Urban solace: a portrait of Toronto as both judging and compassionate protector.

Urban solace: a portrait of Toronto as both judging and compassionate protector. Cities of Refuge Michael Helm McClelland and Stewart 400 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780771040399 "Good novels should not answer questions," Elie Wieselonce said. "They should deepen the questions." After readingCities of Refuge, one is left with the sense that human beings are muchdeeper, more complex and mysterious than they often appear to be.Michael Helm asks the big questions that weigh ordinary people down andbear them forward. And he does so in prose that could be calledgraceful. Let me state simply that this is one of the finest books I haveread in recent years. It interested me initially because so much of thebook is set within the context of the world of refugees in the city ofToronto. This is a world I know well. However, it soon became clear tome that Cities of Refuge is about far more than refugees. At first glance, the title seems to indicate that this is a work ofnon-fiction, a survey of those cities that have designated themselves as"cities of refuge," open to refugees in need of protection.Several cities in Europe have done this and it has become a movementthat has gathered some steam. However, a tiny line on the cover of thebook notes that this is "a novel." It is a novel in which thecity of Toronto is a major actor. Within this city the characters live and move and have their being.It is the city Jane Jacobs loved, the city of neighbourhoods, of peoplewho are located and dislocated, of common spaces where lives intersecton a daily basis. In Michael Helm's book, Toronto is the spacewhere the personal meets the political, where those who have been here along time meet the newcomers, strangers from distant lands and differentcultures. The city is the in-between space in which the familiar and theforeign interact. "A city is like a primary text," in which"everything is connected." The book opens with a violent attack on Kim, a 28-year-old womanwho works at the museum and spends time volunteering at an organizationcalled GROUND, which helps refugees in danger of being deported. Theattack forces her to try to remember what she would like to forget, aneffort most refugees are also forced to make. The assault pushes Kim tothe edge of deep fear and back to her father's grey past. For Kim, as for all of the characters in the book, something hashappened that leaves a permanent scar. They can never return to the selfthey once were. Her efforts to heal reveal the limits of therapy. Shetries to imagine the person who attacked her, only to reject this imageonce she realizes that it is more alive for her than the featurelessundocumented attacker who hangs around the edges of the story but isnever revealed. The attack also strikes at the heart of her father Harold, aprofessor of Latin American history. He immediately surmises that theattacker must be a foreigner who can't speak English who is beinghelped by naive people like his daughter Kim. A number of the characters in the book are involved in the effortto support refugees--most of whom are illegals, refugees who have beenrefused and are in danger of being deported. It is a world of immensesuffering, complicated people, amoral systems and agents of mercy. There is Rosemary, the righteous Anglican woman who is trying to"save" a Colombian refugee named Rodrigo. It is she whoexplains the biblical roots of the term "cities of refuge."There were six cities in Israel that welcomed "only those whokilled without enmity and were subject to the laws of blood vengeance.They didn't deserve to die, so they needed a place where they couldbe safe." Father Andre is the Anglican theologian and soup kitchen priest whotries to get people "to look at what they want and what theyfear." He sees himself as belonging to a dying breed, "theRetainers of the Long Knowledge ... the historical, the private, thespiritual." The book weaves back and forth between the suffering that is nearand the suffering from afar that has now become part of the city. Thecharacters of Kim and her father are superbly drawn. The more we learnof them the less we know for sure. Kim, who does not think of herself asreligious, nonetheless goes to sleep "naming the names" orpraying for the people she cares about. Harold is a man given to lieswho nevertheless weeps at the sunrise over Mexico City. However, the refugees in the book are more one dimensional. Thismust be how they appear to people who are working with them for a shorttime, such as the volunteers at GROUND. The refugees are wrapped roundwith sadness and suffering. It is Rosemary who summarizes the desperatesituation of so many of them: "We take them in, a kind of miracleto them, and support them only enough until they begin to see that theycan't really escape their past here, and many can't ever havea future. And so they begin to rot." She has taken up the missionof correcting the fictions about refugees created by the Canadianclimate of fear. I believe refugees are more complex than even Rosemary thinks theyare. Their reality can be distorted not only by the judgement but by thecompassion of others. Most refugees are going through a legal processthat is long and difficult. Yet they attend to their kids with a dailydevotion. Refugees are not only sad; they are also immensely funny, fullof inventiveness and amazingly resilient. This takes time to discover,proximity and neighbourliness. There is not enough time for this inCities of Refuge. Nevertheless, this book is not only about refugees. It is alsoabout the human condition and the questions that we hold in common. Wehold them differently, to be sure, but not separately. In his luminousprose, Helm has dared to go beyond the psychological level to the levelof spirit. His characters struggle with the weight of the past andwonder whether we can ever remember it truly. They ask whether the sinsof the parents are visited on the children. "He sees it all linkingback through the years to a kind of original sin. And we've allpaid for it." Kim wonders whether forgiveness is possible. Sheweighs whether love is stronger than fear, and why it is still possibleto love a deeply flawed human being. Helm leaves Kim and the reader in an uncertain but surer place. Inan unexpected kindness she experiences something less than God but morethan luck: "it was certainly mystery, a small conferredradiance." She likens this to the gift of the city. "One dayit tries to kill you and another it finds you and hauls you clear andgives you something not entirely rational to believe in. Like thathealing mysteries didn't fall on you but rose up, drawn forthsimply by your paying attention to the lives of others." I read this book several times and pondered some paragraphs atlength. I will return to Cities of Refuge. It is worth the time. Mary Jo Leddy has lived and worked with refugees for 20 years. Sheis the author of several books and teaches theology at the University ofToronto. She is a senior fellow of Massey College.