When Skateboards Will Be Free Read online

  But whatever happened that Saturday, whatever contribution big or small—maybe just a car honking in support—would be enough to give my mother the sustenance to show up the next weekend to do it all over again.

  It was a table just like this table that my parents passed by one autumn afternoon in 1964 on the campus of the University of Minnesota and stopped for a moment, only a moment, to listen to what it was all about.

  They had met each other by chance seven years earlier at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend. My mother was an aspiring novelist studying for an undergraduate degree in English literature, and my father was working toward a doctorate in mathematics. His journey from Tehran to Minneapolis was a long and improbable one that began when he was eighteen years old and had entered an essay contest on the theme “What is liberty?” The contest had been sponsored by the U.S. government, and offered, as grand prize, a scholarship to study at an American university. The irony that my father would hold forth eloquently enough on the subject of liberty to win the scholarship and then spend the rest of his life trying to overthrow the very government that had provided him with that scholarship is trumped by the irony that the government that had asked him to consider the idea of liberty was itself plotting to overthrow the prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. My father has recounted that on the night of that coup in 1953, he gathered in the darkened streets of Tehran with a group of other young men his age, all of them trying to figure out what, if anything, they could do to help their country. When the Shah’s tanks rolled past, they realized there was nothing they could do, and so they went back inside their homes and locked the doors, and a few weeks later my father was happily, thankfully, learning math in the United States.

  My mother, on the other hand, had chosen the University of Minnesota because her brother was there studying for his doctorate. It had been an easy decision for her to make, as her brother was Mark Harris, already an accomplished novelist who would go on to write nearly twenty books, most famously Bang the Drum Slowly, which was turned into a film starring Robert De Niro. My mother did not arrive at the university alone, however, but with her own mother, who was crippled from rheumatoid arthritis and confined to a wheelchair. Her mother had been a frail, infirm woman nearly all her life, suffering from one debilitating illness after another. And her father had been the opposite: a lawyer and landlord, stormy and contentious at both, who allowed his New York City apartment buildings to fall into disrepair, suing and countersuing tenants with verve until he was eventually disbarred for having swindled a business partner. When my mother was four years old, her mother contracted rheumatic fever—for the second time—and during her struggle to regain her health her husband proposed she go to Clearwater, Florida, for six months while he remained behind. This was just the first of many times that my mother’s father would devise a way to separate from the family under dubious pretenses. Lonely, bewildered, and unable to properly care for her children in a strange city, my ailing grandmother made the decision to place my mother into first grade at the age of four. It was a decision from which my mother would never recover: held back in fifth grade, put on probation in college, and constantly shadowed by her own sense that she was intellectually deficient. “Martha seems immature for her age,” her first-grade teacher wrote home on her report card, apparently not taking into account that the little girl was nearly two years younger than her classmates. When her father abandoned the family once and for all eight years later, disappearing into Manhattan forever, he left behind his twelve-year-old daughter (both sons were already grown and gone) to care for a wife who was on the verge of becoming an invalid. Before leaving for school in the morning, my mother would dress her mother, comb her hair, and tie her shoes. And each night, without fail, she would wake and pad into her mother’s bedroom, where she would slip her arms under the wasted body racked with pain—sixteen aspirin a day—and turn her from one side to the other. But by the time my mother was nineteen and a sophomore in college, she had managed to extricate herself from her mother, sending her on a train back to Mount Vernon to be cared for by others.

  So at that dinner party in 1957, the young Jewish woman and the young Iranian man were introduced for the first time, and saw something in each other, and fell in love, and about one year later they were married, and one year after that they had a son named Jacob, and three years after that a daughter named Jamileh.

  By the early 1960s the Minneapolis area had become one of the most successful recruiting hubs for the Socialist Workers Party. The “cradle of the movement” it was called, an immodest nod to St. Petersburg, which had been christened “cradle of the revolution” by the Bolsheviks. Groups of young comrades—trailblazers—would travel around the region, going from campus to campus as they tried to win students over to the idea of socialism. It was at the University of Minnesota where a half dozen of these comrades happened to arrive one Saturday morning in 1964, and unfold their book table, laid out their Militants, and draped their banner that proclaimed “Clifton DeBerry for President. Vote Socialist Workers.”

  I can picture those half dozen comrades standing there in much the same way as these half dozen comrades stand now on the corner at Union Square. I can picture the same exhausted diligence, the same knapsacks, the same scuffed shoes, the same Militant. Except then it cost ten cents. “Why U.S. is losing war against Vietnam rebels!” “Washington admits arming Congo mercenaries!”

  “Cops in New York kill another Puerto Rican!” Over and over I am sure they called, until it was afternoon and their mouths were dry and they decided that the time had come to call it a day. And just as they were beginning to pack up their books and roll up their banner for Clifton DeBerry, I can see a young couple passing by with two strollers as they enjoyed the final days of autumn.

  “Let’s give it one last try,” one of the comrades says, approaching the young couple with Militant in hand. “Read why Johnson is no answer to Goldwater.”

