We must give respect.” Having felt refreshed by the walk in the park, on the way home I’d stopped for groceries. I cooked spaghetti, with fresh bread and cheese, and invited Nikash to join, but he’d already eaten.

He looked into the pan.

“Very good,” he said. “From America ?”

“ Italy .”

“Ah, yes. Spaghetti. Italian. I talk with girlfriend today. She say I don’t coming anymore. I have no flat. She say she no come. Today I call to her three times and she don’t call to back. I am very sad. I have a pain in head. I want kill myself! All will be finished everything.”

I grabbed his shirt (I was still stoned and full of my thoughts from the walk)

“Shut up, Nikash. You don’t mean that.”

He smiled his bright smile.

“No, but no one understand. Thank you. Here I lose everything. Lose flat, lose job, lose visa, lose girlfriend. Lose everything. What to do? Life is very difficult!”

“Must fight!”

“Yes, but always must fight. That is my problem. Here I must always fight. At home no need fighting. Only work. Here fight all the time!”

“It will be better,” I said. “Don’t think about your girlfriend.” That was easy to say. “Don’t call her. Wait for her to call.”

Nikash looked at me eagerly. He hadn’t considered this.

“You think? OK.” He nodded. “OK, I no call to her. You are free Sunday? We go to disco?”

“Maybe.”

Islam returned from the migrant camp. The authorities issued a visa for only seven days. He was very disconsolate. “Must leave country,” he said.

Still, it was good to see him. The brothers prepared a whole chicken and a large pan of rice and curry. I picked up some strawberries and a couple bottles of wine. When Islam arrived the brothers joyfully addressed him as “Buriam,” big brother, and embraced him. Islam of course wouldn’t join in on the wine but it pleased him to see us enjoying it. We all had dinner. The camp life had been hard on Islam, not being able to leave, but he looked good. Since he didn’t like the food he hadn’t eaten much, but in his case it wasn’t bad. Normally he had an oversized belly that now looked almost flat, and the sports and daily contact outside had given him a hardier appearance, and his gaze had a more alert, less listless quality than before.

“James, we go to Italy ,” Islam said during dinner.

“ Italy ?”

“My brother he working there. I go maybe.”

“But don’t you need a visa?”

“My brother work there seven years and no have visa.”

He seemed tentative though. Perhaps all he had gone through the past few months, the falling out with his girlfriend, the loss of his job, the collapse of his business plans, the visa problems, had understandably shaken his confidence.

As for myself, I was not at all sure about Italy , not with the crisis setting in everywhere. Across Europe unemployment rose, there were demonstrations in England to protect jobs against illegal or unwanted immigrants. A few months before in Italy there had been massive police raids on immigrants, particularly Romanian and Bulgarian. In the Czech Republic hundreds of Korean workers at a car factory were laid off. The state was even offering a free plane ticket and 500 euros in cash to demonstrably needy immigrants who volunteered to return to their own countries. Some 1,500 had already left, mostly Mongolian workers.

Islam had considered the program, but as a last option. He really wanted to stay in Prague , or somewhere in Europe . Despite all his words about “Home is best,” I don’t think he really wanted to go back there.

I understood. It was the same with me. Having had the visa rejected, I saw my comfortable position in Prague threatened. The thought of heading back to the States, where a lot of people I knew were on unemployment, or else on unpaid furloughs, was not what I had in mind. The irony was that in Prague I had more than enough work. I could have worked even more if I didn’t devote so much time to my evenings in the pubs. On one hand, I could be philosophic, and say, well, almost five years is long enough, change is good, etc. But the truth was I wasn’t ready to leave, which in truth meant having to face the hard facts that had closed in around my life. I had lost direction, was broke, no longer in the best of health, afraid.

“You go to America ?” Islam asked. “You should. At camp they are checking everybody now. Without visa you can go prison six months.”

He had heard that at the camp. I wasn’t sure if it was true (my experience at the foreign police was enough to know that in a large group of immigrants you hear just about everything). But it frightened me. I wanted nothing to do with prison. It would be better to go home. Vaguely, uselessly, I pictured venturing off to Italy with Islam, winging it on the streets of Rome or Milan or Venice (where Islam’s brother lived). In truth I’d had other high-flown, unrealistic notions of fleeing to Paris and passing myself off as a kind of half-assed Hemingway character. But this wasn’t Hemingway or Fitzgerald’s Europe anymore. The EU and the war and Schengen ended all that. Of course that sounds melodramatic and prosy – watery phrase-making. Americans are still welcome in Europe , but there’s just less to go around these days. A European firm finds it easier, or at least less hassle, to hire an EU national. Even so, Americans can still make a life here. Just as long as they don’t kick cars.

The night of the Champions League Final between Manchester United and Barcelona was a cool night in Prague. Liam was watching the match at the Gold Star sport bar near Wenceslas Square . I thought about going up the hill to riegrove sady but knew it would be too crowded. The lines for beer would be too long. So I went to Konspirace.

I’d sent Tomas a text and he said he’d be there, and he was at the bar when I arrived shortly before gametime. It was always good to see Tomas; a young Czech guy who taught English and was working on his master’s degree in teaching, Tomas was universally liked, a soft touch, easy-going.

“So what about your visa?” Tomas asked. “No? So they said no. So what are you going to do?”

“I guess go back to the States. It’s been nearly five years, maybe it’s time.”

“It’s a pity really. Nothing more can be done?”

“No. Did I tell you Islam is back?”

“Really?”

“They gave him a visa. For seven days.”

“What? My God!” Tomas was rolling a joint. He looked up wide-eyed. “So what is he going to do?”

“He’s not sure. Maybe go back to Bangladesh . He’s got a brother working in Italy .”

“Ah, I see. You could go to Italy !”

“You think?”

“Why not?”

“Don’t know if they’re looking for teachers. The recession’s hit there bad too.”

“Oh, I think yes,” Tomas licked his paper and offered me a wink. “You know,” he said, “I think even with the recession …they need English too, but I think sometimes they are a bit proud.”

“Like the French. I thought about going there. So you think I ought to just skip town and head to Italy then?”

“Sure.” Tomas ordered a shot of rum from the bar and lit his joint. “Or,” he considered, “You could just stay here.”

“Illegally?”

“Sure. I don’t think anyone would check.”

“Islam says he heard at the camp it could mean six years in prison.”

“Six months!” Tomas’ face changed, and he was quiet as he smoked. On the TV the players were coming out side by side onto the field, and the national anthems were played.

“How are your exams?” I asked.

“Good. Actually I have just one more exam. We’d like to go to Greece for a holiday.”

“You and Jitka?”

“Of course.”

The match started. Shortly before halftime Danny Boy came in. He said Vick would come for the second half. Everyone was excited. Tomas and I were rooting for United. The bar owner and his girlfriend were rooting for Barca.

It wasn’t much of a game. All the papers had waxed about the contrast in styles, the two titans clashing, etc., but in the end it was a dull match. Ronaldo was neutralized, ineffective, and Barca won going away 2-0. Vick came for the second half and for the most part we smoked and drank beer until the match ended.

I left about 11, promising Tomas we’d meet again before I left. Outside Donska Street was still alive. I walked by the Zaba and could hear the music inside. Other people were sitting outside at tables at the pizzeria, and there was more music pumping from the tiny club next to my flat.

Islam, Sugit and Nikash had just had dinner. As usual they invited me to join but I wasn’t hungry.

“You fight tomorrow?” Islam asked, coming out of the bedroom and sitting at the kitchen table.

“Yes, in the morning.”

“OK. We will be quiet.”

“It’s OK.”

“I’m fighting tomorrow also.” He laughed. “But I am fighting for visa. Ah, James. In the world there is too much fight. Fight for oil, fight for food. Everywhere fight.”

“Life is difficult.”

“Life is life.”

“So you will go to Italy ?”

Islam didn’t answer. He stretched and rubbed his short legs.

“Pain?”

“No, not paining. Only a little. I don’t know about Italy . Maybe I go back to camp, try for new visa.”

“When?”

“Four days. It is difficult. I must talk with owner about flat. My things here – bed, computer, kitchen. Here I buy everything. Oh, what to do, what to do …”

Sugit came out of the bedroom. He’d heard the last part of the conversation.

“What to do! What to do! Must fight!” he said, grinning.

“Sugit is luck,” Islam said. “He has visa. You, me, Nikash, no luck. We be going or must fight.”

In the morning they were up first. Sugit had to work so he went to the shower. Islam and Nikash were on the computer. I tried to sleep a little longer, but then got up and made breakfast. When Sugit came out I went and had a shower. The water was always nice and hot, so I took my time. My early morning class had texted me and canceled. I shaved and dressed, wiped the wet floor dry with a towel, and went out to the kitchen to finish breakfast and have a cigarette.

“Ah, James, you are a fighting man today!” Sugit said with satisfaction. He was dressed for work. “We fight together,” he added.

“That’s right.”

“You are very lucky man. You teach English. Good money. I would like teach but no one want to learn Bangladeshe.”

“Let’s go to Bangladesh ,” I said lightly. “Home is best.”

“Home is best, but at home no money!”

Nikash came into the kitchen. He was still undressed.

“Home is best!” he said. “Home! No need visa, no need nothing! Only work.”

“OK,” I said, grabbing my bag. “I am fighting.”

“Good fight!”

In the hallway a guy was locking his door. He said something to me in Czech.

“Co?” I asked. He switched to English:

“How many people are living there?”

“Three,” I said, stiffening. “Two brothers.”

The guy was young, but had a worn look and ugly teeth.

“I just wondered,” he said. “I saw a Korean or Vietnamese person going in the other day.”

“That was probably Nikash’s girlfriend,’ I said, hating myself for bowing to his questions. I should have just brushed him off.

“It was a man.”

Irritation rising, I hoped to get rid of the guy as we walked up the hill, but it seemed ridiculous to cut him and he walked with me on the way to the tram stop. I relaxed a little; he seemed harmless.

“Are you from England ?” he asked.

“The States.”

“ America ?” He was politely impressed. “And what are you doing in Prague ?”

“Teaching.”

“Teaching? And what are you teaching? English?”

“Of course.”

“No, no! Maybe it could be physics.” He was trying to show his consideration. The tram came then and we got on. I made a point of looking out the window as the tram rolled up the hill toward Namesti Miru. He stayed on when I got off at IP Pavlova metro station and when I got off, he nodded.

It was a good workday. I taught four classes, finishing up at the Prague Energy Company at five thirty. I texted Liam and we met for a drink at Zaba. The news was on the TV. There was a story about the big storm that hit late the night before. Footage showed lightning flashing over Prague castle like in a horror movie. Then a story about demonstrators throwing eggs at Paroubek, the head of the socialist democrats. Paroubek was angry and said the demonstrators were pathetic, that they had no aim. One demonstrator, trying to spare Paroubek, brought up a whole carton of eggs and just sat them on the stage, whereupon Paroubek kicked the carton to the ground.

With Liam I talked about the United-Barcelona match, or tried to. Liam waved me off.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “We lost. They outplayed us. That’s it.”

“It was still a good year.”

“Yeah, it was. Can’t forget that.” He was doing something with his mobile.

“Nothing,” he said. “My brother won’t return my calls.”

“Why?”

“We had an argument last time we talked.”

“When was that?”

Liam shook his head, not answering.

“Is he older or younger?”

“He’s a year older.”

That made me think of my older brother, whom I hadn’t seen in five years. The last time was for our parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, and I’d flown in from California and we all drove out to Ohio , where he was living, and picked him up. Then we surprised our folks with a party, which our sister had secretly organized.

“My brother is just a control type,” Liam said. “He’s got a good job. Environmental clean up, monitoring. He was the smart one. Studied something with a job waiting at the end of it. Me, I studied humanities. I was visiting his home for Christmas, the whole family was there. But they’ve all learned to live with him, let him have his way, tip toe around his mood changes. I’m just not used to it. I sort of did this …you know –“ he made a gesture of throwing his hands up, flustered, uncomprehending. “So I did that and – he took offense! Because I, you know, … questioned him.

“The next morning,” Liam continued, “I made coffee in the kitchen and he burst in, ‘What’s this? You’re using too much coffee!’ Everybody else liked the coffee, but – you know, he just –“

“—yeah.”

“So you were with Tomas then? How is he?”

“Good. Finishing his exams.”

“Is he? And what’s he study?”

“Linguistics, I believe. Or methodologies.”

“Yeah? And what does he intend to do with it?”

“Teach. Anyway, we had a rum together and watched the match.”

“Rum? What kind?”

“Something from the West Indies . It was good.”

“Yeah, it was some of that cheap spiced shit. I’m going to have a rum. Will you have one?”

“Sure.”

Liam went to the bar and came back with two shots.

“There, now that’s Captain Morgan. None of that cheap shit.”

I noticed he was rubbing his chest. He did it again, then stood up and stretched, walked around.

“Just my arthritis,” he said, shaking it off. “It goes away when I exercise, but when I’m doing this a lot, sitting in the pub, it comes back. Now that the season’s over it might be a good time to get off the piss again. Maybe have –“ he caught himself with a wry smile. “And I mean it – finally have a holiday.”

“Right. You keep saying that.”

“I know. But I pick up me driving license on Tuesday. Did I tell you that? I passed the test. That’s what I’d like to do. Rent a car, go somewhere in the countryside. That’s what I need: to get out of Prague for a few days.”

Friday afternoon heavy rains fell on the city. The trees along the river swirled and tiny white breakers churned the swollen, muddy Vltava . People ran to catch the trams and got on windblown, breathless, wet hair sticking to their faces. It was the end of the month and I had paperwork to do, so I canceled and afternoon class and did the paperwork over a glass of ginger ale at the café inside the Comedy Theater on Vodickova Street . At three o’clock I wene to my last class of the day, just down the street at the government office.

My student, who I’ll call Karel, was a lawyer who specialized in EU affairs. Often he traveled to Brussells on business. Privately he had also traveled widely, to China , India . He had two dreams: to ride a motorcycle across America on Route 66, and to settle down to a house in the Czech countryside. He achieved the second dream that same year, and showed me photos of the cottage he and his girlfriend had bought and were restoring.

“Unfortunately the law in this case is very clear,” Karel told me that afternoon. He had spent some time the past week talking with colleagues and researching Czech law concerning my case.

“I talked with people at the Ministry of Justice,” Karel said. “And they said you could file a legal action, but only in extreme cases, like if you were married or had a child here in Czech Republic , is such an action successful.”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“I guess that means I have to leave then,” I said, to break the silence.

“And where will you go – to America ?”

We talked for a while about the Stanley Cup final and the egg throwing at Paroubek and then circled back to my visa. Karel was sympathetic; we get on well, and the year before I’d helped him pass his Cambridge exam. Before I started teaching him, he’d had an another American, a guy in his sixties, but he had died suddenly from a brain aneuryism.

“It’s a pity you have to go,” Karel said. “Because you are a good teacher and you have been in Czech for a few years. You have friends here. But unfortunately the law in this case is very clear … and I think the same in many countries.”

It rained all weekend. I didn’t feel well and spent a lot of time in bed. Islam gave me a couple aspirin and after tossing and turning at night, woke on Saturday feeling better. Islam and Nikash were heading back to the camp on Sunday. I heard them talking on Skype to people they knew at the camp.You could hear, from the enthusiasm in Nikash and Islam’s voices, that people at the camp looked forward to seeing them. Nikash told me at the camp you couldn’t get good food, but he had sweet-talked a girl in the shop at the camp and she had gone out and smuggled in some meat and they cooked it in their rooms.

