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		Prague Spring Taking a chance on love. By Herbert Hadad My wife of twenty-eight years and I had never been abroad together. “We’re finally getting our honeymoon,” Evelyn said, with sweet excitement. But the trip to Prague was not without its worries. I hoped I’d recovered enough from a back injury to make it through twelve active days. I wondered how much our twenty-two-year-old daughter, Sara Jameel, who’d been living on her own in the Czech Republic for the past eight months, had changed. And because I work for the Justice Department and know a lot about terrorism—and because I’ve just always hated flying—I thought about other possibilities as well. As it turned out, I became a terror suspect myself. During our Zurich layover, I was taken to a booth by grim men and searched intimately, an interest seemingly prompted by my Middle East name. At last, we landed in Prague. Sara looked beautiful and vibrant and happy. “I know you’re tired, but you can’t go to sleep,” she said. “You must see some of Prague.” The beauty of the city—the ornate architecture, the red-tile rooftops, the stone-paved boulevards—immediately enthralled Evelyn and me. The Czech language proved a little more challenging. A shop sign I decoded as “gifts from Damascus” actually said “women’s clothing.” Sara taught me a couple of basics: “ah-no,” which, naturally, means “yes,” and “dee-kay,” for “thank you.” That first day, we strolled to the famous Old Town. Except for the cafés and the gift shops—and the graffiti—the streets seemed to have changed little over five hundred years. “We must get you one of your famous martinis,” my daughter said. The first café was confused by the order, so we drank red wine and ate an amazing array of cheeses and breads. Next Sara led us to a musty old bar, which produced a perfect martini in an exquisite glass. “The owners are Americans,” she explained. Then Sara took us into a club, where four musicians were playing my Swing Era favorites—“Moonglow,” “Take the ‘A’ Train”—and where I learned a little more Czech: “Pivo” brought a tall glass of delicious Pilsner beer. Music has always been a bond between my daughter and me. When she was small, on the way home from her piano lessons we’d sing “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” and “Taking a Chance on Love.” When we drove her to Newark Airport the day she left for Prague, the last song we listened to in the car was “Guilty,” by long-gone crooner Russ Columbo. All winter, I began my phone calls to her by singing Is it a crime, loving you as I do, dear? If it’s a crime, then I’m guilty, Guilty of loving you . . . “Papou,” she’d say, “it’s become Our Song.” Papou was the affectionate name some waitresses in a Greek seafood restaurant in Walpole had given my father. Now I was the papou. Sara was busy with her own life, teaching English to Czech executives and learning Czech. So Evelyn and I explored the city on our own, feeling like honeymooners, learning the trams and the Metro. The people of Prague are good-looking. The women are tall and fair, and young couples unselfconsciously embrace in public. Almost every woman of every age had succumbed to a rage for orange hair. But there was something else: The people seemed mirthless. I began to ask around. “First the Nazis, then the Communists,” said our Czech tour guide one afternoon. She pointed to the blue-washed house where Franz Kafka grew up, near Prague Castle. “Until two years ago, we couldn’t even get his books.” During our visit, “Prague Spring” was the name of a music festival. The real Prague Spring had been a grassroots government-reform movement in Czechoslovakia, crushed by the Soviet Union and its allies in 1968. Twenty-one years later, the Communists were finally removed from power, peacefully. And yet, said the tour guide, “the people are sullen. The great cathedrals and basilicas are almost empty. You see how we even deface the buildings,” she said, referring to the graffiti. “It will take another generation to revive us.” Sara and her roommates threw a party. We drank Becherovka, the national liquor that must translate to “acquired taste.” As we looked across at picturesque rooftops, a naked man appeared. We waved, and he waved back. He went inside and came back out. He symbolized the freewheeling mood. A few nights later, over Montepulciano and fettuccine, I asked Sara when she was coming home. “Maybe for Christmas,” she said, meaning for a brief visit. My heart sank. She loved Prague; she loved her life there. I dropped the subject. The three of us took a train to Vienna. On the Czech-Austrian border, I became a terror suspect again. As customs officials tapped my name into a portable computer, I was tempted to address them in Arabic. I said nothing. We had decided to go to Vienna so impulsively, once we got there we realized we had no euros, knew nothing about the city, and had no place to stay. We bought a Lonely Planet travel guide. An amazing thing happened. I began to speak German. I’d studied it at Northeastern several decades ago but since then had used it only for comic relief. Now the skill had returned. We found a beautiful hotel on a cul-de-sac, a minute or so from the breathtaking St. Stephen’s Cathedral, whose latticework spires dominate the entire city. The next morning, Sara, who had already perused the guidebook, began to lead us to a special destination. On the way, we came upon a large cyclist astride his bike, scowling down at a frail old man with a cane, sitting on a bench. “Was wollen Sie?” I said loudly to the cyclist. He turned and claimed he needed money for a phone call. In my pocket, I had one euro, worth nearly a dollar, which I handed over. “Danke,” he said curtly, and rode off. “Dad, he was a crook. Why did you give him money?” Sara asked. “Because, my darling,” I said, “I couldn’t stand it that he was harassing the old man.” What I didn’t add was, I am getting older, and in the order of things I might need to be rescued, too, someday. Maybe by you. As we neared our destination, I became so excited I could only laugh and point. It was the Ferris wheel. In one of my all-time favorite movies, The Third Man, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles have a pivotal confrontation on this very Ferris wheel. We rode in a compartment that resembled a small freight car; I hummed the haunting “Third Man Theme.” Back in Prague, Sara took us to the restaurant where her friend Jana worked as hostess. When we arrived, the card on the reserved table said, “To my English Teacher. I love you, Babe.” Jana greeted us with kisses. I requested a martini and got a screwdriver. An accordionist sat on a small chair outside the dining room playing melancholy music. I ordered lamb, and it was wonderful. I swapped some for a portion of Evelyn’s goulash. Everyone’s order included dumplings—by Czech law, I now assumed. Jana reappeared, led us downstairs, and opened a set of doors. Fifty happy tourists filled with good food and spirits were engaged in a babble of conversation that I immediately recognized. “Ich bin ein Berliner!” I announced, as President Kennedy had once proclaimed on a famous visit to Germany. “Ich bin ein New Yorker!” they shouted back. We all laughed. Sara bought tickets to the French National Orchestra, led by Kurt Masur, at the Rudolfinium, a grand hall near the sculpture-laden Charles Bridge. The program began with César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. The orchestra was magnificent, and Masur leaped about the podium like a young athlete. I turned to look at Sara. She seemed spellbound by the music and the spectacle. The last time I had seen her like this, she was a five-year-old in our garden. She had captured an airborne thistle and was studying it with utter fascination. We had our last dinner together. I asked Sara again about her plans after Prague; she said she couldn’t answer. We said our good-byes, and hugged and kissed. Sara confidently started down some steep steps that led to a bewildering kaleidoscope of streets and lanes and houses and shops. “She won’t turn back; we’ve lost her,” I blurted to Evelyn. A hundred feet away, Sara turned to smile and wave. The ride home was fine. The plane didn’t crash. My back held up. When the customs woman at Kennedy said, “Welcome home,” Evelyn and I quietly cried. In the cab, I thought about what a really great trip it had been. I’d discovered if you really love someone, you respect their independence; you honor their freedom. I’d had two honeymoons. I loved two women, and two women loved me. A Northeastern graduate and prize-winning writer, Herbert Hadad recently began cohosting, along with author Benjamin Cheever, a suburban New York cable-TV show called Cheever and Hadad: About Writing.