by Madeleine KandoThe word ‘Immigrant’ has become a dirty word of late. It conjures up images of someone sneaky and not so trustworthy. It’s a grade below ‘terrorist’ in many an upstanding citizen’s mind. So here is a story that might lighten up this gloomy image.
I consider myself a professional immigrant. I have a lot of experience and have been an immigrant for most of my life. Even before I was born I was destined to become an immigrant. I feel it my bones. If I hadn’t become an immigrant, who knows what might have happened: I could easily have slipped into a life of complacency, debauchery, neglect..
I started my immigrant career when my parents moved to France from their native Hungary. They packed up their three young children (me, my twin sister and my older brother), boarded a train to Paris and off we went, never to return to Hungary as a family again.
In France our status was that of ‘political refugees’ and, in the eyes of the French, that is even worse than being an immigrant. Immigrants at least are expected to do some kind of useful work, like cleaning toilets or sweeping the streets. We were just running away from somewhere else, without even having been invited.
In Paris the Red Cross issued us food stamps, clothes and shoes with wooden soles. (On the way to school I had to walk like a robot because you cannot bend your feet in wooden shoes). I was an A-student in the ‘école normale’, which surprised my teacher, pleased my parents and made my twin sister really jealous. We soon forgot how to speak Hungarian, my siblings and I. My mother’s conversations with her Hungarian friends became a series of incomprehensible sounds to us.
The next step in my immigrant career took me to The Netherlands when my mother remarried a Dutchman.The Dutch welcomed us with open arms. What a change from our French ‘refugee’ status. Even though we were ‘immigrants’, they looked up to us, believe it or not. We came from France, which was still the center of culture and art in Europe. We spoke Dutch badly, and our Red Cross issued clothes looked funny to them, but the Dutch children were nice to us and our house became the ‘go to’ place. If you wanted to be ‘in’, you were friends with the ‘Kandos’.
That’s when I was first tempted to forfeit my immigrant roots. I thought: ‘Mm, being Dutch isn’t so bad. I could work for the government, vote, say good-bye to Red Cross issued wooden shoes, be part of a ‘group’. Why not?'
Thankfully, I was saved from such a terrible mistake at the last minute. After graduating high-school I decided to get a taste of some of the neighboring countries. I went to England as an au pair, to Spain as a student of literature and to Morocco (just for the hell of it).
But when I turned 21, I finally threw in the towel. I wrote a letter to the Dutch Queen and asked her permission to become a Dutch citizen. She sent me a polite letter back saying that she granted me that privilege and could I please send her a $100.00 administration fee. I had mixed feelings about my decision. I felt like I had sold my soul to the devil. But I was young and had other things on my mind, like boyfriends and adventure.
Being Dutch didn’t sit well with me. I missed my wooden soled shoes. I missed being everywhere and nowhere. So one day, without much warning, I embarked on my third and final stage in my immigrant career. I decided to come and get a taste of America. I came by boat, a big rusty second hand cargo ship called the ‘Big Dipper’. The crew was Greek and the passengers were all Dutch students.
It was mid July. As soon as I stepped onto the tarred New York pavement that felt like marshmellows because of the heat, I knew I had made the right choice. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I had taken a bite of the mushroom that made me be just the right size. Holland was too small, Paris was too ‘French’, but in America I am just the right size. Here, almost everyone else is an immigrant. They are my true compatriots. Here, I have fulfilled my destiny. I don’t have to be anyone else but me, a true immigrant. leave comment here