When In Doubt, Serve Tuna

Not far south from Prague, Czech Republic, on the lovely river Berounka, there is the village of Karlštejn, with a beautiful castle of the same name,

built for Charles IV, the king of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor.

He inherited the county (now a country) of Luxembourg and was also crowned King of Italy and King of Burgundy, but his heart was in Bohemia.  He was a well-educated man who spoke five languages (Czech among them), and wanted to make Prague the center of knowledge, culture and arts.  He achieved that by making Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, founding a university, which is still there after almost 7 centuries, now with 17 faculties and 50,000 students, and building the famous Charles Bridge, now a magnet for tourists,

and also the Karlštejn castle, which was used for safekeeping the Imperial Regalia (crown & orb & sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire).

Since the castle is easily reachable even by bicycle from my family's summer cottage, I know the place well.  Given the beauty of the countryside,

the depth of history in that place, the charm of the castle, this could be a dream place to live.

Well, it depends.  If you were born in communist times, Russians having just invaded your country to stop even minor signs of thawing of the oppressive regime, as the bastards did in 1968,


with the prospect of living your entire life muzzled by the propaganda of an Orwellian state, you might consider taking your chances and escaping your predicament.  Even though it might involve high risk and years of hardship.

One woman did.

Alena Sešínová spent her childhood in Karlštejn.

She earned an engineering degree in Information Technology (a very rare thing in the late 1960's).  After the Russian invasion, she left for the "West" as many thousands of Czechs did at that time.  Not telling her family (to protect them), she took a train to France in 1970 (shortly after 1968, you could still do that; later, you couldn't).

Despite her university degree, finding work was hard.  She worked as a cleaning lady near the Eiffel tower in Paris, having no skill in either French or cleaning.  A friendly lady had to teach her how to clean.

After a while, she managed to save enough money for a ticket to America.  There, she lived in the Bronx, working in a factory making handbags and in a cafeteria serving sandwiches.  Given her poor English, she did not always understand exactly what the customer ordered, so, as the small article about her in The New York Times relates, when she did not understand, she served tuna.

Again, she managed to save enough money, but this time for the Manhattan Community College, where she earned a "western" certificate for an IT job and started working as a programmer.  She had "made it".  She planned to buy a house in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, but then discovered that in that part of town there is a lot of Russian spoken.  She hated hearing Russian (me too), so got herself a big apartment in Brooklyn Heights instead.  (Note: the Russian in Brighton Beach was mostly spoken by the immigrant Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the Soviet Union.  It was not the Russian-speaking people that was the problem, but the language itself, associated with the Russian invaders and oppressors in the minds of many Czechs in those times.)


Her English got much better, but she retained her Czech accent and kept losing her articles (the strange word "the" that English has and Czech doesn't).  When enough wine was served, her accent got stronger and articles went missing even more.  Eventually she ended up as a systems analyst for the Marsh McLennan insurance company.

She loved her job so much that she went to work even on days when she was not expected to, just to "check on the computers".  Such a day was 20 years ago, when she went to her office on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center to "check" on her computers again.

 


At that moment, 8:46am in the morning, September 11, 2001, the first of the planes hijacked by Saudi terrorists hit her building.  Her office was directly in its path.

 

She died on that day, together with 2,700 people in those buildings.  As was the case with many others, her body was never found.  The symbolic grave of Alena Sešínová is now in Karlštejn, close to the lovely river Berounka and the beautiful Karlštejn castle.

Comments

Bloggy Bobb said…
The beautiful sadness of a life lived with conviction, standing straight against chaos, absurdity and stupidity, to the very last breath... Thank you! This is a truly meaningful commemoration.
September 11, 2021 at 8:29 PM
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