A Spare Life (35 page)

In the days that followed, I gathered my strength and went to the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies. I offered them the 50,000 pounds I had been given because of my head for graduate studies. They accepted me. I started at the university in the fall of 1997. There were ten students in our class. Black, yellow, white, like that song from my childhood. Different ages. I was quickly included in the group. Every morning I could hardly wait to get to school. It was completely different from the Law Department in Skopje. The students had homework. We had to write essays on migrant policy, but in unusual ways. We had to describe our own experiences in relation to life in a foreign country, comparing the way of life, manner of thinking and acting, from both sides of migration. What interesting stories and reflections I heard that semester! I had to tell my own story, about my confrontation with Otherness. When I returned to London, I had resolved I would never tell the story of my life with Srebra and everything that had happened. Although the media wrote a great deal about our case after the operation, only two photos appeared, taken the day I was released from the hospital. In both, my head was wrapped in a swathe of bandages as if enclosed in a capsule. I was wearing my glasses, and my eyes were downcast, so my face hadn't been captured completely. I wasn't afraid of being recognized. I told Bogdan I didn't want anyone to know my history. He agreed. I told my mentor at the university the same thing, even though I had had to tell him our whole story. He promised he would never tell anyone and would protect me if necessary. With these assurances that Srebra's name would not be dragged into public view via the ravenous curiosity of the press, I was able to live like a normal person. So now, as we analyzed Otherness, there was no expectation I would tell my personal story, though I knew of no greater Otherness than Srebra's and mine. Nor a greater loss than of that, which, paradoxically, we had wanted to free ourselves. I spoke about the coexistence of Macedonians and Albanians in Macedonia or, more accurately, the lack of coexistence. The parallel worlds in which Albanians constantly felt like immigrants, and Macedonians constantly reinforced this feeling. I spoke about how I didn't know Albanian, even though I had studied in a bilingual high school. About the fact that my former
homeroom teacher, a Macedonian, married an Albanian and was disowned, with an announcement in the newspaper, by her parents, her brothers, and her sisters. And she even taught the Macedonian language. My fellow graduate students had their own views of everything that came from the “other side.” The Bulgarian, Marija, whom I met the first day, told us in the very first class that she had four friends from Yemen in London with whom she had studied English in a prep course. They later enrolled in medical programs, but had remained friends. She told us how the first time she went to visit them, she was dressed modestly in a long skirt and big sweater, because they always dressed that way, and they even wore headscarves. When she rang the doorbell and they opened the door, they were wearing shorts and shirts with spaghetti straps. “Then the Otherness could be seen in reverse,” said Marija. “I was to be seduced, and they were my seducers,” adding, “I had brought them some Bulgarian Turkish delight, and they had chocolate rum candies for me. ‘We have Coca-Cola and whiskey,' one of them said. ‘What would you like to drink?' And, quite befuddled, I said, ‘Both.' So that night, everyone drank Coca-Cola cut with whiskey, and we laughed and danced, but one of the Yemeni girls got sick and threw up in the toilet, and then I decided to go home, forever freed from the stereotype of the Other hidden behind clothes.”

Boris, from Ukraine, read an interesting essay:

Just as the body rejects a foreign object, each nation rejects and discards the foreigner who wishes to work inside its living organism: like the dental prosthesis I never got used to in childhood or the contact lenses that cause my eyes, even after a full decade's acclimation, to become scratched and bloodshot. Great Britain rejects me, discards me, kicks me. It does not want to accept me as an object to which it could offer new opportunity. Perhaps it is still early. I have only lived here for two years.

It appeared Boris had a talent for writing and contemplation; perhaps that's what led him to study migration.