  The couple stops.

  “We say it is only through the overthrow of capitalism that inequalities in society can be resolved.”

  “How much?” the couple ask.

  “Ten cents,” he says.

  And the young wife reaches into her purse, because back then she carried a purse instead of a knapsack, and she wore dresses and high heels and lipstick, and kept her hair long, and showed off her legs to their best advantage.

  “Thank you,” says the comrade, pocketing the dime and handing them The Militant. Then the three of them chat for a while, a second comrade joining in, maybe a third. I am sure they were all friendly people, these comrades, friendly and vivacious and young and full of ideas.

  “Will you vote for Clifton DeBerry in November?”

  “He’s the first black man to ever run for president.”

  “Here’s a pamphlet of what he says about the working class.”

  “I would vote for him,” says the young Iranian man, “but I’m not a citizen.” (Nor will he ever be.)

  And this proscription on voting will enrage the comrades, who see it as yet another form of discrimination against immigrants.

  “Do you see?” they say. “Do you see?”

  The young woman, however, accepts the pamphlet on Clifton DeBerry and says that she will consider voting for him. Then one of the children begins to grow restless and the couple begs their leave of the comrades, thanks them for their time, for their newspaper, for their ideas. And at the last possible second, one of the young comrades suggests:

  “Would you like to join our mailing list?”

  “We’ll help to keep you informed.”

  “There are many upcoming events.”

  “There’s no obligation, of course.”

  So the couple fill out their names and phone number and then say good-bye to the comrades.

  Later that night, I can see them lying side by side in bed in their college housing after the children have fallen asleep, looking through The Militant together. Maybe there is a re
print of the speech that James Baldwin gave during a rent strike in Harlem. This will appeal to the English literature major. Maybe there is a photograph of the Shah standing next to a grinning Lyndon Johnson, with the caption “The Blood-stained Shah.” And this will appeal to the young man who watched the tanks roll past his doorstep. Or there is an article about Che. Or about Patrice Lumumba. Or about Vietnam. Or about Trotsky. There is an excitement to the paper that the couple can feel, lying next to each other, toes touching, a sense that all the big things that are taking place in the world are connected to this paper, are influenced by it. There is also a sadness to the paper as it lays out in unflinching detail the misery of the world. But this sadness is offset by hope: Things can change, of course they can change. And beneath the excitement, beneath the sadness, beneath the hope, lies revenge, its tentacles coiling around the reader. I am sure they felt this too.

  Maybe it is a week later when a comrade calls and invites them to attend a forum on Cuba or Vietnam. The husband discusses it with his wife, who agrees that they will cancel their plans for that Friday evening and she will stay home and watch the four-year-old and the one-year-old while he goes off. Then a few weeks later there is another invitation to another forum, but this time the wife goes along and the children are left in the care of neighbors.

  “We’ll be home by eleven.”

  “Take your time.”

  At the forum the young woman is swayed by the certainty, the confidence of the speakers, and she removes a few more precious coins from her purse and buys a subscription to The Militant. When November arrives she ignores what the multitudes are saying about Johnson being better than Goldwater, and makes up her own mind, pulling the lever for Clifton DeBerry. (He received thirty-two thousand votes.) After that, Malcolm X is assassinated and the Vietnam War accelerates and the subscription is renewed and the husband decides that New York City is the place to be for revolutionary action. So the two of them pack all their things, and along with their son and daughter they leave the campus of the University of Minnesota for an apartment in Brooklyn. Now there are more forums, more books, more demonstrations, and the young woman’s dream of being a writer is pushed aside for the work that is the greater work, the greater dream, until there is no room left for anything else. And Che is assassinated, and Martin Luther King is assassinated, and Nixon is elected (she cast her ballot for Fred Halstead—forty-one thousand votes), and after that a third child is born—which is me—and meanwhile the Vietnam War continues, the demonstrations grow more violent, and the meetings more frequent. On and on the husband and wife go, further and further, faster and faster, until one day there is a pause, briefly, and the husband stands at the front door of their apartment, his hand on the doorknob, looking down and away from his wife and three children, a sheepish look on his face and an overnight bag in his hand. Then he opens the door and tiptoes out quietly into that good night forever.

  4.

  THROUGH THE MILKY DARKNESS I crawled, imagining I was swimming my way through the ocean. Over the seats I went, from lap to lap. The laps were boats.

  “How’s the little revolutionary tonight?” a voice whispered in my ear.

  I couldn’t see the face with the voice.

  “I’m good,” I whispered back.

  Then passing headlights illuminated everything briefly, red, yellow, blue, blinking, blinking, and I could see the inside of the Greyhound bus, the narrow aisle, the bags overhead, and the comrade smiling down at me. Then it all went back to black. I moved on, my six-year-old body swerving as the bus swerved, the sound of the motor humming beneath me, making me drowsy. “What’s the little revolutionary doing?” the voices asked. “Where’s the little revolutionary going?”

