Somewhere in the Unknown World Read online

On the evening of March 20, 1989, a bus came in the middle of the night to take the family on their great adventure. The family of four would travel with the grandparents, aunt, uncle, and little cousins. On the bus, Irina held her copy of Pippi Longstocking in her lap. The moon was hidden by dark clouds in the sky. The night air was cold. It was late March, but all around there were still bits of snow.

  The border agents didn’t care that more Jewish families were leaving the former Soviet Union. They were happy to see them go. Throughout the country’s history, there had always been times when the borders would open for Jewish people to leave. Each family was given two hundred rubles and each person was allowed to take two suitcases out of the country. They asked only that the families leave in the dark of night so appearances could be maintained.

  From the border, the family took a fancy train to Warsaw on which Edith and Irina had an entire car to themselves, including beds and a bathroom. The trip lasted only an hour. By the time they reached the capital city, the world was still shrouded in night. The city was asleep, with closed businesses and empty streets; Irina has never forgotten that the whole of the city smelled like bread.

  In the yeasty city, the family stood on a street corner outside the train station and talked about an organization called HIAS, a group which would be taking care of them until they reached their final destination.

  Irina asked, “Is HIAS very expensive, Papa?”

  “No, Irina. You don’t worry about it.”

  All the adults treated Irina like a girl at the beginning of the journey. No one could have guessed how quickly she would grow up.

  From Warsaw, the family took another train to Austria. This time, the car was so full of people there was little seating available. Only the youngest children got to take turns lying across their mother’s lap. Mama and Papa decided that Edith and Irina were no longer young children, so they spent most of the time standing.

  In Vienna, the family met springtime in a cacophony of birdsong and tulips in bloom. The stores were full of ripe bananas and everyone got one to eat. Irina savored this first full banana, peeling the thick skin, taking first one measured bite, then another.

  Their last stop was Rome. Upon the family’s arrival at the hotel where they were staying, Mama told both girls to change into their best clothes immediately.

  She said, “We have to run to an appointment, girls.”

  Irina put on her white birthday dress from the year before, as planned.

  Mama, Papa, Edith, and Irina raced to the appointment across a city that felt like a palace. At the appointment, Mama and Papa signed paperwork, showed documents, and answered questions. Edith and Irina waited on hard wooden chairs. At first, Irina thought the cramps were the result of nerves. When they didn’t end, but worsened, she started whimpering.

  Edith whispered, “What’s wrong?”

  All Irina could say was, “I ate the banana too fast. It does not agree with me.”

  By the time the appointment was through, Irina was almost crying with pain. Mama and Papa raced the girls back across the expansive squares and the spread of decorated buildings.

  Every few minutes, Mama assured Irina, “We’re almost home.”

  Home was a cramped, uncomfortable hotel room in a basement. Home consisted of twin beds and a small bathroom the whole family shared. At home, Mama instructed Irina to go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet to see if the cramps would go away.

  In the bathroom, Irina discovered blood on her underpants.

  She screamed, “I’m dying!”

  Mama ran to the bathroom and opened the door. Between Irina’s knees, she could see the once white underpants now smeared with bright red.

  “Oh, God, no,” she said.

  She ran back out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Minutes ticked by. Sweat dribbled down Irina’s face. Cramps continued in waves low in her belly. She prayed again and again, “Please don’t let me die in Rome.”

  Irina waited with a pounding heart until Mama came back. Mama was now measured and calm. After she closed the door to the bathroom behind her, she handed Irina thick white pads.

  She said, “This will take care of it. It’s natural for girls who are growing up to get their monthly period.”

  Irina’s knees started shaking. She felt relief flow through her body, and then laughter climbing her throat. Her fear turned into joy in a fast minute. This was perfect. Not only was her life changing, but her body would no longer be the same.

  Later that night at dinner in the hotel restaurant, beneath an old chandelier, with dust motes floating about them, Grandma walked to Irina’s chair, bowed low to her ear, and whispered, “I hope this part of your life goes as smoothly and well as mine did. Welcome to womanhood, Irina.”

