The Displaced Person: thoughts on war, exile, and life in America

         In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi wrote this: “Almost all the survivors, orally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to.  In the most typical (and cruelest) form, the interlocutor turned and left in silence.” 

          Every morning I wake up with the same anxiety and desire: to write.  For the most part, during the day, I don’t write.  Why is it so difficult to take one’s life seriously and to take a responsibility to say something about a past, which is not just mine but others’ too? 

          We have an obligation, I think, to leave a mark on the world, during our life time.  This mark should be that of the good – simply put, to make the world a better place.  Sounds trite and it is a phrase overused but isn’t it true? 

         

          This fear, which was so perfectly articulated by Primo Levi, is a fear that has become part of my being.  Why is it there?  It’s vulnerability.  Any human being is afraid of being vulnerable, whether you have survived a war or not.  I feel alienated as it is, and so opening those wounds again, makes you feel alone even more.  But does one have to bleed every time one speaks of war?  I don’t think so.  This is where prudence and wisdom come into it, and more than anything, discipline.

          I wonder about my fellow Bosnian-Americans.  Do they go about their lives, working and playing, being more American than Bosnian?  And what does that distinction even mean?  Do they ever stop and examine what they have gone through, does it hurt, where and when does it hurt, do they cry and when and where do they cry, are they angry, or do they forget?  Or do they not know how to express the past screams of war or are they just so sick and bored of it that it is easier to “be” an American?  And what is wrong with living an American life? 

          I don’t know who I am anymore.  I have lived in this country since 1996.  America does not have the same feeling of “otherness” that it used to have, which in many ways, is a good thing – a settled way of life despite the uneasy peace.  I realized this about a year ago when I was grocery shopping.  I began to look at the signs indicating which produce you can buy, whether it’s organic or not, variety of cheeses, and the aisles and aisles of different foods and items you can buy.  Shopping at Wegmans is quite an experience!  And the people working there are pleasant and nice, and they say “hello” and “how are you today” and “this cash register is open.”  Americans are friendly people.  They may not want to know exactly how you are but they smile and they create a general atmosphere of pleasantness and fluid movement of society.  I like this about America.

          Sometimes, though, you begin to lose yourself in this pleasantness.  And you do this through not rolling the rrrrs and you start to use your jaw more to say the word “sure,” and you start to sound like an American and you end up sounding like some New Yorker with a British and Slavic accent – God, who am I in all of this linguistic set up?  And people ask you: “are you from Paris?” or they say: “Ah, you must be from Westchester County.” 

          Neither.  Not Paris, not New York.  I am from a place, for which my soul aches.  I am from a place that is complex and yet perfectly straightforward; I am from the place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live together, where bells of the church and call to prayer from the mosque sometimes sound out at the same time and yet you can hear the singularity of both; I am from the place that is the cross roads of many people and cultures; I am from the place that has endured a war and genocide and yet people are trying to move forward.  This place is a mixture of good and evil, of imperfection and beauty, of tension and peace.  It is, in many ways, a place of temporary in-between-ness, of veiled and unveiled existence, of barriers and open doors, of commonality and alterity. 

          I want answers as to why people died.  But there are no answers.  The silence of which Primo Levi speaks is also my own fear.  But, on second thought, it is not the silence I am afraid of.  It is the agitation at the thought that not one human being can give me an answer as to why chaos occurred. 

          I rest myself in God.  It seems to be the only thing I can do.  I rest in his peace and compassion even in the midst of extreme tension and dread. I repeat the prayers I was taught by my great grandmother and grandmother and mother when I was a child.  Consolation and desolation – both are part of our lives.  We are capable of good and evil, we are capable of mass murder and ethnic cleansing but I have to keep reminding myself that we are most definitely capable of beauty and love.