A Polish homecoming

Kathy Sheridan joins Poles on a flight out of Dublin for a long-awaited Christmas trip home, to emotional family scenes

They queue at the check-in desks in near silence, the weather- beaten, mountainy men in their cleanest dirty clothes with the tell-tale spatters of plaster; the sprinkling of women of a certain age, with the sprayed-rigid hair-dos in unlikely colours; the legions of twentysomethings, dressed for the sub-zero Polish winter in sensible scarves and chain-store jackets.

There are no ridiculous heels, no garish outfits, no shrieking, no high spirits. The atmosphere is strangely muted.

They're going home for Christmas and can hardly believe it. Every direct flight and bus service from Ireland to Poland for the past 10 days has been full. Many were booked out by the end of September. Aer Lingus alone is carrying 50,000 people to eastern Europe for Christmas.

Some who could afford to plan ahead paid €270 for flights months ago; others, closer to Christmas, had to find €400 or €500, an impossible hurdle for most on the minimum wage.

"It will be a sad Christmas Day," says Jana, her voice quivering. She is at Dublin Airport to see a friend off. "Polish people want so much their family at this time. And I have a new nephew . . ."

There are many who long for the east but who won't make it. They are the ones trapped by the need for the double- and treble-time wages over the holidays or who are due no extra days off because Christmas falls on a weekend. Most are caught by the airlines' enduring habits of milking the season of goodwill for every cent and of banking on the yearning of lonely migrants to be among their own for Christmas.

The Irish - the ones who didn't catch amnesia as they scaled the social ladder - know all about it. It is surprising how much these Polish men and women know about the Irish emigration story, but how few parallels they draw with their own experiences in 2005. But for the lucky ones here at Dublin Airport, their day has come - the day anticipated over long, frugal months in hard, tedious jobs.

Bogdan, a stoical 43-year-old, who works in construction around Castlebar, Co Mayo despite not having a word of English, is heading back to the Zacopane Mountains.

Lukas, an arty-looking 26-year-old site engineer working in Co Westmeath, is on the way home to his student girlfriend, Marta, and his home village near Kielce, about two hours' drive south of Krakow.

Konrad, a 30-year-old who makes a living "doing everything" in landscaping is travelling back to his girlfriend and family in the little town of Vistola near the Czech border.

IN THE QUIET, slightly tense atmosphere, the few men who've had a drink or two are distinctive, not in any messy way, but in the blissed-out smiles, flushed faces, and the tendency to say "bardzo szosowy"- "very happy" - a lot.

Marek, a 42-year-old who makes blocks in Carlow and is starting the long trek home to the mountains, is unable to stop beaming, kissing hands and murmuring "very, very thanks". While to Irish eyes his behaviour is rather restrained and funny, his compatriots seem faintly disapproving. A younger work colleague is minding him with exasperated good grace - they are two men from wildly disparate backgrounds thrown together by exile and the spirit of Christmas. He will be putting Marek up for the night, before making sure he gets the right train tomorrow.

Meanwhile, for Katarzaena Barska - who calls herself Kate - this day is the culmination of six months' planning. Kate, a 25-year-old qualified speech therapist who works the till in the RTÉ canteen, has a carry-on bag that weighs about the same as several concrete blocks. That'll be the impressive Mini Cooper model car for her five-year-old nephew and godson, Bartosz, the large bottle of Chanel perfume for her mother, Barbara, and - for the family that drinks little but has requested a taste of Ireland's most famous products - cans of Guinness, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream and a big box of Irish chocolates.

As Kate boards the aircraft for the nearly three-hour flight to the tiny airport of Katowice in southern Poland, four generations of her family and her boyfriend, Greg Kacila, are planning to drive through a blizzard along narrow country roads from the village of Lazy to meet her. It's been her first time away from home; she has been gone for six months.

The same muted air prevails on the packed aircraft, a sharp contrast with the unbridled glee of returning Irish emigrant flights in the 1980s. Krysztof, a student from Krakow, puts it down to the fact that "before 1989, Polish people couldn't even cross the border - and after 1989, the stories were all of Polish people going to England, being caught by the authorities and being sent home. Now it's strange for them, they can go anywhere. It's not really normal for Poles to be on an aircraft and there is a feeling that they should behave".