Islam was still hoping to go to Italy . His brother was in Venice .

“Ah, James,” he said. “You go with us to camp and then we go to Italy .”

It sounded great – Venice ! – but I though about what Karel said and it was doubtful the camp officials would view my situation any differently than the Czech courts. Perhaps they would issue a visa, but one like Islam’s, only for a few days, enough time to get out of the country and allow passage through the Schengen area to Italy . But what would I do in Italy ?

Islam and Nikash were worried about the police. That’s why they were leaving on Sunday: less chance of being stopped on the train to Ostrava .

By Saturday evening I felt well enough to go up the street to the Zaba. I saw Vick and Danny Boy. Vick had spent the week job hunting, but had had no luck so far. Danny Boy said he was unhappy about his job at Sazka.

“I think really I need to find a work that is suitable for me,” he said. “Like in music, performance. Concerts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Working at the concerts.”

“That would be fun.”

We both smiled, picturing this work. I could relate to what Danny Boy was sayıng; he’s a friendly, social guy, but you can’t picture him as an oddsmaker, which is sort of what he is at Sazka.

“But Sazka, this work, I am not sure if I am good.”

“Do you have a good boss? Someone who can give you direction?”

“No.” Suddenly Danny’s face lit up. “Sanity –“ he sang, “Is a full time job … in a world that is always changing.” He repeated, his voice rising several decibels. “SANITY! IS A FULL TIME JOB –“

It rained off and on all the next week, and the air was chilly – cinema or reading weather. I didn’t feel like teaching, and I didn’t feel like going to the cinema or reading. I spent a lot of time during the day at places like the Globe or Bohemia Bagel. Sometimes I’d run into Aiden Greenworth at the Globe and we’d talk and drink coffee. In the evenings the Zaba was busy. Jirka the owner finished his A-level exams and there was a big party. He was qualified to be a teacher but told me he wanted to focus on the Zaba. Another evening there was a double birthday party for Ondrej and a pretty girl I didn’t know named Iveta. It felt warm and cozy in the Zaba and you didn’t want to leave. Ondrej on his birthday said he’d have three beers, a shot of rum, then head home. When I left at 11 he was on his fourth beer and rolling a joint at the bar. It’s like that. In Czech someone once told me there are three lies: jdeme na jedno

(we go for one); posledni (Last one), and Nikde jdo na hospodu (I don’t go to the pub anymore).

Most evenings it was the same crowd. Liam usually dropped in after his day of teaching and we sat and talked together, and others, usually Vick and Danny Boy, or Ondre or Kuba, joined us.

Speaking of Liam, I should probably try to draw a better portrait. He was forty, but generally a young forty, except some graying around his trimmed beard; on the piss his features aged noticeably. Before coming to Prague a decade before he had taught in Qatar and Greece. He understood my situation about the car because while in Greece, he came home one night from the pub pissed and didn’t have his keys. After trying (it was very late) to wake the neighbors, in frustration he kicked the glass in on the front door. He let himself in and went to sleep. Hours later he was awoken by the authorities and ended up having to pay fort the window.

In Prague he had managed to put together a fairly prosperous and respectable existence. He had his zivnostensky list, a contractor’s license, and so he did not teach at a school, but rather went directly to the companies. This meant that he made considerably more than I did.

When he wasn’t on the piss, he was responsible with his money; he actually saved, dressed professionally in a suit and tie and carefully administered his business and personal affairs. Though he spoke often of women, and tried, bolstered by a beer and weed, to hook up with the much younger women who came in the bar, you got the sense that he was essentially a permanent bachelor; that he too jealously guarded his space. I visited his flat once and this assessment was confirmed: it was the home of an educated but definitely private man; the walls were lined with bookshelves, DVDs, and the furniture was adequate but not extravagant. Each morning he prepared for lessons on his laptop in the kitchen, read the BBC news, checked the football scores, and in the evenings was fond of cooking for himself. He had a bicycle and in the nice weather went for long rides, and he often went swimming at the public pool near Slavia Stadium, and took pride in his exercise.

He lived alone and one sensed he preferred it; even so, he told me he would like to settle down one day with a family, but it’s hard to picture it, just as it was hard to picture Danny Boy as an oddsmaker.

Of course if he read this, Liam would take issue with probably everything, say I had set off to cast him as disagreeably stuffy or “English.” But then he could at times be both, just as I could often be overbearing, manic and ‘American.”

Our conversations, in this light, occasionally turned sour, owing to drink and the vague hostility that sometimes develops between people who have similar problems, or who are thrust by whatever forces or reasons, into similar circumstances. We were both more or less in a rut, the same rut.

“Your problem, James,” Liam said once, as we had beers at a garden in the park on the hill above Donska Street , “is your world is too small. “I mean, you go to work, and you spend the day wandering Old Town or Mala Strana, and then in the evenings it’s Zaba or Konspirace. You sit too much. You never exercise.

“You’ve got a drunkard’s mentality,” he said, on the same occasion. “You’ve always got the same problems. Like not getting your zivnostensky, because you said it was too much bureaucracy rather than put your head down and just do it. Or with your visa. You sit on the same problems and expect other people to solve them for you.

“And then you get on the piss and you’re off on Islam’s problems, or else Muhammad Ali or Obama. You talk about writing, or going to Istanbul , but you never do anything about it. You’d rather just sit in the pub.”

Actually I agreed, then and now, with what he said, most of it. We had our arguments but they were seldom serious. Like many Englishmen, he enjoyed ‘taking a piss,’ as Liam said, and I, like many American, sometimes lack a sense of irony and end up taking offense. Also perhaps I resented the periods when he got clean and then you wouldn’t see or hear from him. But as time passed a truce of sorts had been made and we got on fine.

I suppose the truth was, as I said, we were both in the same rut, and both would have liked a woman, but weren’t willing to make the effort. Being foreigners we were naturally drawn to each other’s company for the comfort of speaking English and familiar references.

If you needed money, as I sometimes did, Liam would spot you without a lecture – as long as you paid him back. Also he made an effort to be balanced. Once we were sitting in the beer garden at riegrove sady with some other English teachers, they were from England , and everyone was drunk. One of them began aggressively taking a piss out of America , the war, Bush, etc. On another night I might have responded in kind, but that afternoon I was mellow and not looking for an argument. To my surprise, it was Liam who, I guess you’d say for “form’s sake,” sort of took my side.

Islam left for Italy one Sunday at the end of June. His going was both sad and anticlimactic. Most of the weekend I was out at the pubs as usual with Liam and the Zaba crowd, and so in the mornings and afternoons was too tired to spend much time with Islam. I’d wanted to do something for him, take him out to dinner or get him a present of some kind, but in the end I didn’t. He spent most of the last Saturday packing (he bought a new suitcase and trolley from one of the Vietnamese markets) and playing chess on Sugit’s laptop.

I was still rolling around in bed Sunday morning when he and Sugit left.

“OK, James,” Islam said. “I going.”

“Islam leave us forever,” Sugit said. He was accompanying Islam to the train station.

I got up from the bed to shake hands.

“I call you,” Islam said.

“—and you have my email.”

I remembered on one of Islam’s last nights he had sat in the kitchen and talked. “This is not living,” he said, looking around at the small flat. “Must have own flat, must have girl, must have family. Here it is not living only fighting. Home is best.”

There was another place in the neighborhood where I often went. Shakespeare and Sons, a café and bookshop on the next street around the corner. The staff were all relatively young and laid-back, and they didn’t mind if you sat in the back for hours reading a book you didn’t intend to buy or surfing the Net for free on their computer.

It was there that I met Vratislav Brbinec, saxophonist for the Czech group Plastic People of the Universe. They were a popular and controversial underground jazz group in Czechoslovakia under Communism. Vratya, as he is known in the neighborhood, and other members of the group were actually arrested and spent some time in prison in the 1970s for having a concert. After that Vratya emigrated to Canada , where he spent more than 20 years, and had a wife and daughter. Sometime after the revolution he moved back, but his wife and daughter had stayed behind in Canada .

When I met him at Shakespeare’s Vratya was in his mid-sixties, and, and for the most part a tired old man, but after a couple drinks could summon a mischievous twinkle behind his owl-eyed spectacles. He had thin, grey hair that hung to his shoulders and was fond of brown corduroy jackets. I enjoyed to talking wıth him about jazz, politics and literature, all of which he could talk well about. When Coltrane or Miles Davis, or, his favorite, Duke Ellington, entered the conversation, a dreamy look of ecstasy lighted his face.

“Ah, ‘Sophisticated Lady,’” he mused. “’In My Solitude.’”

I’d seen him many times in Shakespeare and Sons. Often somebody was sitting with him. At times it was a journalist, a guy who wrote for Respekt, I think; other times I saw him with various women, several of them American, and he spoke to them in English. Someone had told me he played for Plastic People and for a long while I was intimidated at the prospect of talking to him, reluctant to sort of pay tribute.

When we finally did meet it was after I returned from President Obama’s visit to Prague . After going to the hear Obama’s speech, I came in, still excited, and Vratya and one of the bartenders and his girlfriend were the only ones there. Vratya, seated at the bar, overheard me talking to the bartender and then Vratya himself asked me a few questions. I could see he was fainty, ironically, amused at my enthuasiam. ‘You are an optimist,” he said. And it was that afternoon we sat and had drinks and talked for the first time, and we talked about the days of the Communist regime and the Prague Spring (“Yes, we were very optimist then,” Vratya recalled. “But it turned out to be false optimism.)

Those were the good times; when he had too much to drink (he generally was drinking wine on those summer afternoons), a different look came into his eyes, harshness, anger. Or he was just tired and lonely (lonely, I don’t know why; he had a girlfriend, I was told, and still played regularly with the Plastic People, not to mention the people who always wanted to sit down and talk to him. Sometimes I got drunk with him and once even took him and one of his friends to Zaba and introduced him to Kuba and Lenka and Jirka and the rest of the crowd. Other days I avoided Vratya. He would see it and, if he’d been drinking, became insulted, called me “Curak!” or “Vole.”

On other days, he was mellow, melancholy. “Ah, I am an old man,” he said. “I will die alone.”

One night, I think it was the night I took him to Zaba, Vratya turned and regarded me. “You want to belong here, I can see that,” he said, looking at me drunk but grave-eyed. “You want to be friends with everyone. But you must find your own way. You must take care about yourself.”

There was a lot of rain in June. But there were also days when it was sunny and hot and the trams were stuffy unless the windows and roof hatches were open. On nice days the young Czech women wore shorts and cut tops that showcased their tanned bellies. There weren’t that many tourists, not like a few summers ago; the crisis was starting to be felt in Prague , too. Cafes on Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square now had many empty tables, and waiters looked bored and anxiously at the people who passed.

I’d lost a few classes but nothing drastic; I was holding steady. That’s one reason why it was a shame to leave. But more than that, after so long Prague had really taken hold of me; certain dim backstreets, unknown and mysterious five years ago, were now named and known, even a little dull, and yet nuanced by memories of long ago days and nights. The language, initially an audio tidal wave, crashing against the ear, had calmed and resolved into a fairly clear, if trembling, picture, and I had that sentimental fondness for people and places that comes when you know you will soon leave them (fair and fading). I could almost see people and places in a singular flash of transparent light, the figures already beginning to recede and evaporate before my eyes.

Take Kuba, for instance. Once, while drunk and overheated, I’d become belligerent and insulted Kuba, called him, as he reminded me later, “The Son of Stalin.” For a long time we didn’t speak, but I apologized and over time we became friends again. He was one of those guys who’s impossible not to like: easygoing, quick and full of energy. He played a good table football game, actually he was good at almost all games. Usually he teamed up with Lenka, who was also pretty good, and I liked to watch them play together. He was always bringing something new into the bar, something he’d purchased during the day: a video game, a movie, or else some new joke or song he’d heard and he’d rush to tell you or go to the computer at the bar to show you.

I liked Kuba’s ear: he had a marvelous ear for language. He’d learned English mostly from all the hip hop artists he loved, and his conversation was always sprinkled with the slang and posturing phrases he’d gathered from their records. He wasn’t boring. And he was generous. Often he’d buy you a shot, or invite you to come visit him and Lenka at their flat in the neighborhood, and there would be alcohol and food and an evening’s worth of movies and games.

Kuba was one, but there were many others like that. Tomas, the girls at Oriflame where I taught, then there was Hana, Mika, the Japanese student Mitoda and his wife Naomi …

… Or Standa! Yes, he just walked into Bohemia Bagel, the one on Veletrzni Street near the national gallery and the Holesovice fairgrounds.

I was sitting there waiting to go to a morning class nearby when Standa walked in. I knew him, a tall, thin, prematurely balding guy in his early twenties, from my first winter in Prague . He worked at the Bohemia Bagel in Old Town , and he was one of the guys who manned the Internet counter. In those days, new to Prague , chronically broke, cold and lost, I often spent hours at the Bagel (you could smoke inside then), drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, reading and writing while it snowed outside. Last time I saw him it was a few months before, and he had finished university, quit Bagel, and was preparing to pass his Cambridge English exam.

That afternoon, Standa saw me and came over to the table.

“Thank you,” he said, after I asked about his exam. “Yes, it his finished. So you changed restaurants?” He smiled a smile that brought back the old days. “You didn’t know about this Bagel before? Yes, this one is better, I think. The menu has more Czech food.”

“And Russian, too,” I said.

He said he’d get his exam results in October, and was nervous about it. Some parts of the exam he was sure he passed, but other parts he didn’t feel as well about.

I wished him luck. “Still on break?”

“Sorry?”

“Your break from work.”

“Yes, this was like a milestone in my life. Stop work, focus about the exam, but now –“

“You working here?”

“Part time. Delivery.”

It was good to see Standa, and to see that he remembered me. But it was also a bit sad, knowing that those old days were gone.

That’s what I like about Prague , though. It’s a city of nearly one million people, but the people you encounter remember you. Of course this has its downside, but overall it’s good.

“How can we dance when our earth is turning/How do we sleep while our beds are burning?”

A techno cover of the old Midnight Oil song was playing in the café. A couple of good-looking girls came in and sat in a booth behind me. They ordered the borscht with cream; the tall, dark one ate while her friend, a blonde, sat and talked without touching her food. The manager, a stout woman with deep black Slavic eyes, and her daughter, were both behind the bar pouring drinks for the lunch crowd. Outside the streets were beginning to dry after the morning rain. A yellow taxi passed; a priest, carrying a white package, walked by past the restaurant without looking in. Across the street at the pizzeria a delivery truck sat parked. After Standa left I watched the people eat and talk over lunch. It was Friday, just after noon, and there was that pleasant weekend anticipation despite forecasts for more rain.

I thought about Islam. Sugit said he called him a few days ago and that he was working in his brother’s shop in Venice . Nikash was still at the camp in Ostrava . Sugit had to go there a few days ago but he returned the same day with a fresh visa. I asked about Nikash but Sugit said he hadn’t seen him since visitors aren’t allowed. I had just come back from Zaba, and lectured, rather drunkenly, on the Importance of a Brother, which in Sugit’s case wasn’t necessary, the two were so tight.

