Impediment: noun: hindrance/obstacle – from Latin impedimentium

Impediment

In late 1958 I received a request to make a reservation from London to New York for a man whose journey would commence in Warsaw. The agent explained that the man’s wife was making the arrangements and paying for the one-way ticket.

The couple had been married in Poland in the spring of 1939. Because the world situation was so uncertain, and war seemed highly probable, they decided to emigrate to the U.S. They could not afford two passages by ship, so they chose to have the wife go first, with the husband to follow as soon as possible. By the time she sailed, she was pregnant. Before the husband could afford to come, Germany had invaded Poland and WWII had begun.

There was no question of emigrating during the war, but the situation did not improve under the post-war Communist regime in Poland. It was the era of the Cold War, and Polish citizens were not allowed to emigrate to the West. During this time, the wife worked to support herself and their son, born in the U.S. She also saved to pay for her husband’s ticket, which now would be by jet plane rather than trans-Atlantic steamer.

A few days after making the reservation, the agent called to change it. Polish officials had cancelled the man’s visa, saying they had found a trace of TB on his x-rays. Three times the reservations were made and changed because of some impediment. Once, the man was rousted from sleep in the middle of the night to be examined for no given reason.

At last, he was allowed to leave. This couple had been married for twenty years but had lived together for only a few months. There was a nineteen-year-old son who had never seen his father. What would happen? Could they build a life after all this time? He arrived in New York, and I never got the answers to my questions: I could only hope for the best for them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *