Coming Home

            The cool, smooth texture of the thinly wrapped leather whispers beneath my palms as I allow the car to straighten out of a turn. The gas pedal gently hums beneath the sole of my thin sandal and over the radio comes the soft strumming of a guitar, a prelude to that song that never seems to grow old. The icy chill of the air conditioning sends goose bumps up my arms and back of my neck. I hurriedly flick it off and lower the windows, reveling in the sudden blast of the warm summer night’s air.

            I inhale and exhale greedily. The air is sweet and humid; the smells of freshly cut grass and honeysuckle linger enticingly in the air. The road before me is long and familiar, rife with memories both inconsequential and stunning. A cloud drifts lazily across the horizon, and the moon to shines down with majestic disinterest. I all of the sudden very much want and do not want to cry. I struggle to understand my intensely garbled emotions and recall a similar moment when all seemed perfect and beautiful beyond words.

            “Look!” I sigh happily, sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s car. “Look at how beautiful Texas is!”

            He let out a short laugh surveyed the same landscape, completely underwhelmed. “Flat.” was his only reply.

            “No, look, see? Look at the trees. They’re all planted so…neatly! And the grass! I mean, everything is just so lush and green and open…” I felt the inadequacy of my words but for the life of me couldn’t seem communicate what was really so great about the wide expanse all around us. So I gave up. I settled back in my seat and watched the towering wooden telephone poles flit by. I clung to the contentment I had discovered and found solace in its peace.

            “The life of a student is beautiful.” We were at home, my father leaning back in his armchair, his feet propped up on an ottoman and his hand mechanically stroking the cat curled up at his side.

            “Why?” I asked, a smile already curling to my lips.

            He shrugged and looked almost amazed as he spoke. “Because, as a student, that’s it, you just enjoy life.”

            “And after that?”

            He let out a derisive ha! “Then comes the rest of your life. The real world.”

            “And what’s the real world?” I teased.

            He answered succinctly, “Work.”

            I mulled it all over. The rest of your life. That time period seemed unfathomable. I was already having trouble coming to grips with an entire year having passed since I left to live in Russia. Had it really been a year? Is that really how time works?

            When first stepping back into the house I had grown up in, everything was as I had left it. Russia was by then hundreds of miles away and so, too, seemed my memories of it. It was almost as if I had blinked and dreamed the whole thing. I felt like I needed to stare at my pictures, just to convince myself I really had been there.

Over time however, my brain had a way of reminding itself of the gap in time by completely and utterly failing to retrace my steps. Where had I put that book one year ago? Did I even keep that pair of brown flip-flops? And then there were my friends I had left behind. They came whizzing through space at break neck speeds to call, chat, or message me over the internet. They seemed so close, I felt like I should have been able to reach out and touch them. The reality of the colossal distance between us is only beginning to sink in.

All this flits across my mind as I drive down that stretch of smooth gray pavement. The wind in my face, the silence unbroken, the darkness enveloping all in its path, I sit torturously, happily, alone, trying to dissect this heartbreaking peace. 

Anna

            She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, the pathetically smoldering end of her cigarette suddenly turning a menacing red. Retrieving the cigarette from between her lips, Anna sat poised, examining the ravenous appetite of the fire making its way up the slender column. She was savoring the smoke, the way it licked at the edges of her lungs and curled within her throat. Finally, she collapsed back into her seat and exhaled upward in one steady stream, carelessly flicking the cigarette over a stale ashtray.

            She wasn’t looking at anyone in particular and we all remained silent. Anna took another drag and closed her eyes; the eyeliner above her right eye was badly smudged. Her skin was so pale you could see the trail of blue veins cascading and twisting down her eyelids. Her wrist jerked mechanically over the ashtray again.

I let my eyes wander from her face down to her hand and finally settle on the pitiful tray. Cigarettes, like discarded bodies, lay strewn all across its bed. Some showed signs of real distress, laying at odd angles and creased at the edges like an accordion. Others you could tell had been unnecessarily sacrificed; snuffed out with still plenty of perfectly good tobacco left. Suddenly they were all being swept away, flung into the corners to form unintelligible piles of twisted paper in a sea of gray ash. Anna was stamping out her last cigarette.

