Losing Boris Albinder [Part 2]

The post below, originally from September 23 2006, has been modified from its original form. I wrote it initially as an exploration of my feelings in response to the death of a young man I liked but did not know well, whose death nevertheless affected me quite profoundly.

At the time I considered “anonymizing” the personal information, since what I wrote was, in many ways, not about him as much as it was about me and my inner life. Because his death was publicized, his family was undoubtedly receiving a lot of attention. On the other hand, his death was already a matter of public discourse.

So I wrote a piece, using names, which incorporated what little I knew about the situation. This blog is not a news site; in keeping with that fact, this post is a subjective observation of myself and the world in light of some unfortunate events.

The young man’s mother and stepfather wrote to correct some factual errors I made in the post (looking back, I can see how they happened, but no matter) and also took issue with at least one aspect of my interpretation of the world. I suspect that they disagree with more than they say.

In deference to them I took down the post and, having no other way to contact them, wrote a response on the blog. I haven’t heard back from them. I respect that they would exert their entitlement to “own” some part of their son’s life and legacy. He was clearly an incredible person, and it is because I was touched by him, that I offer what little I can.

I have corrected or elimated the factual mistakes that were pointed out, and I am now posting a corrected version of the original piece. The comments to the original version should still be appended to this post, and my letter in reponse now follows as the next post (for now). I keep these because I think they help explore the point I am getting at.

For all our sakes, I hope that Boris’s nearly twenty years on this earth--and the fleeting news coverage of the end of his life--lead to something other than unmitigated grief and bitterness.

---

Someone I know died a week ago Friday. I wouldn’t presume to call Boris a friend, but I liked him.

Boris’ grandmother, Bella, worked in the research lab where I earned my PhD. She was a technician and I was a graduate student. There were a trio of Russian-speaking ladies who kept the place going; they were actually Jews, not Russians, and Bella was from Moldova.

Bella was on the phone a lot for family matters, and so I heard Boris’ name a thousand times before I ever met him. When I started to work as a tutor, Bella asked me to work with Boris; I don’t remember if it was math or science, but I do remember sitting with a mild-mannered boy in the break room of the lab, fifteen stories in the air. He had clear golden skin and a good sense of humor. He was fifteen or so, and had the makings of a charming and successful man. At that point, I think, his little sister already had died.

The girl, Bella’s other grandchild, was diagnosed with a childhood cancer when she young--maybe four years old. I only saw her once: she was too weak to walk, so she rode awkwardly in a too-small stroller.

It was wrenching to see and hear the little I did: Bella on the phone, a language I didn’t understand; glimpses of the girl; stories from the pediatric oncology unit, which connected through a maze of hallways and elevators to the quiet genetics lab where I sat, studying genes that dictate the lifespan of C. elegans nematodes. Normally, these millimeter-long creatures live for a few weeks, but with genetic and environmental manipulation, one tiny animal in our care lived for over ninety days. Bella’s granddaughter lived for…maybe two thousand days?

How do you lose a child? Fighting, scared, peaceful; they leave, exhausted. And you have to stay, exhausted.

The little girl’s father, Bella’s son, didn’t stay. He committed suicide. This second loss seemed like too much for anyone to bear. We worried about Bella, and about Boris. Everyone in the lab went to the funeral.

It was my first time in a funeral home; and I was struck by the refuge of awkward formality. A Star of David hung over the casket. Down in front, I could see Boris, people shaking his hand. What an awful time this must be for him. He was mobbed with attention; with people’s imaginings of what his life must be like; of what his life would become. Enough projection for one very young man. I left him alone.

I didn’t see Boris again. I left the lab, left science, lived in Zen monasteries, and just this fall moved to Portland, Oregon. I have begun to work as a tutor again.

I got the news about Boris on Monday, right before a session with a golden-skinned, bright and charismatic boy—like Boris—Jewish, athletic and still somewhat innocent to the world. Because I was in the shock that comes immediately after bad news, and the session was unremarkable.

And life contiues unremarkably. Except for these headaches I’ve been having. And the strains of the old antiwar song--written in the wake of the American Civil War—that have been going through my head:

Last night I dreamed the strangest dream
I’d never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

I dreamed I saw a mighty room
All filled with women and men
And the papers they were signing said
They’d never fight again.

And when the papers were all signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed.

The people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round
While guns and swords and uniforms
Lay scattered on the ground.

Last night I dreamed the strangest dream
I’d never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

And there have dreams, too, about war: bombs on the farm where I was raised; bombs that sweep rows of houses away. People in the rubble, looking for food.

I didn’t know exactly how Boris had died, only that he had been killed. As I thought back over the circumstances of his life it occurred to me that he might have fallen in with a bad crowd. I could not imagine Bella’s grief.

