TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Ben Sloan

of his rhythms—molded over years, even generations one could say—led to their formation as rituals. His sister was dead; her lungs were filled with water. It was his fault, he thought. This young girl, an odd remaking of his sister, looked at him with those peculiar, but more so, curious eyes. Yet, rituals and rhythms worked to no avail on Birke. After all, she grew up in the same remote corner of Europe that Onkel Georg grewup inwhereritualsand rhythms, sometimesmasked inwords like custom and tradition , spun lies on the idyllic imagination. Customs repeated themselves. Years later, while she was in a university film class and learned about the use of the montage, Birke day dreamed: she imagined Austrian customs featured on a projector in flickering black and white film, people’s body movements moving quicker than usual like in a Charlie Chaplin movie. She could hear the projector rolling and behind the projectoramanwitha brown felt hat tinkeredwithold filmscraps. Her vision, in this daydream, was impeccable: each square of 35 mm film recounted a custom of her childhood. On the pieces of filmthat themanwith the brown felt had tinkeredwith, she could clearly see her father leaving the house early on Eastermorning so that the priest could smoke their meat with his strange pendulant swinging box; she could see, on December of the 28th, the Day of Innocent Children—the day when the old Testament Pharaoh slaughtered innocent Jewish kids—when her and her friends took sticks and went to homes around their neighborhood to whack adults as a way of revenge on the Pharaoh; she could see, on the next roll of film, what happened on November 1st, All Saints Days—the day when family members went to the graveyard and offered company to their ancestors’ spirits. Where her father 208