My grandmother’s name is SalaSa-la A hard L- the kind where your tongue has to push against the back of your front two teeth My grandfather’s name was Mustafa But we always called him TatiTa-tee They grew up in the same village And played together until the age that boys and girls are separated to learn their roles My grandmother retreated to her father’s house, learning to cook and clean And my grandfather started going to school My grandmother blushes when she admits to me that she used to sneak up to the roof of her house when dawn came Just to see my grandfather walking to school, books clutched against his chest Every morning, him and the sun It seemed to her that the sun rose with him, That it could only be coaxed eastward if he pulled it with him My grandmother married the boy who pulled the sun up for her every day And they had six children Seven, if you count the one who died before his first birthday cake could be made My grandfather was, as they say, “ahead of his time" He was an intelligent and forward-thinking academic living in Communist times His children came home from school each afternoon singing songs about the benevolent nature of their leaderTito belongs to us and we belong to Tito, they hummed But when Tito died, the tides changed And when my grandfather spoke up opposing the nationalistic movement against Albanians- which would one day grow into full-fledged ethnic cleansing- He didn’t make it home from work And my grandmother wondered how to explain ‘political prisoner’ to her children One night, months after my grandfather’s disappearance, My grandmother saw a blue-eyed stranger trudging up the village hill In his hands- a note scrawled in my grandfather’s handwritingSell everything. Meet me in Rome. So she did She sold everything, kissed her weeping relatives goodbye And trudged across Europe with her children In Rome, a reunionWe’re going to America, my grandfather saidWe’re refugees, he said America- the word was bulky in my grandmother’s mouth on that sundrenched day in Rome And even now she can’t quite wrap her tongue around itAmer-eek, she saidAmer-eek, their children mimicked in high-pitched voices Amer-eek! My mother, an 8-year old pig-tailed refugee in Rome On her way to Amer-eek New York City, to be precise Their first house was right off of Ditmas Avenue in Brooklyn A crumbling 3-family home shared with other Albanian refugees Where, during that first year, English was spoken so rarely that you could almost forget you’d left home The house was right underneath the Cortelyou Road subway station Every time the trains rumbled past, the walls of the house shook and trembled and my grandmother prayed under her breath My grandmother- a woman who gave birth to seven children and raised six of them But never learned to read Every morning she sent her children to school, a place she would never set foot in, a mystical land where knowledge and learning were the status quo They came home speaking English, which my grandmother was glad for only so that they could translate for her at the grocery store or the doctor’s office My grandfather worked days in a factory and spent his nights smoking and reading about the land that he’d left behind As his sons and daughters grew into young men and women, Their old country smoldered- A fire quietly growing It would spread soon, my grandfather knew It wouldn’t be long before the name of his country became famous for all the wrong reasons Blasted out of radios, smeared across CNNSerbian forces move to Kosovo Ethnic cleansing Genocide But that wasn’t until the ‘90s And in the decade before his country was ripped apart by misplaced nationalism, My grandfather sent my 18-year old mother back homeGo to college, he said, get a degree Meet a nice boy, my grandmother said, get married She did both And when she finally returned to America a couple of years later, It was with my father and oldest sister in tow My parents made their own home in America in the mid-80s By 1985, my second sister made her appearance- the first of the Latifi’s to be born in America Meanwhile, my father was studying for his medical boards and his ESL class at the same time And my mother was raising my sisters in the bustle of Brooklyn The 80’s faded and in the first year of the 90’s, my brother joined our family My father named him Kushtrim, which means battle cry And was fitting because as my brother was taking his first steps, Our Bosnian neighbors were being brought to their knees By the time the war spread from Bosnia to Kosovo, I was 5 years old and living in Virginia with my family In a sprawling brick house surrounded by a lush green lawn that my father mowed every Sunday Just like a real American But the news was on every hour of every day And some of my earliest memories are of peeking over the living room couch, Straining to see what was happening in the country where my family started- Where my grandparents met as children Where my parents fell in love as college students My brother and I were deemed to young to watch the news with my parents So we snuck looks from behind doorways, Sat on the stairs that wrapped around the back of our house- Anything to catch a few words from Christiane Amanpour’s mouth that would explain why my mother jumped every time the phone rang And my father sat in front of the TV with his mouth pulled into a tight line My brother and I whispered to each other from our hiding spots, Pulled dictionaries into our room and blew the dust from their pagesGenocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation My brother read the definition aloud and I tilted my head to the sideWhy us? He slowly shook his head side to side 8 years old How was he supposed to know? In the spring of 1998, I sat on top of my father’s shoulders as we marched through Times Square, Chanted in front of the United Nations building in Midtown Manhattan Around us, the crowd swarmed Red and black t-shirts, the Albanian eagle stamped on every single oneFree Kosova, U.S.A.! we yelledFree Kosova, U.S.A.! In 1999, Bill Clinton became the hero of Albanians everywhere when he ordered NATO to launch an air strike against Serbia 78 days later, the war was over But what we didn’t understand then was that it had just began The first time I saw the country of my ancestors was in the summer of 1999 British army tanks rolled down the streets instead of cars And my mother tried to distract me by pointing out landmarksThat’s where your father and I used to have coffee That’s where my dorm was But all I could see was the soldiers guarding the entrance to my aunts’ apartment building And the pile of rubble that used to be my father’s childhood home I looked out with my big brown eyes And saw an entire country bleeding and breaking I went back to America after the summer of 1999 with the taste of my homeland burning my tongue My grandfather- Tati, remember? He lived to see the war start and end But died before anyone recognized our independence A snowy New Year’s Eve 2003 slipping into 2004 A heart attack A widow A funeral The first time I saw my mother cry My youngest uncle washing my grandfather’s body My baby sister only three months old, screaming like she felt our pain It’s been 10 years and my grandmother is still mourning my grandfather It’s been 15 years and my country is still mourning our lost souls But my grandmother has stopped wearing all black and she laughs with her grandchildren like we’re the only thing that keep her breathing And my country just celebrated 6 years of independence I know my grandmother is lonely She talks about my grandfather like he just stepped out of the room for a moment And I know my country is hurting We still hang flowers on the mass graves of our countrymen But we’re all healing Which reminds me of the best advice my grandfather ever gave me-Shpresa le te v’des e fundit- Let hope die last
Fortesa Latifi - The Plight of the Refugee & Their Family (via madgirlf)
