Silent Bird Read Free

spoke it so beautifully.”
    “ Well, I’ll learn it too,” I said, grabbing at straws. Then, to distract her: “Why did they have French schools in Rhodes, Grandma?”
    “ Oh, French was still the international language back then. Very important, not like that English. The Jews had a choice of schools, and I wanted to study French. I like to be modern.”
    This coming from the woman of old-fashioned shawls and lace-up shoes: the same woman who had inward ly died the moment she immigrated so many years before and then died a second time along with her husband, my wonderful grandfather. How many lives did she have left?
    Desperate to cheer her up, I suggested that after France I visit her home country of Rhodes too and walk the streets she had as a girl. But rather than looking pleased, Grandma’s face crumpled.
    “ Oh, that is worse, Pilar. Much, much worse. There's no one left anywhere now.”
    I should have known . I’d been told that my mother’s family name was inscribed on a memorial for Holocaust victims in the walled city of Rhodes. But what was wrong with wanting to experience such things for myself?
    Still shaking her head in disapproval, my grandmother shuffled out of the room. I stayed at the table, staring at the uneaten lamb while my mother stared at me, ready to pounce.
    “ For centuries we were a nation in exile, Pilar. That’s why our family came here. You think you’ll feel comfortable living in France? You’ll find plenty of terrorists and neo-Nazis there, and Palestinian supporters galore. Believe me; anti-Semitism is always in style, especially in Europe. Like a sickness, it comes back to haunt you.”
    My mother, so certain about things far away and in the past but not seeing what’s right under her nose —not seeing the connections that really mattered. What would she say if she knew that it was personal sickness drawing me away from her, from Grandma, and the only home I’d ever known? For this adventure I was planning had little to do with France or anywhere else. It had to do with my nearly overwhelming urge to settle somewhere completely anonymous and foreign. I would take along my clothes, my art supplies, and nothing else. A tabula rasa in the making…
    “ Grandpa told me to be interested and curious about the world,” I said. “He would have understood.”
    “Maybe, and I understand too. I understand that you’re young and looking to catch your own shadow. But sweetie, you really won’t fit in. I know you. You won’t ‘find yourself.’ And you’ll never find a decent bagel either.”
    We looked at each other, picturing the life-altering lack of bagels. And we burst out laughing, though s he turned out to be right about the bagels. Bagels and New York pizza: gone, gone, gone. Fortunately in France they did have scrumptiously fresh baguettes, which was what I was eating the morning after I slept off my jetlag and emerged from Hôtel de la Gare to begin my new life.
    A blank slate.

III
    The plaza I ended up falling in love with welcomed me like a disarming old photograph.
    You know the kind of photo I’m talking about . Every dusty family photo album harbors one: of a forgotten relative in her youth, as flirty as all get-out despite the conventions of the time, or maybe because of them. Well, this street appeared like such a photo. I’d been nibbling my baguette while searching in vain for “to rent” signs—or ” à louer ,” according to my English-French dictionary—because there were no apartments, flats, shared cottages or hovels available anywhere. At home I had envisioned an orgy of French living opportunities in my new city, especially with the dollar enjoying such a healthy exchange rate. I wasn’t fussy; anything would do. Shared housing near one of the campuses, a large-windowed flat on the Paris-like pedestrian streets, or even a Bohemian studio with peeling paint—they all sounded good. But Montpellier, it seemed, suffered from an actual housing