Alive in the Old World
Marisella Veiga     [Photo]

We’d heard about the Bangladesh family that had moved to St. Augustine, Florida, less than a year ago and opened a restaurant. One night when neither my husband nor I felt like cooking, we went to the family’s Muniria Mandarin Chinese and Indian restaurant.

It was early and we were not surprised to be the only customers in the small restaurant. The owner came to our table and introductions were made. Soon we were active listeners of a man who obviously needed to tell his stories.

At first, my husband was delighted. Indeed, the man delivered a monologue with a smile, no matter how painful the events of his immigration to London and then the United States. However, it was becoming a soliloquy. He was losing his audience. My thoughts drifted to my own Cuban exile experience. My husband continued to stare at him, but his face was unchanged, a sign of fatigue.

Midstream the linear narrative changed to evocations of the Old Country. Our host loved Bangladesh, its landscapes, music and poets. Remembering them and describing them were ways to have those loves again. They were not so distant then.

“Where’s the food?” I whispered to engage my husband. And then it came. Its arrival provided a transition to other possibilities, including moments of much-needed, respectful silence.

As we ate, I considered the man’s two teenage children, who, as more diners arrived, were delivering menus, taking orders, as well as doing other necessary tasks such as refilling water glasses and folding napkins. They were being educated in U.S. public schools and playing with U.S. neighbor kids while their home life was traditional Bangladeshi.

Watching them, I realized they would live the immigrants’ children’s experience. Out of respect for their parents, they will — for years and years to come — listen to stories about the Old Country.

Here’s the undertow: their present and future is not part of that longed-for past. The bolder ones will, in their parents’ eyes, become disrespectful when they begin to practice the democratic norm of questioning authority.

It’s a cultural characteristic I undoubtedly acquired.

My transplanted grandmother Manuela lived with our family in Miami. In the middle of one of her tales, I’d say, “You’ve told me before, and this is how it goes.” Then I’d spit back the complete story. She wasn’t intimidated. She was in the power of the oral tradition. Thankfully, she continued.

As a result, one of the arteries of my heart reaches the Punta Alegre Sugar Mill in Camaguey, Cuba. That’s where my mother and uncle were born. I’ve never been there but I hope to go.

My parents and grandparents’ descriptions of the island were so vivid, I could feel the sun on my skin and the warm sea at my feet. But that was not enough. It was different in Cuba, they said. I tried to invoke their loves because I loved them. But it’s like having secondary posttraumatic stress disorder: you always know the ones who had the primary kind were more important, more affected.

I could never live their lives.

My nieces and nephews are and will continue to be listeners of my stories. But I see the limits. The girls live in Vienna, Virginia, and the boys in Wilmore, Kentucky. Their childhoods, like the Midwestern chapter of mine, will be graced with four seasons and their accompanying activities and moods. These are their first, powerful loves.

While they may occasionally vacation in South Florida, they will not know the warmth and clarity of the subtropical waters like I do. Airboat rides through the Everglades to the isolated hammocks where the Seminole Indians made their homes — wonderful! I see the great sky now.

They must learn to listen when the conga drums call through their open windows.

These New World experiences form part of my Old World. In the end, it’s a place of memory that everyone can inhabit. But everyone does it alone.

(Marisella Veiga, of St. Augustine, Fla., is a contributing columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. She may be contacted by e-mail at mveiga@aug.com)

© 2005, Hispanic Link News Service
10/02/05
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