There was a new cook at Konspirace, where Islam used to work. The cook is from Nepal . I tried his food at Tomas’ recommendation and it was excellent, much better than Islam’s. Actually over dinner that night at Konspirace several people, while praising the new cook, told me stories. They said that Islam in the last few months before falling out with the owner had just sat at a table doing nothing. Someone ordered French fries and they were served partly frozen. I told these stories to Sugit and he said after all, Islam was not a professional cook. It wasn’t his vocation and there’s a difference.

I supposed so. Take me. People in Prague often told me I was a good teacher. Maybe I was sometimes, but most of the time I was lazy, or distracted. In America journalism was my vocation; that doesn’t mean I was good but it certainly meant more to me because I saw it as a calling. Why don’t you do it now, some people asked. Perhaps with time and distance (and beer), the voice just grew dim and faded, or I stopped listening. When I came to Prague I told myself I needed a rest from the daily pressures of journalism. In fact when I came to Prague that first year I wrote a novel, or rather, an attempt at a novel, called, “Beyond the A.M. Crowd.” It was about a young American journalist who, “dismayed by the war, and existentially confused over the break up with his girlfriend,” abandons journalism to become a habitué in Prague ’s cafes and pubs. In the end, the unnamed protagonist, in a fever induced by beer, drugs and his existential confusion, is caught up in a May Day rally and ends up inadvertently assisting in the beating of a local Communist official. Ironically, the ex-journalist finds himself on the front page of the local Czech dailies, and then goes into hiding. This last part, contrived to be sure, was intended to be very Formanesque, something out of “Hori ma Panenko!”

At any rate, some Czech friends help our hero get over the border to Germany , and from there he escapes to Finland , and is last seen in a snowbound, digitally enhanced Scandanavian white night landscape, techo music playing in the background, like at the end of some movies. A woman he knows, not the girlfriend, but another, an intimate stranger. It is his lost love, a love he knew perhaps in another life, returning. She sees him and smiles a silent welcome. The camera rises high above them, turning and turning, getting faster and faster. Where will he go, our unnamed ex-journalist? Has his crisis been resolved?

I couldn’t answer those questions, which was, among other reasons, why the story never really made it. In other versions, the hero considers going to China, or possibly back to America, or, as the rough reads, he sits on the edge of the Zofin island, looking out at the Vltava while a couple of ducks conveniently swim by, allowing the narrator to ponder why the ducks swim upstream, against the current, instead of with it. The text ends with an elliptical statement by our ex-journalist. “Beyond the a.m. crowd,” he whispers. “Into the peripheral world.”

Does this mean he chose the path of obscurity, seeing it somehow more noble and worthy to veer off the main road of life, the vulgar pursuits of the public path? Is this the answer to his existential confusion? Or was the author himself merely unsure of how to end the story, and quickly dashed off a bit of consciously vague words to neatly cap the mess he had made?

A good friend, whom I sent the draft to back in America , gave this assessment: He liked the story (but then he’s a friend), but felt dissatisfied with the ending, felt it left too many unanswered questions. Perhaps, he suggested, it’s possible “you haven’t lived the ending?”

Of course I was deceiving myself: I knew who this mysterious girl was. But the reason I couldn’t write that ending was because I never made it up to Scandanavia to see her, just as I had never been in any May Day Communist beating, just as I had never been to China , or gone back to America . There were only those spiritual ducks swimming by, pushing against the current, and the elliptical phrase, “beyond the a.m. crowd, into the peripheral world,” was an attempt at lyricism, a way of saying that the hero wanted to escape the prison that his ambitions had become, and to find a simpler world of love and acceptance, a world that he lacked the courage to seek.

Actually the story was a little different, I’m touching it up now as I look back on it. The original story, one of its problems, was I sort of made it up as I went along, as Prague unfolded before me, and I stumbled here and there in the dark. I did spend one real night in a Prague jail, but as I said that was for kicking a car one drunken night, not for beating a Communist. In the neighborhood and among students, that story of the car has become something of an old joke; my novel has, too, to some degree. I mean to say that after the ’89 revolution swarms of Americans found their way to Prague, bolstered by Alan Levy’s famous ‘Left Bank of the Nineties” proclamation. Unfortunately, though a good many people came and wrote, and many books were written, somehow the Great American Prague Novel (GAPN), never hit the bookstores. The new generation was being cheated of the new Hemingway or Fitzgerald who would capture the essence of a new people and how they spoke and lived.

I heard this, or read about it, gleaned it from various observations and conversations. You’d say you were writing a novel and people would say, “Oh?” and you could see a flicker of amusement in their eyes, as if to say, “not another one.” I felt it, and I suppose I got discouraged; everyone hates being a cliché, even if the cliché is true. Looking back, I could have shown more perseverance, more consistency, which are, to paraphrase Capote, the better part of artistic survival. I could have put my head down and wrestled with that story.

But I didn’t. I knew there was another reason. I was aware that much of what I wrote, even when I was working hard at it, was vain, affected: too self consciously Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al, whoever I happened to be reading at the moment. I’m thinking of the next book I wrote, “The Man Called Paquito Montana .” This was a novella, or long short story, I wrote in the summer of my third year in Prague . It was based on a real person I met my first year in the city, an ex-“action star” of the Mexican cinema, so the guy said, who had ended up another habitué in Prague ’s Old Town bars and cafes. He was adept at maintaining a showy, flamboyant front, and by virtue of a charismatic personality and an album of photos showing him, long ago as a handsome young actor, managed to persuade a great many people to support his nights out among the Old Town populace. He tells everyone he is making a new movie in Prague and this assures him credit everywhere he goes. There was one Italian man and his wife who owned a restaurant near Tyn Church and they were so taken by him they put him up in an expensive guest room they reserved for tourists. Over the course of the story the tab begins to mount, and doubts begin to rise about this movie venture Paquito Montana is endlessly talking about. A man, who professes to be a long lost brother, arrives on the scene and tells us more about Paquito Montana ’s past. It turns out that in truth he really was an actor, had emigrated illegally to America and been moderately successful in Hollywood , but had aged and run out of luck. He was eventually deported, whereupon he sought refuge in Europe . As we are learning this, there are scenes, confrontations, a particularly bitter one with the Italian host who is tired of being taken advantage of. At the end of the story, gathering up his frayed dignity, the man called Paquito Montana pronounces, “I am homeless! I serve everybody!” and marches out into the Prague sunset. We never see him again.

As I wrote the story, I saw Paquito Montana as a kind of Gatsby, a doomed romantic, a beguiling lost soul (which perhaps he really was); I added to him and subtracted. He once came into a café wearing a rapier he had found somewhere. In my story, I had him wear this rapier all the time. I saw him a sort of modern day Don Quixote (coincidently, when I wrote the story, two years later, I’d just finished reading that book and that had a great influence on how my final conception of the story).

Looking back now, I can see the holes in that story, too. In the story, Paquito Montana marches off into a glorious sunset. A nearby Russian doorman in front of a cafe, when asked of the hero’s whereabouts, proclaims, “Paquito Montana is everywhere and nowhere.” The truth is, I later found out our hero was living, quite prosaically, in Bratislava , where a girlfriend kept his wanderings in check. All his past, about emigrating to America and Hollywood I made up myself; ironically, I infused the man with as much fiction as he himself did. Instead of clarifying the picture, I merely muddled it all the more.

In my defense, I was then experimenting with “invention,” “making composite characters,” “juxtaposing events for effect,” and all the other modernist tricks of masters Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al. At one point, while struggling with the story, I had beers at riegrove sady with an American friend, himself an aspiring writer (he was a big fan of Wallace Stevens and Brice D’J Pancake). The friend encouraged me in this pursuit, and I quickly agreed.

“We need to know more about this guy’s past, we know nothing about him,” the friend said.

“But I don’t know it!” I protested. “I mean, not enough.”

“Well – make it up, then.”

So I did, and it was glorious fun. You really felt like you were letting yourself go, rushing to the embrace of art. I finished the story in a fever over the last weeks of August, and in the fall, anxiously sent it out via email to friends in Europe and America . Most never read it (who, after all, reads the novels emailed to them by friends?), and as the months passed, I gradually felt the old disappointment coming back. I’d been so sure about Paquito Montana , that everyone else would be as captivated and perplexed by him as I’d been.

The truth was, Paquito Montana was my invention. The real guy, the one I’d met in Prague , was an interesting guy but not as interesting as I’d made him out to be. Or if he was, I’d skipped a few key steps, hadn’t been curious enough. But then that would be journalism, say, recording everything word for word. That’s not what I wanted. But even as fiction I’d failed, serving him up as a sort of warmed-over Gatsby, leftover Don Quixote. I’d taken a man who was perhaps a little pathetic, but a man, and made him a piece of literary kitsch.

Even now I struggle with the fine line between what is life and what is called art. I have a vivid imagination and this certainly doesn’t help; with art yes, and to a great degree life also, but together, well ... I’m a daydreamer, and would much prefer to invent, fantasize, indulge my imagination, rather than get to know people, how they talk and behave, merely “report.”

An Irish friend of mine, who once shared a flat with me in Prague , observed this when I went to visit him in Ireland . He read “Beyond the A.M. Crowd,” (was actually a character in it). Once, after a relationship ended with a girl I was seeing, I said something about how I didn’t expect it, that the girl had betrayed me.

The friend mused over this, and then reflected,“People … do what they are going to do.You can’t mold people.”

I suppose that’s my biggest flaw as a person and a writer. This desire to see people and places the way I want to see them, rather than as they otherwise might be. That, and a lack of curiosity to see this other side to people and things. Take Islam. Over the past year he was one of the best friends I could have had, someone who shared my situation, who constantly helping me out, lent money sometimes, and always sympathy. And I know so little about him, and didn’t bother to see him to the train station when he had to leave.

I’m thinking of the day, a year before, when it was time to renew our visas. Islam, Nikash and I decided to go in the early morning hours together. This was the year the Czechs entered the Schengen Zone; the country was cracking down on illegal immigrants more than in the past and so the Foreign Police, already overworked, was even more crowded as people rushed to get visas. many workers never bothered getting legal, even though many, like myself, did get legal.
The night before Islam finished his job at Konspirace at 1 a .m. and after a short sleep, the three of us set out at 4 a .m. on foot for the Foreign Police. Along the way, Islam hummed an Eastern melody, and Nikash exchanged jokes and grins. Me, impatient as always, walked ahead. Islam had wanted to wait for the night trams, which come once an hour, but I knew a way on foot. We crossed through the park at reigrovy sady and down the hill, a trip that took about a half hour.
'When we arrived at 4:30, my heart sank. Even from a few blocks away, I could see it wasn't good. People were already lined up around the building. A loose conflageration of people, of all nationalities, all looking tense and tired. A few Ukraine or Russian guys were doing crowd control, pushing people back, and one was putting names on a list. We couldn't figure out if he actually worked there (doubtful) or had appointed himself some kind of manager of the scene. You see people like that, and you're never sure if they're really trying to do some good, or just making some kind of scam. Here and there were people with blankets.
'People are coming yesterday,' Islam observed.
After about twenty minutes we decided it was hopeless. Even if we managed to get inside the building when the doors opened, it was highly doubtful there would be any tickets left. Highly doubtful.
'We come back tomorrow,' Islam said. 'Very early.'
'Tonight,' I said, setting a mental alarm. Midnight. That would mean we'd wait overnight. That's about four hours longer than last year.
The journalist in me thought of doing a write up for the Post on the situation, but another reporter already beat me to it. I eagerly read the story, hoping to see that things will change. But the officials shake their heads. Yes, the system is overworked, deplorable. But there's not much that can be done. The workers are underpaid, there's no money, the usual reasons.
Having read the story a few weeks ago, I knew to expect the worst. And it doesn't exactly make you forward to next year.
'And think about in ten years,' Islam said. 'Ah, Life is hard.' He laughed in a tired way. We got the metro back to our neighborhood.
'So you can see,' Islam added, back at the flat. 'There is nothing like your mother country.'
'What's that?'
'Your mother country. There we do not need visas.'
'Yeah.'
'Maybe America is better.'
Maybe, I thought. It's true. Why deal with all this? Back in the States I could just work. Let the foreigners put up with it. I could just go back to being a comfortable American and not worry.
We both crashed for a couple hours. Then my phone beeped. A message from an old student, Jana. She wanted to know if I'd like to go with her to Slovakia in a couple weeks, spend some time in the High Tatry Mountains. The mountains, in the northwest of the country, are said to be serene and lovely, a real jewel of Eastern Europe, a gateway to the East anyway. And Jana is a good friend, we have had great discussions about literature and politics, so it will be a good chance to catch up, possibly over glasses of Moravian wine.
The message made me feel better. I got up, resigned to make the journey back to the Foreign Police again tonight. After all, it may be the very definition of misery, but at least it's only once a year. Anyhow, there could be better journeys ahead.

That evening I brought along a notebook, thinking since we had to wait all night I might as well keep a journal. The following are excerpts:

12:55 a.m. When Islam and I arrived there were already about 50 people outside the office. Most were stretched out on make-shift beds, blankets with bits of newspaper underneath. A few Russians and Ukranians drank beer purchased at nearby all-nite shops, and chatted in circles. Somewhere music drifted from a radio. With about seven hours to wait, fortunately it was a mild, clear summer night.
'Ah, the visa fight,' Islam said. 'Everywhere there is war. War for oil. War for food. And now war for visa.' He chuckled to himself.
The majority of the people waiting for visas tend to be from the Ukraine. Many work in construction, and are responsible for the work that's gone into Prague's building boom the past decade. This morning a heavy-set Ukranian man and a couple girls were putting people's names on a list. I didn't like this or trust it. I've been to the Foreign Police before and know that it usually dissolves into a free-for-all when the doors open, and who were these list-makers anyway?
'I think it's pretty corrupt,' said one Australian guy, who was back for a second attempt like me and Islam. 'It's mostly Ukraine people and they try to control the process. But I don't see any way around it.'
Still feeling highly skeptical, I added my name along with Islam's. We were listed at 145 and 146 respectively.
'You should get in,' the Australian guy said. 'Yesterday I was 300 and just missed the cut. They ran out of numbers just before.'
230 a.m. The broad-shouldered Ukraine guy, the apparent leader, is doing a roll call. Islam had decided to go for a walk to stretch his legs, so when our names come up I answer for him. Everyone looks tired, tense, but there are moments of laughter, such as when the Ukraine guy tries to pronounce the Vietnamese names on the list. Not that he does better with English ones. He pronounces my name, 'Yam-ez Treezler.'
'Here,' I say.
430 a.m.Another roll-call. This time, the Ukraine leader, aided by other Ukraines, begins trying to start the actual line. By now there are about 200 people. We're pushed back and back, while names are called. The scene starts to get tense with all the pushing. People step forward, trying to hear their names. 'This is ridiculous,' I say to an African man next to me. He speaks English, and nods in agreement. More shoving, people step forward and try to get the Ukraine man's attention, checking and rechecking the list for their names, insisting. A few of the men are obviously drunk, and they begin gesticulating and cursing in Russian. This is never going to work, I mutter to myself.
At one point, a couple Russians get into a shouting match with the Ukraine leader and he gives a 'hell-with-it' gesture and hands the list over and strolls off. Then dozens of hands are reaching for the papers, and there's more shoving and cursing. One man goes ballistic, chattering and unleashing a volley of orders in screeching Russian.
This isn't working.
During the ensuing chaos, I quietly slip through. No one stops me. I go and join the small group of people already called on the list and have a seat. No one stops me.
I go and sit next to a youngish guy who tells me he's from Uzbekistan. He's been waiting for the last two days.
'But today I should get in,' he says. "I'm number three on the list.'
'Two days?' I grow alarmed.
'Some people they are here for five days,' he says.
'The other day the news media was here,' the young man continues. 'They had cameras, there was a story. But still nothing really changes.'
Hell with it. There's no way I'm waiting five days. Hell with their lists. The thing is to be as close to the front door as possible when it opens. Suddenly a couple of Ukrainians in front of me, tough-looking guys, turn around and start yelling at me. They point toward the back of the line. I pretend not to understand. They start to shove me violently. Luckily at that point a couple of policeman pass by. Someone nearby intercedes and I can see he’s telling the policemen that the Ukrainians were pushing. One of the policemen checks our passports. He issues a stern warning to the Ukrainians. After the police leave, the Ukraine guys don’t bother many more. Someone hands me my papers, which had been scattered during the mess.
6 a.m. The police arrive, a dozen of them in black slick suits. This is a new wrinkle from last year. But I'd heard even with police there were still problems. Recently a couple of the cops were fired because they were found to be taking bribes from people to get places in line. This morning the police spread out and stretch out poles with red tape to control the perimeter of the line. I'm within shouting distance of the entrance, about 30 people ahead. I notice at the very front of the line is none other than -- the big Ukraine guy, our list man, the great organizer. Amazing his ability to combine community and self service, a lesson for us all. Oh well, good enough. I don't know where Islam is, and look around for him but don't see him. Hopefully he'll get in.
7 a.m. The doors open. It's actually much more orderly with the police around. A certain calm has settled over the crowd. The police let in the first dozen or so. After a few minutes the next wave, and so on. Upstairs I get a coveted number and sit down. I'm so tired I'm a little dizzy, mostly worn-down nerves from all the waiting and uncertainty.
830 a.m. Islam comes upstairs. Nikash is with him. They got in! I wave and they wave back, and I remember that I've got one of Islam's documents in my bag, so go over and get it to him. A few minutes later my number comes up on the screen. 'Good luck,' my friends say.
845 a.m. The girl at the desk is young, early twenties. It's her first day, and two other women are training her. 'It's terrible,' one of the older women says. 'It's summer and some of our colleagues have holiday.'
My paperwork is in good order. The women hand me a receipt. 'Come back in 30 days,' they say.
Bummer. Last year they gave me the visa on the spot. This year I have to come back and pick it up. In 30 days. That means another pleasant all-nighter at the foreign police.
I got home and slept for a few hours. I heard Islam come in about 1130. 'I must going back,' he says. 'I am missing some papers.'
'Me too. I mean I have to go back in 30 days to pick up the visa.'
'Ah, the life is hard,' Islam said.
We went in to sleep.

Tomas was also very sympathetic during that time. That evening the sun disappeared and great black clouds descended on the city. The heat sucked away and evaporated, and the rains came, loud and insistent, followed by thunder. People went hurrying indoors, their shorts and t-shirts soaked through. I couldn't help think -- at least the summer storm held off until we were through with the Foreign Police. Can you imagine sitting outside all night under that downpour?
I went to Konspirace. Islam was already there and mopping the floor. There was no gas for the keg, so we settled for střík, half white wine and half sparkling water, a cool, light summer drink especially popular with Czech women because it saves the waistline some mileage. Tomas invited me over for a smoke.
'So how was it?' he asked.
'We were there from midnight,' I said.
'Midnight? Jesus! So did you get the visa?'
'30 days. I have to go back.'
'Oh no!' he laughed sympathetically.
'I don't understand it,' I whined. 'A city with a million and a half people, probably at least 50,000 immigrants, and they have just one office to process the paperwork.'
'It's terrible,' Tomas said.
'But I'm sure it's the same everywhere.' I told Tomas about Luzcka, a Czech girl I knewwho spent a year in the US, and how she waited all night at the embassy in Washington to get her visa. We also talked about Mexican immigrants in California, and the difficulties they have getting legal.
'But they do the jobs nobody else wants,' I went on. 'And immigrants help drive growth. They're the ambitious ones, the ones who want something better.'
This is in reference to a conversation Tomas and I have frequently had.
'Here in Czech Republic,' he often says. 'Everyone who grew up under Communism is used to the state taking care of them, and everyone being the same. They cannot imagine taking care of themselves, or imagining something better.'
'Look at what Kennedy said,' I went on, 'Democracy isn't perfect and freedom presents many challenges, but at least in America we don't have to build a wall to keep our people in. Of course it's ironic now, the Bush Administration wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico. They want to build a wall to keep people out!'
'Yes, but don't you think, James,' Tomas said, nodding. 'That for some people such freedom is too difficult to handle. They cannot survive. So in this respect, it's good to have some some controls.'
'But what about when you went to England?' I asked. 'What if the English had said, 'Sorry, Tomas, you cannot come.'
We conceded points, and I realize that it's not the same, comparing discomfort over getting a visa to the Berlin Wall.
Outside it was still storming, the rain falling in sheets. On the Tv there was some French soft-core porn for some reason -- and from the Eighties on top of that -- and everyone was getting a laugh out of it. People came in flushed and streaming with rain, and exchanged 'Ahojs' and either had the wine or waited for the beer. Warmed by the střík, and the cozy feeling of being inside sheltered from the storm, we continued the discussion.
'Basically there are two philosophies,' I mused, feeling the wine. 'One is like Robert Frost said,' Good fences make good neighbors,' and the other ... I guess, that for those who strive for something better the path should be open.' This was perhaps a winefully stupid observation. Frost was talking about privacy, I suspect, and of course what kind of life would it be without obstacles?”

Tomas wrote poetry himself, and appreciated the reference. “But I like his nature poems beter,” Tomas said. “Robert Frost. Do you know this one, ‘West-Running Brook?’ I did, vaguely, from college. “It’s excellent,” Tomas said. “The idea that people carry each other along for awhile, and then …? And always pushing, trying to get back to where we came from. It’s almost biblical.”
Islam came over and shook hands and leaned over to Tomas.
'You know some good anti-virus program?' he asked.
'You have a virus?' Tomas asked.
Tomas wrote a site address on a napkin and handed to Islam.
'It's free,' Tomas said. 'The site -- it's free.'
Later his student Stazka came, along with a tall guy named Lukas and another guy whose name I forget at the moment. Under the storm, in the warm cafe, we had another of our endlessly circular conversations in varying shades of English and Czech. There were even songs. The beer finally arrived in frothy pints, but since I was already on the střík didn't want to change boats in mid-stream. After a while I forgot about the visa issue and just enjoyed the evening.

That was then … of course, the way things worked out later I didn’t get the visa. Islam actually got a six-month visa and I remember he came into Konspirace that evening and showed me, with the new photo inside and fresh stamp. His face was glowing. Of course, he said, after six months they said they would probably not extend it, but at the moment he was too happy to think about that. I was happy for him too even though I was very disappointed at having been rejected. That evening at the flat we had dinner, Nikash, Islam, Sugit and I. Nikash and Sugit were shocked I didn’t get a visa. I suppose they thought that as an American, I would automatically be issued one, and so I had to explain about my “criminal record.”

Out of consideration for me, the guys all expressed indignation.

“You don’t need be Czech,” Nikash said, vociferously. “America! Home is best!”

“Home is best!” Sugit added, even louder. “Home is family!”

I can see the reader now saying, “Didn’t you ever do anything else in Prague besides drink beer and hang out in pubs and worrying about visas? Why, If I lived in Prague – .” Yes, I did find time for other things. I taught most days, but the hours were irregular and often found myself with great stretches during the mornings and early afternoons, time when I could just drift through Malo Strana to the Wallenstein gardens and look at the gold fish swimming under the fountains. Or on nice days I’d take a book over to the Kampa or the Park just across the Manesova Bridge, lay in the grass with students and read and look at the tourists or the old Czech people walking by. It was pleasant too sometimes to just get on a tram and follow it to the end. I liked grabbing the number 17 in Old Town and riding out past the Branik train station, or taking the number 24 at Karlovo Nemesti and going out past the Botannical Gardens, through Vrsovice, watching the architecture shift from classical to more blue-collar structures, the functionalist, grey panalaky that hover over the cityscape like towering ghosts of Stalin … and back again to the Vltava, where in spring the boats passed up and down under the bridges.

I even found time for a little bit of journalism, and contributed a few pieces to Provokator and The Prague Post.

Once I remember seeing President Bush’s motorcade. I was teaching at the main government office when it passed by, a helicopter soaring overhead. This was when Bush was trying to convince the Czechs to support a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic and Poland.. Later Condoleeza Rice visited to sign a treaty for the radar. I didn’t see her but the atmosphere in the city was the same.

The evening she was in town I went to Vaclavski Namesti, the city's main square, where some two thousand Czechs gathered to protest the radar. Surveys at the time showed about two-thirds of Czechs opposed the radar. They waved flags and signs that said, in no particular order:
'Ne Zakladnam!' (!) No Base!
'Ne Radar!'
'Není rozhodnuto!' (No Decision!)
'Dekujeme, Necheceme' (Thanks, but we don't want it!)
'Nejsme ovčane' (We are not sheep!)
'Nejsme terč!' (We are not a target!)
'Condoleeza is not Welcome!'
I drifted through the crowd. Many people wore shirts specially made bearing an anti-missile logo that's become quite common here, as bumper stickers and such. In the I saw one man wearing on the back of his shirt three images:
1939: A picture of Hitler, referring to the Nazi occupation.
1968: A picture of the Russian hammer and sickle, referring to the 1968 Warsaw Pact (Russian) invasion
2008: A picture of George W. Bush

'It's exactly like an occupation,' melodramatically proclaimed one young woman; who said she was with a group called Movement Humanity.
'But for me,' she went on, 'I worked in Africa and I saw the poverty there. I don't understand why we have these weapons. With the money we spend on these weapons we could use to solve bigger problems in poor countries.'
'So why would the Czechs sign a treaty if 70 percent of the people are against it?' I asked.
She shrugged.
'Well, that is how it is here in Czech,' she said.

'Do you think there should be a referendum?' I asked.
'Yes, of course.'
I took one of her fliers and moved on.
Up near the stage, where the organizers were getting ready to start, I bumped into a journalist. I introduced myself. He handed me a card, Karel Janíček, AP Prague.

'Do you really think this can be compared to the 68 invasion?' I asked.
'No, not at all,' he said.. 'You have to understand, a lot of these people here -- a lot of them are just old Communists. There are a lot of old people there, true, but also lots of young people.
'Old Communists, and also the extreme left of the country.'
Karel wandered off to get more quotes.
One man, Jiři Novotny, carried a sign that says 'No to Radar.' I asked him if he spoke English and he said, a little. But just before I started to interview him another journalist, a big fellow with a shiny shaved head and wearing a blue suit, a television cameraman in tow, strode up. 'Do you speak English?' he asked Novotny.'So you don't like the U.S. radar -- why?' the journalist asked. He was Czech but was speaking English to show off a bit.

'I think the radar is totally nonsense,' Novotny said, obviously a bit camera shy.

“—Yes, the journalist interrupted. “But isn't it nonsense to come here and protest when it's already been approved?'
The journalist was referring to Rice having signed the treaty the day before. It was in all the news reports. Technically though it stil had to be approved by the Czech Parliament, which some speculated could take many months, as it eventually did.

'I think the process is not finished,' Novotny said. 'And in November in the U.S. there will be a new president, so perhaps it could be different.'
The hefty TV journalist, satisfied, whisked off into the crowd. I stayed with Novotny.
'But what about Vaclav Havel?' I asked. The revolution hero had publicly expressed support for the radar.

'Yes,' Novotny said thoughtfully. 'But you know, Havel has very strong feelings for the United States, he was a dissident for many years ... In the past 10 years you must admit the political situation in your country has rapidly changed. The U.S. has many problems, politically and economically. This radar, I think it's all about business. It's not about politics.'
'You mentioned the U.S. election,' I said. 'So do you like Obama or McCain?'
'I don't have enough information,' Novotny said. 'But at this point, I think I like Obama better.'
Up on the podium some people were giving speeches, roaring up the crowd, but I couldn’t quite understand, my Czech was never that good. I wandered over to a young woman wearing an anti-radar shirt.
'I work as a dispatcher for the international road transport system,’ she said, after we introduced ourselves. It was hard to hear her over the crowd. The speakers were leading people on to various cheers and boos. At one point I heard Condoleeza Rice's name mentioned, followed by boos and whistles.
'So you're against the radar,' I said.
She nodded
'I don't see why it is necessary.'I am afraid we will be like target. And also I don't want to destroy the nature.'
I stayed about an hour. By then it was after seven. The traffic was actually stopped. Police were there, but just monitoring. There was no violence or anything out of hand. Earlier I had asked around to see if the U.S. Secretary of State was expected to drop by. No, most said with a laugh. Actually Rice spent the evening at the U.S. Ambassador's place up in Prague 6. The next day she was scheduled to g oto Poland to discuss that country's end of the deal. Meanwhile, as I said, Rice's signing of the treaty today doesn't exactly close the deal. Parliament still must approve it, a vote which could come in a few weeks, or a few months. It's still not clear. Right now, the country's Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his party the Civic Democrats, support the radar. But it faces heavy opposition from the Social Democrats, Communists and Greens.

But to get back to Islam. It was in the autumn, a month after he got the six-month visa that he and his Czech girlfriend, the one he wanted to marry, broke up. Part of it was endless separations (she had a kidney stone and spent much of the time in and out of the hospital, and the rest of the time lived in another town). But also, Islam was counting on them getting married (in part to help extend his visa so they could open a business together). As I said before,Monika, claiming a bad experience with a previous husband, an Italian, kept putting him off.
By autumn, Islam was getting a little desperate. He was beginning to nervously eye the end of the year, when his six-month visa was set to expire..
'Can you renew?' I asked.
'No, not this time,' Islam said. 'This was last one.'
I could see he was disconsolate. But in a way we were in the same boat. My visa had already expired. The appeal at that point provided a little, not much, hope. If the appeal wasn’t granted, I would have to leave the country, too. At work I kept a low profile while looking at jobs in other countries, including a school in İstanbul that had expressed interest in my application.
'I must find new girl,' Islam said, breaking into a smile.
'You must fight,' I said.
'Must fight. Must win! Ah, James, there are many women everywhere. But I must be quickly. By hook by crook.'
'So come with me to Turkey,' I said lightly/
'Yes, but they will not give visa.'
'You're Muslim. They're lots of Muslims in Turkey.'
'Yes, but I am from third-world country. Not like you.'

