It was impossible, being in the presence of this man,
not to want to do something wonderful for him.
One night a few years ago, when I couldn’t sleep even after giving myself several yawns of encouragement in the mirror, I decided to drive out to the airport. If I can’t take the journey of sleep with most of mankind in my city, I thought, at least I can go watch the comings and goings of my fellow non-sleepers. In the goings is always the promise of new beginnings; in the comings a sweetness, like when the lost return.
I know now that it was not whimsy which betook me to that airy crossroads; it was fate. For I had been there only a short while when I saw, standing at a window and looking pensively at the sky, the writer whose books I loved better than anybody’s in the world, Elie Wiesel.
Every book of his I had read many times, and some I almost knew by heart. I knew his childhood like I knew my own. How he and his family were deported to a Nazi concentration camp. How he lost everyone. I knew his struggles after the war to go on living without seeking revenge or falling into self-pity. I knew all the long years of trying to fight evil simply by remaining human.
And on my bedroom wall I even had an old faded newspaper photo of his face. There were newer, clearer photos from the covers of his books that I could have put on my wall, but none with the smile he was smiling in that one. Take the sadness of a man who has seen people both at their best and their worst, who has asked how the very skies over the terrible scenes of the Holocaust could not break their silence and cry “Murder!” Add to this the hope that the best in will prevail, and the understanding that the silence of skies speaks only for themselves and not for God, whose sky is the heart itself. That was Elie Wiesel’s smile.
It was impossible, being in the presence of this man, not to want to do something wonderful for him. To bear witness, somehow to my love for him, my gratitude for all the meanings he’d given to his life, and then shared.
Suddenly a voice announced that a flight was boarding. Breaking off his revery, Elie Wiesel picked up his flight bag and walked hurriedly almost straight toward me.
To my joy, inspiration arrived before opportunity was lost. I did something so simple it was almost sweet. I bowed to him. And it was such a deep bow that my head went down to my knees, and such a wide bow that my arms swung out to my sides, and such a shy bow that my eyes closed tight. I held it for a long moment.
When I finally arose and opened my eyes, Elie Wiesel was gone. Had he taken a sudden turn and missed my bow? Had he seen it, given it his smile, and then, for he is very shy himself, hurried on? I gave a sigh.
The I noticed them, two very young children ,a boy and a girl, standing hand in hand a few feet away, looking at me as if they wished I would do my wondrous bow at least once more, so they could forget how sleepy they were.
I bowed to them too. And a voice inside me whispered, “Not to worry if he saw, or didn’t see. To honor children is to honor him.”
Source
Mazel, D. 1985. Homage. In My Heart’s World, 138–140. Wild Rose, WI: Phunn Publishers.
For copies of this book, contact: Phunn Publishers, S5707 Highway; Viroqua, WI 54665–8606 USA.