The Dishwasher Dialogues: Les Droits de l'homme

Patriotism and Passports

By: Gregory Light and Rafael Mahdavi - Jul 13, 2025

Patriotism and Passports

Rafael: Leroy had been in Paris since the early nineteen fifties. I never knew if he acquired French citizenship, which wasn’t that easy, as I found out years later. Becoming legally French was a long and labyrinthine process, a bureaucratic nightmare. But Leroy had the social connections to cut through the red tape for his French citizenship. You’d think that a country that prided itself as a terre d’accueil and on its charter of des droits de l’homme would make it a little easier to become a French citizen. Years later, I discovered that renewing my residence permit every year, or later, every ten years, was a Damocles sword over my life. The French could throw me out at any minute.

Greg: I always felt the simple visitor’s stamp on my passport gave me just enough right to live in Paris until the next visitor’s stamp. I never contemplated the idea of citizenship or even having a carte de travail. My existence in Paris was so peripheral to the mainstream, that I was unable to recognize what an official card of any kind would confer on me. As you indicate, it would have entailed a whole host of obligations which, at the time, I was not ready or capable of shouldering. Even my eventual attestation from the Commissions de la Professionnalité that I was a genuine écrivain/auteur in Paris and eligible for a carte de séjour was more like a badge of honor. I cannot remember showing it to any official or using it for any substantive reason. It did not change my life in Paris in any meaningful way. A few years later European citizenship would become important to me which was solved when I obtained British citizenship; only to be lost thirty years later in fit of pique or stupidity or both, when Britain decided peripheral existence was the way to go.

Rafael: Did Leroy think of himself as American? He only hired Americans. Is that right?

Greg: I always assumed Leroy had obtained his French citizenship. He married a French woman and was part of the French music and cinematic and culinary scene. But maybe not. If not, it was not because he felt an allegiance to America. I will always remember his remark: ‘Baby, I was never American’, and the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the fusion of sadness and rage in both, as he said it. He did hire lots of Americans, but he was an equal opportunity employer. There was me from Canada, the manageress from Norway, the next manageress from England, the waitress from Australia, the waitress from Ireland, the cleaner from Spain and so on. We did live under the Damocles sword of Leroy’s impetuosity, volatility, and the fear of sudden termination, but the firings were rare, and often deserved or came with useful experience tucked into them. There was never prejudice in them. He was not an ideologue, always a pragmatist. He was open to all. Certainly, to all who spoke some facsimile of English and were willing to work for 10F per hour and forsake all other benefits except a sumptuous dinner.

Rafael: Leroy knew about me being a draft dodger, and though he was an ex-army man, he never held it against me. Was he a patriot? In some ways probably. But he told us that he’d never go back to the U.S. He could never live there again.

Greg: Could you live there again?

Rafael: No.

Greg: I finally did. Chicago. For fifteen years. But I did not want to stay. At one point you tried. Boston. But it did not last.

Rafael: Was I a patriot? Am I a patriot? The answer is no.

Greg: There is something about the word ‘patriot’ that annoys me. The part which gives up the pursuit of independent thought.

Rafael: It does not mean I am a pacifist. Some things are worth fighting and dying for. It was worth going to war against Hitler because of the cruelty, bestiality, and planned exterminations of his regime. Fighting in Vietnam because of American hegemonic hubris? No. The Americans working at Chez Haynes, and many of the Americans I met in Paris were not patriotic. They had chosen to leave the U.S. because they felt there was something dysfunctional about the U.S., even back then in the seventies. And yet many Americans, including myself, felt American in the sense that we retained a certain optimistic naïveté about society, a can-do mentality, we could change things for the better. I don’t love any country—that’s too big and abstract, it’s like saying you’ll die for equilateral triangles.

Greg: Wait! Who wouldn’t die for a good equilateral triangle? Have you ever read the book Flatland?

Rafael: I may love a parcel of land, a city block, a coastline in Mallorca, but to love a whole country, that leads to jingoism.

Greg: ‘My country right or wrong’ was never a slogan either of us could get behind. If we couldn’t tolerate it in ourselves, we were hardly going to a blindly support it because we had paperwork which allowed us to live and work and come and go; on land which, let’s face it, we stole from other people long ago. Although there were some exceptions. I remember you often saying that you would always support your children, no matter what. You were emphatic. But then you paused and added, “unless they were fascists”. Which was hard to argue with.

Rafael: One could say that we youngsters working at Chez Haynes embodied different facets of America, each reflecting their bit of that nation. And even more than that, we reflected an era too, and of course, we were not aware of it. Whatever America might be, our passports were necessary, even precious. This was before the European Union, when a U.S. or Canadian passport allowed you to travel pretty much anywhere in the world without the hassle of applying for a visa. Sadly, I didn’t have the money to travel much. But there were some paintings, where a background landscape, behind some drapery, a room, were like countries for me, even a home. I could always go and have coffee in Phillies, that diner in Edward Hopper’s The Nighthawks, or lose myself in the jewel-like landscapes behind Da Vinci’s Saint John the Baptist. These places didn’t ask for anything, no passports, no money.

Greg: The paintings did not ask for money. But the institutions housing them often did. Neither the Louvre nor the Art Institute of Chicago are free. Although the Louvre is still free for those under 26. I think it was then as well. So, I could enter for free. And I did. Many times. Without a passport or confession of patriotism.