Via Prague

I finally screwed up the courage to tell my schools about the visa situation, and that I was leaving for Istanbul. And there was no problem at all; they were completely understanding, and offered help if I needed it. They also arranged to pay me early in time for my departure. All they asked was that I provide a run-down of my classes for the next teacher.
I guess it’s really true: what seems so difficult in our minds is often quite easy, if you just face it and take a step forward. Leaving the school that morning, I felt relieved, elated. My life was set in motion again, after so many months of suspension, self-created drama and crippling inertia.

Sugit already knew I was leaving. He had a friend, a guy from Pakistan, who was to take over my bed after I left, or maybe even before, which would allow us to split the rent threeways and save money. Ah, the immigrant life! Nikash was still at the camp, and we weren’t sure when he would be back, but Sugit said most likely Nikash would join Islam in Italy.

Friday … again. A sultry morning; Prague was having a steam bath, a fragrant dampness hung in the air. At the government office my student was away in Brussells, so I took the tram to Veletrzni Street and had breakfast at the Bagel. It was pay day so I treated myself to three eggs, sausage and potatoes, but I couldn’t finish it. I was too full of thoughts about the near future. It felt good to be thinking ahead again, for a change. I wondered how things were going for Islam in Italy. Probably about the same. Sugit said he tried to call him a few times but had not got through. It was too bad I didn’t get a chance to tell Islam about my plans, but I knew what he would have said. Sitting in the café that morning, I thought again of that Saturday afternoon a year before, in autumn, when Islam and I took the bus together and just rode all over Prague. It was relaxing, not having any particular destination, not having to fight for once, just watching the people get on and off the bus, the trees in all their fall colors, the leaves falling in the streets. It was then, or maybe I’m thinking of another time, when we decided to go to Prague Castle. I’d been there many times, but Islam had never been there before, not in the whole two years he’d lived in the city. We walked through one of the entrances into the main courtyard, and waited in line to get into St. Vitus. As we waited Islam’s eyes roamed upward over the Gothic and Baroque spires, the intricate carvings, and I remember feeling happy that he was getting to see something of the city besides the bar and the Foreign Police. We went inside the cathedral, and the vast interior was dark-lit and somber-quiet, though there were many tourists. We checked out the various frescos, the icons, Jesus and Mary, the saints, and then went outside and walked down the hill past the Golden Avenue and to Mala Strana. The visit seemed to revive Islam. We walked down the hill in high spirits.

And then there were the times I went with him when Islam had to get things for the restaurant. He was always doing stuff like that, going to the markets to check out the prices for fish and chicken, fresh potatoes. “Fresh is best,” he would say. “Best for the health.” He usually bought everything for the bar, but he brought some of it home too. Unfortunately not enough people at the bar were buying his curry dishes, so he tried other things: vegetable sandwiches, egg sandwiches, a kind of chicken burger he slapped together, to serve as munchies for the regulars after they smoked their joints. They sold, but not nearly enough, and after that I think, along with his personal problems, is when Islam started to stop caring. He had a computer in the kitchen and very often, after I’d finished teaching, I dropped by the bar to see him. He’d be sitting at the computer, either reading the news (in English or Bangladeshe), listening to Bangladeshe music, or calling home. There were all these free Internet call services he was always digging up.
Sometimes I’d sit and discuss the day’s news with him. We talked of the war, of Afghanistan and Iraq, of the uprising by the militia in Bangladesh, of Bush, Bin Laden, and later, Obama. Once, together, we wrote a short article for my old newspaper, “Bombing is not the (only) solution,” and it got posted online. The only comment we got was from someone named Anonymous who wrote: “I guess calling it a blog is an excuse for poor writing. This is the worst I’ve read in a long time. Painful actually.”
It’s true it was poorly written. That was my fault – I was half tanked when I wrote it. I showed the comment to Islam and he said, “That’s because they don’t understand. It’s Ok. We know there cannot be only bombing and killing.”
Not long after that the bar manager told Islam to get rid of the computer. He said it was because he was afraid a health code inspector might drop by, but really I think it was because he thought Islam was spending too much time on the computer, or maybe he was trying to cut costs.
Later, when the bar manager wouldn’t pay him the back wages, Islam fumed about it privately, I know he did, but he didn’t want to raise a fuss. He told me he thought about making a call to the police and telling them that marijuana was being bought and sold at the bar, but then he discarded that idea. He didn’t want to make trouble.

August. What a strange summer it’s been! Yesterday, Sunday, was a crystal clear day, towering blue skies. The streets were dead: everyone in the neighborhood, in all of Prague for that matter, had fled the city for the countryside, the cottages and festivals.. In the evening the skies darkened again and a huge thunderstorm erupted and it rained all night.
The cafes in the center were empty; on Old Town Square the tables were set out on the square waiting for guests. What few tourists there were drifted about aimlessly, seeking amusement, diversion. In five years, I couldn’t remember such a slow season, but then the newspapers had commented on it too. Some said it was the crisis. Others said tourists had already seen Prague, and didn’t return because of poor city services, pickpockets, scamming taxi drivers, or that the strong crown had driven tourists further east, toward Bulgaria, Latvia, other cheaper holiday destinations. For me it was symbolic: for five years I’d been a kind of permanent tourist in Prague. Now it was time to move forward, to get back to work. “Life is fight,” we said. “Without fight everything is finished.”

