An American in London

by Howard Altman

Though I hadn’t seen him in at least 20 years I knew, right away, it was Dixon standing under the awning of the Marks and Spencer department store near the London’s Covent Garden tube stop.

The last time we saw each other was in a youthfully reckless drunken stupor, hanging from a rail trestle with paintbrushes and paint.

And now we are so very serious.

He is a world-renown geologist and academic. I am a newspaper editor.

An out-of-breath newspaper editor who didn't realize how deep underground the Underground runs at some places, particularly here at Covent Garden, where I shunned the elevator for what turned out to be a seemingly endless spiral staircase.

I e-mailed him when I realized I would be in London and he e-mailed back saying he would be in town and that we could meet if we had time.

Our schedules meshed, but we had only a couple of hours before he had to go back to university so we walked to a nearby pub, grabbed a few pints and reminisced about old times and old friends.

This one is getting a divorce.

That one is an alcoholic.

These two died.

He is single and wants a family. I am married with kids.

The Way We Were eventually segued into The Way Things Are and for Dixon, an American living abroad, it is a mixed bag.

"I like it here," he said with his mouth.

His body language told me there was this great, hanging, conjunctive but out there.

So I pressed.

"It's hard to be an American living in Europe right now," he admitted, explaining that along with widespread opposition to the war in Iraq comes a deepening resentment toward Americans.

The resentment has intensified with the growing instability in Iraq. As we down our beers, the BBC reports new uprisings and new deaths. Though the pundits wring their hands in worry about a civil war, I joke the opposite is taking place.

George Bush and Tony Blair have done what nobody else could -- united Shia with Sunni.

The bad news is not just emanating from Mesopotamia.

Just a few weeks after the Madrid bombing, London is a bit jittery, with officials saying that a similar attack is a matter of when, not if.

The combination of events is making people edgy and angry, says Dixon. An anger vented on the U.S.

That feeling is particularly pervasive in academia, said Dixon, as is a growing hatred of Jews.

"It is intellectual chic now to dislike Americans and Jews," said Dixon, adding a bit of information that I'd never known about him which enabled me to figure out why he was feeling so uneasy about the growing anti-Semitism.

"I'm 25 percent Jewish," he said.

A few weeks earlier, the couple in line next to me at the passport office was in a panic.

Just days after the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the couple -- Orthodox Jews in Hasidic garb -- was furiously making last-minute travel arrangements for themselves and their infant twins, who were cooing adorably in a double stroller.

The panic set in when the woman asked the clerk if there was any way she could alter the information about the place of her birth.

"I was born in Israel," said the wife. "Given what is going on in the world, I was wondering if I had to put that down."

The woman behind the counter apologetically said there was nothing that she could do.

My passport was processed and handed to me before the couple was able to resolve their dilemma. Having spent the last hour waiting, I had no time to stick around and find out what happened.

But the look in the woman's eyes, the fear that her religion will make her a target, will always haunt me.

It is the look that I imagine my relatives had just before they were taken away to the death camps.

I arrived back home just in time to watch the Condi Rice show.

It was pretty much as I expected it would be. She didn't give up any state secrets, she didn't veer from the party line, and she sure as hell didn't apologize for anything.

Like many people, I'd pay dearly to watch the president undergo a good grilling on the matter. And I couldn't help but think that perhaps we'd all be better off if Rice was running the show instead.

Not that it matters much. Bush, Rice, Kerry -- we're pretty much fucked no matter what.

Which made Monday at the Phillies' new home the perfect tonic.

The place is amazing, except for a serious shortage of scoreboards. But it was so damn damply cold and the Phils were so damn anemic, that I sat in the press box, numb to the world, and stared out at the pretty grass.