One year ago today (--ish. Eid--or as we call it here, Kurban Bajram (the feast of the Sacrifice commemorating when Abraham didn't sacrifice his son Issaac/Ismail for god/Allah/whatever name you would like to use, and instead sacrificed a lamb) isn't a fixed date, as it is a fixed number of days after the end of Ramadan.
So with that tangent aside, one Kurban Bajram ago, Evan, Tasha and I woke up, and proceeded to walk two kilometers through what is usually 'hopping' studenty-peopled Tetovo, where you can't step without either passing food (how many places sell burek between the university and the qender?) or building equipment, usually encroaching out into the sidewalk, all without seeing a soul. Nor, for that matter, a place to eat breakfast.
Just two months into living here--it was eerie to wake up in a bed, in a building, on a street, in a town that I thought I was 'getting to know' and have it feel like I had entered an alternative universe.
And after that day, I always wondered: just where did all those people go? how can what sometimes feels like thousands of people just disappear, overnight? where are the traffic jams? the honking cars? the kids running between strolling pairs on the sidewalks (who always, it seems, are walking at 1/4 speed)? where did all the merchandise, usually spread out over square meters in front of stores, where did it disappear to? the mannequins? the bananas, cucumbers, the men selling plastic trinkets and peanuts? the noise of the traffic (oh so markedly absent from the soundscape of my new apartment--and a welcome change)?
I knew that Bajram is a big family holiday here--and that people (mostly men) go visiting the various branches of the extended (and my god. When they say extended, they mean extended. ) family. But the math didn't quite add up for me: if Tetovo, a city full of people, hasn't gotten any bigger, and the number of people has remained the same (these two remain constant), and people are moving between outposts of the family clan--wouldn't there still be people out and about? perhaps not on the scale of your hum-drum Wednesday morning, but some middle ground between quasi-post- apocalyptic ghost town, and cars parking on the sidewalks because there isn't enough parking space?
And today--I think I unraveled some of the mystery.
Having the apartment to myself for the majority of the day (as Zeko is one of the people zipping from halle (father's sister) to teze (mother's sister) to daje (mother's brother) to xhaxha (father's brother) to another halle, another teze, another daje another xhaxha, and thus it continues (and then to their children...I think he said he ate more than 20 pieces of baklava over the last Bajram (and I'm surprised that much sugar didn't knock him out)), and assuming that I'd also have the roads to myself (who's going to be out pleasure driving on Bajram?), I went out to see the fall foliage (for the record: still no comparison to Vermont) on bike.
And biking down these usually sleepy quiet roads, there I found the traffic jams: seven, eight cars in a line zipping from Halle to Teze to Daje to Xhaxha (although they use a different word here (Mingj?) all riding their Baklava-induced sugar high, and all, I suspect, a little surprised to find me there on my green bicycle.
It's an interesting testament to how connected families remain--something I'm still trying to wrap my head around--as I have five first cousins, and my knowledge of the extended family ends there, and also to how much the population has shifted towards the cities--places like Tetovo, contributing to the fullness of the city (and the housing/infrastructural shortages)--and yet pillars of the family still remain in the villages. I hadn't been able to see this connection between the urban and the rural quite so clearly until this morning.
And it also speaks volumes to the extent to which personal/face-to-face contact matters in this culture/community. it's not enough to just send 'holiday's greetings' cards--with messages about all events of significance in the family--at choice times during the year (and not to imply that this is the extent of our means of staying connected as a family--or on a broader, American scale) but sitting down and having tea. eating the Baklava. taking the time to nourish these relationships--in this manner. it's a generosity with time that I know will take me a while to get used to. because--hand in hand with generosity with time, is patience (and waiting). and in so many ways, our cultural understanding of time (as having fixed quantity. as being precious (time is money, or so they say), as moving in a linear, organized manner) leads me to this inexplicable impatience, especially around unspecified periods of waiting--when in so many other ways I can be oh so patient.
I guess it's a good thing, then, that I've got another year here, to keep working on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment