I lived in Montreal one building block away from Rue Sainte Catherine which is the main east-west artery of the city. This is where for decades they held what the old timers claim to be the biggest Saint Patrick's Day parade in the World. I believe this claim because it takes the parade several hours to pass, and I watched it many times year after year.
Anyone can see that this is a joyful occasion for everybody but especially for those who have Irish blood in them. Sometimes, when someone suspects you are not Irish and yet you stand in the cold to watch the parade, they venture to say in good nature something like: Is this not a nice day to be Irish? or something close to that. They also appreciate it if you responded with something like: Are you Irish? or better yet, today I feel like I am Irish, are you? Of course, all these are variations on the old theme: On Saint Patrick's Day there are those of us who are Irish and those who wish they were.
One day I was going to say something entirely different but I bit my tongue at the last moment because I felt that the Irish woman who addressed me would not understand. Besides, she was attractive, she was cheerful, I knew she was from the neighborhood and I was unattached.
We had met before inside the Middle Eastern store that was right behind us as we stood to watch the parade. On that previous occasion I was waiting for the storekeeper behind the counter to wrap the piece of feta cheese I had ordered when the Irish woman walked into the store.
She asked if they carried "hummus" which is chick peas in Arabic but she pronounced the word so badly that the Iranian storekeeper did not understand even though she was fluent in Arabic. I did understand because I heard the word hummus pronounced by Anglophones previously and I knew how it sounded. So I pronounced the word correctly and the Iranian woman understood. She said yes, they carried the staple; the two women thanked me; I got the cheese and left the store.
I crossed paths with the Irish woman a few times after that; we smiled and nodded to each other but that was all. On the day I stood to watch the parade, she saw fit to come and talk to me. She said something like: "What a nice day to have a parade!" For a moment I was tempted to respond with something different from the customary: "Yes, it's a nice day to be Irish; you look Irish to me, are you?" but I did not.
The reason why I was tempted to say something different is because of scenes I witnessed previous to that which remained seared in my memory. So let me tell you this story before I come back to my encounter with the attractive Irish woman who spoke to me at the Saint Patrick's Day parade.
I was writing for a local newspaper when they held a convention in each of the ridings across the country to choose candidates for an election that was to take place later in the year. Looking at the scheduling of the events, I decided to attend a number of them a day or two apart. Having seen a few of these events in Ontario and Quebec, I was struck by the fact that they were done somewhat differently in a few of the ridings in Quebec.
In Ontario and in most ridings in Quebec the candidates seek out and shake hands with as many voting members as they can in an attempt to win last minute support from those who may still be undecided. The same thing happens in French speaking Quebec except in those ridings where the population was overwhelmingly English speaking such as you find in some districts in the city of Montreal.
These would be the districts to which most of the immigrants who come from the English speaking parts of the World flock. But they are also the districts where the English speaking old timers have lived for generations. The people who attend the conventions would not be the new immigrants as you might expect because these souls have no time for politics, working as hard as they do trying to get settled and start a new life. Instead, those who attend the political conventions are old time Montrealers who are relatively wealthy and have the time to spend on political activities.
In general, these wealthy English speaking Montrealers are of Irish or Jewish descent, and you do not have to be a journalist to feel the animosity that exists between these two groups when they hold a convention where they face each other and compete for votes. You literally see the convention hall divided into two camps, one Irish and one Jewish.
When you wander into either camp, you are told that the folks in the other camp cheat because they bring people by the buss load to vote in this riding with fake identification. However, they hasten to add that there is nothing they can do about it because the other guys know how to get around the rules and get away with it. But the truth is that both camps cheat and neither asks for an investigation that would expose it for doing the same thing.
Most of the candidates who run to represent such ridings in Parliament would also be of Irish or Jewish descent and a sympathizers of either camp. Each candidate would stick in most part with his or her group, neglecting to even wander into the other camp or to shake hands with a member of the other group.
I came out of these experiences gratified by the realization that there was less animosity in Montreal between the Arabs and the Jews than there was between the Irish and the Jews. In fact, the corner of the riding where I lived was mostly populated by Jews until the Arabs and the other Middle Easterners started to move in. They came to live there and they started a few businesses, a phenomenon that helped to jack up the rent for retail space.
Except for the fact that the Jews started to close their own businesses and move out of the area, handing their existing low rent leases to the newcomers for a large up front payment, the relationship between the various ethnic groups was warm, cordial and harmonious. But the one thing that struck me the most was the fact that the Jews conducted two contradictory discourses at the same time.
On the one hand, they went out of their way to show how close they felt they were to us, their Arab Semitic cousins, but on the other hand they exhibited - albeit in a very subtle way - how "White, Western" and therefore superior they thought they were to us. And this attitude was exhibited even by those who had a darker skin complexion than some of us.
Because I was convinced that most of these people were descendants of someone who converted to Judaism and therefore had nothing to do with being Hebrews or Semites, I felt that they symbolized an identity theft of the strangest kind but I said nothing of the sort to any of them.
In the meantime, that whole strange experience gave birth to a saying that reverberated in my head ever since. It was this: “Every day of the year there are those of us who are Semites and those who wish they were.” And this was the saying I was prepared to respond with if and when someone ventured to show me how proud they were to be Irish on Saint Patrick's Day. But I never used the saying because like I said, the Irish woman who approached me on that day was attractive, cheerful and I felt she would not understand. To be more forthcoming, she took my breath away and left me speechless.
Well, not completely speechless because I responded to her remark with a question: How do you want me to respond? Nothing, she said but then asked me which paper I wrote for. I told her which paper then asked how she might have guessed I wrote for a paper? She said that it was cold, I had my gloves removed and I was taking notes. And also the Iranian storekeeper told her the other day I was writing for a local newspaper.
In less than a split second my brain jumped to the conclusion that she must have asked about me to be given that answer. And so I seized the moment, pointed to the Irish pub across the street from where we stood and asked her if she wanted to go there for an Irish coffee or a beer. She said not the Irish pub because it would be too crowded today, and so we went somewhere else.
I saw the woman a few more times after that and I must confess she was delicious to be with. We went to a different place each time but never into that Irish pub as she always found a reason why not to go there.
And because every good thing must come to an end, this one did too. You see, the woman had a boyfriend all along and she married him eventually. Only much later after that did I learn that the man she married used to work at the Irish pub where she refused to go in with me.