            “Fuck.” She uttered in a tired monotone voice.

            The girl sitting next to her lifted eyes and smirked. “What’s with you?”

            Anna and I could both tell her smile was mocking, but her eyes seemed genuine, naïve. Only foreigners could pull off such an air. But there was nothing to say. She wouldn’t understand.

            An answer, nevertheless, was delivered in due time. Running her fingers recklessly through her hair and down her face, all the while rubbing away the last bit of integrity her eyeliner had tried to cling to, Anna heaved a great sigh and answered matter-of-factly,  “Everything’s fucked.”

            “Everything?” Came the automatic reply, that teasing smile and almost bewildered gaze foreigners sometimes get when they’re afraid they’re not understanding something.

            This was ignored. Snatching up the carton only to come to the depressing realization that there were no more cigarettes, Anna again slouched back into her chair and promptly asked in a derisive tone, “What so, are we going, or what?”

            I seized the opportunity and quickly stood up. “We’re going.” I answered decisively. The foreign girl quickly scuttled to follow our lead, a wry smile on her lips from probably still trying to figure out why everything was fucked.

            We walked out into the darkness and felt the promise of winter lingering in the air. I gave an involuntary shudder, and flipped up the collar of my leather jacket.

            “Where are we going?” The foreigner wanted to know.

            “Nowhere.” Came the reply.

            And so we went. As we walked down dark deserted streets and twisted our way through fowl shortcuts reeking of urine and alcohol, only the uniform sound of our feet hitting the pavement broke apart our otherwise languid silence.

            Anna fell behind to bum a smoke and I drew in line next to the foreigner. Sensing my presence she fixed me with a playful smile. “So.” She said, her soft accent somehow managing to make itself known in even those few letters. “How are you?”

            It was too simple, out of place. I laughed. She grinned too, knowing full well its futility in our present context, but pleased with my response nonetheless.

            “Well?” She goaded me.

            “The hell with it. Everything’s fucked.”

            “So it seems.” She said with that same wry smile.

            Anna caught up with us and I strolled on ahead a bit further. The foreigner had begun to inquire after mutual friends. She was digging, thirsty for conversation. After dangling countless opportunities to set records straight, Anna finally took the bait and began to rain story after story down on her. I kept off to the side, catching snippets of our shared narrative here and there. Every tale seemed to be booby-trapped with a dozen others as the foreigner struggled to piece Anna’s life together from the jumbled array of anecdotes and frequent asides.

            The foreigner’s genuine confusion as well as interest was the perfect fuel for Anna’s storytelling. “Wait, why would he do that?,” and “I thought she loved the other guy,” and my personal favorite, “Holy shit.”

            The night passed like this and at one point we found ourselves leaning over the edge of a bridge, watching the black water rock ceaselessly to and fro, to and fro. Anna, I could tell, was growing bored of her own voice.

            “Well, in short, fucked. Everything’s fucked.”

            “Mmm.” Was the only reply that came from the foreigner this time.

            I watched her as she gazed out over the water.

            “I mean really fucked.” Anna continued, just for the sake of saying it.

            “Well it could always be worse.” The foreigner answered quietly.

            “And it’s been worse, and it’s only getting worse…” Anna railed on.

            I continued to study the foreigner; she was listening patiently, nodding in concern and laughing at the moments of dark humor. But as I watched her I noticed the tired creases under the eyes, the way her fists were jammed in her pockets and her arms clung furiously to the sides of her body to stay as warm as possible. And yet there was that mocking smile and refusal to accept everything as fucked, that dangerous naivety.

            I offered her my coat and she declined, firm in her resolve. Foreigners. I thought bitterly.

            We started up walking again and this time Anna walked alongside me. She was telling me her plans for the next few weeks. They were chockfull of grandiosity, of if-this-works-out-then-this scenarios, but Anna rarely dwelled on the hopeful, it was better to understand and expect reality.

            “It should all work out. But you know, before it does, something is going to fuck things up.”

            “The hell with it.” I responded vacantly.

            We finally decided to part ways and I saw the relief in the foreigner’s eyes at the prospect of going home. I went my way and the foreigner went hers. Expecting Anna to follow, the foreigner called back to Anna’s idling figure. “Where are you going?”

