Israel, and Going Home
467
and what I planned to do with the photographs. Even the
place of my birth had become victimized by the suspicions
engendered by the madness of war! They wanted to know
when I planned to leave. "Tomorrow," I said. "Tomorrow."
Without seeking to do so, they had hurt me deeply.
A detective was on hand the next day to bid me bon voyage.
No one else came. Arto, my cousin, was bedridden; and Mrs.
Exerjian too old and too cold to leave her home. My suitcase
contained the only worthwhile souvenirs I could find: pebbles
from the beach, a bit of plaster from my home; some of the
lathwork; a jar of earth from the garden, and a few twigs from
the Grandfather Tree. There were my only mementos.
The plane headed toward Athens. Beyond it, America
beckoned. I thought of how shrunken everything had appeared to my eyes: my room, which once loomed so large, was
actually about ten feet square. How congested it all was. And
how symbolic this was of the Old World—with all its incestuous, tragic conflicts. I thought and dreamed. I had seen the
forces of evil at work in the part of the world from which my
people came. I had seen misery and degradation of my fellow
man. Against this backdrop of hopelessness, I placed the
vitality, the hope, the dignity of my adopted land—and I was
both proud and humble. How I thanked my parents for bringing me to America!
Every foreign-born American, I think, should revisit his
homeland to renew his faith in America. Every native-born
American must, I feel, revisit the lands of his forebears to revive his faith in American democracy. Every tourist in Europe,
I think, should spend some time meditating and contrasting
ways of the Old World with those of the New. I can conceive
of no better antidote for all the evils that beset us—Fascism
and Communism, hate and bigotry, war and authoritarianism
—than a true rebirth of our belief in the ways of peace and
democracy.
In this mood of reverie I took the plane westward, and as it
brought me nearer and nearer the New World, I thought of