Around
the World:
I KNOW MY PARENTS WILL FIND ME
by Joyce Maynard
Part Three
THEIR ONE SOURCE OF HOPE
Back at Kimete's tent, the women are preparing dinner. They smooth out the piece of fabric carefully and set out the bread as if this were a feast. Mirsod gently helps his grandmother to her seat on the mattress. Mirsima pours me a glass of water. We dip our bread in the yogurt and begin to eat.
Violja, who has been with me during the day, went home to her family a couple of hours ago. Now, as darkness falls, we are left to figure out our own ways of communicating. Having been shown pictures of their many other family members (whose whereabouts now are anyone's guess), I take out a little wallet holding photographs of my own small family: my children Audrey, Charlie, and Willy.
Each person studies the pictures with great care. "How old?" they want to know. I write my children's ages on my hand. "Where are they?" I draw a picture of our house. "Audrey, university," I say. Mirsod's eyes shine with withheld tears. He dreams of returning to school one day. He was going to go to university, before all of this happened. He was studying electronics, once.
What else can I tell them? I act out my son Charlie, riding his skateboard, and Willy playing bass guitar. I say the Albanian word for father, bobo, and pantomime the concept of divorce. Everyone's face clouds over.
No divorce in Kosovo?
Never.
Somehow, Vahide tells me of the still-birth of her first child. Ipatete combs my hair and tries to make a ponytail. Kimete strokes my arm.
Word has gotten out in the camp that I'm staying here, and so many people stop by to try out their English, to share their stories. One woman tells me how her husband fled their village weeks ago and disappeared. How she lived in the woods, finding food in abandoned houses when she could, sleeping on the ground, always keeping an eye out for the Serbs. "Please write this down," she says. "Tell people in America what's happening here." Several of the refugees hand me scraps of paper with the phone numbers of distant relatives in other countries to call when I leave. They all want to hear about America, and to tell me how much they love NATO. Though they know the NATO bombs might be destroying their homes, nobody here opposes the bombing campaign. Far from it. They all speak of it as their one source of hope.
Later I suggest we play a game that I once used to fill the hours on long car trips with my children. Everyone sits in a circle. One by one, in any order we like, we call out a number. First somebody says "one." Then somebody else calls out "two." Then "three" and so on, until "ten." You can't give any indication that you're about to call out a number. And if two people say the same number at the same time, you have to start over again. To make it even more challening, we all close our eyes.
The 15 of us, from age four to 76, sit together in the silent darkness, calling out numbers in Albanian. Every time two voices call out at the same time, we all laugh, then begin again.
We play for an hour, but, oddly, this is not boring at all. For the first time, in fact, after years of playing this game, I understand what it is really about. It is about concentration, and coming to know the group so well that you know just when to speak and when to remain silent. By the end of the hour, we are getting to ten almost every time we try.
At 10 P.M., after a family trip to the toilets, we are ready to sleep. Faharia is already lying down. Now the rest of us -- still dressed in our clothes from the day -- lie down on the mat, side by side, and pull the blankets up over us. Except for Faharia's slow, labored breathing, it's very quiet in the tent.
"Notanamir," I hear Hasmir say into the darkness. One by one, each member of the family calls out the same word back to her. So do I.
It's odd, I think to myself. I am lying on a thin foam pad in a tent with 13 people I had never met until two days ago. We share no more than ten words of common language. I am 8,000 miles from home, and just a few miles away, bombs are dropping from the sky. But here in the refugee camp, with Kimete's arm around me on one side, and Mirsima's on the other, I feel warmth and safety and what surely amounts to a kind of love.
I wake in the night to the sound of voices. Kimete is crying out, words in Albanian I don't understand, except I make out the words for "Mother" and "Kosovo." On the other side of the tent, Mirsod cries out. Then it's Agim, then Fexhrie. Before the night is over, nearly every one of them has talked in his or her sleep.
In the morning, the routine begins again, as it does the next day, and the day after that. The bread delivery. The trip to the bathroom. Washing our hands in icy water -- which felt good in the heat, but chills the bones on rainy mornings like today when the sky is gray and the wind is blowing.
I know I am beginning to blend in when the Macedonian guard at the gate, seeing me about to go outside to drive to town for provisions, stops me. He thinks I'm a refugee, and even after I show him my American passport, he's still suspicious. I convince a taxi driver to bring us back from town a traditional Albanian meal of spinach pie, meatballs, and a noodle dish called pliya, along with a couple of bottles of Kimete's favorite drink, Coke. It is the first meal of meat the family has had in days.
The next day I leave the camp and drive to the Radusha refugee camp to look for Makfirete's parents. At the information tent, I give their names and the name of their village, and pore over the lists of people in the camp -- but none matches the ones I'm searching for. I walk up and down the rows of tents, asking. No luck.
Driving back, I dread seeing Makfirete again, though I don't plan on telling her where I've heen. But when I get back to Stankovich, I learn that her father made his way here himself today and found her. It turns out he and Makfirete's mother have been staying with an Albanian family in Radusha. He could only stay a few minutes, he told her, but he would be back tomorrow. Now she is almost dancing, she's so excited. Tomorrow she will finally see her mother again.
The news subdues the usually bubbly Kimete. She knows the prospect of her own parents showing up any time soon are slim. The village where they were last sighted is one in which, we have read, 70 civilians were lined up and slaughtered by Serb troops. The hope of her ever reuniting with her parents fades with each passing day.
"WE MUST STAY TOGETHER"
It's my last night with Kimete and her family, and I am finding it hard to leave. I distribute my clothes and belongings: my hairbrush to Vahide, a ring to Toto, a couple of rubber balls for the smaller children. I rip the pages I had taken notes on out of my notebook and give the book to Mirsima, who begins, instantly, to start writing. She's going to keep a journal, she tells me. Half an hour later, she's already filled several pages, and she's still writing.
To Mirsod, I give my son Charlie's snow boarding cap, my jacket, and a picture of Charlie. "I'll tell them all about you when I get home," I say. "American friends," he says. When I raise my camera to take a picture of the whole family, he is holding Charlie's photograph over his heart.
Then I ask the adults in the family if we could speak privately. They send the children outside and zip the tent shut. With the help of Violja, I say there is something I want them to know. I pray they will find the rest of their family -- and Kimete and Mirsod's parents, and their sisier and brother. But I want them to have my name and address and phone number, too, in case they ever feel it might be a good thing for Kimete and Mirsod to come to America. My family and I would take them in.
Agim nods solemnly. Nobody says anything.
"I know you have a wondeful family," I say. "I know what you really want is to return to your own country. I just wanted you to have this address, in case...."
Kimete's uncle nods again. "Our family has lost everything except each other," he finally says. "Thank you. But we must stay together."
I knew that already.
They walk me to the gate, Kimete on one side, Mirsod on the other. We stop to say good-bye to Makfirete, but she's too sad to talk. Her father, who was supposed to come back for her today, never arrived. After all this time, she seems to have lost him again. Her thin body, when I hug her, feels as if it might break.
I tell Kimete and Mirsod that they will always be welcome in our home if they come to America. "I'll ask my father when we find him again," Mirsod says. Kimete recites the names of my children one more time. "You. Me. Love," she says.
As we round the last bend, with the gate coming into view, Kimete begins to sing. "Kumbaya, my Lord," she sings. "Kumbaya."
Then we are all singing. "Someone's crying, Lord," we sing. "Someone's praying. Someone's singing. Someone's hoping."
She has no address to give me, of course. All I know is tent number 531A. She knows where I live, in the magic state of California, the home of Mickey Mouse. One day, I tell her, I hope I pick up the telephone and hear her voice again.
At press time, we learned that Kimete and her family were sent to Austria. They still had not heard heard from her parents.
American Red Cross International Response Fund, PC. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013; 202-728-6800; www.redcross.org.Doctors Without Borders, 6 E. 39th St., 8th floor, New York, NY 10016; 888-392-0392; www.doctorswithoutborders.org.
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, c/o International Rescue Committee, 122 East 42nd St., 12th floor, New York, NY 10168; 212-551-3111; www.intrescom.org.
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