This story is a
chapter of a memoir focused on the insights I gained from interactions with
certain notable people. All these stories are true. I admit, however, my memory
may not be flawless.
Dith Pran – A Good Use of Star
Power
On a cold day near
the end of 1984 I took the D train from Kings Highway, Brooklyn, straight to W.
4th St. in Greenwich Village. I emerged above ground on busy 6th Avenue. It took
me a minute to get my bearings. A taxi sprayed icy water in my direction as I headed
downtown on 6th then crossed at Carmine.
I was going to be
late. Maybe I should have tried to catch the #1, but at this hour that may have
taken even longer. I quickened my pace then turned downtown again when I reached
7th Ave. I still had 5 minutes to spare. I vaulted the piles of partly frozen slush
in the middle of Houston Street.
Now, where the hell
was Varick Street? I was looking for the two hundred block, so I continued on
downtown. At the next corner the street sign informed me that I was already on
Varick. The number of the building on the corner was in the three hundreds. I
missed it somehow. I doubled back only to instantly slide to my knees on a
patch of wet ice.
201 Varick St. is a
massive, undistinguished gray stone building. A small plaque next to the
entrance said simply “Immigration and Naturalization Service.” I was only two
minutes late.
A few days earlier
my then girlfriend, Anne, told me that a causal friend of ours, a graduate
student in her department, had been detained by INS when he tried to re-enter
the US after attending an academic conference in Europe. He was now at the
Varick Street Detention Center. His family was not allowed to visit him or
communicate with him by telephone.
I met Hiroshi [not
his real name] at a cocktail party at the home of a psychology department
faculty member out in Stony Brook on Long Island the summer before I started
law school. Like Anne, he was doing graduate work on cognitive mapping. I liked
him at once. He was friendly, smart and open. After a long conversation focused
on Japanese food and poetry, he invited Anne and me to come to dinner with his
family the next weekend.
Midweek Anne told
me that she had talked to Hiroshi in the psychology lab. He asked her if I
might be interested in helping him prepare the meal. Since she knew how much I
enjoy Japanese food, she accepted on my behalf.
Saturday afternoon
at about 3:00 we knocked on the proper numbered door in a nondescript apartment
building. Hiroshi introduced us to his wife and two small children. Anne
disappeared with his wife and kids while Hiroshi led me to the kitchen. First,
he showed me how to correctly sharpen a knife the Japanese way. We rolled out
dough for gyoza and prepared the filling as we started the rice. We carefully
chopped and shaped a mountain of vegetables. I received a detailed lesson in
how to select and carve fish for sashimi. We assembled and rolled five or six
types of sushi. It was going to be a feast.
Through it all the
four of us joked, told stories and drank a few thimblefuls of very good saki.
Hiroshi began calling me "Edo." He explained that since Japanese
names always end in a vowel, he had to add one to my name in order to pronounce
it. He said he chose that name for me because it was the name of a 250-year era
of peace in Japanese history and also the historic name of the city now called
Tokyo. He said my new Japanese name was an auspicious one because it was easy
to remember.
Now Hiroshi was in
trouble. I wanted to help. Anne said, "His wife told me they were going to
hold him until a deportation hearing can be scheduled."
"Any idea how
long that may take?"
"They told her
it could be three or four months."
The Christmas
holidays were about five weeks away. His kids missed him. His wife missed him.
The uncertainty was killing them.
I said, "Maybe
they should hire an immigration lawyer."
"She already
looked into that. They can't afford it. She's trying to borrow enough money
from their families back in Japan, but it doesn't look good."
I agreed to try to
find someone the next day at law school that knew something about deportation
hearings. I asked around and found two faculty members willing to help me
understand the situation. It did not look hopeful. The first professor I spoke
to told me that detainees represented by counsel could sometimes speed up the
process, but the unrepresented could wait as long as a year for their case to
appear on the docket. The second professor I spoke with conveyed essentially the
same message. After commiserating about my friend's situation, she looked up
with a smile.
"I just thought
of something. You don’t have to be a lawyer to represent a person in an
immigration hearing. Why don't you do it? You can file an application for an
expedited hearing. It’s easy."
"But, I don't
know a thing about immigration law. I don't even know why they are holding
him."
"You could
just represent him until the family is able to raise enough money to hire a
lawyer. You can get the ball rolling. Prepare affidavits with the facts. Stuff
like that. I’ll help you."
And so on that cold
wet winter day I found myself checking in on the fourth floor of 201 Varick Street.
After clearing security I was led to a small, airless interview room where
Hiroshi sat at a bare table. As soon as the door closed behind me, he stood and
bowed formally to me.
"Edo, it is so
good to see you. How did you get in here? They told me I was supposed to meet
with my lawyer."
"I'm sorry to
tell you, Hiroshi, your family can't afford a lawyer right now. Your wife and
your friends are trying hard to raise enough money for a lawyer. I'm here to try
to help you until they do."
I knew he was quite
disappointed. I know I would be if I were in his place. He had hoped a good lawyer
would appear to quickly help him return to his family. Instead, he got a first
year law student with zero experience in immigration law and procedure.
His disappointment
faded a little as we began work on the affidavit we needed for the application for
an expedited hearing. We reviewed his family situation, his need to return to
his studies and the merits of his claim that he should not be detained or deported.
I learned that
since coming to the US on a student visa Hiroshi had traveled abroad on
numerous occasions before this recent trip to Europe. He had been back to Japan
on several occasions. He had attended a conference in Canada only six months
earlier. He had no reason to believe this trip would present a problem.