            I heard Anna’s answer cut loud and clear into the crisp early morning. “Nowhere.”

            And then there was nothing more than the trudge of shoes bearing down on the pavement.

*This is a work of fiction, based on real people.

The Flaws of Fluency

February 2010 – New York

Timer set and fidgeting fingers armed with a café beverage, I began to recite with a nervous-confidence the entirety of my life story condensed to its most basic grammatical format. My name is X. I am X years-old. I have a father. He is an engineer. I was born in Texas. The guy across from me sat patiently, listening and nodding. Grammatical errors dribbled from my lips like inadvertent drool.

My running monologue finished, I smiled as he began to respond. And I did not do much else. He spoke and I strained with every fiber of my being to understand. I willed my brain to make sense of the sounds and intonations. He made a slight pause. Oh no. Please don’t let him have asked a question. I smiled and gave him a confident, affirmative nod. He continued, reassured.

I began to read his body language like my life depended on it. An upwards twitch in the corner of his mouth – I flashed him a big smile. “How funny!” I would exclaim. Any pregnant pause whatsoever – my eyes would flick away as I said in my most neutral tone, “How interesting.” But then it stopped working. He wrinkled his eyebrows and panic sirens went off in my head. Mayday! A question has been asked! I repeat! A question has been asked! I smiled again, feigning surprise at my inadequate response to his question with, “Really?”

“Forgive me. Repeat that please.” And so he did. Again and again. Each time he repeated it I tried to repeat it back to him. “You want to know what I like…” I was cut off by his shaking head. “You want to know about…” This time I cut myself off, and broke our strictly Russian communication, asking him what he wanted to know in English. I don’t remember how many times he tried to rephrase the question.

Finally he sighed. “I am asking what you would like to get out of this. If you have any specific areas or questions you need help with in Russian.” My next smile was twisted with shame at the irony of it all.

February 2012 – St. Petersburg

            “What kind of beer did you…take…brought…carry…?” I listened to myself with horror.

            “Ugh!” Was the answer I justly received from my host-sister-in-law. “What happened to you?! Your Russian used to be so beautiful. And now…now it’s just disgusting!”

            I bowed my head in shame, babbling and trying to excuse myself. My grammar drool began to set in and every time I went to wipe it away it just became an even longer trail of embarrassing spittle.

            “What’s disgusting?” I heard my host-mother ask over clanking pots in the kitchen.

            “Her Russian! Have you heard her? She just now forgot how to say ‘bring’!” My host-sister-in-law called back, looking me up and down as if I truly were drooling all over myself.

            “Ah!” My host-mother called back, shuffling into view with a knowing smile. “Yeah your Russian’s gotten a bit worse hasn’t it?” The look she fixed me with was playful, but I knew the only part of that sentence that was in jest was the “a bit” part.

            I wouldn’t have known how to respond even if I had been able to recall all the forgotten verbs I needed for a rebuttal. In all honesty, I was almost too shocked to believe what I was hearing. I had been away from Russia for barely three weeks on Christmas vacation, and it seemed as if that’s all it had taken to undo years of toil and frustration. And what was more, this was perhaps the first truly negative word I had heard about my Russian since I had arrived (by then) eight months prior.

            I was the darling child of my host-families, Russian friends, and peers. It wasn’t that I was some language prodigy; it was just that I wasn’t nearly as bad as they expected me to be. “Only two years? Wow! Your Russian is just amazing for two years! Your grammar is better than mine! You know, you sometimes even speak without any kind of accent!” I enjoyed the compliments but I insisted on never letting them go to my head. Every sentence I uttered rife with glaringly obvious mistakes were enough to remind me I did not deserve their flattery.

            And yet, something must have remained from their kind words to bolster my confidence because standing before my host-family, their respect for my Russian crumbling into nothing before my eyes filled me with despair. “I know, I know!” I finally answered, burying my face into my hands. “It’s just so hard!”

May 2012 – St. Petersburg

            It took me another month to feel comfortable speaking Russian again, a fact that still haunts me to this day. As I long for the family and friends I haven’t laid eyes on in almost a year, joy and anticipation mix with anxious panic at the prospect of losing all that I have fought so hard to gain in my year living abroad. And I am not the only one.

