But not all Holocaust survivors are willing or able to speak of their experiences. I am intimately familiar with the choice to stay silent. My father was a nine-year-old Jewish boy when Nazi Germany invaded his native Poland. He was one of the lucky ones, eventually saved by deportation to Soviet territory where he nearly starved to death in a slave labor camp. Almost his entire extended family—well over one hundred people—were killed. For decades after the war my father suppressed his pain, never speaking of what he had endured and dodging questions when pressed by friends or strangers. This silence was his way of healing and building a new life in the pluralistic America he so loved. My father became a professor of Soviet studies, dedicating his life to fighting totalitarianism and anti-Semitism from a comfortable professional distance.
In this story the author speaks about an Indian woman who has moved to Canada and describes washing his turbans. It is common in the Sikh religion for men to have long hair and wear turbans.
The family moves to Canada because they don't have enough money. The wife does not want him to cut his hair. But the man cuts his hair and takes off his turban.
Once when the woman takes her saris for the laundry she is illtreated there saying it was dishrag and towel.
The poet chooses each word carefully so that both its meaning and sound contribute to the tone and the feeling of the poem pay attention to types of words that recur in a poem! :)