I feel I haven't done justice to Islam. His portrait comes across as thin and skewed. As think I said earlier, he had been in Prague about two years, leaving behind a wife and daughter in Bangladesh. The wife later filed for divorce. When I asked Islam about it he said she had a new boyfriend. Islam met the owner of Konspirace by chance and got a job cooking in the kitchen. He was paid about 100 crowns an hour, which is about minimum wage (about $5). Islam's plan was to work long enough and save money to start his own restaurant.
'Working for yourself is best,' he said, recalling the days he had the phone business. 'There is freedom, I need freedom. It's no good work for somebody else.'
It's hard to believe sometimes that he was actually younger than me. He seemed older. Part of that was his health. He suffered from diabetes, how serious I didn’t know, except that there were nights he couldn’t sleep because of pain in his legs. By then I’d known him for a year now and had never seen him take a day off from work. But then it wasn’t that his job was that hard. In fact, that was part of the problem. Most people go there to drink and smoke marijuana, so he spent too much time sitting in the kitchen, where he had a computer, and chatted with his girlfriends (at one point he had several, most of them married, he had met through various online chat groups) or listened to music from Bangladesh or read the news (he read the BBC translated into Bangladeshe).
I encouraged Islam to take a day off, now and again, but he said he couldn’t afford it. Every now and then, though, on a Saturday or Sunday morning, we grabbed a bus -- any bus -- or tram and just rode it all the way to the end. One time we rode the tram 22 up to Prague Castle and walked through St. Vitus together. Islam personally bought all the ingredients he used at work, and sometimes on our tours he'd find a market with super cheap deals and load up.

One weekend I went with him on one of his errands. We took a tram to Michle, one of those unsung, out of the way districts of Prague, and there we found a 60-pound sack of potatoes for something like four bucks. The sack was heavy, but Islam had brought with him all these spare plastic grocery bags. So we opened the sack and distributed the potatoes among the bags, and split the load to carry home. It was a heavy, grey afternoon in October and the leaves were all over the sidewalk, and people looked at us as we got off the tram, carrying all these sacks of potatoes.

There were times when I was short of cash, and Islam said: 'You need money? No problem.' Once he had 300 crowns. He handed 200 to me and kept 100 for himself. Of course I've lent him money as well, but I admit it's harder for me to be philosophical about it. 'Money, always coming and going,’ Islam said. ‘Money can never be in one place, it must always going somewhere. This is the system of money.'
What else? There are other things, things I'll probably remember later. But I remember thinking after what happened later, after we both left Prague At that time it still was not clear; in theory yes, but on the day to day level it seemed we could avoid that fate, even though in the end it probably would be beter. From time to time Islam stil considered moving back to Bangladesh, as I considered America. We both agreed ‘Home is best,’ as always, but in truth I think, looking back now, that he had reservations as I did, about going home. Why? Many reasons – Money, the difficulty of starting over, perhaps. In my case, I had just grown attached to Prague, which represented to me ‘the adventure,’ I had set out on, even though in all honesty by then I the feeling of adventure had long worn off and in truth I was stagnant, bored, tired of living in suspended animation. The Zaba and Konspirace, the conversations with people there, helped me sort my feelings and forget for awhile, but in the long run that couldn’t sustain me or anybody. It was not easy to talk about these things with Islam, or with the two brothers, Sugit and Nikash. I think that’s why we employed the language we did, all this “Life is fight!” and “Home is best!” It was a kind of coded language that brought solidarity and comfort; they sufficiently communicated the other complex stuff that one wanted really not to talk too much about, like a confession of defeat. Or talking about the war, or terrorism. If something happened in the news, like with Obama, or Bush, or Iraq, we talked but in the same kind of language. “Too much killing in the world,” we said. “Bombing is not only solution.” There was no point going further than that. The flat was too small for disagreements. We had disagreements, but in our universe these disagreements were over things like cleaning. Islam, Nikash and Sugit were all fastidious, tidy. I was careless, messy. “Must clean,” Islam would say. “It is important for the health.” “Without clean flat,” Sugit added. “In one week it will be dogshit!” Or on my side, I’d sometimes get sick of the smell of curry (even though I love curry) cooking every time I came home. “Can’t you guys try something else?” I’d ask, only half joking. Actually later on, especially when Nikash’s girlfriend came over, she made Thai food for a change.

But overall it was pretty mellow at the flat, the days and nights falling in very much the same pattern. At times life seemed suspended, as we waited to see how much longer our days in Prague would last. “Ah it is not living,” Islam would say. “Without work, without girl, every day the same.” This was in those last weeks before he finally left for Italy.

For some reason I am reminded now of when we first became friends, around Christmas time a year before. This was when I first started going to Konspirace. One evening we sat and talked.
'You must go to India,' Islam said.
'India?'
'Yes, you must come.'
'Where in India?' I asked.
He smiled.
'Anywhere.'
That night Konspirace was really slow. Most people were still away with family for the holidays. But the owner Franta greeted me warmly and I recognized a few other people from the neighborhood. Then Islam came out from the kitchen and sat down for a while and we had our talk. Usually we didn’t talk much, I sat with my beer and smoked and Islam sat watching the bar and then after a while he’d get up and go back to the kitchen. Or I would order one of his dishes and when I finished just took the plates back to the kitchen myself. That night some people from the neighborhood came in and asked to share my table. We got to talking and by chance the conversation arrived at the assassination of Bhutto, which at the moment was all over the news. No one at the table really knew much about it, so I got up and went to the kitchen.
'Did you hear about Bhutto?' I asked. Islam looked up from the computer.
'I know,' he said.
We sat down together at the computer. He was looking at a news website, the news in Bangladeshe. Islam clicked on an English news website, and we looked at the terrible headline together.
'She was shot in the neck and chest,' Islam said.
' -- and then a bomb!’ We recounted the story together in a whirl of desperate and confused words.
'Who do you think did it?' I asked.
'Taliban, Al Queda,' Islam said. 'We are not all this way,' he said.
'Extremists?'
He didn't understand at first. I repeated and he sort of nodded. “Too much killing,” Islam said, shaking his head. “Everywhere too much killing.”

Sifting through memories is like turning the dial on a radio. The pervasive message is static, interrupted here and there by a jangle of music or a voice relating something that without any context… what is the message of memory? Or rather, which station do we tune into, for there are many messages in this static landscape.

The night Mayweather fought Hatton, for instance. This was around the same time of the Bhutto killing. I had just gotten to know Liam in those days, at Konspirace, by the way. He was going to the Gold Star Sport Bar to watch the fight. In Prague because of the time difference the fight was on at 5 in the morning. As I was packing to leave Prague, throwing out a lot stuff, I found an old journal that had my notes on that night. Here is my account:

The Night Mayweather Fought Hatton

My phone went off.

SMS from Liam. 'Am at the pub.'

What time is it?

It was 3:30 am you sent your alarm for, and of course you just went back to sleep when it rang. F--k Mayweather and whoever it was he was fighting. It was only a grandiose pub promise, the night before, at Konspirace when I promised I'd be up for the Mayweather-Hatton match. Even here in Prague, at least among those I know, there was a certain buzz leading up to the fight. I'd spent the past few weeks in a mind-numbing, pre-Christmas funk -- dividing my time between teaching and Konspiraces a quiet place I like in Vrsovice not far from the Bohemians stadium, and watching on Youtube (and watching, and watching) the old Ali-Frazier and Ali-Forman and Ali-Cleveland Williams matches. I was all Ali, and of course, beer and funk. When was it -- Friday night, dazed, in a stupor, with Michal the cool Russian guy, and Patrik and Liam that I wrapped Michal in a bear hug with a fake Ali-like growl 'Sucka you aint nothin'! I'm dancin! Dancin!' And Michal laughed, and Patrik and all the other Czech guys. They love to see an American talk like that to a Russian, Ivan Drago and Rocky and all that. I even did a touch of the shuffle, like Ali in the corner just before the bell. Jesus.

Anyway. OK, just go back to sleep, you need sleep, remember? Forget it. Just tell Liam you were tired.

'RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'James! You coming?' Nothing

'Yeah, I'm just getting up.' My head feels like there are rattlesnakes making war on herbivores or
something inside. The dream is still there, the one where a chunk of my head just fell out, all of a sudden, and I'm walking around holding this chunk of tissue or maybe brain and I'm thinking should I go to a hospital? And everyone I meet pretends they don't see it. It was a relief to wake up and find at least that hadn't happened yet.

'Has it started?' I ask.

'No,' Liam said. 'They're in the first fight right now. I'd say you've got about an hour.'

'Alright! See you there!'

Suddenly I was excited. Everything came back, like when you're a kid and you wake up on Christmas. The Mayweather-whatisname fight! I was Ali again, on my feet, dancin'! Dance! All night long! Sucka, you aint nothin'!'

I got a shower. It was still dark, just after 5 am. The night before at Pavels, Liam had said the live fight would be broadcast early, 200-crown cover charge. He said he'd get me if I didn't have it.

With the shower, I was definitely up. The fight in Kinshasa, Ali-Foreman, it was at 4 am, the temperatures something close to 90 with the humidity. And through all that he danced! If Ali could do it, you can. But once again, you're not Ali. Be careful.

Outside the streets in Vinohrady were wet, but it was warm. No snow for the past week. I walked to the tram stop. The night trams were still running (or did they stop after 5?). A taxi sat at the corner. I walked by it and kept going. The taxi sped away. Damn, should have at least had him run you down to IP Pavlova.

Maybe you could have got it for like 50 crowns, here- just here, take it, IP Pavlova, dobry? Super! Oh, well. It'll do you good to walk. And just think! Three years ago you would have taken that taxi and paid 300 crowns, and now you can just walk there for free. Some sort of accomplishment.

There were only a few cars out, now and then a tram empty except the last refugees from the bars. I let the fight build up in my head. It was better than coffee. Dance! Stick! Move! I'm pretty! You too ugly! Too ugly to represent! Dance! Dance! Bundini's snake charm rhythms are in my head now ... By the time I got to IP Pavlova I'd pretty much knocked out everyone in the universe, except Ali of course. A strange, somnambulant song hovered in my head. Da-doo-duh-Lo-Ahh-me-fey. Da--doo-la-AAAAYYYY!!!! And strange, blue rhythms, faint rustlings, like the feather sticks jazz drummers use, flickerings and dim crashes.

Oh, but you forgot cash -- again. Might need that. Cross over to the metro station, find an ATM.

The Gold Star (Zlaty S) is on a street with a steep hill overlooking Wenceslas Square. The street was quiet, as it usually is. The place looked closed, and for a minute I was afraid Liam had meant another sport bar.

Come on, he said Sport Bar and we all know there's only one that counts.

It's open though, and when I go in I'm expecting a crush of people, like it is during the Manchester United and Chelsea matches. I'm ready to pay the 200 crown cover. The upstairs is quiet though. I try the doors to the main hall and they're locked. But I can hear a roar, action. Downstairs. Down through a winding set of wooden steps into the basement that looks like an old wine cellar.

The fight's on, but the place isn't that busy. Maybe 20, 30 people. Liam's sitting at table next to the bar. The fight's on two screens, showing on opposite ends.

'It's started?'

'First round,' Liam said.

I went over and ordered a beer. Everyone in the place are male, and mostly British. The bartender is a young, tall Czech girl. But she looks absorbed in the fight as much as the guys. She looks at me a little resentfully when I call her over. 'Just pivo.' 'Pivo?' 'Dik'

The fight! It's blur at first. You shouldn't walk in on a fight already in progress, especially the all-important first round. I'm rushing to catch up, to make some sense of the swirl of mashing flesh, the clashes, Mayweather's flashing jab and hook catching Hatton each time he tries to come in, Hatton coming, coming, getting hit again, the high, big lights, the roars from the crowd, both on tv and off, the roar and silence of the incessant night, the rattlesnakes and herbivores in my head have signed a truce.

'Hatton's from Britain, not to ask the obvious?'

'Yes.' Hatton's wearing a pair of trunks with a huge Union Jack emblazoned on the ass.

I think I started to catch up by the sixth or seventh, when Hatton, already cut over the left eye by Mayweather's stinging and moving style, had Mayweather against the ropes, and Mayweather, in a show of defense, turned his back, and Hatton clubbed him over the back of the skull. Point taken from Hatton, caution from the ref. Both fighters had already been cautioned, Mayweather for using his forearm during the clinches on Hatton's bad eye. 'But the referee's not going to be able to do anything about reducing the intensity of this fight,' Larry Merchant said. Good old Larry, who helped discover the great Joe Frazier.

Listen for a while to Larry's commentary. He's all praise for Mayweather at the moment. 'He can move, he can jab, he can use the Sweet Feet, he can move horizontally ... and Hatton, he's ...'

A bell rings.

'So there's a cut, is there?' Liam asks.

'Yeah. Mayweather doesn't have a mark on his face.' Camera is in both fighters' corners.

'No, Mayweatha‘ looks like he's walking in the park.' Liam acknowledges.

'Is he from Britain?'

'No, Grand Rapids, Michigan.'

'OK.'

Bell again. The fighters are back on the ropes, Hatton pushing up against Mayweather, seeking his chance, one blow that will trigger something, that will shatter Mayweather's incollapsible cool. Again the ref separating them, cautioning, motioning to continue. Mayweather's feet moving, side-stepping, dropping into a crouch to invite Hatton to come in, catching him each time he does, zooming back out of focus, Hatton driving Mayweather to the ropes again (or is Mayweather letting him do that, like Ali in Kinshasa?)

'A little rope a dope?' I ask Liam. His expression is one of patriotic concern for his countryman, though at the moment he’s also passively absorbed in a roll-your-own. He just tips a nod.

Fast forward to the ninth. Hatton comes in once again, and suddenly his head rocks back, he's literally looking up at the sky.

'OHHHHH!!' escapes from everyone.

'Damn,' I said to Liam.

'He won't last this round,' Liam said.

But somehow Hatton manages to survive, mostly by tying Mayweather up.

'I've got it 6- 3' Liam said. 'But even that might be too generous.'

I go up and get another beer at the bell. The ninth's just finished. This time the Czech girl is nicer. 'Good fight?' I ask.

She smiles.

On the TV, we see Hatton's mother and other family members. The mother looks drawn and slightly pale, but composed.

The tenth starts. And soon it's all over. Mayweather, his back to the corner, Hatton coming in, and Mayweather meets him with an astonishing left hook, turning with Hatton as he comes in, driving the blow home. Hatton down. Another great roar.

Hatton up. A flurry from Mayweather, in for the kill. He catches Hatton with two stiff blows, followed by a crushing right. Hatton, with a look of hurt surprise, stumbles and falls backward into a corner.

'THAT'S IT! IT'S ALL OVER!!' one of the announcers cries.

Hatton being helped to his feet. Mayweather, bent over hugging his knees, nearly kissing the ground.
Then the post-fight orgy of emotion and posing begins. The fighters embrace, Mayweather placing his gloved hands over Hatton’s battered head. Everyone's talking about how the fight lived up to the hype.

Now the post-fight hype begins. Larry beside Mayweather, his hand over his shoulder like a proud, concerned grandfather, asking questions while seeming to administer advice. 'You knew, Floyd, didn't you, that you could -' 'And would you agree, Floyd, that -' and Mayweather nodding his head, sweat pouring off of him, thanking everyone in the Mayweather Productions universe, profuse in his praise, to Hatton. 'He showed me why they call him the Big Hit --'

Then Larry with Hatton, again with the paternal (or is it eternal?) questions. Fortunately, Hatton looks and sounds like he's still in possession of his mental faculties. 'At least with this weight class, they can still get up and talk about it five minutes later,' Liam observed. 'Not like the heavyweights.' Hatton saying 'I didn't stick to my strategy,' 'was a bit gung-ho,' and praising Mayweather. A shot of Hatton's mother. The other girls around her, maybe a girlfriend, collapsing in inconsolable grief, while the mother looked bravely on.

Then the station goes off, the TV changes to snow.