The title of Ervin from Bosnia's essay was short: “On the Train” followed by a colon. Then:

Three guest workers in stocking feet. The men with raspy, inaudible voices. The woman with fat oozing out on all sides. Cheap jeans, short sleeves. A mouth without sense or self-censorship. “I'll fuck your ass; he says his nuts hurt not his asshole. You still want to feed the workers? If you only give 'em burek, they won't finish in one day.” “They nibble, eat, drink, munch, go to the bathroom, laugh, and then they're quiet again.” “Oh, my leg hurts something awful,” the woman keeps repeating. The men mumble something unintelligible, uninterested in her torment. “I love that Bosnian kefir, but not the buttermilk.” “Kefir isn't any good, it's too thick, I have to thin it with water.” Sajko, probably her husband, says the word for chitlins,
kukurek
, and starts to laugh; everyone laughs. The woman's body is a naturalist painting—black disheveled hair permed into curls. When she comes back from the bathroom, she smells like flowers, carrying the scent of her floral wipes.

We all laughed at what Ervin had written. Later, I learned that he had come from Bosnia two years before, from somewhere near Srebrenica. He had fled before that fateful July. In my mind, the thought
just before Srebra and Darko's wedding
flitted. Ervin kept saying, “I can't believe I'm in a secure place, that I am safe. I'm so safe here that nothing could happen to me.” He buttoned up his soft fleece jacket and ran his hands along it as if it gave him full protection.

Peter, the Hungarian, one of the most spiritual and cynical students, always ready to comment on any topic, said that he had analyzed—theoretically, of course—the excrement of immigrants and of the native-born, and had come to the interesting determination that the excrement of primitive tribes weighs 250 grams, but Europeans' only weighs 100 grams. And he added, “Currently, in Hungary, our excrement also weighs 250 grams, but that number will fall drastically when we enter the European Union.” He said the excrement of English people, because they are in the European Union, weighs 100 grams, but that of immigrants weighs between 300 and 350 grams. “And that's normal,” he said. “Immigrants shit a whole lot more, in both the literal and figurative sense. Not only are they under more stress, which accelerates their metabolisms, but they are always dissatisfied, and from countries of primitive people.” We all looked at him in shock, but he was convinced of his theory.

Raluca, the Romanian, had lived outside of Romania for years. She had completed high school in Vienna, university in Berlin, been married and divorced in London, and was now in graduate school. She said she would read to us from the diary she had written on her most recent trip to Bucharest:

On leaving Vienna, the train was already filled with Romanian guest workers who had short-term work permits. Sitting next to me was a middle-aged woman who spent several months every year looking after an old woman near Vienna. Every time she went home, to Braşov, she brought four suitcases (two fake leather, two cloth) filled with various products: coffee (a hundred packages), special salami, candy, processed cheese (three slices for ninety-nine cents), chocolates, pita, kashkaval cheese, laundry soap, etc. Seated across from us was a younger woman, now on her second marriage to a man in Vienna, filled with self-confidence, certain of her good looks. Her daughter, a teenager, is now living through a second relocation. Although she had originally not wanted to live in Vienna because children in Vienna didn't play outside, now she didn't want to stay for long in Romania. While at her grandmother's during vacation, the daughter sent her mother a message, “I miss our refrigerator.” Her mother was traveling to Romania to get her. Also in the train car, a young man, who had been living and working in Vienna for six years, found another young guy who wanted to drink, and the two of them drank and sang until the young man had drunk so much he became psychologically and physically violent (while smoking in a nonsmoking car) and even attacked me twice: first, two ping-pong paddles fell out of his bag (above my head) and struck my elbow; and then, before he got off, even though I had moved out of the way, he didn't fail to hit me—accidentally—on the shoulder as he grabbed his bag. I arrived in Bucharest with two bruises.