Even relatively well-travelled Krysztof becomes as excited as a child when the lights of Poland start to twinkle below. Marek, our happy friend from Carlow with three words of English, doesn't get all that stuff about fastening your seat belt and putting your table back and he heads for the toilets as the aircraft is descending. He has to be escorted back to his seat, looking a tad mystified.

The aircraft hits the Polish runway amid complete silence, then suddenly, as though waking from a dream, passengers break into a great round of applause.

OUT IN THE minuscule arrivals area of Katowice Airport, 40 minutes early, Kate's mother, Barbara, an office clerk in a linen factory, and father Jerzy, a train driver, have been waiting with her sister Anna, Anna's husband Tomasz, their five-year-old boy Bartosz, and Kate's very sprightly 73-year-old grandmother, Janena. Pacing about, nervously fingering a perfect, long-stemmed cream rose (about €3 in the airport shop) is Kate's boyfriend, Greg. He went to Ireland with her, where he worked on the maintenance of Donnybrook rugby ground, "doing everything from levelling the ground to making the lines", but had to return to Poland two months ago to finish his social work studies.

Will they get married? "Yeah, I hope," he whispers. He'll be returning with her after Christmas. No more separations. The plan is to live in Ireland for two years, then to return to Poland and buy a house.

They know all the stories of Irish emigration, about the parallels between Ireland and Poland, about the men who went away, leaving wives and families, and simply disappeared forever into another life. The difference is that a whole genre of Polish folk music is devoted to them while Irish folk songs steer clear.

According to Barbara, Kate has nothing but good to say of her manager in the RTÉ canteen - "but she will come back to Poland. Twice a week, she calls and stays on the phone for a whole hour. I've started to learn English so if I go to visit her in Ireland, I won't be completely dumb". They chat easily, always with an eye on the airport information screen, about how she shares a house (in Crumlin) with five others and pays €200 a month rent.

So how long ago did Kate book her ticket? They all laugh and chant together, "128 days ago". She paid €270 for it. The return portion is for January 4th, but they prefer to remember that she has already bought her ticket home for Easter - and for only a third of the Christmas fare.

In an atmosphere charged with emotion and expectation, Barbara is also clutching flowers, a fussy arrangement of artificial-looking pink roses. "They should have been white", she says with a quivery sigh. I brush one with a finger. "Da! (Yes!) They're real!," she yelps indignantly.

She can hardly speak without her eyes welling up. Granny Janena had spent all morning crying. Anna is taking deep breaths. "My heart is pounding," she says, as the "landed" sign flashes up beside the flight from Dublin.

They joke about how Kate will look. "She had red hair when she left. It could be any colour now . . ."

Meanwhile, all around us the tension builds as mute, little family groups stare at the screen, then at the arrivals door. Many are holding flowers. Two little boys have model airplanes and are holding them up, aching to show them to their dad.

"He is gone two months," says the man's pretty, misty-eyed wife, who has four children under the age of 10, one a little girl in a Santa hat carrying a tiny posy of flowers. "It's not an easy time."

Meanwhile, Greg moves to the front of the barrier so his face will be the first Kate will see.

THE FIRST TO come through are the mountain men, carrying only their near-empty, shabby little holdalls. Many seem to have no family waiting and most head straight for the exit and public transport.

Suddenly the little girl in the Santa hat tears across the floor, in under the barrier, stops and stares wordlessly up at a man laden with duty-free bags. He stands transfixed at the sight of her, drops the bags and scoops her up, nodding his head incredulously before burying it in her blonde ringlets. His wife stays put, dabbing her eyes as the little boys wave their planes at him.

Among those waiting is a startling Jackie Healy-Rae lookalike called Jerzy Adamizyk. Jerzy is a little, round man with a big, friendly face wearing what is unmistakably a Healy-Rae-style patchwork cap. Jerzy's daughter Johanna, who works as an office cleaner in Dublin, had sent it on. Waiting with her father is her 12-year-old son, Krysztof, whom she hasn't seen since May.

Ireland is "okay", she says after an emotional reunion, "but it's hard to be alone. I hope to bring Krysztof back with me to Ireland some time . . ."

A glamorous, middle-aged woman with unlikely red, permed hair and a leopard-print coat unceremoniously pulls her arriving son, daughter and husband to her ample bosom and smacks kisses all over their faces while they stand and submit.