And yet, in those last days, I couldn’t recall the city ever looking lovelier. And I thought again of my abortive novel, “Beyond the AM Crowd.” In the closing pages of that story, the ex-journalist, having fled to Prague to escape his “crisis,” over war, of lost love, of “confusion,” and after his arrival, had sunk into drink and depression, had beaten a Communist, landed on the front page of Czech newspapers, went into hiding; after all of this, he goes to Zofin Island and watches a pair of ducks, who conveniently swim by, allowing him to ponder why they swam against the current rather than with it. In those closing moments, too, the unnamed hero reflects on the beauty of his fading city. Is it true that in our creative acts, no matter how contrived or inspired, good or bad, that they are in fact an act of will, an attempt to impose our dreams upon our everyday life?
At any rate, Prague really did shine in those last days, with or without my help. With all the rain that summer, the city felt tropical, overgown. The trees in the parks and along the streets, in the squares, the junipers at Namesti Miru, and in the vineyard at Grabovka were all full and rich, bright green so late in the year.

Things were quiet at the Zaba. Kuba and Lenka took a ten-day holiday to go fishing near his parent’s house in South Bohemia, “Southside,” as Kuba called it. I sent him a text message one afternoon and he wrote back, “The little bastards won’t catch!” Ondrej also spent time at his weekend cottage, played tennis, and got healthy. Liam had dropped out of sight. True to form, he’d decided to get clean again and so I didn’t hear from him. But with my approaching departure, I didn’t resent it. I wished him well. And I didn’t see much of Aiden Greenworth, or someone told me had recently been kicked out of the hotel up the hill for sleeping in the lobby.
Danny Boy I heard had found a new job, something working for his sister-in-law. He didn’t have much to say about it but I was glad he’d found something.
Nikash got a 30-day visa and got a job somewhere outside Prague in one of the villages. We also heard from Islam. He was working in his brother’s shop in Venice, but was having problems with his visa. “He say now he think he leave Prague too quickly,” Sugit said.

Hearing this added a jolt of apprehension about my journey to Istanbul. Was I too being premature? The thought of arriving in an unknown city, Istanbul, with virtually no contacts, and having to start all over again, made me look at my situation in Prague all over again. Prague was continuing to flash before my eyes like in old moving pictures. Everywhere lay memories, strewn like discarded dolls in streets and cafes and bars. A tram ride through Nusle, passing under the Vysehrad Bridge (“Suicide Bridge,” as the locals say), and past a hotel where friends of mine once stayed three years ago; the nearby theater, Divaldo na Fidlovacce, where across the street in an office building I had my first class. Past Namesti Bratsi Sinku, the square with its shops and restaurants, where up the hill I shared a flat with two young American girls, and further on, other avenues and corridors with their own distinct scents and impressions.
I got off the tram at Palacek Square and walked through New Town. Traffic was light and the sky overcast. It was nice to walk without any particular destination, no appointments to keep. I could retire into my daydreams and fancies. Passing under the rubix cube-like dome of the National Theater, a gypsy man was selling copies of New Presence. At the tram stop an elderly blind woman asked me when the Number 18 tram was coming. It was coming just then so I helped her get on, and then rode it to Old Town, got out and kept walking until I reached the city library. Inside there was a café that sold and excellent roast chicken with buttered mashed potatoes and cabbage, all for like 70 crowns. I tried thinking about Istanbul as I ate but nothing came to my head. It was an afternoon for nostalgia, a season of nostalgia, and now that the wheels of the future were in motion I wanted to slow them down and see the city in all its colors one last time.

In the news that summer was the story of a young man, a Gypsy, who drowned in the river. The young Gypsy had been traveling through the country with friends. Later, after his drowing, it was reported that the young man was a prince, descended from an old Gypsy family. In the news reports there were efforts to trace the man’s background, to verify whether he was a true prince or not. I ran the story by several friends, who seemed skeptical. “Well, you know,” one of them said. “Every gypsy you meet will say he is a prince.”
Out of that came the idea for a story: A young man who comes to Prague, is found dead, floating in the river. Efforts are made to identify the man, his past, his family. But efforts to do so are met with hostility, resistance, and finally apathy. Sympathizers for the young man argue that identification is essential. “After all, this young man could be a prince!” Ah, the skeptics say, the world is already too crowded with would-be princes, the rivers of the world are floating with them.
Or another story: A boy and his father. They are very different, physically, psychologically, cut from opposite ends of a continent. The father is stout, red-faced, the son slender with eyes the color of mocha, features he inherited from the mother, long ago vanished.
Emotionally, the boy and his father were different too. The father was stern, practical; the son, again taking after the mother, elusive, poised on a meridian, a dreamer. And yet the two got on welll, having forged out of loneliness and neglect, a bond of sympathy and regard.
What do this young dead Gypsy prince, the boy and his father have in common? And why was I briefly attracted to them enough to consider writing about them? They were variations on my unnamed ex-journalist, the hero of “Beyond the AM Crowd,” and even descendents of Paquito Montana, discarded peoples found in the “peripheral world” of Prague, and beyond Prague. People like Islam, Sugit, and Nikash. Like Liam and Aiden Greenworth. Like Vick and Danny Boy. Like the Zaba and Konspirace. People like me. Will their fight ever be finished? Home is best, Islam said.
But where was that home?

One night I was sitting in Zaba. Everyone was back from their holidays. I was sitting at the bar with Ondrej.
“So you leave for Istanbul?” he asked. “I hope someday you will write about us. Yeah, us, I mean. Here at Zaba.”
That night we talked about the wine, which would be ready soon, at Grabovka. Jirka, the barman, waved me off.
“You’ll be in Istanbul,” he said.