The Choice

an easy place to be, they say. Aer a year, the Arab-Israeli War is
ĕnally winding down, but the country is still a war zone. People live in
tents, do what they must in a time of deep political unrest and
continuing hostilities between Arabs and Jews. at is not the life we
prepared for when we packed our boxcar. What good will our silver
and china be in a tent surrounded by violent conĘict? And what of the
jewels sewn into Marianne’s clothes? ey’re worth only what others
will pay for them. Who wants to eat on gold plates that bear our
name? It’s not the idea of hard work or poverty that creates a little
drag of resistance in my stomach. It’s the reality of more war. Why
start again if it yields nothing more than the same suffering?
In the dark, waiting for Béla to return, I open the papers from the
American consulate, the papers I was so adamant that Béla retrieve in
Prague, that have crossed the border with us, strapped against my
back. Two Czechoslovakian families qualiĕed for immigration to
America. Just two. e other family, Béla learned when he went to
Prague, has already le Europe, they chose to immigrate to Israel
instead of America. It is our turn, if we choose to go. I turn the papers
around in my hand, look at the words, blurry in the dim light, wait for
them to crumble in my hands, to rearrange. “America, Dicuka,” I can
hear my mother say. America is the hardest country to get into. e
quotas are fierce. But if the letter is not a fraud, a hoax, we have a way
in. Yet our fortune is in Israel. e letter must be a false invitation, I
convince myself. No one wants you if you’re penniless.
Béla comes in breathless, waking our roommates. He has managed
to contact Bandi in the middle of the night. Tomorrow night our
friends will travel to Vienna, we will meet them at the train station the
following morning, and together we will travel to Italy where Bandi,
with the help of Bricha, has secured our passage to Haifa by ship. We
will go to Israel with Bandi and Marta as we have been planning since
New Year’s Eve. We will build our macaroni factory. We are lucky to