Home Is Where Your Honey Is: A Bosnian-American Story from Yugoslavia

By Zeljka Numic

A story of life in Former Yugoslavia,
of beauty and hardship of life in the mountains, the circumstances which led to changing countries, cultures and social orders in pursuit of better life, the satisfaction of knowing places and the yearning for a steady one, and finally the impossibility to fit into one category once politics drove right trough the marriage of a Muslim and a Serb in the recent Bosnian war, serves as an explanation for generations to come, as to who we were, and how trough believing in ourselves and our love, and by being offered the right of pursuit for happiness, this familys history became American.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469101361

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Copyright © 2009 by Zeljka Numic.

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To my children

A piece of history

For them and their children to know

How they became Americans

U.S. CUSTOMS DECLARATION

Citizenship: none

Nationality: I’m not sure

Country of residence: none

Temporary address: I’m not sure

The only thing I know for sure is my location at the exact moment: Delta 107, Frankfurt-New York, somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean; and my name. Even though I am not sure how the language is called in which it is spelled.

Now, do I sound like a criminal on the run? Like an amnesiac? Like somebody from the Philadelphia Experiment or the Bermuda Triangle who, after a mysterious disappearance and reappearance, does not fit into any of the current standard descriptions?

No, nothing like that happened. Nothing unusual like that. I actually don’t know what happened except that they call it war. Even there they disagree; is it a civil war, an invasion, fight for freedom, or just plain killing?

However, my effort to avoid being part of the latter, in both directions, heaved me into this sunny afternoon sky above the Atlantic. Or is it morning again, of the same day?

My son is asking for a bathroom. He is bored. And here it comes, Are we there yet?

Where?

At home.

Which home? I was really curious about his answer. Our real home. In America, he answered with confidence.

Yet, he never saw America before. Neither did I. But in his entire life, he never knew what home is, except maybe a place where people don’t talk about moving so that he, listening to our final sounding plans, probably came to the conclusion that this must be the real home.

My smart, easygoing, take-it-as-it-is seven-year-old. He knows so much already. He speaks a few languages (except the one he will need at his real home), he met people from so many different countries, he saw many cities, he played at many different playgrounds . . . only he never knew home, never a steady place of his own except my lap. I wonder how he will be able to puzzle his childhood memories together. With always changing faces and places, habits and languages, it must look like a fast-rotating carrousel with many colors and sounds. Maybe it is even fun. Children like carrousels.

But will he have a place where his thoughts can rest? Feeling the sun on your face, smelling the air rich with the scents of fresh cut grass, listening to always known voices . . .

Here you are, my mother’s voice came closer. Come on, we are going to Grandma’s.

Do we have to? I opened my eyes slowly. I did not want to leave my soft, good-smelling hollow of fresh grass and flowers. A hollow which was there because a long time ago, a tree with its root was pulled out of there where now wild flowers, small strawberries, and a tiny tree could grow undisturbed. It was my very own piece of wild life. Not too close to the woods where all kinds of scary animals lurked, and not too close to the house where everybody could trip over me and remind me of some undone chores.

Maybe I should go and visit Grandma. Not because I especially liked her (she was always too busy as to deal with useless children and grandchildren) but because at the back of her house, on the hill, in the middle of thick ferns, there grew the sweetest, juiciest, rosiest strawberries ever. And if Grandma’s husband is not going to be there, in which case I will be allowed to pick strawberries at all than I really could go. I didn’t like Grandma’s husband. But if he would be home, my mother would not go there. She did not like him either. Or better, she was afraid of him. He was always yelling. At everybody and everything, and burdening hard work at everybody but himself. Just like my father. No wonder, they are related. That is actually how I got my father in the first place.

Not that my mother had depended on the mercy of a stepfather’s relative to marry her; she was a pretty girl. Strong and hardworking and always cheerful. But since she had lost her father and her mother was left alone with five children in the after-war years, they were considered a poor, almost homeless bunch who had to work hard, every one of them, for rich people just to be able to survive. And since her mother married this widower with four children of his own and got two more in that marriage, and my mother was just a stepdaughter, she was not in the position to impress any decent man or to bring any considerable value into a marriage.

Besides, she was too busy to socialize. In the woods where she worked as a woodchopper in order to deserve bed and food in her stepfather’s house, there were no princes riding along on white horses, offering glass slippers for a try-on. But her time was running out. She was past twenty already, bound to become an old spinster, what she got to hear from her stepfather every day in addition to him counting the cost of food she ate. In reality, my mother earned the food for the whole family, working mostly alone while her stepfather was busy working his bottle and snoring under pine trees.

But who had ever heard of women’s rights in those days? Anyway, the only man she had a chance to meet was her stepfather’s nephew, my father. And he liked her. And coming from a similar background, he could not expect any valuables from his future bride either. The perfect match! But he placed one condition on my mother: She should prove to be able to bear children. And because my mother liked him also (or was it just the lack of choice?), she took her chances. And she got pregnant. And my father was happy. And they lived happily ever after-

Yeah, right! Grimm brothers and Walt Disney were not known in that part of the world. Or maybe they were too since there was a witch.

