Olga, a luscious 50-year-old blonde, works as a hairdresser on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and a part-time secretary in a Chinese import-export company based on Long Island the other days. She misses her home country Russia, which she left in her 20s, already married to a fellow countryman and Jew as well. Would she ever return? “How could I?” she asks me as if she never expected the question. “I belong here”. She warmly greets a man in his early 50s with dark hair and deep blue eyes who asks for a haircut – “Dan has been my favourite client for 20 years now” she says excitedly. “He came from Iran. His wife came from a place even further away, England.”Ryan is the doorman of a chic apartment building in the Upper East. Throughout the day, out of the building the most privileged dogs in the world come and go with their masters or their dog walkers. Well past 60, a tear rolls down his cheek when he admits that while feeling grateful he is an American (Irish-American, he elucidates) and particularly grateful for Barack Obama's re-election, he is not in the mood to celebrate because he lost his mother a month ago. “But what else can I do? I have to… I have to… My mother would be delighted – she and my father suffered greatly in order to come here and bring us up as Americans…”
Olga’s weird sense of geography surprises me less than the fact that she seems not in the least affected by the fact that the gentleman comes from a nation and a religion that target the notion of the national state all people of Jewish faith like Olga emotionally belong to. When I tactfully tell her so, she laughs. “But here is America!” she says. “We are all the same. We have left our differences back home, in the distant countries we love…”
Angie – all first-generation Chinese women who come in contact with the public are called Angie, Nancy or Sam, for simplicity’s sake obviously – resembling a beautiful little bird with her shiny black hair and sparkling innocent eyes, tells me that she studied architectural design back in her home country and that she came here “to learn more because it is the centre of the world.” However, she didn’t find a job in her field, apart from unpaid apprenticeships. She is currently working as a hairdresser’s assistant in order to make ends meet, whereas her mother, who lives in China, sends her pension in yuans-turned-into-dollars in order to pay her daughter’s rent. Wouldn’t it be better if she returned to her home country? “I don’t want to go back as a failure” she says misty-eyed. “I have to achieve something first.” If she succeeds, why go back then? She laughs awkwardly and rather hopefully. “Yeah, why? When you succeed here, you walk on clouds…” Dreams fill her eyes, a smile plays on her lips, her hands still immersed in lather.
For a moment it seems ironic that the rising superpower holding a large amount of the American debt and shapes the destinies of the American people cannot hold its own people. Maybe that’s partly why America was and still is the symbol of the desire and the struggle of hundreds of millions of people to become part of it.
Leo, a blue-eyed blond from a traditional Protestant family of Chicago, has been living here for 20 years, but his Moroccan wife is a later arrival. He met her seven years ago during a tourist trip the woman he describes as “the most beautiful, smarter, kinder and most charming woman in the entire world” made here. They got married after three months and Leo started learning French and Moroccan, living next to his mother-in-law, studying Islamic mysticism and becoming an avid follower of raw veganism – when it came to the couple and their dog. “We have so many things to be grateful for” he says. “Thanksgiving is our favourite holiday. We are given the chance to honour this great country, which offers a life full of opportunities and alternatives.”
Jelissa, a 21-year-old African-American employee in a supermarket, was born and raised in Brooklyn. Her father is “somewhere”, she says. “Maybe in Texas or somewhere even further. It’s been months since we last talked.” Her mother, who lives near and doesn’t work on Thanksgiving Day, is expecting her at home, along with the 2-month-old son of her youngest daughter, and is cooking stuffed turkey and sweet pumpkin pie. “It is nice to be taken care of” she says with a huge smile. “Despite the difficulties, it is also nice, especially when you talk to foreigners, to say that you are an American and that you belong here. Their combination is perfect!”
These stories are some characteristic examples. Millions of others correspond to each one. I alone know of dozens. Each person has a different story to tell. All these millions of people with their stories, so different and so similar at the same time, comprise the mosaic of this brave new world.
That’s what the people of this country celebrate and give thanks for. What unites them is the fact that they came from some place else (most of them very recently, some others 300 years ago) and that they arrived here because they wanted to. They all become, sooner or later, part of this city, defining and defined by each other. Despite their differences and disagreements, they all agree on their love for this country (which became more intense and more conscious after 9/11 and the eight-year-old George W. Bush administration) and this city they live for even if it cost their own lives.
This is a special miracle of everyday transcendence–one that calls for thanksgiving.