  In response to the warmth of her words, Irina blushed and looked at her hands.

  Grandma kissed Irina with the gentlest of kisses, a touch of lips on her ear.

  Irina looked up and Grandma winked.

  With the arrival of her period, her family started treating Irina differently. In the twin bed they shared, Edith told her jokes and giggled. When Irina asked where they were headed next, Mama and Papa did not tell her “Not to worry.” Instead, they said, “We will have to wait for our paperwork to be processed here in Italy.” Instead of asking more persistent questions as she would have done in Minsk, Irina responded with “Okay.”

  Russian Jews were flooding into the country. Many of them, exhausted from the clamor of Rome, had found work taking care of gorgeous villas in surrounding cities and towns. Aunt and Uncle had found two beautiful villas for themselves and Mama and Papa to take care of while the wealthy owners were away. Irina tucked her beloved Pippi away in the suitcase for good when the family left Rome for the seaside resort town where they stayed the rest of their time as refugees.

  Santa Marinella was the first place where Irina experienced the beauties of being a woman. Santa Marinella, located north of Rome, on the coast, was as far away from Minsk as she could imagine. The ocean lapped at the beaches like the tongue of a thirsty dog at a pool of water. Blue umbrellas lined the edge of the sea as people in bathing suits basked in the sun. Palm trees stood proudly from the high cliffs and between houses like old men in the uniforms of their youth. In Santa Marinella, Irina saw women enjoying life, relaxing, taking deep breaths of sea breeze, letting down their hair, and spreading their arms high over their head to feel the wonder of the world.

  The family settled in a sprawling estate. Its gate was ringed with tropical palms and its driveway curved up to the front of a grand house the color of white sand. The house sat like a jewel with shiny windows glinting in the sun, in a sea of emerald-green grass.

  Inside, as the family’s voices echoed against the cool marble stairwell and the high curve of the ceiling, Mama said, “You can’t lean on anything. Not the furniture, the walls, the pillars, the stair rails, anything.”

  Mama added, “Pretend like you were never here.”

  Edith, Papa, and Irina walked on their toes on the spotless marble floor to minimize any footprints. They talked in whispers as they went from one room to the next, each with a tall window that allowed a view of the sea and the sky in equal measure. They laughed quietly about how they would be shadows of themselves in the luxurious villa overlooking the sea. The sound of the waves came in through the windows and walls and greeted their laughter.

  Irina’s aunt and uncle’s villa was not far and the families visited often. Occasionally, Irina made the trip by herself, feeling independent and safe.

  On the way, Irina passed other villas with gardens, sometimes cultured, but other times overgrown, wild, and in her opinion more beautiful. On the path, there was an abandoned amusement park: old cement garden gnomes stood like guards among unchecked vines that grew over the old rides, rusted metal roasting in the hot sun. There were even fountains full of green things growing where water once ran. The park was full of strange creatures made out of cement, m
etal, marble, and other materials that Irina did not know. Each time she passed the amusement park, the girl from Minsk wondered what it would have been like to go on the rides, even as the young woman she was becoming felt a wave of sadness and sorrow for the abandoned place, the things that are left behind.

  The family stayed in Italy for three months, as spring turned to summer. Time moved slowly in that place of the sun, but that waiting period gave Irina time and space to remember and to forget what it had been like to be a girl and to encounter the beginnings of womanhood. Irina grew accustomed to a changing body, the swell of her breasts, the widening of her hips. In the spotless mirror of the fancy house, Irina saw that even her face had changed. Its previous roundness was disappearing and the bones of her mother’s face were peeking through.

  Every evening, all the refugees congregated on the beach to talk about the news. Hundreds of Russian Jews met up on the smooth, white sand in their fine clothes. They were all part of an exodus. The adults stood together and told the older children to watch over the younger ones so they would not wander too far into the sea. Each night, the family found that some of their friends had left, while new ones had come to fill their place. The wind and the ocean beckoned as the large gathering stood in uncertain freedom, tethered to shared histories and places far away. Among them, Irina stood fast, smelling like perfume, staring out toward the future.

  Every night on the beach the group found out who was going where, who got accepted and who got denied. There was always some family talking about how they’d been waiting for over a year to get processed. Many offered tips. It was a bad idea to say you were members of the Communist Party. It was not a good idea to say that your life had been easy, that you were an excellent student, or that you had been well respected at work. No one said anyone should lie, of course. But if you wanted to do well at the interviews, and each family usually went through two or three interviews before being accepted for resettlement, you had to say that you lived in the long shadow of Russian Jewish history, that your people had survived pogroms, and that you were the remnants. The world knew what had happened to the Jews in Russia, but it did not know what would happen to the Jews now. Irina’s family was part of that not-knowing.

  Mama was tense about the interviews. She was mad at Papa for being so proud of his work as a mechanical engineer in Minsk. She did not like that Edith, contrary to advice, talked of her good grades and her friends. Irina did not talk. Instead, she sat quietly in the now too small white dress. However, as the best one at English, Mama did most of the speaking at the interviews, so the family was accepted to the United States.

  There were options. A family could choose to go to New York City for free, a place full of Jews from around the world, a place full of most of the world. There was also Los Angeles, although that was more expensive as each family would have to pay two hundred dollars per person up front for the paperwork. If a family wanted to go anywhere else, they needed sponsors. Mama had cousins who had gone to a state called Minnesota, and they agreed to sponsor Irina’s family.

  Minnesota was not a part of America that was famous. Irina had never thought to look it up on a map. All she knew was what Mama and Papa said.

  “Minnesota’s weather is a lot like Minsk’s. The winters are cold but the summers are temperate.”

  “There are some Russian Jews there so we would not be the first. They’ve done well, so we will, too.”

  Aunt and Uncle, Grandma and Grandpa, and the cousins chose to go to Los Angeles. It was only in those final days in Italy that the family, afraid to speak of the imminent separation, spoke about what they had left behind in Minsk.

  Irina’s family would be leaving the warm coastal city. They didn’t know that they would be on welfare after HIAS helped them pay for their first year in the new country. They didn’t know that they would have to be prepared to live on five hundred dollars a month as a family of four. Mama would become a babysitter and Papa a pizza delivery guy. Irina couldn’t have known that her auburn hair and brown-green eyes would help her fit in as an American. Irina would be changed to Irene.

  When the family packed for America, Irina folded away the white dress. She tucked her copy of Pippi Longstocking inside it, knowing that she had outgrown both. The bottle of perfume in its little bag she placed in a corner of her luggage. She reminded herself that when she thought she was dying, she was only beginning a new life. Irina closed her suitcase firmly.

  In America, Irene learned how to turn her memories and feelings into songs, songs in Russian, that say life is the beautiful moment. She allowed the weight of the memories, the leaving and the letting go, to enter into her voice so it became as full of the past as it was of the present.

  A year after they left Minsk, in cold Minnesota, beneath another dark sky, Irene celebrated her twelfth birthday. The family planned a real birthday party. Mama bought a black dress and Edith put silver lipstick on her lips. The apartment the family lived in was decorated with balloons that hung from the ceiling. There was a cake, frosted with sugar that melted on the tongue. Irene laughed with the friends she had made during the year of calling Minnesota home—blond Sarah; Felicia, an African American; Kim and Linh, who were Vietnamese American; and Dina and Julie, who were Russian and had also left Minsk behind. The girls wore birthday party hats and stood around the dining table where there was a small dish of sunflower seeds next to a bowlful of ripe bananas.

  —IRENE RUDERMAN CLARK

  2

  The Strongest Love Story

  AWO KNOWS THAT her mother and father love each other. How else could they have survived these twenty years, talking on the phone only on Saturdays, if they didn’t love each other, were not devoted to the family they have built across oceans, not united in the most holy of marriages?