'Can we get one more?' ask the group of British guys.

'Sorry, closed.'

The guys pack up and leave with an air of disappointment. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

Liam and I still have half a pint or so.

'Did you have to pay the 200 crowns?' Liam asked.

'No.'

'Me neither. They'll probably put it on the bill.'

'No,' I said. 'She didn't charge me when I paid for the beer.'

'Oh, you've paid your bill?

'Yeah. Just don't say anything.'

'She's been here all night,' Liam said. 'I was here at 430 yesterday watching the football and she was here.'

Liam went up and paid. The girl, who was cleaning up, charged him 50 crowns.

'Dlouhy den,' he said. Long day.

'Co?'

'Dlouhy den.

'Ano. Ano. Mluvisti anglitsky?

Yes, of course.'

'Hope you made some good money today,' Liam said.

'Yes, it's good money. Better than in most other places, but --'

'How did you like the fight?' I asked.

The girl was picking up glasses from the tables. She stopped and came over.

'I don't know,' she said. 'It's first time for me, something like that.' Her face was shining, lost in thought.

'It was something like in Lord of the Rings, so --' Her eyes narrowed and she sort of shivered. 'I don't know, how they can do that, two people do that, just beating, and not think of the future. I am a sensitive person, I am not this way -- I'm sorry I do not have the English to express it.'

'Who did you want to win?' I asked.

'Oh, I am not for one side or the other.'

'But you liked it,' I said.

'Me? What?'

Her face was still shining in a curious way.

'Your face,' I said. 'I can see it.'

'Maybe,' she said. 'I must take some time and absorb it.'

'What's your name?'

'Alena.'

'Nice to meet you.'

Outside, it was just past seven and still dark out. We walked back toward IP Pavlova.

'We're just about near the shortest day of the year,' Liam said.

'Yeah.'

It felt strange to have woken up so early and had beer. It would be good to sleep, but I didn't want to. It
somehow would have felt wrong, to mar the horrific beauty of the fight, the ugly shattered beauty of awakening.

'Mind if I come by for a bit?' I asked. 'You said you had 'When We Were Kings.'

'Yeah, sure. I'm just going to smoke a spliff, see what they say in the English papers about the fight.'

The trams on Sunday morning are really slow. We waited at IP Pavlova, then walked to the next stop at Namesti Miru. The tram was slow in coming so we walked to an all-night potraviny and got some beer. We missed the tram ( it came when we were paying), and ended up walking all the way down Francouska Street, down the hill past Pavels and into Vrsovice. It was beginning to be light out, and it was cloudy. The grey, skulking panalaky, ghosts of Lenin, looked sullen in the early morning, and debris spilled over from the dumpsters in front of the youth hostel.

Something had been broken, smashed against the hard night, but to be honest I wasn't aware of it then. I was only aware of an immense calm. Vrsovice has a beat-up, Philadelphia look to it in places, but at that moment everything looked arresting rather than depressing.

'I like this part of Prague,' I said.

'I don't know,' Liam said. 'It's a bit run down.' He pointed to the debris. 'You'd think they'd come by and pick this stuff up. You can clearly see the difference between here and Namesti Miru, where they've got a bit of money, different city districts.'

'Maybe in a few years it will be better.'

'Yes, I suppose the money will begin to spread outside of the center.'

'It was a great fight though,'

'Yes, it was. What do you think the newspapers will say?' Liam asked. We were going down a set of steps, nearly tripping over a big rock absurdly left at the foot. 'Who the hell put that there? So, you think the papers will say 'MAYWEATHER DOMINATES HATTON?' Well, I suppose it's true.'

'I don't know.' I searched mentally through my old stock of newspapery cliches, to drape a suitable hand-me-down quote over the evening, but gave up.

'I can't remember the last time I actually watched a fight live,' Liam said.

'Me neither. It would have to go back to the Tyson days.'

'Yes, Tyson.'

'I suppose most of the time I stay clear of it because I can't stand all the sleezy, the Don Kings, etc --'

'Yes, the sport itself is good, just everything around it isn't,' Liam said. 'Most of these blokes, even Tyson,
though he was screwed up from childhood issues, most of the blokes are alright, they just get exploited.'

'Yeah.'

'I gotta piss,' Liam said. He went over to a bush. 'But Mayweather he was amazing tonight.'

'Yeah. But Hatton went a good 10 rounds.'

'True, but he just had no answer.'

'Yes, Mayweather just got him each time. At least Mayweather went over and embraced him after.'

'Yes, he was quite gracious in victory, wasn't he?'

We arrived at Liam's place, and took a small, creaky elevator. It was a small, but well-kept flat, with an impressive book and DVD collection. Liam put in 'When We Were Kings' for my benefit, then himself went to his laptop on the kitchen table and went to listen to the BBC's report on the fight.

'Dominant Mayweather Stops Hatton, that's what the BBC is saying,' Liam said. He passed a joint.

Later we checked out ESPN. 'Pretty Convincing,' as the headline. 'They've got it 9- 1.'

'That's fair,' Liam said. 'But what's this?' We were looking at the round-by-round analysis. 'They say here
Hatton won the first round ...'

'Well, ESPN, they've always got different guys who make their own calls. It's probably something like that.'
I sat with a beer and watched the video, Ali talking it up. 'Be truthful, now. Be men. Raise your hands. You got George? You? You got George? You? All you got George? You? No opinion? OK, I just want to know ... '

But who ever knows? That's a stupid question maybe. In those moments you want to be Ali, so often you do, and in the end come up wanting. To have the prizefight on a late night, flashbulbs bursting ... remember the last image? The slow-motion replay when Mayweather had Hatton, and everyone watching knew it, Hatton probably knew it. The two stiff lefts thrown, driven Hatton against the ropes a last time, there was the young woman in the first row. She was clearly a Mayweather fan, dressed in a bright, garish outfit, a bright, garish smile, and the look on her face just as those last ferocious punches were delivered, the message, she had an expression that was almost cannibalistic in its ecstasy, or was it just sheer joy of triumph? Her man had won, her man had delivered, her man had shown the world. And of Hatton's girl, bent over in tears, friends and family bent with her, speaking gently to her, Hatton's mother standing disappointed but proud. A message had been sent there too. Both are worthy, both are to be honored.

That's what Foreman said when he demolished Frazier, and it's also what Foreman said the night Ali demolished him, after he came to his senses and was informed he’d lost.

We drank the Pilsner and watched the rest of the video, Ali taking Foreman in the 8th, the roar of the Zaire crowd, Ali in the dawn striding victorious, touching hands, embracing the joyous African children and women and young men who’d waited up all night and through the long rain after in hopes of catching a glimpse of their hero.

By then it was mid-morning. Liam wanted to crash, so I put on my shoes and got ready to go.

'Right, well thanks for waking me up,‘ I said.

'Sure – maybe see you at Pavels later.‘

... Outside, a stream, grey and fast running, swirls along, twisting through Vrsovice and past Nusle and the other little neighborhoods. Someone's tossed a sofa chair into the stream, and it sits on its side in the fast-moving water. Other random pieces of rotted furniture pockmark the smooth stream. I wish I had a camera. The streets are still quiet, the sky a hard, winter grey. Time to go home. There's a strength there and an emptiness, you feel it, but it's as though they switched places. Sometime during the night they changed – no, it wasn’t then, it was when you woke. What was the girl’s name? Alena. Maybe she really did like it, or at least part of it, at least when the two fighters embraced at the end. At least that maybe.
There will be other fights and other nights. But certainly not again the night Mayweather fought -- not beat -- but fought Hatton. Was it one of the greatest fights of all time? Perhaps not. But it was certainly worth getting out of bed at 5 on a Sunday morning after a roughhouse night. It's why we bother getting up in the first place, right? The night Mayweather fought Hatton! Walking up the hill on Francouzka toward my flat, I felt good. It felt like my city again, the old girl I knew three years ago who surprised me with her charm and loveliness. Later we’d all meet at Konspirace and talk about it all again.

I tried to remember what happened later but it’s mostly static. Liam actually read it and liked the story, but added with a smile, “But I think my role could have been a bit more heroic.” My answer is lost in the static …

Then there was the New Year’s Eve party at Konspirace. This was a couple weeks later. Digging through that same old journal, I found a report on that party.

It was a surprisingly warm evening for December, but the humidity had a chill in it. There's been no snow for several weeks, and the streets were slick and shiny with the rain from earlier. Konspirace was already open and a warm cheery light came from the window. 'Cau, Jamesy!' Franta said. We shook hands. There were a handful of other people. Most of the tables were reserved for the party later, so I sat at the bar with a pint of Bernard, a spicy light beer. On the TV they were watching 'Svejk,' the classic with Rusinsky, again. It was still early, just after seven. I sat at the bar drinking a beer and sending text messages to students and friends wishing Happy New Year. Messages came from Jitka and Katja, and Marja in Finland, Martin in Ireland, Pavel at the Arts Academy, JIrina and Illona.
Then Mirka, a pretty blonde, and her boyfriend Roman, and their little white and brown dog Milos came in. Mirka andRoman are from Slovakia, and have the warm hospitality typical of most Slovaks. Mirka wished me Happy New Year, and offered both cheeks to be kissed, and Roman and I shook hands. Mirka had brought a bottle of Slivovice, a plum brandy famous in Moravia and Slovakia. 'Homemade,' she said. 'My father's brand.' She got all of us a shot and we drank. Good slivovice, if you drink it slow, doesn't taste like alcohol, but only the plums. But MIrka insisted we shoot it so it burned going down. 'Happy New Year!'
They were going to another party so a few minutes later they left. Then Patrik and some other people came, and for a while I joined them at the table. I also went back to the kitchen and said hello and Happy New Year to Islam. He was trying to send a New Year's SMS to his wife and daughter in Bangladesh, but was having problems getting through. He asked to use my phone. We tried sending it on mine, but the only report I got was 'message pending.'
'Sorry,' I said. 'Maybe it's really busy.' He kept trying on his phone and also Pavels.
'I come,' he said. A little while later he came out and sat at the table and everyone made a space for him.
'Did you hear the latest about Bhutto's son?' I asked.
'Yes. But I think he is too young.'
'Nineteen.'
'Yes, they need someone among the older leaders who has more experience.'
'But what if he's got some of his mother in him? It's possible.'
'Yes, it is possible, but he's too young.'
'His mother was very strong.'
'Yes, very strong.'
Tonnie and the guys showed up a couple hours later. By then, the place was pretty busy, but we found them chairs. An American guy named Lane, and Courtney, an American girl, were rolling a joint.
'Here,' I said to Tonnie. 'You can watch something you can't do in America.' We turned and watched Lane.
'Yeah,' Steve said. 'In China too, it was free where we were at.'
I mentioned the dogs too. By then there were two dogs, one a white pit bull with a blank, cartoonish face, and a big black dog. They took turns drifting around the tables, sniffing, or letting themselves be petted. The white dog went over to a young Czech girl sitting by herself. She spoke to the dog and petted it. Encouraged, the dog jumped up onto his hind legs, and then up onto the table and looked out regally upon the bar. Finally, his owner, a Czech girl at our table who was very quiet, got up and fetched him down.
'I miss my dog,' Tonnie said.
'I can't believe you left him in China!'
'We had to. He's with a friend. But we'll send for him once we get back to California.'
Lane passed the joint, and passed it over to Tonnie. They'd had a rough time the past few weeks, so I figured they needed it more than anyone. She smiled and took it, smoked, and passed to Carl and Steve. I went to the bar and got Franta and introduced him, then he brought three pints of Bernard.
'Now you can try a Czech beer,' I said. 'Sorry Pavel doesn't have the Pilsner. That's the most famous one.'
'Oh, I love Pilsner,' Steve said.
'Nazdravi,' I said, raising my glass.
'Nazdravi?'
'Nazdravi.' We clinked glasses.
Islam came out from the kitchen with big plates of chlebicky, Czech open-faced sandwiches with crab, ham, cheese, squeezes of lemon, tomatos. He put them on all the tables. I had a couple, but then let Tonnie and the guys devour the rest.
'It's a nice change from potatos,' Tonnie said with a wan smile.
A Czech guy with a guitar was standing up at the bar, doing a spontaneous concert. He and Pavel and the other guys went through a bunch of American standards, mostly Sixties and Seventies rock, 'Smoke on the Water,' kind of stuff. A Czech guy at our table had a drum, and he beat along. He showed me the inside of the drum. 'Made in the USA' was the label.
'Good drum? Not Chinese?' He nodded.
It was very warm and festive in the bar. You felt on the verge of complete intimacy with everyone in the room, and there was that sentimental feeling of the holidays, when it's OK to go up to complete strangers and clap them on the back without being boorish. 'It reminds me of beach bonfires back in California,' I told Tonnie.
Later on the TV they put on a Tina Turner concert, which was great.
Around 11 to my surprise, Tonnie and the guys rose to go.
'I'm just not feeling too well,' Steve said.
'Well, I'll walk you back.'
I wanted to be back at Konspirace in time for midnight, but the walk was refreshing, the brisk air clearing my head and lungs. There were explosions from fireworks reverberating up and down the long broad avenue that is Francouzka Street. We went up the hill and in the small park near my flat a group of young guys were lighting chasers and rockets.
'It's too bad about everything,' I said to Tonnie. The guys were trailing twenty yards back.
'Yeah,' Tonnie said.
'But it will be good for you to get back to America for a few months, get your bearings.'
That morning they'd told me they'd decided to go back. They were buying a ticket for Carl to Ottawa, where they had a friend who could help him.
'We'd like to come back,' Tonnie said.
'Yeah, just bring enough to get by for a couple months.'
'Yeah.'
Once they were safely back in the flat, I headed back to Konspirace. The young man who'd called himself Death, Smrtak, and whose real name was Tomas, was there along with his girlfriend Andrea. We exchanged greetings and there were other people too. Islam came out from the kitchen and sat again. Then people were lighting sparklers, and on the TV we saw a clock, counting down. Piet! Steri! Tri! Dva! Jedna! Hezky Slvestr! Happy New Year!' I hugged Islam, and the girl Zora with the sparkler and even went around Death and stole a happy kiss from Andrea, who winked and flashed me a happy smile. Death looked confused so I just laughed and shook his hand.
Patrik's group had popped a bottle ofchampagne. They invited me over. We raised glasses, then I went back to the table with Islam. He doesn't drink, but since it was a special occasion, and he was so far from home (both of us) I offered him the glass of champagne. To my surprise, he accepted it. He looked at me before tasting it. 'It's champagne,' I said. 'Really good.'
'Champagne? Very good?'
He drank it and nodded approvingly.
'Happy New Year!'
'Happy New Year.'
'And your message to Bangladesh?' I asked.
Islam tipped his head sideways.
'Maybe it got through,' he said

Maybe it got through. Actually it didn’t now that I remember. I asked Islam the next day about it. The static returns … louder this time, as though passing through a tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel is the present time, or is it another episode of the past? Or a point in the future?

Actually it was Aiden Greenworth again. You remember him, the crazy English guy, the actor. One morning I was on the tram going down Francouzka Street when I saw him going through some trash bins outside the Czech Inn. I got off at the next stop and walked up the hill. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “Just separating these,” Aiden said. I looked and noticed he was separating the paper from the plastic, the glass. Aiden made a disgusted face and gestured upward toward the flats. “When people, in those buidings there, they just dump the shit. Man.” “You should have gloves,” I said. “I know,” said Aiden. “I think Pat said he was bringing some.” Pat was the manager of the inn. I asked Aiden how things were going and he just gave met his tired sideways look. “What do you think? Same as always, man.”

