The sixteen-year-old Yitzel was getting restless in the long queue at the entrance to the Portuguese embassy in Berlin. It was so very hot and crowded in the noonday sun, and she felt a great thirst, a sweaty forehead, and an intense need to defecate. She and her mother Yolande had been waiting in line for over five hours, and Yitzel couldn’t understand why her mother was so bent on getting what she called a “visa” to Portugal or to any of its colonies. Yolande had explained that a “visa” was a special permission to travel to any part of the Portuguese empire, including colonies in both Africa and Asia, but Yitzel didn’t quite understand what the words “empire” or “colony” meant.

The house always wins. Anyone who tells you differently has never played a game for money in their lives. You bet a small, relatively safe, amount and a win may come or it may not. Doesn’t matter to you because you only played sixty cents per game. So, you play again. Pull the slot. Roll the dice. Spin the wheel. Call for the next card.
But you lose.
Oh well, it’s only sixty cents. But now you’re in for a dollar twenty because you play again. Time passes and fifty tries later, you’re down thirty dollars. Not an awful lot but it was still money that could have gone into the gas tank. But you’re sure you’ll break even because sometimes you do win. Of course you do. That’s just how they get you to come back.