  Maryam, Awo’s mother, had been a nurse. She met Awo’s father, a man ten years older, a doctor, in the big hospital in the capital city of Mogadishu. The two fell in love. They got married. They had Awo. The family lived a good life before news of the war reached them and propelled them out of the city they shared, back to the places they were from.

  Awo’s mother was a daughter of Buuhoodle, a city in the middle of Somalia, the plains of the country, a place full of red soil so soft and dry that Awo knew it to be as valuable as saffron. Her father was a son of Laascaanood, a city set against a backdrop of gentle, rolling hills, where lonely trees stand tall across the landscape. Between her mother and father, there were 98.2 miles of road, a journey that took three hours and nine minutes in a good car.

  When the couple left Mogadishu, Awo’s mother and father also left behind their years of being together in the same place as husband and wife. Awo, just a toddler, tethered to her mother, left her father behind. The two decided that it was safer for Awo’s father to work in his home village far away from the quiet place his wife came from, where their children would grow up. They understood that in a war, there was no knowing who would visit a doctor and if a doctor could save a life or not; there was no knowing the consequences of dire situations. During the worst of the war years, they further decided that a quiet village would not be safe enough; Awo’s mother took the children to Kenya. From Kenya, they left for America. Thus, Awo’s mother and father’s marriage was a union separated at first by miles of road and then the spread of oceans; their children were the hands that stretched helplessly across that distance.

  * * *

  The only memories Awo has of the war come to her in a continuous nightmare. In the dream, Awo is a child again.

  I am a little girl with an oval face, emphasized by my hijab. I have big, round eyes, a small nose, a fine chin. The adults think I’m like a doll, a picture of cuteness. I like the way they see me. I am so young that I also like the way I see myself.

  I stand in a courtyard. The walls around me are painted white. There’s a bright sun shining down. It is almost noon because the sun is on top of me and my shadow is short and squat. There is a heavy wind blowing. My hij
ab spreads out around me. My gray shadow is a more magical creature than human, a changing thing moving in different directions. I lift my arms. I have wings. Like a bird, I fly around and around the courtyard.

  I hug the hard, smooth skin of the palm tree in front of me. I see that there is a matching one on the other side of the yard. My little girl arms wrap themselves around the thick trunk. The tree feels alive, warm, fleshy, but too firm to be flesh. My hold is tight around the tree, my fingers meeting on the other side. I’m clinging. I realize that I’m afraid. My feelings are suddenly confused.

  I notice that there are two guard dogs running around the compound. They both have their yellow eyes on me. Their bodies are black. Their nails sharp. They walk toward me, their tails raised high. Their ears are pointy triangles in the air. Their mouths are open, teeth glistening white. They are snarling at me. I can hear the wind from their throats.

  I look around and try to find safety. All the adults are gathered in a corner of the compound. They stand with their heads bowed beneath the shade of a tall tree, its mushroom canopy casting a shadow over them.

  I can see an aunt standing at the edge of the group. Her hands are held to her face. She is crying. Grief is pouring out of her body like a bucket tipped over. I can make out her cries, louder than the dogs’ snarls. She is my target for protection.

  I run for her.

  The dogs run for me.

  We chase each other, around and around in a figure eight. They run like circus dogs, trained to follow each other, so it looks like a child’s game to the adults. The grown-ups cannot tell how afraid I am. They are not even looking at me. When I run out of breath and I feel my feet slipping, I know I will crash to the ground. I can feel the pounding of my blood coursing through my veins, I can see the splatter of red on the ground once the fangs of the hungry dogs penetrate my skin. I make a noise, part squeak and part scream.

  My aunt’s arms are around me. She lifts me high. The dogs back slowly away. My arms are tight around my aunt’s neck. I make sure the dogs are no longer a danger before I look at her face. Her brown skin is wet with streams of tears. My fingers, small and slender, move to stem the flow of wet on her face. Her skin is smooth. I let my hands skim along the surface of her wet skin, follow the wet streaks from her eyes, all the way down to her chin, until I touch her scarf. Her scarf is damp. I look around me as if waking from a dream.