“Yeah, all my friends are like, ‘Hey! How’s Russia? Are you fluent yet?’” Collective moans, pained smiles, and bobbing heads are shared throughout the room.

            I join in. “Yeah, I saw this one article online that said, Become fluent in another language in 6 months or less!” Derisive laughter and shouts of “Oh God!” abound.

            I am of the opinion that a dangerous epidemic has been slowly spreading across the linguistic world. It affects not only the well-meaning bystander but the primary actors as well. You’ve probably already guessed it: fluency. We’ve got to have it, and as soon as possible, or else we risk having wasted all of our earlier efforts for naught.

            But is that all a language is worth? Perfecting one’s knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to be able to communicate with someone else without fear of misunderstanding? Don’t get me wrong, that is a huge motivational factor, and an important one at that. But why is approval and accolade granted to only those that finish the marathon in good form and record times? Doesn’t everyone get a medal? Even if they have to stop along the way? Even if they were the worst one there?

            Of course they do. Because it took guts to enter in that marathon and from then on it took sheer blood, sweat, and tears to finish it. It takes a heck of a lot of courage to stand face to face before a completely foreign language and decide that you too will one day write, read, speak, and hear its words with ease.

            But is this aforementioned ease equal to how our society understands the ultimate linguistic prize, fluency? I think of the relative comfort and control I feel when speaking Russian and then I think of English. The comparison is almost cruel.

When I speak English, my heart soars. I no longer think about words or structure or placement, my thoughts and emotions just appear, falling neatly and perfectly into place without a single afterthought or re-analysis. What is more, I use constructions that are so natural, so current, and so American that I feel almost a patriotic bond kindling between myself and the person I’m speaking with.

Only a lifetime spent in Russia could possibly grant me the same feeling in Russian. But despite this, I cannot fault myself for any linguistic shortcomings. My year long journey in Russia as well as the two I spent poring over textbooks in college have influenced my life like no other. Complete strangers have opened their homes and hearts to me across the world, teaching me lessons in humility and gratitude. Daily interactions with Russians have reminded me of a different understanding of the same world, reminding me to never be too quick to judge. And finally, the frustrations I’ve experienced with trying to obtain a subjective and abstract goal such as fluency has forced me to internalize the wisdom behind one, well-spoken piece of advice:

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” – Greg Anderson

And I intend to do just that.

The Socks of Addis Ababa

He is standing in his socks and singing.

I hear a voice dripping in adolescent sass ring out, “Don’t sing!”

The picture blurs slightly and he has broken out into a wide, gap-toothed smile. In that moment he is the spitting image of my father.

 “Why not?” I hear him ask. His face zooms in and I note his kindly, mocking eyes.

There is no need to wait long for the retort. “Because you sing bad.”

His eyes are narrow and his shoulders are shaking jovially. He is laughing but the sound is turned off. The scene restarts and now the laughter skips, each time a fresh attempt. I can’t remember the sound of his laugh.

But I remember his socks. They are dark brown, like the color of his rich skin, but the color is too washed out to be mistaken for bare feet. I especially like his socks because they contradict the first impressions of a man donned in a thin gray suit and straight black tie.

He had met us at the airport like that, but now, the next day, standing in the shining morning light the suit had lost its formality, it greeted me instead like a tired old friend. In the days to come my father had fondly recounted to me how this man had accompanied us to our temporary home and, at his own insistence, stretched out on the floor adjacent to my father’s bed to spend the night. My father’s face is beaming as he recalls their simple conversations, and I romantically envision the two of them like young school boys, taking comfort in the living sound of each other’s voices calling out in the darkness. Dubbed over my daydream is my father’s voice still describing that night while he interjects his own narrative with soft coos of “Oh my brother, my brother. Oh he makes me feel as if it were just yesterday.”

This makes me realize I am remembering the first time I ever truly met my uncle. I try to piece together the rest of the memory. Had he just woken up? I focus on his hair, but the image flickers. It could have been either way, slightly askew or neatly combed. I replay the entire scene again. The annoyed critic in all her nine-year-old authority is me. I don’t doubt the dialogue, it’s far too close to the nearly daily exchange I still have with my own father about his singing. But was I speaking English? I know how to say those words in Amharic, but did I know them then? Did my uncle even speak English? My mind spins for a moment as I feel embarrassed at not immediately knowing the answer. But I seem to recall not knowing before. I imagine the surprise on my father’s face and his words, “Huh! You think he doesn’t know? Of course he knows!”