He had no
difficulty when he departed the US and no difficulty entering or leaving Europe.
It came as a complete surprise then that he was pulled aside when he presented
his passport at immigration on his return to Kennedy Airport in New York. At
first they would not tell him why they were holding him, but since he was fully
cooperative and totally confused, an INS agent eventually told him that his
name showed up on a watch list of possible terrorists.
Hiroshi had no idea
why his name would be on such a list. The agents who questioned him didn't know
either. Hiroshi told me when he was still in high school in Japan he had
participated in a peace march against the Vietnam War. He considered himself a
pacifist and had attended some meetings of a local peace group since coming to
America. He assured me there was nothing in his record that would raise any
suspicion that he might be a terrorist.
Before I left that
day I assured him that I would contact his family to let them know he was OK
and to fully explain what I was doing. I worked on his application for an
expedited hearing for the next two days and filed it with the immigration court.
I visited Hiroshi a
few days later to tell him that his application had been successfully filed. He
was not hopeful. He had talked with other detainees who heard nothing for many
months after submitting an application for an expedited hearing. In the blue
neon light Hiroshi seemed pale. He had lost weight. He told me he couldn’t eat.
He missed his family terribly.
I tried to cheer
him up, but he knew I had no objective basis for optimism.
Routine news from
his family was all I had to offer on my next visit a week later. Hiroshi looked
sick. He had developed a persistent cough. I was worried.
I called the
immigration court early the next morning only to be told my request would be
addressed in due time. It was impossible for me to believe Hiroshi would be released
before Christmas. He had even asked me if I could arrange to get him deported
back to Japan, or anywhere, just so he could be reunited with his family. I
urged him to try not to lose hope.
Everything had
changed by the time of my final visit the next week. Hiroshi appeared in the
interview room smiling and in clean clothes. He bowed very slowly then
unexpectedly reached out and eagerly shook my hand.
"Edo, a
miracle has happened."
"What? Tell
me. Have you heard something from the court?"
"No, no word
from the court."
"So, tell me."
The day after my
last visit, a New York Times photographer
somehow obtained permission to tour the INS Varick Street Detention Center.
During the course of this visit the photographer took a few minutes to talk
with Hiroshi. It seems the photographer decided to approach Hiroshi on a whim simply
because he was a fellow Asian. Hiroshi briefly related his story. The
photographer seemed genuinely moved. He promised to speak with “a friend” to see
about getting some help to speed the process that would correct the mistake
that sent Hiroshi into limbo.
Two days later the
photographer returned for a second visit. He told Hiroshi that he had spoken to
his friend, the artist Yoko Ono. When she heard the story she was outraged that
a Japanese student would be held incognito because of the government’s error
compiling the watch list. It was unthinkable to her that Hiroshi might be
considered a subversive simply for believing in world peace. She made some
calls, then contacted the photographer and told him to let Hiroshi know that
things were going to be all right.
The very next day
Hiroshi received word from the guards that he would soon be released.
Hiroshi told me the
Times photographer was named Dith
Pran. The name did not mean anything to him.
I knew who he was. Only
a month earlier I watched the chilling documentary, The Killing Fields. The film recounts Dith Pran’s experiences during
the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1975 until their overthrow by
Vietnamese forces in 1978. Pran saw it all. In 1975 he was working in Cambodia as
a translator and guide for New York Times
reporter Sydney Schanberg. When the Khmer Rouge took power, foreigners were forced
to leave. Pran, on the other hand, was forced to stay.
At first he worked as a taxi driver, dressed as a peasant, and tried to
hide the fact that he was an educated person. Pran was discovered and sent to a
forced labor camp. During their reign the Khmer
Rouge summarily executed anyone who had more than a grade school education or
who wore eyeglasses, perfume, makeup, a watch, or other evidence of Western
influence. In their Maoist attempt to return Cambodia to its agrarian past, the
Khmer Rouge killed or starved nearly two million Cambodian citizens. Three
of Pran’s brothers and a sister died in the camps. In all he lost fifty family
members. Eventually he was able to escape and make his way across the border to
Vietnam. He coined the phrase “the killing fields” to refer to the piles of
corpses and skeletal remains he encountered during his 40-mile trek to Vietnam.
After spending time
in a refugee camp in Thailand, Dith Pran made his way to the United States. He
came to New York City where he was reunited with his friend Schanberg and
started to build a new life. In 1980 the New
York Times hired him as a photojournalist.
Dith Pran survived the
genocide in his home country due to a combination of sheer chance and his own
wits. He knew what it meant to be a refugee. He knew how disorienting it was
for someone from Asia to try to live in America. The day he came to Varick
Street he knew the decisions of a faceless government could be completely
unpredictable.
What he did for
Hiroshi was a small thing. He did it without hesitation and with only faint
hope that it might save one family from greater grief. He employed what power
he had. His power was outside of and unacknowledged by what we like to call our
system of justice.
It is not fair that
Hiroshi was saved from grief while others without star power to help them sat for
months and months on end in that windowless jail at 201 Varick Street. In a
just world, they all would have their cases carefully considered and decided in
a timely fashion.
We do not live in
such a world.
A week or so after
Hiroshi was released I received a Christmas card from him and his family. It
was addressed to Edo, spelled out in Japanese characters. They formally thanked
me for all my efforts on their behalf and wished me a happy holiday.
江戶
No comments:
Post a Comment