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A LIFE OF RIGHTEOUS WORK

When I was working as a lawyer, things pretty much sucked.  I had bad cases, lousy bosses, no coworkers, and unscrupulous adversaries. I argued about petty injuries and modest sums of cash. My clients harbored grudges and enormous egos.  I worked late into the night and brought more work to do at home while I ate breakfast. My trusty car got burned to cinders where I parked it.

I had gone to law school pretty much by default, but at the time it had made good sense. I had a gift for advocacy; dad taught talmud; nothing else seemed like a better choice.  In the back of my mind I imagined myself doing something significant with it someday; then again, I wanted to avoid the real world a little longer, get a better education, set myself a solid platform for professional advancement somewhere down the line.  As a choice, one could do worse.  But as a life, it was like death. 

I did, however, manage to find something meaningful to do with some part of the training I’d received: I started working with non-profits on political asylum cases.  One of these advised me of a fellow needing help to file a petition for asylum.  I agreed to interview him.  We met in cramped but homey quarters where he was staying with a cousin and his wife and children.  He told me there a story that still stretches my credulity.

He was tall and large, articulate, polite.  He had been a university administrator and a local politician during his robust career, but primarily he was a journalist. Ever since his early teens he’d been reporting on politics and advocating democratic principles in his West African homeland. As a result, he had been threatened with grave personal harm by competing warlords. Eventually several warlords in a council brought him in and brandished weapons, laid out tortures they intended he endure unless he gave up advocating for democracy.  He felt that he was out of options. He told me that he’d fathered over twenty children and he could not let himself be killed because he could not bear to miss their growing up. 

He therefore contacted a U.S. funded social service group with agents who disguised him, hustled him into a darkened van, and spirited him to the airport just before the warlords’ killers tracked him down.  Now that he’d made it to the States, he needed help with his petition for asylum. Our meeting had been scheduled for half an hour.  Three full hours later I was still engrossed in his amazing story but was out of time and had to leave.  We made a date to meet again and start where we’d left off. I was optimistic when he asked me what his chances were.

He was an inspiration to me.  He had overcome so many difficulties, worked so hard to help me help him, was already sending back reports on U.S. politics and social structures to colleagues he had left behind… He was irrepressible and always cheerful, wishing blessings down on everybody and their families.  He was meticulous and had tremendous resources to aid our preparation of his case. His petition for asylum came together like a giant deli sandwich, section after section of exhibits stacking up with little tabs like ragged lettuce, A to CCCC. We’d worked for months and filed the thick pleadings proudly.  Yet we knew that we weren’t close to being done yet. Soon the government would set a date to interview him; that was where the final questions would be answered. 

At the interview, an agent from the INS would meet my client in my presence and would pose a number of invasive interrogatories in an effort to uncover some scant reason to deny his eminently meritorious petition.  My client was experienced at public speaking, quiet and concise in conversation, and a walking ray of sunshine, so I didn’t count on any special kind of problem; but if you cannot know exactly what will happen you had better plan for all of it to go awry. We carefully reviewed our case, the areas of likely inquiry, those that signaled danger or a golden opportunity.  We didn’t want to make mistakes. We got the case down cold. 

By this time I made a living doing small potatoes plaintiff’s PI from a borrowed office cowering in shadows down below the final onramp for the eastbound bridge out of the City.  My client in one certain case had had a fender bender which required some few weeks of chiropractic care, paid for by her own insurance.  We had sued on her behalf for some ridiculous amount like $20,000 (jurisdictional minimum), but my client told me personally that she wanted to dismiss the case and wasn’t interested in pursuing litigation. I had been instructed by my office to proceed regardless, as we had sufficient assets sunk into the case to necessitate that we recover something for our costs.  A status conference had been set — the sort of thing that clogged my calendar, unending little conferences to stroke some judge’s ego and officially advise the Court that there’s more work to do that I’d be doing if I weren’t appearing there advising the distinguished Court that such was so. Anyway, I’d have to go.  That is what attorneys did.