My father’s mother considered herself as something better (people do have crazy imaginations sometimes) and did not even think of accepting my mother and her bastard (that was my first given name) into her house and family. Her disagreement was mainly based on an old family dispute about a piece of land, and she was afraid that my mother could influence my father to give it up in favor of his new in-laws.

My father, as a good Mama’s boy, obeyed his mother, said sorry to my mother, and disappeared from her life.

Soon it was time for my mother to disappear too. Not out of free will. Who had ever heard something about a woman’s free will in that mountain village in the early sixties? No, her stepfather threw her out. At nine months pregnant, when she was not able to work in the woods anymore and was about to give birth to one more mouth to feed.

Ashamed, disappointed, and afraid of the future, she took her little brother who, after her mother’s remarriage, was more like a son to her and went back into her father’s cabin in the woods.

That became my birthplace. On an Easter Sunday morning when, in my arrival, I spoiled my big brother’s long-awaited joy of coloring and eating Easter eggs, for which he later said he never forgave me even though I repeatedly promised to make it up to him. And it became the place of my first memories: rolling down the hill with my little uncle—my big brother, all the way down, to the mountain spring under the big rocks, shadowed by big pine trees with huge roots, between which I liked to sit and listen to the birds and the bees (no, now, this is not going to be a story about where babies come from), and watch the ants carry their oversized cargo along their ancient paths, the squirrels chase each other for a pine cone, and the frogs make sudden jumps between buttercups, which always startled me . . . .

Oh, all right! Let’s go to Grandma’s.

The walk to her house could be quite exciting. Two miles through the woods and across fields and streams was where we would meet people watching their sheep or cattle, see others searching for a cow or two, calling out their names and listening for the sound of the bells around their necks which would echo through the woods from time to time. Some families would collect hay or harvest vegetables or sit down around a meal in the shadow of an oak or cherry tree. Someone would call out, Maaraaa, is thaaat youuu? Yeees, my mother would holler back, how aaareee you, Rooosaaa? Fiiinee, thaaank youuu, if you aaareee goiiing tooo your mother’s aaask if the kniiittiing is readyyy, I wouuuld pick it uuup tooomorroow. I wiiill, my mother would answer and the calling and chatting continues until you are too far away as to be heard anymore. And on the way back, Rosa would receive an answer to her inquiry in the same manner, or if she is not there anymore, somebody else would carry the message to her. That was our way of wireless communication before the time of the cell phone. People were calling from hill to hill. You could always hear a child call, Maaamaaa and ask questions and amazingly; of all the mothers in all the houses on the surrounding hills, it was always the correct mother answering the call. I guess it’s practice. We would pass by an old water mill, which I loved and hated. It was intriguing and frightening at the same time. Sitting above a fast-running stream, it would turn its huge wooden wheel, which is connected to a big grinding stone inside where it was dark and loud and dusty. You could see only shadows and flour dust dancing in the streaks of sunlight peeking through the cracks in the walls, which echoed the clicking and knocking and squeaking of the machinery. But there, you could always meet people. There was always somebody dropping off corn or wheat for grinding or picking up flour, of which one tenth would go to the mill owner as a charge for the task. Then we would go up a hill to the first house on our way. Sometimes we would stop for a cup of coffee and the latest news and gossip. The sheepdog, tied to the fence, would bark in a deep voice, recognizable from far away. That was another amazing thing about life in the mountains: that you could always recognize the bark of a certain dog and were able to tell whose dog it was. You also could tell if the bark meant just anger or boredom or real danger and how urgent it was. By following the voices, you could tell if something threatening, like a wolf or a bear, is passing too close to the homes on the hills and whose house it was at and which direction it was going. It was like a messaging system.

Crossing the railroad where once or twice a day a slow going, puffing train would pass, we would arrive at Grandma’s house. Sitting on a small hill, it was made from whole boulders and had a wood shingle roof, a small porch in front of it, right next to two big apple trees (later I discovered that they were not that big at all). On one of the apple trees was, to my joy, a rope swing dangling above the green where in summer the whole household took place: cooking, washing, sheepshearing, chicken feeding, knitting, rug weaving, or just napping. Above the house, there was a cherry tree and of course, the strawberries. I would climb to the top of the hill, just below the pine trees, look into the distance all over the other hills with houses and barns here and there, across the greens with cows or sheep watched by the ever-running children and dogs, and over corn and wheat fields in different shades of green and gold changing in the breeze, which also was to hear in the tree tops in my back.

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Grandma’s house

When I close my eyes, I can still hear the wind in the pines and see people working in their fields (which they had to give up later), and children running (many of them dead in the meantime), hear the sound of ripping grass with each bite a cow takes (which the owners exchanged for weapons now) and the soft sound of bells around their necks (a sound exchanged for the sound of exploding grenades in the same beautiful hills).

I could listen to the pine trees even in my home in town, not hearing the unbelievable news from the radio somebody placed in his yard, not hearing the fearful discussions among the neighbors, not the first bullets somebody was practicing with. Or I pretended not to hear. Would I not have heard it, I would have probably never heard the question my son is asking for the hundredth time, Are we in New York yet? I want to go home.

New York . . . In my wildest dreams, I would not have dreamt that somebody from my family would call New York his home. When my son was born, I never thought I