Towards the end of our five-week stay we were all taking a drive around the city when my uncle decided he wanted to take us all out for lunch. Where was completely up to us. Being the hardest to please however, put the decision, more realistically, in my hands. I barely hesitated before announcing the restaurant of my choice with glee: “Blue Top!”

“Blue Top?” I hear my father’s voice echo mine with an unmistakable inflection of incredulity at my daring. More than a decade later my stomach still flutters uneasily at the disproval in his voice and my own naivety.

Somehow back then I didn’t know any better, or at least did not want to know. Blue Top was the name of perhaps the only chain of restaurants back then in all of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that catered to the American fast-food palate. To stumble across such food as burgers, fries, and ice cream was a rarity, but more so were the everyday Ethiopians that could afford to eat there.

I can’t say that my uncle ever expressed anything other than willingness however. My father on the other hand, knitted his brow when the final check came out and fought hard to help pay for the bill. They argued in Amharic as I sat blithely by, still nursing my disappointment over the burger they had served me loaded with toppings when I had specifically asked for none.

At some point later in the day my father took me aside. “Now, you are young, so you are forgiven.” With this famous opening line of my father’s, I immediately readied my defenses and poised myself to deny any and all of his accusations of bad behavior. “Next time, if a relative, out of the kindness of his heart, wants to invite you to a restaurant…then?” I didn’t like being asked questions in the middle of reprimands. I felt too much pressure to make sure I didn’t say anything to anger them more.

“Not say Blue Top?” I offered.

“Think!” He answered earnestly jabbing his finger into the side of his head. “Think before you speak! Think, oh, here is my lovely uncle, or auntie, or cousin, who is trying to do something for me. Oh, nice of them! I should just say, ‘Oh, thank you, nice of you, but you don’t have to.’ And that’s all.”

“But what if they really want to?”

“Then, think! Think of their living circumstance! You see how they live here; money doesn’t just fall from the sky. Pick a reasonable place and not this Blue Top nonsense.”

My conscience squirmed as he spoke. It was true; I had noticed the difference in the way people lived there. I recall vividly my sick surprise in seeing main roads lined with beggars as far as the eye could see. Mothers with starving children, men with amputated limbs, old women stooped over with age, all of them sucking their teeth in despair, their palms stretched upward, a constant murmuring sea of prayers, blessings, and pleas for help on every side of me. One encounter in particular has always stuck with me.

I was walking up a dirt path with my father one afternoon when I spotted two boys sitting off to the edge in the grass. One was sitting down, staring wistfully ahead, while the other was crouched ready to move at a moment’s notice. And sure enough, as my father and I drew nearer the boy straightened up and came bounding over to us. None of his dialogue remains in my memory and so it is most likely he approached us speaking glibly in Amharic. Proficiency in the language, however, was not necessary to understand the meaning of his outstretched, pleading hands.

Removed from the overwhelming streets of beggars, where giving to one feels like purposefully denying the rest, I handed him a few coins with my heart at ease. The boy took the money with a wide grin and ran back to the boy babbling happily away in Amharic. As we steadily drew near their post on the side of the path I took a better look at the seated boy, and how the other boy, who we had given the money to, was deliberately placing the coins in his friend’s hand and closing the fingers around the coins as if to make a point. As the seated boy’s face lit up with a smile, I peered closer but immediately regretted doing so as I recoiled in horror.

I could see far too much of the whites of his eyes with his irises, just barely visible, pointing directly upwards into his skull. And it was then that I realized he was completely blind. As we continued past them and down the path my father turned to me and asked simply, “Did you see how they help each other? Did you see their love?”

Back in the house, standing uncomfortably guilty before my father’s reproaches, this is the question I understood he wanted to me to see. Through his disapproval he was saying, “My brother is poor. But he paid for all of us to eat our fill. Did you see his love?”

He standing in his socks and singing. I see it.