All around, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters are bestowing flowers and no fewer than three kisses before engaging in long, passionate embraces.

Two likely lads arrive in, giant green leprechaun hats perched on their heads, and raise a low cheer from a waiting group. Another saunters through, wraps a proprietorial arm around a clinging, sobbing girlfriend, plants a fag in his mouth, and swaggers towards the exit, master of his own turf again, out to Katowice city traffic jams nearly as bad as Ireland's but where most of the cars are small and old and people still have road manners.

"People have to go slowly because of the snow, so maybe you only think they have road manners," suggests a jaundiced-looking local. It's not easy to get a Pole to say something positive about another; they don't have the same trust in each other as the Irish do when abroad, says another well-travelled, cold-eyed native.

Close by, a young blonde woman in an expensive shearling jacket, holding up a passenger's name, looks on contemptuously.

"You should tell your readers the truth," she says in perfect English. "Tell them that there is no need for Polish people to go away, that there are plenty of jobs here for those who want them. These people are lazy."

Hardly lazy, I say; they have to work hard in Ireland.

"Well, I have my own company and there is no problem here. They should stay in their own country where they are needed."

A man nearby rolls his eyes and mutters, "Oh yes, there are many many jobs in Poland if you will work 24 hours for nothing, which is probably what her workers must do".

It's a taster of a debate that unfolds, usually in safe company, one that contends that Poland must wait for the passing of the middle-aged generations - the ones "destroyed" by the old Soviet mindset and work ethic - for the country to make something of itself.

"The best thing to do is wait for them to die," says the cold-eyed Pole.

It's a hard judgment on the middle-aged people standing around us, who lived through dangerous, troubled times and never had the choice to travel or seek new opportunities, and who are now trembling with emotion and expectancy for a generation that has.

Suddenly through the door comes a radiant, red-haired Kate, leaning over the barrier to kiss Greg before emerging to be enveloped in a series of tearful bear hugs, while outside falling snow blankets the rural landscape of her homeland.

For this family, Christmas will be as it always was: the traditional 12 meatless dishes on Christmas Eve followed by the opening of presents and midnight Mass, and on Christmas Day, the meeting up with family, the chat and endless sing-songs with guitar accompaniment by her father and Anna.

They "might have a little wine - one glass is enough".

Will they watch television? "Oh no," she says, shocked to her boots. "It's a special day. We don't have time for that." (I should add in mitigation, that Polish television is not to be recommended. The same funereal male voice dubs all the movies, and sounds just the same, whether it's Macaulay Culkin or Angelina Jolie.)

New Year will be a time for change back in Ireland, perhaps a new job, a chance to take English classes once Greg is there. "My ambition is to get good English and come back to Poland. I want to have children and to raise them in Poland. It's very hard to learn English in Ireland because I live with five Polish people and we don't speak English at all. And you are so tired after working."

Meanwhile, there are compensations. The people at RTÉ are "just gorgeous". They help her by correcting her English, and show an interest in her comings and goings. She also finds it cheaper to live in Ireland because she buys no clothes here and eats mostly in the RTÉ canteen.

She is acutely aware that there are Poles who will remain trapped in Ireland. "There is one girl who will probably stay in Ireland for the rest of her life and she is not happy. She has two children, she doesn't know English and hasn't time to learn. She is too tired after work. But there are still no jobs for the young in Poland; I think it's worse than six months ago when I left. I think there is no future there at the moment for young people. It's very sad because we have very intelligent, educated people."

Upon which she turns and walks out of the airport and into her sad, beloved country.

When The Irish Times flew back to Dublin a day later, the scenario was very different. About 30 people were scattered through the plane (the one-way fare west cost just €39, noted an Irishman who had been in Poland to scout out the property scene) and they included two young Polish sisters, aged 16 and 17, who last saw their parents in the summer in Ireland. Now they were coming to spend Christmas with them in Drogheda. In the meantime, they continue their schooling while living with their grandparents.

"Oh yes, we miss our parents," says one, pressing a knuckle to her lips emotionally. "We long to see them." Then they look at each other, suddenly wreathed in smiles: "And now we have a month. A month!"

Additional reporting by Marcella Gajek