Ordinance on Arrival
Welcome to you
who have managed to get here.
It's been a terrible trip;
you should be happy you have survived it.
Statistics prove that not many do.
You would like a bath, a hot meal,
a good night's sleep. Some of you
need medical attention.
None of this is available.
These things have always been
in short supply; now
they are impossible to obtain.
This is not
a temporary situation.
Our condolences on your disappointment.
It is not our responsibility
everything you have heard about this place
is false. It is not our fault
you have been deceived,
ruined your health getting here.
For reasons beyond our control
there is no vehicle out.
Commentary
I only recently found out that recent south asian immigrants into Toronto are called “FOBs” or “Refs” by the first or second generation south asians who live here. FOBs means “Fresh off the boats” and Refs means “Refugees”. It does not matter if you came into Canada under the independent category of skilled labour. If you have the slightest trace of an Indian accent and, particularly, if you’re struggling as a new immigrant consider yourself a FOB.
While I am angered by this for various reasons, I find that this poem by Naomi Lazard which actually alludes specifically to the FOBs (be they from Vietnam, India or wherever!) really does apply to so many recent immigrants, the skilled workers - the ones that have not crossed borders and entered into this country unlawfully (in boats) or pleaded sanctuary as refugees.
When I read this poem, I am reminded of scenes from Bombay, of long lines of people with their hopeful faces before the US consulate in Breach Candy or at the visiting Canadian Consulate at Nariman Point. So many people, from all over India, who left behind their country with a dream of making it big in the west. People who dreamed of having a bright future here for themselves and their children.
I see these faces now, in Toronto. It is always a humbling experience. They drive me home in their cabs or fill gas in my car at full service gas stations. Some serve me meals at restaurants and some have cleaned my room at the Convention Centre hotels where I am attending conferences. They are really no different from me. Had it not been for the financial stability and support I had from friends and family (on my own arrival into Canada) I could just as easily have been one of them. They see a fellow south asian and we break into conversation. It does not shock me anymore when they tell me that they used to be Civil Engineers, Professors, even Doctors ‘back home’. These are the people who got lost in the conundrums of accreditation and gaining “Canadian experience” and succumbed to finding other ways to make a living. They came here with only a few hundred dollars and did not have the financial ability to go back to school and retrain. It’s most challenging when they arrive here with a family. Accreditation is a luxury they can ill afford when bills have to be paid and mouths have to be fed.
And I wonder if they now feel betrayed. I wonder if it they absolve the Canadian Government for all the lovely brochures that it prints praising the life in Canada, when all that they hear after their arrival into Canada is exactly this:
Our condolences on your disappointment.
It is not our responsibility
everything you have heard about this place
is false. It is not our fault
you have been deceived,
ruined your health getting here.
I know that for these people there is a vehicle out - they could go back to their homes and professions. But, every one of them has always given me the same reason for staying here. “Our kids will have a better future here and they will have a better life here. We’re staying here for them”.
A bit ironic then, isn’t it, that these very kids will grow up and mock people just like their parents by giving them derogatory terms of reference like “FOBs” and “REFs”?
— Salima
Bio on Naomi Lazard
Naomi Lazard is more popular for her translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz than she is for her own poetry. Her own poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the Nation, Haroers, the New Yorker. She is author of several collections of poetry: The Moonlight Upper Deckerina (Sheepmeadow Press, 1977); Cry of the Peacocks (Harcourt Brace, 1975 ) and Ordinances (Ardis).
PS: I don’t really know anything more about her - perhaps google would help those who want to know more.
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin DeMello · 29 July 2003
I believe Salima’s commentary hinged on the lines
This is not
a temporary situation.
Our condolences on your disappointment.
It is not our responsibility
everything you have heard about this place
is false.
which seems to speak more to the violently disillusioned than to the violently dispossessed.
Actually, emigrants often burn their boats (and both ends of their candles) to the extent that going back to their homes and professions becomes as much of an uphill task as staying and trying to make the best of their new lives and circumstances.
Kafkaesque sums it up nicely. I personally don’t believe that Lazard intended the poem to restrict itself to any one class of people; conversely, I think it applies very well to the class of people Salima wrote about.
martin
S. Bhattacharji · 29 July 2003
Dear Minstrels,
I do not know if comments on poems are in order, but I found this a fascinating poem. I work in primary health care and a lot of my work is with mother and child care especially during child birth. In developing countries, mortality associated with childbirth for both mother and child are still so high and for me this poem was as if addressed to the newborn who finds the world into which she/he comes a hostile one. So it was a surprise to read that this is about refugees, but I suppose for many newborns in developing countries their arrival is as it is for the refugees of this world.
