Jessica Hecht

I asked.

This morning had felt cooler.'

Some hoodlums, they spit on me as I cross Rue de Rivoli, he said, looking both embarrassed and upset.

Hoo-hoo, I said.

Oh, my God.

I said I picked up my bottle of Evian.

Would you like to use this to wash off?

Paris is getting worse and worse for us.

I've soaped my face three times already, he said, but I still feel it on my skin.

It wasn't like I was stupid.

I knew things sucked for the Jews in France.

I had eyes.

I saw the swastikas painted on the Shoah memorial when I took the baby to the Ile Saint-Louis for ice cream.

I'd seen that video, ten hours of walking in Paris as a Jew, which followed a middle-aged man wearing jeans, a sweater, and a yarmulke, traversing multiple arrondissements in one day while being cursed at, kicked, and shoved by random people as he passed.

but now it was my very own rabbi being hurt.

Nervously, he picked up a volume off the top of the pile.

He could not control his hands, and in an effort to change the subject, I supposed, he offered to buy it.

I have the original at home, he said.

I'm curious about the translation.

Anna Akhmatova's 20 poems, converted into English by the poet Jane Kenyon,