Amra's English Journal

Thursday, 31 December 1998

Tonight is the New Year. In Yugoslavia, when I was a girl, New Year was the biggest holiday for everybody, Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic, it did not matter. We had a tree with lights, and the children got presents under it, and Djed Mraz came, Grandfather Frost. At midnight all the neighbors went out on the balconies and shouted.

So this week I bought a small tree at the grocery store, and Selma decorated it. Her friend from school came and said, "Oh, you have a Christmas tree!" and Selma explained to her very seriously about the New Year tree, in perfect English, with her hands, like a professor. I stood in the kitchen and listened. I did not understand every word. I understood that my daughter is a bridge.

Emir is working tonight. New Year's Eve is good money for a taxi. He says people are very generous at two in the morning. I made coffee for him at eleven and he took it in a thermos, the Bosnian coffee in an American thermos, and we laughed about it.

Next year I want: better English. A better job, maybe. A letter from Tuzla with news. I write the last one very small.

Sretna Nova godina. Happy New Year.

Friday, 27 November 1998

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Mrs. Oberle, my teacher, invited the three of us to her house for dinner. She has a husband with a big laugh and two sons in college who came home, and one old dog who put his head on my knee for the whole dinner.

I brought a pita with meat, a burek, that I made in the morning. The dough must be very thin; you stretch it on the table over the back of your hands until you can read a newspaper through it. My mother taught me. Mrs. Oberle's husband ate four pieces and asked for the recipe, and I told him the recipe is thirty years.

Before dinner everybody said one thing they are thankful for. I was afraid, because of the English. When it was my turn I said, "I am thankful we are all at this table and nobody is missing." Then I remembered that for us somebody is missing, and I could not say anything else. Mrs. Oberle took my hand under the table. Emir said the rest for me. Selma said she is thankful for the dog.

The turkey is a very big bird and very dry, but the sauce of red berries is excellent.

Tuesday, 20 October 1998

One year today we are in America.

We came on the airplane from Zagreb to New York and then to St. Louis, with four bags and the džezva. A woman from the agency met us at the airport with a sign with our name spelled wrong. The first night we slept in an apartment with three mattresses and a refrigerator with milk and bread and bananas inside. Selma ate four bananas. In the war we did not see a banana for three years.

What we have after one year: an apartment, a flat they call it here, the downstairs of an old brick house in the south of the city, near Gravois. A car for Emir, from the cab company. My job at the factory. Selma in the eighth grade. Many Bosnian neighbors, so many that on some streets you hear more Bosnian than English. A Bosnian store where I buy real coffee and ajvar and Vegeta.

What we do not have: our house. My brother. My mother, who stays in Tuzla. My profession. My language in my mouth when I need it.

One year. My teacher says I must write the good things also. The good thing: nobody is shooting. I say it often to myself, in the morning, at the bus stop. Nobody is shooting. It is a very good thing.

Wednesday, 9 September 1998

Last night the whole city went crazy because of baseball. Mark McGwire hit his sixty-second home run, which is more than any man ever in one year. Emir was driving and he said every car was blowing the horn, and people were dancing on the street, and a man in his taxi gave him twenty dollars extra and shouted, "Do you know what this means?" Emir said, "Yes, sir," and he did not know.

Selma knows. Selma knows all the rules of baseball now and she explained them to me at breakfast. There are many rules. Mostly I understand that it is a slow game, like coffee, where you wait and wait and talk, and then suddenly something happens and everybody stands up.

I liked the city last night. I liked to see a whole city happy about something that is not important. In Bosnia I forgot that a city can do that.

Wednesday, 19 August 1998

Today is the birthday of my brother Nermin. He is thirty-two today.

I write "he is," and I will continue to write "he is." I want to explain, for the people who read this and do not know. Nermin is my only brother, eight years younger than me. In July 1995, when the town of Srebrenica fell, the women and children were put on buses and sent to our side. The men tried to walk through the forest to Tuzla, many thousands of them together. Some arrived. Many did not. Nermin did not arrive. Since then we know nothing. No letter, no body, no grave. The people who look for the missing have his name and his description. We wait.

So I write about him in the present. Nermin is tall and too thin. He laughs very loud, with all his teeth. He eats sugar cubes one after the other like candy, and our mother hits his hand. When Selma was small he taught her to whistle with two fingers, and my mother did not speak to him for a day. He knows every tree in our father's plum orchard by its personality, and he talks to them when he thinks nobody hears.

Today I made coffee for three this morning, for Emir and me and one extra. Then I drank his, too.

Monday, 13 July 1998

Saturday was the 11th of July. Three years.

I called my mother in Tuzla with a phone card. On the 11th of every month she walks with the other women from Srebrenica in the center of Tuzla, with the photographs of their sons and husbands. In July it is many more women. She said it was very hot and nobody fainted, because nobody would let herself faint.

I cannot write more about it today. I am sorry to my teacher. Maybe next time.

Thursday, 11 June 1998

School is finished for Selma. She received a paper certificate for "Most Improved in English." She was angry. She said, "Improved means I was bad." I told her in Bosnia we say, the one who climbs the most is the one who started lowest, and there is no shame. She rolled her eyes. She learned that in America, the eyes.

I also finished my level at night school. Now I am Level 3. Selma says she is Level 100.

She is right. Eight months, and she speaks like the girls on television. When the telephone rings, she answers. When the landlord comes, she speaks. At the doctor, she explains my stomach to the doctor, and I stand there like a child while my child explains me. I am very proud of her. And something else also, not a good feeling, that I don't have the English word for. Mrs. Oberle says maybe "humbled." I will look in the dictionary.

Friday, 15 May 1998

Yesterday I became forty years old. Also yesterday Frank Sinatra died. On the radio at the factory they played "My Way" all day. We knew this song in Yugoslavia also; everybody's uncle sang it at weddings, very badly, with feeling.

Emir brought a cake with forty candles, and the candles made so much smoke that the alarm went off, and the neighbor upstairs came down in his socks. Then he stayed for cake.

Sunday was Mother's Day in America. Selma made me a card at school. On the front is a coffee cup she drew, with steam, and inside: "To the best Mama. You make the best coffee in St. Louis." I put it on the refrigerator. I think this card is the best review I ever had.

I called my own mother. Forty minutes on the phone card. She asked, like always, "Is there news?" I said no. She said no also. Then we talked about the weather.

Sunday, 8 March 1998

Today is the 8th of March, Dan žena, the Day of Women. In Bosnia, in all Yugoslavia, on this day every woman gets a flower: from her husband, from her son, from the men in her office. The teachers get so many flowers they cannot carry them home.

Here nobody knows about this day. At the factory on Friday I told Linh, the Vietnamese woman who works next to me on the line. She said in Vietnam they have Women's Day also, the same day! So we shook hands, very formal, and said "Happy Women's Day" to each other in English, and laughed like crazy people, and the supervisor looked at us.

This evening Emir came home with one red carnation. He bought it at the gas station. It was in plastic with a price on it: $1.99. It is in a glass on the table now, and I did not take off the price. Some things are more beautiful with the price.

Thursday, 19 February 1998

My teacher says: write about your work.

I work in a factory that makes plastic containers, bottles for shampoo and for oil for cars. I stand at the end of the line and I look at each bottle for holes and bad seams, and I put the good ones in a box and the bad ones in a bin. Eight hours. My eyes are tired, not my hands.

In Bosnia I was a civil engineer. I studied five years at the university. I made the plans for roads and water pipes in our municipality. Now I watch bottles. I know the machine at the start of our line better than the supervisor. When it makes a certain noise I know the temperature is wrong before the bottles come out bad. I do not tell him yet. My English is not enough to tell a man he is wrong in a polite way. First I will learn the polite way. Then I will tell him.

The bus at five in the morning is very cold. The wind comes over the river and goes directly through my coat, which is a coat from a church box and not for this wind. The other people at the bus stop are Bosnian women from the same factory. We stand together like birds on a wire. Nobody talks until the bus comes.

Tuesday, 10 February 1998

Good evening. My name is Amra. I am thirty-nine years old. I am from Bosnia, from a small town near Srebrenica. I live in St. Louis, Missouri, since October with my husband Emir and my daughter Selma, who is thirteen.

This is my journal. My teacher of English, Mrs. Oberle, says we must write every week in English. The school has computers, and the young man in the computer room showed me how to make a page on GeoCities. So now my homework is in front of the whole world. I hope the whole world will forgive my grammar.

Every morning before work I make coffee. Bosnian coffee, in a džezva, a small copper pot with a long handle. I brought it from Tuzla in my bag, wrapped in Selma's sweater. It is the only thing in this kitchen older than four months, except Emir and me.

I make it at half past four in the morning, because my bus is at a quarter past five. Emir comes home from driving his taxi at four o'clock, so we drink it together, him at the end of his day, me at the beginning of mine. Ten minutes. This is our marriage now: ten minutes and two small cups. It is a good ten minutes.

I will write more on Thursday. My teacher says I must not write only about coffee. We will see.

Amra