Unrooted

One of our regular customers at Baldwins, this sweet old black lady, english teacher at some college, who is constantly finding something to be “debilitating” (this cold she suffers from lately ,the humidity, this cold weather, this hot weather etc.) rushed in today, fuming. She found dealing with her students particularly debilitating..in a sense that must keep explaining all over again, that the word “citizen” means the same thing no matter where you are, London or Burkina Faso..just “Get a job and pay your taxes”. That is the sine qua non for becoming a “citizen” of any given country.

According to this particular definition, I ceased to be a citizen of Czech Republic exactely two days before Xmas. There was a shocking unauthorized debit of approx 2 pounds (I no longer recieved payments on my czech account, yet they were still charging for maintining the bank account). And so it happened that my one and only czech bank account was closed. It felt a little bit shameful although you can hardly say I was treated unjustly. After all the very purpose of the bank account is to store your money. Which I didn’t provide. Juju just brushed it off the other day, saying they (the ruthless evil financier “them”) are the same everywhere around the world.

“Man,” she said: “those bastards waste no time, the very second you cease to be a source of income, they get rid of you.”

And I don’t blame them. I am no longer a part of the system, I do not work in Czech, don’t pay the insurance and taxes, therefor I don’t have any means to financialy participate on the flourishing or thumbling of the country. I will always love the language, the culture and two or three people back there. I still stand up for the Czech Republic in the occasional disputes with the people of more polished and cosmopolitan origins. But that’s not enough to qualify me “a citizen”..