So I made inquiries, and today there was an article in the paper. Boris died coming to a friend’s aid in a fight over a parking spot. Seems that he and a friend were driving somewhere, and the friend hopped out to claim a spot by standing in it, while Boris circled around to come at it from the right direction. As the friend stood there, a bunch of guys in a van tried to take the spot; bumped the friend with the vehicle; and then jumped out and started beating the crap out of him.

At this point Boris shows up. What would you do? What would you like to say you had done? There are five of them.

You have to remember, this is San Francisco, where parking is serious business. That aspect of the story gives the senseless violence an absurd twist—propelling it onto the evening news, and selling newspapers. “Youth Dies Over Parking Spot”—but that misses the fact that Boris died, not for the sake of parking, but coming to the aid of his friend.

The man who killed him was a Cambodian refugee, unable at last to get his life together after past scarred by genocide and brutality (How do I know this? If you are Cambodian, and you’re still alive, that’s what the past was.)

Bella herself was a refugee, who escaped anti-Jewish violence in Moldova in the 90s, and nothing could convince her that Israel should make concessions of any kind. I can still hear her, insistently, her accent, saying “Where can we be safe?”



There is a makeshift memorial now, by the parking spot. A blurry photo there, reproduced in the newspaper, shows a body more adult than I recall. Turns out he was a swimmer. He looks well, and healthy, more mature than I recall.

I‘ve been praying and talking to him as I sit, and I know Boris is in a good place now. But there is no place in this world where any of us are truly safe, or insulated from sorrow and harm: not in Israel, Moldova, Portland or San Francisco; not while we destroy others’ lives and our own.

There’s war outside and a war inside, and lives of value and promise are snuffed out by some hijacked notion of entitlement, some forcible version of how the world should be.

Even so, these things come as a shock. Because it is so lovely to sink into a life of plenty and comparative comfort. If I’ve been dwelling on the other side of things lately in my writings and musings, it’s because I want to keep remembering there is a price and a context to my life.



FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

A 19-year-old Pacifica man was stabbed to death in a dispute over a parking space on Geary Boulevard over the weekend, and San Francisco police have arrested his alleged killer, a former Cambodian refugee featured in a documentary about immigrant life in the Tenderloin.

The victim, identified Monday as Boris Albinder, whose parents were Russian immigrants, died Saturday morning of stab wounds he suffered during a brawl just after midnight in front of a club at Geary and Third Avenue.

The fight began when a friend of Albinder's tried to reserve an empty parking space for him as he drove to the Richmond District neighborhood for a private party at the club. A van with several men in it started to pull into the spot, and when Albinder's friend tried to shoo them away, the van nudged him twice, police said.

Albinder drove up to find his friend struggling with as many as five men who had been in the van, investigators said. Albinder got out to join the fight and was stabbed. He died later that morning at San Francisco General Hospital.

Police pulled over a van in the 300 block of Leavenworth Street at 12:38 a.m. that matched the one involved in the clash and arrested Pounloeu Chea, 25, of San Francisco, said Sgt. Steve Mannina, a department spokesman. Chea has been booked on one count of murder and five counts of assault, police said.

Albinder was remembered Monday as a hardworking, dedicated athlete and student who graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory High School last year.

"It's awful and devastating, any time you lose someone this young," said Joe Vollert, director of development at the school, who taught Albinder in a math class. "It's a life gone too soon.''

Albinder was on the school's swim team and was ranked among the top competitors in the region in the butterfly stroke during his senior year, said a coach, Greg McCarthy.

"He was a great guy," McCarthy said. "His senior year, he matured quite a bit. He was very respectful. He led his team very well.''

A friend of Albinder's, Joe Hills, said Albinder had been taking classes at Skyline Community College.

"He was a real genuine guy. He always spoke his mind,'' Hills said. "I guess you could say he lived each day,'' he said.
His death, Hills said, was senseless. "All over a parking spot.''

Chea, whose family fled the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, was featured three years ago in a 20-minute documentary film, "Who I Became," about the life of Asian immigrants in the Tenderloin.

The film portrayed Chea's struggles to escape the street in recent years after first his mother and then his father returned to Cambodia. At one point, Chea was convicted of taking part in a car-theft and smuggling ring, but was allowed to stay in the United States as long as he fulfilled the terms of his probation, said one of the filmmakers, Mike Siv.

Siv said Monday that he had seen Chea a few times in the Tenderloin since the documentary came out in 2003, and that he still appeared to be hanging out on the street.

In the year that Siv worked on the film, Chea completed a construction training program but was told he couldn't get a job unless he had a high school degree, Siv said. A friend got Chea work at a hotel, but he couldn't keep it.

"When I was following him, he wanted to stay away from the street life,'' Siv said. But he added, "I don't think he ever got his GED. All he had to do is get a GED.''

Siv said Chea had a young son and was living with his girlfriend in the Tenderloin.

Siv said he was sad but not surprised that Chea had been arrested. "When you are put at a disadvantage, it's hard to dig yourself out," he said. "He chose his lifestyle. For him to be arrested ... to tell you the truth, it was a matter of time.''
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.