The date they set for the asylum interview coincided with the status conference in the fender bender.  A gap of hours separated them – the INS at 1:45, the auto case at 4:00.  The buildings where I would appear were near each other.  This might sound like I was in some great exalted power center, but at this time the City had relocated its most important functions into cheap and ugly quarters during seismic retrofitting.  These vital bureaucratic chokepoints lived in drab and faceless office blocks as likely to house dentists, actuaries or accountants as the power to grant life and death, to bestow citizenship or order an expulsion. I digress. 

My asylum client faced time pressures of his own; he could not postpone his hearing. He appreciated my predicament; during our long conferences I’d shared my lack of love for the kind of law that I was doing.  But, although in many ways his back was up against a wall, he enthusiastically averred that I’d have time to do it all. I figured we’d be fine if everything went smoothly.

The day arrived. I walked from my grungy office to the boring building where the INS was waiting for us. I had on a lower-power tie, my shoes were shined, and I was going to save someone’s life.  I was glad to be a lawyer. It was 1:00, the time I’d asked him to arrive. My client typically employed a tropical ambivalence to punctuality, but I’d impressed on him how critical it was to be on time for this appointment.  He had promised he would not be late.  But soon he was.  By 1:15 I started fretting.  I’d scripted 45 whole minutes for a conference prior to the interview, and now some major points would have to be deleted. Unfortunate though that would be, the most important thing was just to get asylum granted.  I was sure that that would happen, regardless if my script got shot to hell. 

One-thirty came and went.  I really worried.  At 1:40 I went up to the appropriate department (this required a complex security procedure that required quite a bit of time) and told them what was going on. They asked me to keep them posted.  I went back downstairs and out (again with the security) and waited for my client. At 2:00 I checked again with office staff, who took the news impassively.  At ten past two I saw my client walking fast towards me.  He was soaked with sweat, and panting.  He gasped that he had missed his bus, gone to a different hearing office, got confused, and now he was a mess and surely he would lose his case because of his stupidity and weakness. He looked at me, face glistening, appeared to hover on the verge of tears.  I reassured him, let him know that I’d been checking in and everything was going to be fine.  We had a hurried conference and I made sure he’d prepared for this as I had known he would.  We went upstairs. 

They told us we had lost our place in line and thus would have to wait.  It was 2:20.  Forty minutes later I was writhing in my seat.  It would take ten minutes to walk to the courthouse for my 4 o’clock appointment.  We had to start this interview. I spoke to the clerk, accomplished nothing.  By 3:20 I had reevaluated distances: I could make it to my status conference in five minutes walking briskly.  At 3:35 I asked my client for a meeting in the hallway; I told him, even if the interview began that moment, I would have to walk out in the middle of it.  I could stay until 3:50; then I’d have to leave immediately. 

Fifteen minutes later we had not begun and I absconded. Quietly, my client followed me outside.  I told him I regretted this necessity but I could not be there to guide him past the prosecuting agent.  I tried to give him pointers on potential problems I’d anticipated. I stammered unintelligibly.  He raised a broad palm radiating gentleness: “I understand enough.  You will confuse me.  We’ll be fine.  I’ll call you on your telephone tonight to offer my impressions of the interview.  Good luck; God bless your family.” I turned my back and walked away.  The vision of him smiling, waving at me as I left, remains burned in my memory.

As I sat waiting for my status conference, looking at a bunch of other lawyers who were looking back at me, I thought about my real client.  He was framing careful answers to some functionary’s probing inquiries about his loyalty, his tenure as a government official, about his children and their role in underground activities, about his health and intimate experiences. God only knew what he was really being asked, what he was saying in response.  I sure didn’t.  I’d walked out. 

That night he called to tell me it had all gone well.  There had been some rough spots, but he’d handled them adroitly, so he thought, and I agreed.  I told him that my status conference had been an unqualified success, where I’d been authorized by solemn mandate to continue doing what I had been doing previously anyway.  He laughed and thanked me for my help preparing him and his petition, for sharing what I knew of U.S. law and civic mechanisms, and for being patient, courteous and understanding with his slow and clumsy ways. 

I demurred with brevity. I had turned my back on him. I couldn’t stop remembering the moment when I walked away. “You won this case yourself,” I muttered.  “With a life of righteous work.” Or words to that effect.

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