Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Fish and Chips
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Today the London weather is cold and gray, damp and depressing. A dense mist drips off street signs and store awnings.
Across the street from the British Museum, I’m in the Museum Tavern. Perched on a stool at the mahogany bar, I’m nursing a frothy pint of Guinness and reading the Sunday Times.
My fingers are flexing and unflexing, unfurling an inner stress. The news from back home is ugly. American politicians are trash talking about Mexican immigrants.
America has an unquenchable appetite for Mexican restaurants, farmworker-picked produce, well-tended lawns, clean houses and cartel-delivered narcotics, but at our borders Hispanic immigrants are terrorized. Welcoming the free flow of goods and capital, but not human capital, is a well-worked American hypocrisy.
Another American at the table nearest me—a parody of her own pretensions—is fretting. “I’m worried Trump might deport my cleaning person,” she blusters. “We pay Isabella cash, under the table. Saves us a bundle in social security taxes.” Her voice, like the sound of frying food in hot oil, is staticky.
My waitress—dressed in intellectual black—is wearing black jeans, black shirt, black apron. Bouncy black curls cascade off her shoulders. Lustrous black skin. That she is poised, purposeful and pretty is tracked by the milling herd of males at the end of the bar. Whether she’s native born or a foreign arrival doesn’t get in the way of her waitressing or her sex appeal.
She serves my fish and chips. A ten-inch piece of deep-fried plaice with meaty French fries and a pile of green peas. Malt vinegar to taste.
In the 15th century when Sephardic Jews in Portugal fled religious persecution, many resettled in England. On street corners, they hawked a battered, fried fish prepared “in the Jewish manner.” When chips were added is unknown, but one culinary history reports that in the 19th century a Jewish immigrant opened the first London fish-and-chip shop.
My name is Noah—a Hebrew name. Jews know something about human migrations and friendly or unfriendly borders.
Pharaohs, fascists and bigoted demagogues are old news. Closed country clubs, the Berlin Wall, Hitler’s antisemitic emigration laws, North Korea’s imprisoned population, razor wire along the Rio Grande are the shuttered doors of fear. A futile fight against a globalizing world.
People carrying their customs and cargos have been crossing continents since the day the first traders stayed at a caravansary. The Silk Road brought goods, culture and knowledge from China to the Arab world. The Dutch East India Company was a globalizer. Christian missionaries and drug cartels are borderless. The BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera ignore borders. Egyptians exported papyrus scrolls—the first paper—to Italy, thus saving my high school students from writing their exams on clay tablets.
The tavern’s polished wood paneling, fake ‘antique’ pictures, old-fashioned lettering and swinging doors are quaint and old-timey. Bevel-edged mirrors magnify the sepia lightbulbs glowing inside phony gaslights. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi kitchen staff are as invisible as the electrical wiring hidden in the walls.
Outside the pub, the thrum from the rain on my umbrella is deafening. In the London sky, a rainbow smiles at me, at native Londoners and new immigrants—and even at other American tourists.
