Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Typically, I do not chat during Uber rides. Not out of misanthropy, but because I often email on the run. This one morning, when my driver told the story of his friend Gabe, I put down my phone. Both men came to the United States in the late 2000s, immigrants from different countries, like millions before who fled political violence or sought better opportunities.

Their friendship began as strangers on a fishing expedition. When Gabe noticed that Ravi, my driver, struggled with his line and tackle, he approached to help. The two fished nearly every weekend for twenty years. They purchased a used boat together, spent holidays in each other’s homes, celebrated their children’s milestones. “We were closer to each other than our own siblings,” Ravi said. He even followed his friend Gabe to Nashville.

Two years ago, Gabe called one morning to say he could no longer go fishing and hung up. For two weeks, Ravi’s return calls were ignored. Confused and hurt by his friend’s abandonment, he showed up at his house after dropping off a passenger who lived nearby. Gabe’s wife answered the door. She told Ravi that Gabe had cancer. He was worried about receiving care as an undocumented immigrant; so they were planning to return to their home country. He was ashamed. When Gabe emerged from behind his wife, Ravi said, “Old friend, let me help.”

Ravi organized fundraisers and a GoFund me campaign. As his friend’s health declined, he drove Gabe back and forth to surgeries and sat hours through multiple chemo sessions. Gabe did not survive, but Ravi was proud to have cared for Gabe. He told me, “I haven’t touched a fishing pole since.”

As Ravi shared his story of friendship, I thought of citizenship and those without legal recognition. I thought about the fragile meaning of home, how our fortunes are intimately connected to the generosity of others, the spirit of kindness fostered among migrant communities, how we were once a nation who garnered its strength from welcoming the displaced to its shores.

Today’s poem problematizes easy notions of citizenship and arbitrary boundaries. It powerfully implores us to reflect on our advantages, to find a way to humility — and to connect with those whose freedom is not a given.

A Dominican Poem
by Danielle Legros Georges

If you are born, and you are stateless,
if you are born, and you are homeless,

if your state and home are not
yours—and yet everything you know—

what are you? Who are you? And who
am I without the dark fields I walk upon,

the streets I know, the blue corners
I call mine, the ones you call yours . . .

Who am I to call myself citizen, and
human and free? And who are you

to call yourself landed and grounded,
and free. And who is judge enough?

Who citizen enough? And who native?
Who other?

And who are we who move so freely
without accents of identification,

without skin of identification, with 
all manner of identification. With 

gold seals of approval. With stamps
of good fortune. With the accident

of blameless birth. Who are we to be
so lucky?

“A Dominican Poem” by Danielle Legros Georges from THE DEAR REMOTE NEARNESS OF YOU © 2016 Danielle Legros Georges, published by Barrow Street Books. Used by permission of the poet.