Tra i t o r For even life in exile… is not as bad as life alone in one’s own country.
The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig
Two-ton eagle above the stairs, soldiers cradling M16s, flags everywhere, the Consul’s Why?, the oath I swear to absolutely and entirely renounce my… nationality, murmur Traitor, as I stand, cancelled blue passport in hand, a grey haired alien on foreign land. Forty years doubts brewed in me about Yankee Doodle verities poured into us as kids, corroded loyalty to hostility, and left no choice at last but quit the homeland I never fit. I feel no remorse, but wonder, nonetheless, how Dreyfus felt, braced on the square at l’Ecole Militaire, sword snapped, disgraced, reviled for what he did not do, though faith, not fury, stood him askew.
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