TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Fleeing Father

never got that. None of these flashy things that were in our glass vitrine did I want. I was never asked, and then two of them came as a surprise.

Aren’t you happy, Mother asked.

I’d given upenjoying things very early on. The bearwith thedrum, I never wished for. Not even the bear with the camera. Nor the ice cream vendor with his truck. Nor the Chinese man with the bicycle. And none of these things that one had to wind up with a key, so that they continuously circled in their narrow world, always frozen in the same position. With a raised hand. With a camera in front of the eyes. With a drum in the air. I had never wished for any of these toys, even if Mother was so proud of our collection. I was allowed to take it out of the glass vitrine, show and demonstrate when someone came to visit. But that rarely happened. Otherwise I was not allowed to play with them—they shouldn’t break. China, Hungary, Yugoslavia and so on. One could think that the entire Communist bloc were in agreement. At the time there had not yet been a Prague Spring. But even we children of the PCR- Blockknewthatwasn’t true. RadioTiranaspokeof an imperialistic Soviet Union and of the revisionist Chinese. I can’t remember what Father thought of that. Mother, however, thought. These little Albanians were paid by the Russians to emphasize freedom of expression in the Communist bloc. Demonstrate democracy. These little Albanians. They exaggerate. Take themselves too seriously.

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