Nathan Englander - Unhooked

 

 

For those of you who are less than 100 years old, I want to tell you there used to be something called The Soviet Union. [audience laughter] They were our arch enemy and we were locked in a perpetual state of cold war with them for my whole life until I was an adult to contrast that to our perpetual war on terror that we're now in, going around the city, we're all afraid something's going to blow up that might blow up. Well, back then, we were afraid everything was going to blow up. We were going to melt the whole world into a tiny glass marble. 

 

The symbol of this split between east and west was the Berlin Wall, which not only divided that city, it literally divided the planet. I think about it now, it's hard to go back to that, but it was really people would die trying to cross. They were literally trapped, they would literally dream of freedom, they would hide in trunks of cars or dig or try to hang glide, and they would be shot dead. That's how serious it was. 

 

So, in 1989, I'm on my junior year in Jerusalem, studying abroad, and suddenly word comes just out of nowhere, “The wall has been breached. It's open. There's a crossing between east and West. People can move freely.” It's not like today where you know Halliburton for $100 million plows the thing down. People are literally ripping it down with their bare hands with hammers and chisels. This is just unbelievable. The only thing I can think of it in terms of today, literally, like I say to you, like I'm announcing right now on stage, but we have peace with Iran, there's peace in the Middle East, you can go take an Al Qaeda bus tour of Kabul, go see Osama bin Laden's [audience laughter] coffee shop, that kind of stuff. It was just literally mind boggling. 

 

Well, within two seconds, people start showing up back in Jerusalem. Friends and stuff start showing up with pieces of the wall. They're going to be part of history. They're going over there chipping at it. They're helping put the world back together. And this girl I have a crush on shows up and she gives me a piece of the wall and I'm holding it. It's like holding moon rock. I'm holding it, it's got the graffiti on it. I just can't believe I'm holding it. It's such an amazing thing to be a part of, except I ain't. It's like, clear to me in an instant, like, I need to go be a part of this. 

 

So, I grabbed my buddy Joel, who dragged me to Jerusalem, and we set the plan in order, and we're going to do it a Jewish boy style. We're going to do like a Passover, slavery to freedom route. [audience laughter] So, we fly into Warsaw and we do like speaking of bus tours. We hit all the highlights. We do Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka. [audience laughter] We hit all our favorite concentration camps, [audience laughter] and we end up in Prague, where we're going to take a night train to Berlin and that's the end of this heroic journey for us, which is we're going to get to Berlin in the morning, we're going to chip at the Wall, cross to the west, and go home at the end of our year. It's all exciting. 

 

Well, no, we thought this is a grand plan. Nobody else seems to have thought this was the same grand plan, because we are alone on this platform at night. It is pitch dark. There's nobody else there. We're just waiting on this platform in Prague. Ain't nobody else there. Basically, here comes our train. We think it's our train. It starts rolling through the station, but it doesn't stop, it just keeps rolling, clattering those tracks. And what it is is an old freight train. 

 

Now, can I tell you, I am Long Island raised. Like, for me, I have been raised on a full-on diet of the Holocaust. [audience laughter] This sets instant Holocaust PTSD in my head. [audience laughter] You know what I'm saying? For those of you like, I'm yeshiva boy, like we didn't do The Diary of Anne Frank. We went clockwork orange style. [audience laughter] Honestly, I have a friend here, she’ll tell you from a way too young age, they would sit us there and flash images, no joke. Like, piles of bodies, piles of teeth, piles of hair, just combs, just these really unbelievably dark images. 

 

And there's no greater symbol of it. They always did the jackboots. All those old tapes played big black jackboots. And then, those trains. These are the trains that annihilated our people. They would stuff them full of Jews, and when there was no more room, they would stuff babies in over the people's head. There we are standing on the same platforms. It's not like it changed. We're on the same platform, those are the same tracks, this could be the same train that destroyed our people. We're just standing there dead silent. 

 

Well, the next train is our train. [audience laughter] We get up on it, and back to the Long island part. I know my trains, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst, Babylon. [audience laughter] I know my roots. I can tell you-- [unintelligible 00:25:26] went to switch cars, I know when something doesn't feel right when I step into a train car, and this feels bad. It's over hot and already over packed. We're looking for our seats. We got our numbers and we go over our compartment and we open it and we expect two British people drinking tea. It's like the beds are open, it's six guys laid out head to toe, like sardines. Honestly, it smells of piss, it smells of beer, and most of all, it just smells of sadness. 

 

These are refugees. We're on some freedom adventure. People have been trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Like, the wall has come down, people are on the move. Like a good American at that time, I don't think I could point Canada on a map. I can't tell you today, are they Romani or-- No idea. But just refugees on the move. Well, we don't want our seats anymore and they ain't giving them up. We look around in this packed car and this nice family, they make room for us. We take off our packs. They slide their kids over and they let us in their compartment. I could cry telling this to you right now, these people with nothing, they offer to share their food with us. 

 

We settle in, and we're rolling, and we're on our way to Berlin, and then the train stops. I don't speak anything. I don't know what's happening. I don't know how they understood it, what's getting screamed, but suddenly bedlam. You know what I'm saying? They're grabbing their stuff. You can feel it in the corridor. Everybody has to get off the train. And there we are, packed like turtles getting jostled. We are out the train. We're not at a station, we're down the ladder, we're in the dirt, in the night, running in these groups. It's going this way, and that's eddies and rivers. We're just flowing with these refugees. We don't know if there's a fire or what's going on. We are just terrified. It seems to me I'm a coward at everything. It seems like a nightmare of a bad idea, what we have done. Like, I don't know what's going on. 

 

Eventually, there seems like a dominant stream. What it does seem is that they're sending the whole front of the train to the back of the train. Like, the train is being split in the night. We climb back up. Well, if it was packed before, there is no room. It's really panicky. I don't feel like a witness to anything now. I just feel part of it. Joel and I, we are in it. Like, I just want some space, somewhere to be. I want to get safely to Berlin and I want to cross through that wall. Well, it's just we're pushing-- Again, those compartments are overflowing. We make our way to the end of the car and the last compartment in that car has the curtains drawn. So, we give it a yank, and we give it a yank, and we hear someone scream, “Fuck.” 

 

Now, I have to tell you, you cannot learn to curse like an American. You know what I'm saying? Like, I have an Israeli friend, Moti. I remember he always be like, “Nathan, I give a shit.” I'd be like, “No, no, Moti, you don't give a shit.” [audience laughter] He still can't learn it. Point is that is a pitch perfect fuck that I get, [audience laughter] you know? So, we're like, “Fuck. Did you say fuck? We say fuck.” [audience laughter] It's like this chorus of joyous fuck. And then, the door flies open, we fly in, it slams shut. And back to me being a coward. I can tell you know, I don't know if I'm overreacting. There's two American frat boy types there. [audience laughter] Dudes have eyes like saucers. They are as scared and panicked as we are. 

 

Well, this is the embarrassing part of the story. It's just this is any you my age who backpacked then, we honestly all deeply believed that Europe was filled with small bands of ninja robbers who were trained solely to rob 19-year-old Americans. Like, they wanted the bounty of half a joint and a cowboy junkies mixtape. [audience laughter] This was on the black market. You could feed a family off of such bounty. 

 

The more embarrassing part of the story, is we honestly believed it is so stupid. We honestly believed we would tell each other that they would gas you, that they would have like tanks of sleep, they would knock you out, and then take that stuff. So, we all traveled with ropes or bicycle chains. That's how you lock your door. Well, guess what? These guys had the bicycle chain. We were thankful for it. The door was chained. And people are pulling. You know what? We're not the only ones who need a space. Like, people are pulling and yanking and banging at that door and screaming. 

