She presents the result to her brother for inspection....
We went for a walk yesterday. We started later in the morning than we should have given the heat, but typical for when trying to plan something around here, even something as simple as a group walk.
We took the road upward this time, our destination the cemetery. Today we passed a man sitting on an incline along the side of the road. He was sitting in front of two medium sized containers with a large rock on each to hold the lids down. The man was old, skin darkened from a generation of working the fields. He was rather thin with deep groves cut into his face. His cloths were sturdy but worn and faded, almost a workers uniform.
Gjulia looked at him with interest. She does this with many things new to her, but this man held special interest. As we continued our walk, I got the sense she wanted to ask or say something. I looked down and she said, “That man is very poor isn’t he?” He certainly looked very poor to me, but I wondered what in particular made her deduce this. I asked her what made her think the man was so poor. Without hesitation she replied, “Because all he had for sale were rocks.”
It’s 12:50am and I’m lying in bed with Noah while he tells me a story about how he once slept through the whole day. As he tells me this story, I drift off into thought about all the nights I have put him to bed. Of course it was always about 4-5 hours earlier than this, but tonight that just doesn’t matter. In fact, very little matters. I’m here with my son, in the house where I was born in the hills of nowhere. The unscreened windows are open, the night air is cool and there are least five species of crickets vying for first chair. I hug him close while he speaks in an endless stream of words. He pauses mid sentence and says, “Papa, can you please stop holding me, you’re making me kinda hot?” I couldn’t help but smile from the simplicity of his sincerity. There are not many perfect days in life, but this is one of them.
I wish I could put into words this idea I have here about the different sense of privacy they have over here. I’ve tried to make a little impact as possible but invariably I couldn’t help but spread out all over. After returning yesterday, I found everything folded neatly and put into various drawers. This required them to go through pretty much everything I own. I’m sure it never entered their mind that I would feel a loss of privacy, nor should it.
Today I was in my room trying to write something on my laptop. First one child enters and gently disturbs the peace. Then another followed by a third and so on until the entire regiment of kids are abuzz with activity all around me. The sense of spontaneous life in this room if a true gift and isn’t easily found or created.
The kids of course lost interest in me so I slipped out and headed for my uncles bedroom which is right in the middle of the house, door always open. I only hesitated for a moment before entering reflecting on why I now hesitate. I sit down on the bed and from this vantage point, can monitor all the activity of the house. I understand the lack of privacy here both on the practical and emotional level. What is given up here is exchanged for a sense of belonging that can only be felt and not described, at least not by me.
Those of us in the west greedily guard our privacy. The cost is a sense of belonging that resonates at the core. While maintaining this high level of privacy, we frantically search for that missing something, but unwilling to pay the seemingly heavy price to obtain it. As the generations pile on top of the bones of the past, we don't even know what it is we are missing. As humans we were meant to be in commune with one another, and at many different degrees.
I'm not sure how to give thanks for being given the opportunity to gain a glimpse of this lost time from the vantage point of the future. We won’t be living in this form of purgatory long enough to develop the rituals needed from which to provide a sense of comfort… whatever the heck all that means.
Morning One.
Looks like only 3 out of our 8 bags made it. The only one I actually cared about did not. I took out some of the kids clothes from their carry on to make room for some toys and plane activities, unfortunately I didn’t plan as well as I should have for the real possibility of a missing luggage. I didn’t leave a pair of sandals for Noah that I meant to so now he only has some regular shoes to wear around the house.
In many ways it feels and seems exactly like it did three years ago. Nobody seems different or older except for the kids, but even in them the personalities are the same.
Later…
We went back to the airport to check on the remaining bags. The airport is actually pretty nice and seemly very organized. Of course this doesn’t help our cause as we still have to ask where to go. We are pointed to an area that says Authorized Personal Only. As we approached the entrance, Vaseli keeps going much to my surprise. Some younger looking guy says something which sounded like an annoyed version of “Can’t you see the sign?”. Presumably he tells the guy that I’m looking for lost baggage. He then signals me to go through the door. Now I’m confused but head through the door nevertheless. I find three of five missing bags, luckily the only one I care about is among them.
These three bags are pretty large and I look towards the front entrance to size the customer service factor. I quickly determine that we’re just not there yet and I’m on my own. We’ll need a few more decades between us and the communist experiment formally known as Yugoslavia.
I precariously stack one bag on top of another and drag them away. To my surprise the young guy that was supposedly in charge said he would take one of the bags for me. As we headed out the smile on my face again turned to confusion as he is quickly heading to an area in the opposite direction of where we were we came from. As I looked back, I saw on Vaseli’s face the expression of a man that just heard a surprise verdict.
I went into this hallway where there was an older looking guy in a uniform sitting at a small table, legs crossed, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t make it out exactly, but two fuzzy words started to come into focus. The first was “Interrogation”, the next was “Turkish”. A woman in a similar uniform appeared out of a side room with a stream of words I had no chance of deciphering. Usually I’m more prepared with a slightly more respectful reply, but in this case I just gave a random response in English almost like a Rorschach experiment.
What followed was a string of circler questions leading to the same destination, “How much do you want to pay to get out of this torture chamber” or so I imagined. Luckily for me I once went through a real communist border interrogation during my first visit here. This uniformed refugee of the past, even with his costume and slanted looks didn’t really intimidate me. After playing the part of a dumb tourist, I think he grew tired and told the woman to have me open up one of the bags. I give the “Like I Care” look in return. Looking a different direction, he picks the suitcase in the middle which also happens to be the medium sized one.
The woman asks me to open it up and I gladly oblige. It opens up revealing a whole lot of very boring looking cloths. The old commandant in charge quickly loses interest… nothing to play with here. The woman barely lifts a few items as asks almost apologetically to please close it up. To my surprise she strikes up a conversation after I tell her the important suitcase is the larger one they didn’t pick because it has some of my kids clothes in it. With an actual smile on her face, she says she is surprised I’m old enough to have kids. At first I’m not sure if I should take the bait, but I figure why not. I tell her she has my passport in her hands so she can see for herself.
I then made the mistake of saying that in fact it’s my birthday in a few days. This is true, but not technically speaking, meaning it’s not what is reported in my passport . Luckily I don’t have to explain the details of this and I leave saying “Hvala”, hesitating a bit first, of course, the woman delighted with my attempt.
