A few Christmases ago I was given a lesson. Visiting someone’s house, being a guest in someone’s home, is disorienting. It is difficult to know what, if anything, you should do to help your host. Often as not the guest and the host differ on what a definition of “help” might be. I can remember hearing one of the children in my family complaining about something, and in response I asked a snide question. My sister looked at me and said flatly “Josh, that is not helpful.” I realized in that moment that my host had the right of things. My presence in her home was an anomaly, a blip, a point of inconsistency. Her home finds a harmony of its own without me there and there is little I can do to add harmony. Albania, like my sister’s house, operates as it does without me in it. The most I can hope to do is take out the garbage when it is full.
This morning I was surprised to find that the fugon into town had been canceled because Prime Minister Sali Berisha was coming to Sauk for a rally. I was going to be too late to make it to church in Durres on time. The fugon, like the water supply, like the power grid, like so many things, is a service one can depend on, mostly. Finding no way to add harmony to my situation through any other action, I decided to walk into town. Walking is good for you.
The man who spoke at church was an Amerikan, I didn’t catch his name. The Amerikan accent takes all of the beauty out of the way the Albanian language sounds. In the north Shqip has the latte-steaming growl of French, and in the South it has an almost rhythmic chop like the prop of a boat motor idling on a cold morning. I have been frustrated on numerous occasions trying to accurately imitate this way of speech. Often as not I am unable to distinguish one sound from another. Avash, avash.
This afternoon I stopped in a Gensi’s for a haircut. He is so rigidly focused on his craft, sitting in his chair I feel like a block of marble on a stand in Michelangelo’s studio. My dogs were waiting impatiently outside his door for him to finish carving shape into my scalp. Before long I was beautiful, the mutts were fed, and I was back in my apartment writing this post.
albaniacalling 