 

Well, the train starts moving. The banging subsides. Every once in a while, there's banging and screaming, but the door's not coming open, and in the way you make home anywhere. The four of us are team. We're a group, we're safe, the adrenaline drains out, we pass out. So, we wake up in the morning. It is beautiful. I've never so enjoyed seeing in a morning like that, like sun streaming. It is lovely, it's bucolic, it's dead silent. There's just trees out the train. We're waiting and we're not moving, so I go to check what's going on. I go out into the corridor, and I very much understand why it's so silent. There's nobody else in the car. Our car is completely empty. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I look into the next car and then I totally understand why it's empty, because there is no next car. There's no locomotive, there's no train. [audience laughter] I look behind us, same difference. We're a car alone, we've been unhooked. At some point in the night, we've lost our train. [audience laughter] So, I also then understand maybe one of those people banging and pulling and screaming was a friendly conductor trying to tell us there was [audience laughter] a second switch. I can hear you all laughing, which means you understand what's happened. I understand what's happened. 

 

Well, going back into that compartment, honestly, we had a very bad night. It's a very difficult information to relay to them. What do you mean there's no-- Like, this idea, where are we? I don't know. You don't know what station? I don't know what country. [audience laughter] So, again, it's not hard to do recon as a group. They come out and they see, we've lost the train. [audience laughter] Well, the one thing we have with us-- Again, it's night. we don't have our iPhones, there's no compass. We know which way our bodies were hurtling through space. So, we put on our packs, we open our door to the next compartment, but there is no train, next car, and we step down onto the tracks, and we hike. 

 

We see a station in the distance, which is good. We hike up towards the station. There's another fact that I have not forgotten in the 20 years since, which is when you show up at the station without the train, the platform is so much higher than you would think. [audience laughter] But they hop up. Joel pulls me up, because that's how it goes. [audience laughter] It's like 06:00 in the morning or something. It's morning light and then there's just one drunken blonde dude with a bottle of vodka stumbling around, not scary happy, like, about our age, looking happy with a bottle of vodka on the platform. We go up to him to inquire, “Do you speak English, and what country are we in?” [audience laughter] 

 

Anyway, He does speak English. He's been out partying. He's got one leg up on us. He's finished his degree. He's been celebrating drunkenly all night. We are in the German Democratic Republic of East Germany. We are in the city of Dresden. And guess where he's going home to? He is headed home to Berlin. So, our group of four, we are now five strong. Our train is coming. It's joyous. I really just want to get through the wall at this point. 

 

We get on the train. We take our seats. In comes out of central casting, this big, strong East German woman in the very serious conductor uniforms. She takes our tickets. And our tickets are no good. Try showing up at O'Hare with a ticket from Laguardia. Our tickets aren't even from the same country. We have Czech tickets. We did not originate in East Germany, so the tickets are no good. So, we pull out our Eurail passes, which are good everywhere. She looks at them, and she doesn't know them, and they're no good. And this is when I understand, she makes it very clear we are being turned off at the next stop. 

 

Now, you know what? I held it together through Israel and then Intifada, and I held it together through the trip and the night. You know what? I'm actually terrified, because I remember my mother talking about my grandparents saying, “Oh yes, these relatives used to write them from across the--” and then they stopped writing. You know what I'm saying? Then they were just gone. Like, this is a part of the world that swallows Jews. [audience laughter] And you know what? Like, those refugees, like dead serious, there's a reason they're racing. That wall comes down a day, it could go back up in a day, half the world was already trapped behind it for all those years. I just think like, what have we done? I think back to that Al Qaeda bus tour. As I tell you now, I think like, do you have to be on the first bus? [audience laughter] What have we done? 

 

Anyway, so, in the middle of my panic attack, Joel's trying to keep me under control. I see our German friend. He's up. He's up, and he's talking to the conductor, and he's gesticulating. He's delivering the Gettysburg Address there. Honestly, literally, with the light streaming through in the morning, he looks almost sober. It's beautiful. Whatever he's doing, it's beautiful. And when he's done, out of nowhere, she reaches out this conductor with this hard face and it goes soft, and she punches our Eurail passes, and she welcomes us on the train to Berlin. 

 

So, we ask him, “What did you tell her?” And he says, I told her this, “These people have come from America to our country. They've come to see our country. Are you going to tell them that a ticket that is good in Madrid, that is good in Rome, that is good in Paris, is no good here? The great conflict is over. We are one world now. We are all of us, brothers.” Thank you.