“Oh, but I found a place to live, man! You know the Pension Florida. Or at least, I was living there. ‘Til this morning. The old lady who works there said, “Aiden! You gotta pay rent!” I’m like … uh … Me? I mean, I try, when I can, you know, to pay a little something. But … Man. I’m the only one who’s been doing all the work around there! The place is a shithole man. I cleaned the whole kitchen. Opened the cupboard and it was just like, ‘Ugh!’ And the past week or so there have been about maybe eight raids by the police. Checking for drugs. Checking passports. You know a lot of Ukrainians live there. So the old lady, she comes to me and says, ‘You gotta pay rent!’ and I’m like, ‘Me? I wouldn’t pay a bloody penny to live here!”

Anyone who knew Aiden for any length of time had heard these kind of rants before. Most of them revolve the three main, perpetually unresolved crisis points in his life. Chiefly these were: a) his ex, who was constantly hounding him for child support, b) his inability to hold down a regular job and c) to pay all the people who loaned him money, who sustained him on a daily basis.

Actually Aiden worked as often as he could, and no one worked harder at being unemployed than he did. At one point when I knew him he was doing fairly well with his acting. He had found a well-paying small role in a Hollywood production filmed in Prague, I forget the name of the film, it was some kind of “Lord of the Rings” knock-off and Aiden played a swashbuckler or something. With his wild personality and hard Hull City accent, it wasn’t difficult to imagine him in the part. He also found a number of smaller acting jobs, for instance as a rowdy football fan during a bus scene in “Eurotrip,” TV commercials, student films at the Prague Film School, which was not far from the Globe. In the ten years he lived in Prague, he had been, besides an actor, at turns short-order cook, bar man, waiter, English teacher, construction worker, and, as you saw earlier, even hat seller. For a long spell he wasn’t able to get work because he had lost his passport. A friend loaned him the money for the passport, but then the financial crisis hit, and people in Prague just weren’t hiring.

I liked Aiden; most people did, if they were willing to put up with his manic personality and trunkload of unsolvable problems. He was always ready for conversation; speaking for him seemed at times like his ball and chain. Even when there were times when he was clearly tired, beat, when he seemed to hit a new low, and when you clearly were not the company he’d prefer to share his troubles with, he’d still gradually, then like a fast-moving stream, engulf you with whatever consumed him at the moment.

He was really into fantasy books, and from time to time appeared to be hard at work on his own fantasy series. I couldn’t tell you what it was all about; an elaborate fantasy kingdom full of magic and sorcery and ancient races, all of which he related to me over beers or coffee, at the Globe or Conspirace, or wherever I happened to run into him. Sometimes I listened, but most of the time I just let him run on because you could see it distracted him from his troubles.

He and Liam had a testy relationship, though they usually got on fine when the football was on, other than the fact Aiden couldn’t resist rejoicing whenever United lost or Liverpool won. Liam generally disapproved of Aiden though and Aiden knew well enough that Liam was one person he couldn’t expect to borrow money from, since there was no guaranteeing when he could repay it. Though in Aiden’s defense, in my case anyway, he always eventually paid me back.

That morning as he sifted through trash at the Czech Inn I couldn’t help but feel sympathy. His problems, though many of them self-created, could be tiresome but you had to admit that here was a guy who was a survivor. After all, he had one sister back in England who had spent years in a psychiatric hospital, and mental illness ran in the family. I think that’s why it bothered him when people around Prague who knew him always jokingly referred to him as “Crazy” Aiden. If you called him that, he’d look at you: “Really?” he’d say, mock astonishment on his face. “Wow. Man. I have never heard that before. Man. You are the first to ever call me that.” His reaction would be the same, doubtless, if any of the people passing by at that moment had said anything about him sifting the trash. If you told him he needed to find a job, he’d say, “Wow, man. I never thought of that. I just love digging through trash, you know. It’s my dream, man.” The last image I have of him that day is he finished sifting the trash, then reached down and lifted up a giant toaster. “Industrial size,” he said. “They use them in restaurants.” Aiden wanted to know if I knew anyone interested in buying it. I told him to try Konspirace.

“James, this is the system of money,” Islam was fond of saying. “ give you money, you give me money. Every day we must fight or no money. We are fighting every day for money so we can give money for flat, for food, for beer. Money is never one time one place. Always moving. This is the system of money. In my country, Bangladesh , he who is leader has all money. People is poor. In this system there cannot be good leader who is have more money than people. To be leader must one be serving people. In America you have this. President is not richest man. His salary is not so high. He must be serve people … but not making war. Bombing is not only solution. Must be negotiate …”

These fragments appeared often in my conversations with Islam. We didn’t talk that often, but when we got past the day to day, Islam tended to lean toward political, philosophical discussions. It was never heated debate, on the contrary rather easy going since we generally agreed on most things. After Bhutto’s assassination we wondered who her successor would be, and later, debated whether Hillary or Obama should get the nomination. Islam actually preferred Hillary (“With her husband,” Islam said. “You get two good leaders.”) but he was happy later on when Obama won.

Aiden and I had these kinds of discussions too, but I didn’t enjoy them as much with Aiden. He was too manic, grabbed a point and ran away with it so far that you ended up losing interest. For instance, the 9/11 bombings he was convinced were a US government conspiracy and anyone who disagreed was an idiot, no matter how many beers you bought him. Liam and I occasionally talked politics, and I did sometimes with the Zaba crowd, but I later on learned not too because after a certain point with beer I became defensive and rude.

·

Take the night of Obama’s victory, for instance. No, actually it was the day of his inauguration. That afternoon, my last class canceled, I wandered over to the Globe, a cafe and bookstore in Prague's New Town that caters to an English and American clientele. I'd noticed on my last visit that the cafe would have the Obama inauguration broadcast in full on its big screen and I looked forward to tuning in over a pint of Pilsner and a heaping plate of nachos.
But it was not to be. The owner, an generally affable American guy, received me curtly.
'Sorry we're all booked,' he said. It was still a good two hours before the start (the inauguration was to start at five o'clock Czech time), and at the moment the tables were generally still empty.
'But can't I just sit for a while?' He waved me off.
'I've got to be tough about this,' he insisted, as though playing back a pre-rehearsed speech. 'If I let you sit, or anybody sit, then when the people who've reserved seats show up -- and this has been advertised the past two weeks -- there could be problems. I don't need it. Sorry.'
I left, feeling the chagrin of a regular customer but nevertheless understanding.
Where else to go? Well, there was another American cafe near Wenceslas Square, Jama, which had also advertised an inauguration party. But something told me that place was probably booked too.
Ah, wait! Of course, the Czech Inn. This establishment, a hostel run by a British expat, happens to be right in my own neighborhood of Vrsovice, It also happens to have a bar with a big-screen TV that usually is played without sound because the girl bartenders would rather hear music than listen to Manchester United and their loutish fans. But something told me I should give the place a try.
The manager, as it turned out, was not only cool with the idea, he even offered to -- turn up the volume!
'Shall we have it in sound?' he asked affably.
(Amen, brother) 'Sure, why not?' is what I really said.
Of course by then it was three, and I had two hours to wait. The manager suggested a beer to help cool this long interval, and I grudgingly accepted. By the time the inauguration started in earnest, I was well into my fourth, and feeling it, but the excitement was such that it didn't matter. Gradually the cafe filled up with travelers, some of whom were just returning from an afternoon of sightseeing and others perhaps just waking up from reveling in the center's bars and discos the night (and morning) before.
It wasn't a big crowd, hardly; about twenty people, but just enough to give the necessary touch of 'moment.' Laptops were set aside, mp3 players temporarily turned off; travelers in faded jeans, laden with backpacks, they forgot their itinerary, brushed off fatigue, ordered pints and tuned in with bright, alert faces. It should be noted the majority were Americans, or at least seemed to be.
Not that it mattered. I've watched other presidential inaugurations; I remember watching Clinton's inauguration while a 21-year-old seaman recruit at the former Naval Facility in Ferndale, California, and Bush's address while covering the local Republicans' reaction while at the Times-Standard. But this time, as it was for everyone else, there was something special, and I was glad to be in this small cafe in Prague, surrounded by a few fellow stranded countrymen. Anyway, when it wrapped up I was a bit unsteady from the excitement, the moment of history, and my sixth pint of Bohemian milk. Unsteady? I was horsed, trollied, three sheets. I was on a certain planet where visions of Obama swam and fluttered, and people chanted and frolicked, and purple ponies nay-ed and kicked up their happy little heels.
I probably should have tuned in more closely to Obama's admonition for a 'new era of responsibility.' I should have just went home, called it a night. Instead, I tottered and swayed, like a senile hippopotamus, over the ice-covered cobblestone street (a bad idea: one slip on the ice could mean one broken arm one broken head)
Still, I decided, for Obama, that one more was in order. So I settled on Rozjety Zaby, which in Czech means, 'The Squashed Frog.'
The 'Frog,' as the locals call it, was comparatively quiet, a rather dour Tuesday crowd. Most of the faces were familiar. On the computer, YouTube was up (we use it as a jukebox) and a friend was playing hip hop videos. Rather boorishly I greeted everyone with 'Obama' jibberish and hoots and nonsense, and even asked (and was granted permission) to bring up the inauguration, which was already on YouTube. As Obama's speech started, I ordered a beer and prepared to share my 'moment' with everyone. The response was noticeably lukewarm.
'James, all right, all right. We don't care, OK?'
'James, who in America cares about the Czech president? Don't you see?'
Beerfully, I became defensive. Beerfully, aggressively, I proclaimed Obama's greatness. I uttered beer-soaked oaths and curses. I called one guy, a good friend, a Communist. It became less clear and more offensive after that. I vaguely recall several shouting matches. A friend, this one British, happened to come in. 'James! Calm down, man!' Another friend, this one Czech, reminded me of a promise I'd made him give that if I ever got too belligerent to knock me out. He didn't, but the promise was repeated.
Somehow, eventually, I got out and wandered down to -- incredibly -- another bar, where I had another beer and had a few other minor mishaps before finally going home.
The next day, sober, chastened, I returned to the Frog.
The friend who I had accused of Communist tendencies was there. "Don't talk to me right now, OK?' he said as I offered a hand.
Others came in. They'd heard about it. Others at the bar remarked on it.
'Byl jsem novy planet,' I said to some who offered curious ears. In Czech that means: I was on a new planet.'
Later, a girl who'd received some of the benefits of my planetary excursions came in. I offered an apology.
'It was just the beer and too much excitement,' I said. 'Like when your team wins the championship.'
She nodded.
'But James, be careful. Obama-- I understand. But he is only a man. Uvidime.' In Czech, that means: 'We'll see,' a phrase Czechs often use.
'Uvidime,' I said.

Actually the friend who bailed me out that night was none other than Aiden Greenworth, “Crazy Aiden.”

I remember a few days later I ran into him at the Czech Inn. He was at the bar waiting for one of the girls to get off work. Winter had come and it was snowing, and the girl had taken pity on him and was allowing him to say at her flat. While he waited I sat and had a beer.

“Man,” Aiden said. “You should have seen the look in your eye the other night!” He looked at me with a strange admiration. “People say I’m crazy! I wished I had a camera! I was thinking, ‘Man, this ‘Jim.’ That’s who it is you know. You’re a nice guy and all, but there are times like that, when you’ve been drinking, and I see it. It’s not you, it’s Jim. He just comes roaring out of you man like a freight train and…! Wow! We both can be that way! I think in your case your problem is you’re too nice. You’re a doormat. You let people walk over you and then when you get to drinking, you overcompensate. This ‘Jim’ comes out and wants to knock everyone over. Really, really! You know what I think? You should stand up for yourself more. Stand up and say, “I’m a badass motherfucker, man!” Then people wouldn’t walk over you so much and Jim would be happy. He wouldn’t want to come out so much.”

I wasn’t sure how much I agreed with all that, but there was some truth in it, I suppose. A lot of those times are filled with so much static that I fear that my ears will burst. Like that night I kicked the car, or the night with Hana, a Slovak girl I was seeing for awhile. One night after too much too drink I got agressive and pushed her. She fell right on the platform while the metro was coming. I had already left in a kind of fog. When I came to my senses and went back she was already gone. The next day she met me and she was surprisingly fine, a bit subdued. We spent the day walking together through the city and at one point sat on a bench by the Vltava and looked out at the castle. I had already apologized for what happened and she understood, but in that moment I remember watching the feelings she had for me evaporate in the sunlight. She stared straight ahead, at one point breaking into tears as she recalled how some people helped her to her feet and she was crying, and they asked if she wanted them to call the police and she had told them no. And for me, listening to her, and feeling as sorry as I had ever felt about anything, looked out at the castle, the river. It all looked so beautiful, and on that morning we should have been enjoying it together, instead of sitting at a funeral, which is what our relationship had become in that one moment. Looking back, I think that’s where my dream of Prague came to an end. Not getting the visa, which came later, was just an afterthought. Perhaps too that is why I eventually sought out, or found my way, to Donska Street. There, in Islam’s calm presense, in the regular anonymity of the Zaba and Konspirace, I could hide from all those things, drown the pain and disappointment that had replaced the first bright hopes upon my arrival in the city.

Yes, maybe “Jim,” as Aiden said, was behind it all. A hungry, frustrated soul, capable of violence, that came out from time to time. Ironically, Jim always seemed to break out on evenings when I was having a really good time. Like a doppelganger, Jim would burst in and smash everything just when the evening had acquired a rosy glow.

There were times when Jim even made his appearance at the flat. Once Islam and his girlfriend Monika were in the bedroom and I came home drunk and for some reason began yelling about not ever having any privacy. Islam came out, it’s one of the few times I recall him ever becoming angry. He said I could leave the flat at the first of the month. In the end I apologized and he changed his mind, partly out of need but also because we were friends. “James, you must leave drinking. It is not living. This drinking and fighting.”

And it happened once with Sugit also. I came home late and began on a tirade. “Every day must fight! Every day must fight.” I said it in a mocking way. “Always the same. Must fight.” I was drunk and I wanted to be cruel. I wanted to punish Sugit for my despair, my loneliness. In the next room I could hear him crying. I think he was homesick and my cruelty just brought it out. In the morning I awoke, heartsick, and wrote him a letter apologizing and telling him he was my friend. He was OK after that but still it was another harrowing example of “Jim” having his way in the night, another morning where I woke up in Prague and feeling shattered and alone and afraid.

Not long before Islam left for Italy we went to see Obama in Prague. The city was really excited he was coming. I was at the Czech Inn the afternoon Obama arrived, on the TV there was footage of Obama and the first lady getting on Air Force One to depart for the G20 Summit in London.
A buzz went through me, and the bartender looked up.
'So he'll be here -- when?' the bartender asked, while tending the till.
'Saturday,' I answered. We exchanged an anticipatory nod.
We went over details, all of which were in the Czech news for days (along with the collapse of the Czech government, right in the middle of the Czechs' turn at the rotating EU presidency).

