A Different Idea of Freedom

By Jessica Cavanagh
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

In 1994, South Africa had its first free and fair elections. In those elections, groups of people who had always been disenfranchised in the Republic of South Africa got a chance to vote for the first time. Two years earlier, in 1992, a six and a half year old girl and her parents left South Africa forever, on their way to Canada. They left, fearing that the violence and tension between the races would erupt into a bloody civil war, rather than a relatively sedate election. Arriving in a remote region of Canada, determined to start their lives anew, and amid Canadians who spoke an ancient form of English and a barely existent Jewish community, they felt safe, possibly for the first time. As you might have guessed, I was that little girl and my parents made that gut-wrenching decision to leave their home country and start over in the middle of their lives. A few years later, we made a similar leap when we moved to the United States.

I’ve lived here for over eight and a half years. Few people realize I’m not from around here, until it somehow comes up in conversation. People often ask me what I remember, and I tell them: I remember what a six year old remembers. I remember school, friends, family and my house. I remember foods and candy, favorite restaurants, very basic things. I also remember some emotional things as well.

When I was asked to write this piece, I realized I’d never really thought of myself as someone who had gone somewhere for the freedom that place offered. After thinking about it for a while, I realized it made sense. Every reason I could think of relating to why we left boiled down to some certain freedom that we lacked. As Jews, we were free from religious persecution. As citizens, we were laden with economic insecurity, worries about corruption and extortion and a legal system that was about protecting the government and its policies rather than the people. I can’t think of one specific incident during which my life was in danger. However, there’s a great difference between not being in an explicitly life threatening situation and actually being safe. I grew up feeling unsafe. My small part of the world was stable, but everything else could intrude upon that stability and change it, very much for the worse, at any moment. I lived in a relatively well off residential neighborhood. There were bars on my windows, gates on the doors and motion sensor lights outside. Guard dogs were common. Every house had a wall around its yard and a gate to let cars and people in. We showed a picture of our house here in the United States to my cousins and they asked where the walls were in our neighborhood. Going to a bank was a major ordeal, involving a guard with an AK-47, a metal detector that would make American airport security green with envy, as well as heavy, bulletproof glass everywhere. Rolling down the car windows on a hot day was unsafe, inviting someone to carjack.

Keeping in mind all those impediments to daily living, it might seem amazing that my parents, being educated people, stuck it out for as long as they did. After piecing together my parents’ comments over the years, I came to two conclusions: first, none of us really knew how bad it was until we left and second, my parents really thought it would get better rather than get worse.

In more than one way, when we left Africa, we were searching for a feeling of safety, a freedom from fear. It took me a long time to recognize this even though it might seem obvious. My mother cried on September 11^th in our living room in Central Illinois. We felt as though we were being haunted. We’d traveled across the ocean to feel safe and it seemed like profound uncertainty was following us. On campus, a speaker about Israel came and caused some controversy and there were protests. I hated it for many reasons, but mostly because of the emotional response. I wasn’t supposed to feel unsafe in this country, only in the country I still consider "home."

For me, freedom means being free of fear. Free of the fear of economic insecurity, free of the fear of a random act of violence in your own neighborhood and free of the fear of the people around you. America isn’t perfect, or perfectly safe, by any stretch. But appreciate what you have. I never experienced the tragedies that some immigrants have faced, but I see the way native-born Americans take for granted how well we live and how safe we truly are. We have open yards and clear glass windows, without a gate, fence, or wall in sight.

[Posted 3/21/04]