FLASH
Shkruar nga Eduard Zaloshnja
Convinced of the special Albanian identity, which, according to my conception at the time (this was the distant December of 1991), had been forged by Albania's isolation over several decades, I was happy to bluntly tell the professor that Eastern Europeans were as foreign to me as any other foreigners.
“In our department, we also have two graduate students from Eastern Europe, with whom I believe you will enjoy chatting.” These were among the first words of the professor who had mediated my admission to Virginia Tech, immediately after our meeting at the airport. “How nice,” I replied to the professor with feigned pleasure, while I wanted to tell him that he probably did not know that Albania had been completely cut off from Eastern Europe for 30 years, and that, precisely because of that cut-off, we Albanians did not resemble other Eastern Europeans much.
Convinced of the special Albanian identity, which, according to my conception at the time (it was the distant December of 1991), had been forged by Albania's isolation over several decades, I wanted to tell the professor bluntly that Eastern Europeans were as foreign to me as any other foreigners. But I refrained simply to maintain the courtesy of the first meeting. Only a few days later, I realized that I had done well not to say those words.
Eastern European bloc
When I met the two Eastern European students in my department, one East German and the other Hungarian, I felt that I was dealing with people very similar to me. Our repertoire of jokes was almost identical; the jokes we told seemed like translations of each other; the music we liked was the same; our fandom for Western football clubs was equally fervent. In short, when I was with them, I felt like I was sitting on the curb near the Skanderbeg monument in Tirana, surrounded by old high school friends.
Every day I spent with my new Eastern European friends reinforced my belief that I was almost exactly like them. And during the first exam we took together in one of our doctoral program courses, I told myself that there was no question that I was just an Eastern European like everyone else. During that exam, our professor, after writing the questions on the blackboard, went home and told us to stick our answers under his office door at the end of the exam. And as he was leaving the auditorium, we Eastern Europeans immediately exchanged glances with surprise and, to be honest, a little mischievous. Meanwhile, from the reactions of the other students, it was clear that they didn't think anything extraordinary was happening.
Istanbul, our former capital
For a while after that exam, I made peace with myself about my identity, which, I thought, had engraved on it the traces of living in a communist state, which had had many similar features to other communist states in Eastern Europe. But that peace did not last long. A few months after I had begun graduate studies at Virginia Tech, I met two Balkan students, one Turkish and the other Greek. (How they had become friends with each other is a story that perhaps deserves a separate article.)
Just a short time after meeting them, the identity model I had built in my mind crumbled again. How many similar things I noticed in my new friends! How many times did I want to tell them that we Albanians had their own habits or culinary or musical preferences! And when I said those words, they often answered me: “Don't forget that we have lived together for almost 500 years in the same empire.”
After meeting my Balkan friends, I was forced to rebuild my identity model, which had been significantly modified since my arrival at the American university. According to the new model, my identity was a kind of hybrid that combined the old roots of the Ottoman Empire with newer roots, born during the communist regime.
Once I built this model in my mind, identifying myself in this vast world, filled with the most diverse cultures, seemed easier. So I concluded that I had given a definitive answer to the question about the origin of my cultural identity. But again, I was wrong.
caliphate
Over time, my circle of friends expanded. It included a Bolivian, a southern Italian, a Spaniard, and an Egyptian. And again, I noticed that I could easily identify with any of my new friends. I noticed in them the same predisposition to enjoy the moment, despite the challenges that might await us the next day (exams, tests, assignments, etc.); I noticed in them the same desire to sit around a coffee table and chat for hours; and most importantly, I noticed in them the same fatalistic mentality that I had often noticed in myself when thinking about the future, a light mind entered, I remember often telling myself then, because as it is written, it will be done...
After meeting my new friends, I naturally set out to search for the roots of my identity again. And the historical discoveries I made while meditating on them led me to the distant time when the Arab Caliphate extended to Spain and Southern Italy, and when the developed Arab civilization completely dominated the Mediterranean. Surely we must have common roots from that time, I thought to myself, as I tasted the striking similarity in mentality I had with my new friends. So, in short, I made the final modification to the initial identity model since arriving in the USA, to which I added the millennial roots of the Arab Caliphate.
In conclusion
Many years have passed since the day I first set foot in the US, and it is clear that I am no longer the graduate student who had just been released from the prison called “communist Albania”. But even though life there changed my cultural construct (relationships with friends at university initially, and with colleagues at work and neighbors in the neighborhood later, naturally shape it), the model for explaining the origin of my identity that I created in my first year in America still holds true…
Lini një Përgjigje