My decision to go to Prague was based on two phenomena. The first was a beautiful picture of Charles Bridge and the skyline made sacred by Gothic Church spires. The second was my inner gypsy: my desire to go beyond my boundaries, to recreate myself, to discover who I truly am when faced with nothing and no one familiar. Who will I be when I am Tabula Rasa personified - the blank slate - once again?
It wasn't exactly as expected.
Supposedly when we die, we see our entire life flash before our eyes. So landing in Prague was like a death. Childhood insecurities, forgotten memories of racism and deep-seated fears that have probably been passed down from one threatened generation to another, popped by to remind me that they are still, after all these years, my close allies. And what was it that catapulted me back 15-odd years?
Everyone was white.
Living in Miami for twelve or so years, a Mecca for the ethnically schizophrenic, I had completely forgotten just how white most of the Western world is, and for a brief moment, amidst this crowd of lilywhite faces, I felt like a stain, like a little black spot on the sun. This awareness of difference, which has been long buried in my fragile past, flaunted itself in my consciousness, like a huge Swastika. So here I am in Prague, and yet I am again 10 years old, shaking in my boots because the feminist, indestructible girl that traveled here from Miami is somewhere else. I am someone else here.
It took one day before the 'I' who I am now returned unscathed. The fear, it seems, was all in my head and had risen like a bout of post-traumatic stress. But after a glass of very cheap Czech beer (about 50 cents) and a chat with an Austrian tourist called Thomas, I was back good and proper. Prague was nice to me, and as I traversed her cobbled streets, I viewed this city with the awe of a child. In the old town square, troubles of the modern world dissipated and all I was left with was this urgent desire to lose myself in a fairy tale. I would, of course, be the damsel, and a knight would save me, except (reality check), I am not blonde, nor in distress, nor do I want anyone to save me except my own inner knight, who (except for that one solitary day) is always with me, thank you.
It is a sheer miracle that the "Golden City" has been left standing after its tumultuous war-infested history. Here the architecture can be read like a history book, revealing the political, religious and artistic trends for the past one thousand or so years. This is indeed a city of magic: a city of alchemists, philosophers and astronomers. From Wolfgang Mozart to Albert Einstein, this city has inspired art in every form possible. To breathe its aristocratic air and to sit in St Nicholas's Church (Old Town Square) with its Vatican-like painted ceilings, while Mozart is being performed on the organ accompanied by the beautiful voice of a skilled opera singer, is enough to make you forgive every trespass made by the Church in the name of God. Hush. Just sit in the Church of St. Nicholas. Look at the art that was given wings during the Renaissance. You are reborn. All is forgiven.
On the first day, Thomas and I did a walking tour through the old Jewish ghetto. Even though I am a Jew by birth, the Eastern European Jews knew terror like no Middle-Eastern Jew ever did during the Middle Ages. The Eastern European Jews were the underdogs, the outcasts the "Other." Admonished, belittled and dehumanized, if it weren't for their loyalty to their religion, Eastern Jews would be extinct. hitler (small "h" to take away his power), was only the icing on the cake after centuries of dogma that wished ardently for what he eventually did.
In the ghetto, up to twenty families would live in single family homes, a chalk mark implying the border from one family to another. And while it is not a ghetto any longer, the memories are kept alive because hitler, God bless him, didn't burn the synagogues down. Even he had a sense for beauty and wanted to keep the Jewish ghetto as a museum for "extinct religions." And in a sense, it is a museum that is kept intact for tourists. There are two synagogues that are functional prayer houses (one Ashkenazi and one Sephardic), but the old synagogue with its burial ground is a monument - proof of a poignant struggle for mere existence. If there is one solitary symbol of these hard times, it must be the old Jewish cemetery. Here on a small plot of land, 20,000 Jews are buried, 10 people high, because the Jews had no more land to bury its people. It is a humbling experience to see these battered gravestones, with animal etchings and other symbols to communicate a person's way of life. The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker and of course, the money lender. They were all buried here. And while the Jewish story is only a morsel of the feast that has created Prague, it is the morsel that I have chosen to chew on while trying to make sense of the inhumanity of humanity.
So here I am in Prague. The brown girl in the ring. Tra La La La bloody La. And this history, which I would love to own, is not mine. And yet it is so alluring, with all its colors, even if they are stained with blood and tinged with darkness. Even for us peace lovers, isn't it that which makes it so irresistible?