There was speculation in the press for weeks. Ideally, Obama indicated he wanted to give a public speech with the Prague Castle in the background. The best spot would have been Letna Park on a high hill above the city with the prerequisite regal view; however, that site is out of commission at the moment because of ongoing construction on a road tunnel connecting to the center. Other spots considered included in front of the Rudolfinium and Old Town Square. As an aside, personally I thought Wenceslas Square, where Havel famously gave his speech and thousands of Czechs symbolically jingled keys signaling the end of the Communist era in 1989. I imagined Obama saying something like, 'In the past, you've gathered here to ... Today together we stand here together ...' Actually, I saw Tomas at Konspirace and rant hat idea by him. He shook his head.
'Too kitsch?' I asked.
'Not kitsch,' he said after a moment. 'Just too -- I don't know -- god-like.'

During Bush's visit, the main item on the menu was the U.S. proposed missile defense shield for Europe, the radar which would be located in a base an hour outside Prague. Polls then and now show most Czechs don't want the radar.
It wasn’t clear in the news reports how much Obama would talk about the radar. One news report indicated his speech would focus on the need to prevent 'nuclear proliferation.' Incidentally, I was at Charles University the other day, just out of curiosity, and noticed a poster for an anti-radar demonstration planned by students at Wenceslas Square on Sunday afternoon, so I decided to drop by there, though I didn’t expect to hear anything new or different from the demonstration I’d seen the summer before.

Islam and I planned to get up early. Together we've had many late night discussions about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama, etc.
The night before, as I set my alarm, Islam joked. But James,' he said. 'I am Muslim! The security will think I am bid Laden's brother!'
In mock fashion, I searched him for explosives.

I wrote a report for my old newspaper in California. Because of some confusion over where to file, the story ended up too late and not running. I kept it and, for no other reason than it shows my last adventure with Islam, will publish it here:

Obama and the Prague Spring

As we entered the square, with the dawn breaking over St. Vitus Cathedral and a hazy mist surrounding the far away spires of Vysehrad, a hush settled over those who would be near the podium when the president made his speech, three hours away.
'I can't believe this -- can you believe this?' said an American guy next to me, as he thanked his host.
His excitement was justified.
After all, it was a gorgeous spring day, the sun casting the statue of Tomas Masaryk, the First Republic president, champion of democracy and friend of Woodrow Wilson, in silhouette; indeed, later when Obama delivered his speech, the podium was positioned thus that it seemed the ghost of Masaryk were looking at Obama, considering every word.
But it was more than that. This spring is significant, the year marking the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution which ended a half century of Communist rule, and also this year began with the Czechs assuming the EU presidency. Thus, this particular gorgeous morning, slightly over 40 years since the 1968 Prague Spring, that brief flowering of democracy and intellectual fire that was crushed later that same year when Soviet troops invaded the city, it seemed to me that yes, finally, Prague Spring had returned, and with poetic convenience, in time to reflect the excitement and hope of Obama's first international tour as president.
Certainly these feelings were reinforced when, about a quarter after 10 a .m., the president and First Lady Michelle ascended the podium, which was beautifully decked out in an array of spring flowers. The multitudes that had been waiting since dawn exploded. On the speakers, the chords of Smetana's 'Vltava,' the Czechs' unofficial national anthem, swelled and rolled over the sea of people.
I still wanted to pinch myself. By a stroke of luck, one of my students, Jitka, has a daughter, Andrea, who was working the event as a volunteer and had given me an invitation to be in the special section near the podium, about 10 meters away from the president.
Actually, it wasn't quite that easy. Thousands were already squeezed into the narrow streets around the castle, and all were expectant, like when you're waiting to get a visa. All were determined to get in. A girl with a bull horn entreated the crowd, in Czech and English, to move aside to let those with invitations pass through. This process went slowly, but just as the crowd threatened to get sullen, an army of police, in perfect, quiet order streamed by. The procession, single-file, took the better part of 10 minutes to pass entirely (a reminder that reports indicated 4,000 police would be on hand). This display subdued the crowd, and just then my mobile rang. It was Andrea. She asked where I was and when I told her, I began jumping up, gesticulating, over the crowd. Then I saw her wave. It was the very same girl who was doing crowd control. Seeing this, the crowd, at turns generously and grudgingly, let me pass.
Andrea handed me the invitations. There were three.
Actually, I'd brought only Islam, my Bangladeshe flatmate, and I'd lost him. One minute he was behind me, then he was gone. I scanned the crowd.
'He's very short,' I explained to Andrea. But there were more people coming and it was impossible to see him.
'So you can wait,' Andrea said. She wanted to help.
'They are expecting maybe 30,000,' she said as we both scanned the crowd
I waited for a few minutes, still scanning the crowd. After a few minutes, hating myself for abandoning my friend, I went on through the security gates.
The crowd was a tossed salad of nationalities, more than a few Americans. The closest feeling I could compare would be at a summer festival. Or a trip to the Foreign Police (see Via Prague, July 2008). Everyone, at least in the invited section (perhaps we were subconsciously 'earning our tickets') looked at each other and exchanged little grins of expectation. Unfortunately, the dense crowd wasn't for everybody. One young woman feinted, perhaps from lack of air, and had to be taken away and helped by personnel on hand.
Beforehand student volunteers had passed out Czech and American flags, and these waved in the air covering the crowds like red, white and blue confetti. I was waving an American flag myself. Surrounding me were a German family, a young man from Brussels working at Exxon in Prague, an elderly American woman and her granddaughter. The German family were very excited. 'So in America Obama is much more famous than Bush?' the German man asked. By 'famous,' a slight language mis-transfer, I gathered he meant 'popular.'
At one point, I turned to the elderly American woman and, in somewhat incautious reference to the Bush Administration, said it felt good to proudly wave the flag again. The woman fixed me with a reproachful eye.
'Always be proud of that flag,' she said. 'People have died for you to wave it.' The granddaughter pulled the woman aside and whispered something. 'What?' the woman said. 'I'm right, I think.'
All of this was stampeded out during the Obamas' entrance. The president flashed the smile we'd seen so often on TV, in news reports. Michelle Obama shared the spotlight with ease, giving her husband a 'go on and do it' pat on the arm before retiring off stage. It struck me that I'd always found the couple attractive and charismatic, but that in person -- was it possible?-- they were even more attractive and charismatic. The crowd seemed to agree, for the response was deafening, like at a rock concert. No, not just a rock concert. It was almost like the Beatles were in town.
Even Obama, accustomed to the mania of such stops, and who earlier looked a bit sleepy on the TV screen showing him arriving at the Castle with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, seemed impressed by the fervor of the greeting.
'Thank you, thank you,' he repeated. 'And to paraphrase one of my predecessors, I'm proud to be the man who brought Michelle Obama to Prague!'
A large video screen offered both a view for those on the far side of the square, and Czech subtitles.
I won't spend a lot of time on the president's speech, which lasted about 30 minutes (to the disappointment of some in the crowd, including the young man from Brussels, who said he'd expected at least an hour). Most of the president's speech focused on the need for Europe and America to work together on reducing and ultimately eliminating the nuclear threat. The crowd listened attentively to this part of the speech, occasionally responding with mild shouts of approval. But the best cheers came, as it always has, when Obama drew upon his own personal journey, a journey that Europeans, Czechs included, have found fascinating.
Pointing at the statue of Masaryk, whom Obama called 'a hero to the Czech people,' the president reminded his audience, many of whom can still remember the life behind the Iron Curtain, that just 20 years ago many people didn't believe that the Berlin Wall would ever be toppled, just as in America nobody would have foreseen a black man becoming president.
'Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague,' Obama continued. 'And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams.
We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change.'
In light of the current fight to contain the spread of destructive nuclear weapons, Obama warned the audience about the danger of 'fatalism,' that it's impossible to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
'This goal will not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.'
I have a vivid memory of an American man standing a few feet away from me, and listening, shouted, 'So -- Disarm!' which apparently went unheard.
Obama made only one brief mention of the U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield, including a radar in the Czech Republic, in Europe. He called the Czechs and the people of Poland, where the missiles would be located, 'courageous.'
Finally, but most importantly, he won Czech cheers by using the phrase 'samota revoluce,' referring to the 89 Velvet Revolution. He spoke Czech. ('He was well prepared,' some would later remark, in varying tones, both complimentary and with studied skepticism).
Obama's speech, particularly its relatively general tone and brevity in regards to the radar, of course didn't send everyone into swoons of praise.
A glance at Ceskenoviny.cz press survey shows that while many were impressed by Obama's poise, statesmanship and charisma, critics said the speech was high on dazzle and short on specifics and muddled by unclear policies.
'A star-filling emptiness,' wrote Petr Fischer in the daily Hospodarske noviny.
'Barack Obama's stay in Prague was disappointing as he behaved like a desperately undecided man who is only able to speak nicely,' griped Teodor Marjanovic in Mlada fronta Dnes
Others complained that Obama had failed also to respond to Czech Prime Minister's controversial statement last week that the president's stimulus package, in reponse to the global financial crisis, is 'the road to hell.'
But the Czech press also had some praise. All found him an engaging speaker and compelling personality.
Barack Obama is really able to provoke hopes, Alexandr Mitrofanov wrote in Pravo.
President Klaus, on a radio show, praised the speech as 'surprisingly Czech, surprisingly Prague,' meaning he was surprised by the number of references Obama made to the country's history.
Also, my friend Tomas, also a teacher who plans to share the speech with his Czech students, wasn't won over by the critics.
'I see what they're saying about the need for specifics,' Tomas said. 'But with Obama, it's not necessarily about the details. It's the idealism, the optimism I think he represents.'
As for the crowd, most of them (myself included) appeared too star-struck immediately after the speech to be able to comment. Plus everyone was a bit tired, from waking up so early and from the hours of build-up and then sudden release of tremendous excitement.
As I readied to leave, the elderly American woman who'd reproached me earlier offered a warm smile.
'Just remember,' she said, indicating the little flag that now drooped at my side. 'Always be proud of that flag.'
'It was better here than it was last summer in Berlin,' I overheard one American girl saying to her friends, as the throng slowly moved out of the square and down the hill into Prague's narrow streets. She was referring to Obama's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate.
'Yeah?' her friend said.
'Yeah, (in Berlin) it was too hot and there was no water anywhere.'
I walked down the hill. On the street there were a dozen people, all dressed in white costumes, their faces covered in white, expressionless masks. Signs in front of them indicated they were 'Invisible People.' Indeed, soundless too, for they made no sound, but merely looked out like ghosts in the morning.
'Nuclear Disarmament,' read one sign. 'The 70 percent of Czechs who don't want the radar are invisible,' read another.
At the bottom of the hill I waited for a tram, but then realizing traffic was probably tied up, decided to walk across the Vltava River. The earlier mists had burned off and it was a languid spring morning, and the buzz of the day's events was still strong. A tram came just as I crossed the river at the National Theater. It was packed with people coming from the castle. But as it made its way past Charles Square and up the hill toward Peace Square, the tram slowly emptied and there was room to be comfortable. I noticed an elderly couple, Czechs, sitting near the back. They had just come from the speech, and were dressed in their best clothes, the man wearing a tie, salt-and-pepper wool jacket and a hat, and the woman looked similarly prim and respectable. The woman was holding an American flag, a remnant, as mine was, of the day. They were both looking out the window, a look of dreamy contentedness in their eyes. At the next stop a young Czech woman got off, along with her son, he not much more than a toddler. In one hand he held his mother's hand, in the other an American flag. Watching them get off, I thought again about Obama's speech, and the elderly woman. Perhaps the critics are right; Obama is short on specifics at times, but I would say at this point he's offered something else; not just shining rhetoric, but something that I hope in time will mature and matter. He's perhaps given the heart of Europe, so long on the wrong side of history, a chance to perhaps be on the right side this time.
But wait, wait, hold it -- the 'right' side?
Did I forget something? Like, the fact that just two weeks ago the current Czech government collapsed in a no-confidence vote? That polls had indicated some two-thirds of Czechs don't want the radar?
'Ah, you are very optimistic.'
Yes, this came about hour later at Shakespeare and Sons, where I'd gone to cool my head off with a beer and relate the morning's events to the handful of Czech acquaintances. The man I was speaking to was Vratislav Brabinec, saxophonist for the legendary Czech group Plastic People of the Universe. The group was the country's foremost underground avant-garde group during Communism, and still plays all over the world today. Vratislav, now 66, lives in my neighborhood and hangs out at Shakespeare, but until now I'd always been too shy to speak to him. He eagerly listened to my account, a sparkle occasionally gleaming behind his owl-shaped glasses. We talked for a while about Prague Spring.
'It must have been a very optimistic time,' I offered.
'Yes,' Vratislav said, thinking. 'Unfortunately it turned out to be false optimism. I ended up spending time in prison.'
'Why?' I asked.
He laughed wryly.
'For being a jazz musician.'
'I hope it's not that way with Obama,' I said later. 'I mean, I hope it's not all false optimism.'
'Me too,' my companion said.
I told Vratislav my favorite Czech expression was 'uvidime,' which means, 'We'll see.'
He laughed.
'That's your favorite?' We sat and the barman brought me a beer and refilled Vratislav's wine glass, and we talked about jazz, his band, the economic crisis, the Bible, and Obama. The details aren't important, except to say when we finished Vratislav crowned me 'an optimist,' which I suppose I am, but as always, a cautious one.
When I got home later my flatmate Islam, from Bangladesh, was finishing a meal with his friend Sujit. I felt bad because Islam and I had set out together that morning, but in the crush and confusion of the crowds we'd become separated. So instead of being near the podium with me, Islam had watched everything in the general public section.
'It's OK,' Islam said. 'There was nothing you could do. The crowd was very crazy.'
I asked what he had thought of Obama.
'Very good,' he said. 'Many people were there. If many people are there you must be good. I think Obama is very good.'
Later, I noticed Islam had taken the American flag I'd brought home from the speech and put it up on the refrigerator.

The reader will notice two things that stand out in this rather overblown account. One, that it repeats the meeting with the jazz musician Vratislav, who if he reads this might find himself popping up not once, but twice, in a story not of his choosing. Two, the story shows us again, Islam and I, in a pushing, crowded throng, with police all over the police. We always seemed to find each other in these situations, and to lose each other in the crowd. Always “fighting.” Fight for visa, fight to see the president.

Actually the brothers Sugit and Nikash were very amused when they heard what happened. They chided Islam for being too easygoing. They said he should have been more aggressive, should have pushed his way through the crowd.

“Life is fight, everyday must we fight.” That was what Islam always said, and the brothers. Liam didn’t think so much of this philosophy. “The underclass,” he remarked as we sat one night talking about Islam and the brothers. “But I still think in your case it’s all part of the same mentality you’ve allowed yourself to slip into. It’s easy. All this ‘Life is fight,’ business. It just gives you a reason to sit on your problems and not do anything about them or to wait for somebody else to solve them for you.”

He didn’t have any problem with Islam, and in fact was sympathetic. When he heard Islam was leaving for Italy , he asked if I was going to get Islam a farewell gift. I hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, but really you should!” Liam said. “Really, the way you talk about him, I get the impression that he means a lot to you. In that case you really should get him something.”

I gave it some thought, but to be honest had no idea of a suitable gift. Something practical, perhaps, like phone credit so he could keep in touch. But then that seemed paltry. Or even just a card. In the end I didn’t get him anything. Islam himself didn’t seem to expect anything; on the contrary I suspect that he thought it best I look after my money and let him look out for himself.