Miami offers respite from hardships at home — with a twist

MIAMI — Miami Beach was nice. Very nice. Somehow it made me forget poverty. For a while. I mean my poverty back home in Romania, living on less than $100 a month. It’s a tough life. Without many choices. That is why there are more and more young people leaving the country for the United States or basically anywhere else they can go.

Down in Miami my World Press Institute colleagues and I stayed where the rich people hang out, in a “tropical” hotel right there on famous Ocean Drive in South Beach. Not far from the Versace house. The beach was only 100 meters away from our hotel. The water was warm and irresistible, so, even though I’m unable to swim, I spent most of my free time in the water and on the beach, sunbathing.

Somehow I met mostly rich or very rich people. At least according to the living standards in Romania. But somehow I felt equal, because in many ways — even if only for a couple days — I was living almost like them. Well, we certainly didn’t eat in the same kind of restaurants in the evening, but still. They were all nice and interested in Europe, Romania and the almost 2 million-strong Hungarian minority in (my home) province of Transylvania. It was different in 2001 when I visited the U.S., invited by the State Department.

Back then it was enough for me so say “I’m from Europe.” The conversation about my birthplace stopped right there. Although they just couldn’t avoid bringing up Transylvania and Dracula. And Ceausescu, the former brutal communist dictator of Romania. And Nadia Comaneci, the former gymnast who defected from Romania together with her coach, the ethnic Hungarian, Bela Karolyi, in the 1970s.

But for a couple of days in 2003 Miami made me forget about the hardships at home. Surprisingly, it seemed that poverty had missed Miami.

I was wrong.

Which would you choose?

One evening, as I walked up Washington Avenue trying to find a place to get a slice of pizza, I witnessed a most unusual scene.

A very well-dressed, clean-shaven young man in a wheelchair suddenly approached a beggar sitting on the ground. I sensed this was not going to be an everyday give-money, take-money event. The poorly dressed and rather drunk beggar looked surprised when the handicapped gentleman merely gazed at him without taking out any money from his wallet.

“What do you want, man? What’s up?” the beggar finally asked. There was no answer. Instead, the young man in the wheelchair pulled closer and faced the beggar, but still said nothing.

“Come on, man, what’s your problem? You got nothin’ to do tonight?” the beggar got more agitated.

“Stand up!” the guy in the wheelchair ordered him, army style.

“Will you give me money for that or you just want me to act stupid?” the beggar asked.

“I’ll give you plenty!” was the answer. And so he did.

The man in the wheelchair gazed at the other man again for a while and suddenly said with a loud voice, “I wish I were you!” He didn’t explain, but the beggar got the message.

“I wish I were you too, man!” he said. “You got money to give me, so I can put stuff down my stomach. You don’t have to worry about that, do you? Do you know how it feels to sit here all day and ask for money?”

It seemed the fine gentleman in the wheelchair didn’t. But still, he wished he could walk.

“You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to walk! I wish I were you!” the disabled man said. He rolled on down the street, leaving some money behind.

“I’m a lucky shit!” the blessed beggar shouted.

“Or, probably I am,” he murmured as I walked by, trying to see how much money he got.

Back in my hotel room I remembered somebody in Transylvania telling me a few years ago that he’d rather sit in a wheelchair and be rich than experience poverty all his life.

I think if he met the rich man in Miami Beach he might change his mind.