Narrative Essay – Ide’s FIQWS Portfolio

Rewrite (October 30th, 2019)

Floor Four, Apartment Eight

A late-summer haze hung over the apartment, the last embers of the day visible behind the screen door that separated us from the balcony. “Make sure you hug and kiss everyone when they come in,” my dad said for what seemed like the tenth time in 30 minutes.

I huffed. “Got it.”

Someone rapped rhythmically on the door. He stood up and slid the door chain, letting it fall with a slight clang. Chatter filled the entryway as he opened the door. One by one, familiar strangers filed in through the kitchen and into the living room. Mustering all the enthusiasm I could, I exchanged air-kisses with each one while they took their respective seat. I took my own on a sofa cushion by the balcony, allowing the usual dialogue to play out. My father occasionally spoke on my behalf when any questions were directed at me.

Routine small talk was peppered with compliments. First and second cousins removed and unremoved aimed kind nods and smiles at me:

Je shumë e veçantë!

Or alternatively,

Jeni bere kaq e bukur!

To which I grinned and offered a demure faleminderit. It was probably the one Albanian word whose elocution I had down pat. The older women cooed, demanding why I didn’t speak more despite understanding them with near-perfect clarity. My father shrugged. I didn’t need to know how to. Have you no pride?

It doesn’t make sense to be proud of something I have no control over. And when is she going to use it? He said.

And so the conversation carried on, voices rising with passion – not anger, I’d learned – as the adults talked politics and the differences between America and Albania and have you seen so-and-so lately? Skandal!

It was a scene I enjoyed from the sidelines. Being unable to engage nettled me like a day-old itch; I was used to it enough to not bother, but not exactly happy with the predicament. I knew these people, yet I didn’t. For all the talk of me being shqiptare, I wasn’t Albanian. Not really.

I shifted in my seat, eyes darting around the room and eventually settling on the window and the sharply angled skyline of worn and water-stained Communist-era buildings that laid beyond it. We were tucked away in a semi-quiet block, not too far from Myslym Shyri, the busiest street in the city. Possibly even the country. “Our very own Fifth Avenue,” my father would say, gesturing with an ironical (and possibly resentful) smile at countless cafes and stores that boasted faux luxury products. A muddied river ran parallel to the street. It smelled of sewage and something I couldn’t readily identify. “Among cobbled streets and old bunkers.”

As if sensing my distraction, one of the guests turned to me. What do you think? She asked. Different from America? This elicited a chorus of groans and mutterings I assumed meant of course it is. Before I could sputter through an answer, my father waved her off dismissively. What are you saying? Of course. My father was quick to reclaim their attention, regaling them with tales of America in all her vastness, upward and sideward.

It was odd to be part of mostly one-sided exchanges, but my otherness felt clear-cut in an almost comforting way. To them I was a New Yorker from America, the land of the filthy rich and home of big, fat, neon-sign aspirations. I could never truly be Albanian—if not to myself, then certainly not to them.

“It’s good that you aren’t,” my father said later, after I’d voiced these thoughts. We scrubbed the plates of long-gone dinner guests. We’d spent another hour of sitting, laughing along with jokes I didn’t quite catch. The moon glowed dim and yellow from behind a sheath of clouds. “It won’t help you with your life in America. This all will fade with time. And that’s okay. It’s different for me because I lived here.”

“Different and the same,” I said. “You’re not just Albanian, you know.”

“You’re right. But I’m not American either. I’m an immigrant.” He declared this plainly. “Twenty-five years of living in America have changed me.” I understood the distinction, even if it left him in this strange interstitial space. Like a lab specimen, my mind helpfully supplied. Trapped between two glass panes, subject to scrutiny from both sides of his dual identity.

“Doesn’t it become lonely?” It must, I think, recalling how many of his cousins had laughed and mimicked his flat, American intonations.

He took a moment to consider this, the sudsy rag pausing in its descent across the burek tray. “Here? Sure. I could joke all I want with them over a coffee, but at the end of the day, my life is different from theirs. They don’t know about life outside city limits. They can’t imagine it.”

“Don’t you mind that?”

“Sometimes.”

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Original (September 16th, 2019)

I huffed. “Got it.”

Routine small talk was peppered with compliments. First and second cousins removed and unremoved aimed kind nods and smiles at me:

“Je shumë e veçantë!”

Or alternatively,

“Jeni bere kaq e bukur!”

To which I grinned and offered a demure “faleminderit.” It was probably the one Albanian word whose elocution I had down pat. The older women cooed, demanding why I didn’t speak more despite understanding them with near-perfect clarity. My father waved at them dismissively. I didn’t need to know how to.

And so the conversation carried on, voices rising with passion –not anger, I’d learned –as the adults talked politics and the differences between America and Albania and have you seen so-and-so lately? Skandal!

“It’s good that you aren’t,” my father said later after I’d voiced these thoughts. We scrubbed the plates of long-gone dinner guests. The moon glowed dim and yellow from behind a sheath of clouds. “It won’t help you with your life in America. This all will fade with time. And that’s okay. It’s different for me because I lived here.”

It was odd to be part of mostly one-sided exchanges, but my otherness felt clear-cut in an almost comforting way. To them, I was a New Yorker from America, the land of the filthy rich and home of big, fat, neon-sign aspirations. It was obvious to anyone when I spoke in clipped and butchered sentences. It was obvious even to total strangers who sent curious glances my way whenever we walked around the city.

I couldn’t say the same for my father. He was a lab specimen, trapped between two glass panes, subject to scrutiny from both sides of his dual identity. Not that he seemed to mind. In New York, his tentative insider status hinged on his otherness, or at least his distance from the WASPy, all-American culture that most of the people there couldn’t quite relate to. Still, it didn’t bridge the cultural gap between him and others he encountered; the occasional recalcitrant student gave him hell for his accent. His relatives back in Albania, however, never failed to mention the slight American-sounding inflection to his words or how much he’d changed in the past 25 years. I heard an earful of these types of comments that evening.

He was an insider and an outsider. He scorned what he called the “provincial” and “hungry” mindset of his people yet openly accepted it as part of his roots and upbringing under a totalitarian regime. He cautioned me against immersing myself in Albanian culture yet wrote his poetry and musings almost entirely in Albanian. In his mind, my total assimilation into American society was tantamount to later success. It had been far too late for him by the time he immigrated to the United States at age 31.

The bits and pieces he revealed of the complex relationship he has with his culture make me yearn more for a connection, or at the very least an understanding. I relentlessly read news articles out loud. I strike up a conversation with my aunt over the phone and refuse to resort to using English, even if I do falter. I’ll never be able to fully mask my otherness, but maybe that shouldn’t necessarily make me an outsider.