Sara Bhattacharji.
Jerry Rao · 29 July 2003
As one who has chosen to live in India…I must say I have no sympathies for Salima’s views…..no one forced people to go…..why whine after doing something voluntarily
I do like the deadpan audenesque quality of the poem though
Jerry
John Burstow · 29 July 2003
Hi Martin
Today’s poem by Naomi Lazard is striking, but I cannot see how it “specifically” refers to all the classes of immigrants that Salima Virani lists in her comments. It is indeed hard to find on-line biographical information on Naomi Lazard, but that poet, translator, and American academic seems to have associated herself with the plight of the permanently and violently dispossessed peoples of the world–specifically Palestinians–and not with the uphill fight immigrants of various economic backgrounds may have for full comfortable citizenship in places like Toronto. Virani’s comment that “I know that for these people there is a vehicle out - they could go back to their homes and professions” should alert us that Virani is NOT writing about the same people whose situation Lazar is describing, people whom the poem says have NO such vehicle. But I do not mean to suggest that the little biographical background I could find in THE TRUE SUBJECT, (by Ali, Agha Shahid, Grand Street, 07345496, Winter90, Vol. 9, Issue 2–through EbscoHost, for those with access) is the key to the chilling Kafkaesque “Ordinance on Arrival.” I do not have that key.
John Burstow
Winnipeg, Canada
Arun Simha · 29 July 2003
Hi,
Incidentally, the term “FOB” as well as PIGS [Poor Indian Graduate Students] is common across the North American continent. FOB, I believe, was used primarily by the second generation East Asians.
PIGS was created as a reaction to the term “ABCD- American Born Confused Desi” sometime in the early 1990’s. It was a term usually used by second generation Indian Americans to refer to new grad students of Indian origin.
Other Asians also use insensitive terms like “Eggs & Bananas”. [broken link] http://www.asianwhite.org/egg.html & [broken link] http://www.iistix.com/_stixandstones/blendfor1000years.html refer to these terms. I don’t know whether this is a predominantly Asian habit or whether Europeans are susceptible to this trait as well.
Anyway, nice poem!
Arun
Acynta · 1 August 2003
Hah hah. Well, when I was reading it, I thought it was about heaven/the afterlife. But either the childbirth or refugee readings seem more borne out (a pun! great!) by the text. Indeed, rereading it, it seems very much in reference to the many illegal immigrants who come to the United States (and Canada, and the UK), under almost unbelievably inhumane conditions. It was only about a month ago that a tractor trailer full of Mexican immigrants was abandoned by the side of the road in Texas (?), with a staggering death toll due to suffocation/dehydration. And of course the poem’s title “Ordinance on Arrival” is particularly cutting, as illegal immigrants are not part of the established beaurocratic order, and are not greeted by any official ordinances at all.
However, I like the poem’s deliberate ambiguity, which makes the themes of struggle, disillusionment, and irrevocability (is that a word?) human themes, thereby humanizing the illegals whom it is so easy for us to forget, and to excuse their suffering on the basis that “it is not our responsibility/everything you have heard about this place is false.”
Very “Hotel California”, n’est-ce-pas? “You can check out any time you like/but you can never leave.”
carlynn
Ian Baillieu · 10 August 2003
A memorable poem, in tone and content reminiscent of some of the work of the popular Australian poet, Bruce Dawe.
I think Martin hit the nail on the head in the last paragraph of his comments. Nothing in this poem restricts it to any one class of people. It’s a general template (I guess that’s what Carlynn means by ‘deliberate ambiguity’) for a Kafkaesque nightmare that could apply to arrival in any unfamiliar place after an arduous transit or journey, though it might fit the details of some situations better than others. Besides those already mentioned (refugees, immigrants, the newborn, and souls entering the afterlife), it could apply, for example, to prisoners transported to a concentration camp, or a would-be relief party entering a besieged city, or tourists who have crossed dangerous terrain to reach some remote place on their itinerary. I don’t regard the word ‘Ordinance’ in the title as meaning just some official regulation or even formal announcement. To me it signifies a key element of the nightmare, namely, that the dismaying circumstances conveyed by whoever is in charge are presented as unalterable.
Ian