  When I awoke, it was morning and all had been transformed. The noise, the dirt, the large buildings of New York City were gone. Everything had become very wide and very flat. The sidewalks looked like they had been scrubbed in anticipation of our arrival, and when I stepped from the bus my mother bent down to untie my shoes so I could walk barefoot. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sunshine beat down. The air smelled fresh. I was now on the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, where the Socialist Workers Party held its annual national convention. For one week every August, a thousand comrades from all over the country, and some from overseas, even, gathered here to elect committees, discuss strategy, attend political classes, and raise funds.

  Under the trees I went running.

  “Where are you, Saïd?” my mother called. “Come help me with the luggage.”

  And the two of us stood over our suitcases, trying to right them, trying to pull them, until a comrade said, “It’s okay, Martha, I’ll get those for you.” And my mother and I walked gratefully behind him to the dormitory we had been assigned to live in for the week. A small, clean, square room, with two beds and a wooden desk that faced out over the wide grassy lawn. “Look at me, Ma!” I said, leaping from one bed to the other. “Look at me, I’m Superman!” From the window I could see the crab apple trees that the year before I had climbed and gorged so much from that I had diarrhea for two days. On top of our dresser a stack of towels and an orange bar of soap had been generously provided for us. “The soap smells good, Ma!”

  After we had unpacked, my mother took a nap while I went out to explore the dormitory. Through the hallways I scampered, and up and down the staircases, marveling at the alternating sensations of carpeting and linoleum on my bare feet, while feeling as if I had once again become the proprietor of an enormous hotel in which everything belonged to me. I darted in and out of the lounges, where the comrades had gathered to smoke and discuss, and through the lobby, where the giant banners were being hung about the Vietnam War and the Fourth International and the Equal Rights Amendment.

  “There goes the little revolutionary!” they yelled as I passed.

  Just one flight below my dorm room was the cafeteria, and later that afternoon my mother and I walked down the stairs for lunch, greeting the other comrades who had just arrived from Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles, with hundreds more still on their way. “Martha,” the comrades said, “I haven’t seen you since …” “Saïd,” they said, “look how tall you’re getting!”

  In the cafeteria I was permitted to eat and drink without fear of reprisal. No accusation was ever leveled by my mother when I returned to the table with yet another tray piled with plates of French fries and pizza and cake and cookies. It was the chocolate milk that I loved the most and consumed in vast quantities. I found it incomprehensible that it could flow so uninterruptedly from the soda fountain. My mother explained to me that the milk was not free, that none of the food was in fact free, and that she had paid a onetime fee for everything, but since I did not see money change hands I felt as if all was free. And it was here at Oberlin that I began to draw a strong association between revolution and summertime and grassy fields and all-you-can-eat.

  That evening, as dusk began to fall, my mother and I walked to the skating rink on the other end of campus, where the first meeting of the convention was always held. I sat beside her on a folding chair while comrades filed in, filling the place, their voices bouncing off the round bubble of the rink so that a thousand people sounded like a million. From out of this crowd I could hear the faint calling of my name.

  “Saïd!”

  The voices were far off but coming closer.

  “Saïd!”

  I stood on my chair and strained to locate their origin.

  “Saïd!”

  And suddenly, out of the crush of comrades, two small comrades emerged, brown eyes and brown hair, bearing an odd and unlikely resemblance to me: my brother and sister.

  “There you are!” they shouted.

  I was shocked by how much taller they had grown since the last time I had seen them. And my sister’s hair was long now, like a woman’s, and my brother was showing the signs of a mustache. They each wore little buttons on their collars that said Join the YSA, because they were m
embers of the youth wing of the party, the Young Socialist Alliance. I suddenly felt shy in front of them, and I flinched when they touched me.

  “I caught a fish!” my brother exclaimed, bending down and picking me up into his arms.

  “Should we fry the fish tonight?” my sister asked.

  “No, no, no,” I squealed, and in this way I was coaxed into laughter.

  And then my mother came over. “Hello, Jacob,” she said with a stiff formality, extending her hand for him to shake. Some of the comrades offered to slide down so we could all sit in a row, and when we were settled in, my brother and sister told me which dormitory they were staying in, and they told me a funny story about unpacking, and they told me that my father was somewhere in the front of the audience, or in the middle of the audience, and that he wanted to see me, but he couldn’t see me just yet because he was discussing things with the speakers, but soon enough. Then they asked me what funny things I’d been doing the last six months, or the last year, or however long it had been since we had seen one another, but before I could tell them, a speaker took the stage, a hush descended over the skating rink, and my brother and sister took out their notebooks and pens.

  “Welcome, comrades,” the comrade said into the microphone, his voice echoing. And so the speeches began.

  There had been a time in the beginning when we had all been together. Five of us. But things did not go well, and about three years after my father left, my sister was packed up and sent off to a mysterious neighborhood in Brooklyn where my father was said to be living with a female comrade from the party. I retained a single memory of my sister, from when she was probably eight and I was probably three, and she was kneeling in front of me to take off my shoes, but, unable to figure out how to undo the knot, what was supposed to be untied became tied tighter. And the two of us laughed and laughed.