A Slovenian woman, Alenka, told us what happened in Ljubljana one day when she was contacted by a nongovernmental agency and asked if it was true that she translated from Romanian. She had been taking Romanian classes at the university for years, and had been to Romania for summer courses several times. She said that she occasionally translated, and agreed to help them. They told her to come to the Youth Crisis Center in the southern part of the city. There, waiting for her, was the coordinator of an NGO committed to protecting women who were being trafficked, and a fifteen-year-old Romanian girl named Rodica. Rodica was twenty weeks pregnant. She was carrying a girl who would be named Petra, after the father, Petar—a fifty-seven-year-old Bosnian Serb who bought her parents a house in exchange for her. That was the official version given to the police. For Rodica, Petar was the first man in her life, the man who bought a house for himself, for her, and for their baby in her village in Romania. Petar worked as a seasonal construction worker in Slovenia. They came from Romania by car. Her father brought her across the Hungarian and Slovenian borders, because he was also traveling outside the country, to Austria. There were no problems; her father told the border guards he was bringing her to her mother in Austria, who was in the hospital, sick with cancer. Her father continued on to Austria, but she and Petar stayed in Slovenia. They went to register at the police station, and there they remained: he in custody for the seduction and mistreatment of a minor, she in the Youth Crisis Center. As the interpreter, Alenka had to take a trip she hadn't planned on that day: from the crisis center to the gynecological clinic. Rodica hadn't showered for days and stubbornly refused to do so at the crisis center. Her body filled the exam room with the smell of rotten fish, or more specifically, dead fish thrown onto dry land in the hot sun. Her genitals exuded an intense odor, steaming vapors. The doctor said everyone had to work like crazy to air out the room after the examination. Alenka stood behind a curtain and translated, but the smell penetrated the material and into her clothes. But it didn't disgust her. She didn't feel like vomiting. She had taken a liking to Rodica. She trusted
her. “Maybe I was crazy,” she said, “but I believed her. She was kind, beautiful, and mature. Maybe as mature as I was when I was fifteen and in love for the first time, when it seemed like it would last forever.” The psychologist—a blond woman—tried to help. “No,” she said, “Rodica isn't going to commit suicide. But she can't stand being without Petar any longer. I don't know what the wisest course of action is.” Rodica was fifteen, pregnant, and, out of stubbornness, refused an IV. She refused food and liquids. She thought the baby would survive without them, and she had no real relationship with the baby. She loved it, but she loved Petar more. She carried his photo in her purse. White-haired, but strong. Now, beside his photo was the ultrasound of their baby. While they were performing the gynecological and psychological exams, the coordinator from the NGO bought shampoo, shower gel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The inspector, who was with them the whole time, dressed in civilian clothes, gave her a Fruitabella bar. The nurse gave her underwear and slippers. But she just wanted a telephone card so she could call her mother, whose number she didn't know. Her parents' number was in Petar's cell phone. A bit strange. Why didn't she contact her sister's fiancé, a Slovenian? Was her love for Petar real? “Love for a man of below-average intelligence, a lost man from the dregs of society, living in Slovenia in a barracks without water or a bathroom?” the inspector said. Did he really buy her, or did he love her, too? Once, when she was sick he cried, she said. Now she was crying. She was looking for Petar, who was already in custody and likely would get a long prison term for the seduction and ill-use of a minor. Rodica remained at the gynecological clinic. That whole time, another inspector was walking the hallway, dressed in civilian clothes, as if waiting for his wife to give birth. The nurses and doctors were obligated not to reveal that Rodica was under police observation. Alenka and the coordinator left. A few days later, the coordinator came to Alenka's house so she could give him some books in Romanian to give to Rodica. He was very grateful to her. He told Rodica there was no way she and Petar could see each other again until she reached the age of majority. The baby would most likely be given to a foster home. She couldn't go to Romania, because her father was evidently mixed
up in the whole business. Petar would rot in jail. The story of Rodica and Petar would not have a happy ending.

All these stories were a sick revelation for me. Some were connected with emigration, others with human fate, which knows no borders. Did something similar await me? Had I also become an emigrant the moment I left Macedonia? Apparently so. In exile because of my parents' lack of love, in exile for hygienic reasons, in exile because of my love for Bogdan, in exile because of Srebra's death. Paradoxically, I had emigrated to the place where Srebra died—where she had not survived. London, the city, in every sense, of our separation.

Bogdan and I were in love, and if one didn't take into account my spiritual torment over Srebra's death, how the loss overwhelmed me, the guilt I felt because I had lived and she hadn't, my conscience gnawing at me, my abrupt departure from my parents' home, and the endless questions connected with our relationship and family, if one didn't take the dark side of my soul into account, then I was as happy with Bogdan as he was with me.