A very moving testimony by a very beautiful soul.
The story, as Ibi Gábori notes, we all know already, from books and movies.
Lifelong, this gifted, intelligent, sensitive human being has loved music, books, people, the Hungarian language, and Hungary. She lost everything — mother, father, brother — but survived and became a librarian, as she had always wished, first in Hungary, then in Canada.
And she holds no rancour in her heart, just sadness, gratitude and hope.
One understands (or thinks one understands) it all: the love of music, books, people, language. These are all real, and deserve this love. The love of a place — land, landscape, landmarks — too. These are all real things.
But when it comes to love of a “haza” (patria, nation) one balks.
Apart from those other real things, this abstraction is a fiction, and a fiction — like gods, angels, devils and supermen — that has already done enough real harm in this world not to deserve Ibi Gábori’s gentle, heartfelt loyalty.
As she says, some of her expatriate countrymen loudly proclaim that they are eager to go back and vote for Jobbik, to start it all over again. Some don’t.
Ibi’s heart still gives patriotism the benefit of the doubt. It still swells not only at the sound of Mozart but at the sound of “Oh Canada” — and “Isten áldd meg a magyart.”
She has earned the right to judge — and we to reserve judgment.