A Spare Life (48 page)

I paid a gravedigger to dig the plot I had purchased right beside my mother's. “If possible, dig it so there's no barrier between the two graves,” I said, as he looked at me strangely. “You're not Satanists are you?” he asked. My father, sweating with shame and anger, snorted through his nose. For the first and last time, he shouted at Marija and Marta, who were circling around the grave: “Calm down! You have devoured the world.” When the gravedigger finished, I filled the empty grave with the cherished items that my mother had preserved for her future. After we covered the grave with earth, I leveled it. I told Marija and Marta to stamp the dirt down with their waterproof boots. Then the priest came. He recited the memorial prayers, crossed himself, and left. We left as well, walking by the graves of Bogdan, Srebra, and Aunt Ivanka. Marija and Marta patted Bogdan's picture, repeating, “Daddy, Daddy.” At Srebra's grave, Marija and Marta said, “Auntie,” and for the first time I said, “Yes, this is your aunt.” At Aunt Ivanka's grave, they said, “Let's go home; we're cold.” In the taxi, Marta asked me, “If a dog dies, does it become a toy? Does it still bark?” “No, it doesn't bark anymore,” Marija said importantly. “It's peaceful, and you can keep petting it.” Indeed, that would be a good way for toys to be made. Create children's toys from dead animals. Embalmed like Egyptian mummies, they would never die in a child's embrace. But what about dead people?

This year, on November 7, Marija and Marta will turn eleven. They are so much like Srebra and me as children that the older residents in our neighborhood are shocked when they see them. They experience a sense of déjà vu, even though the girls' heads aren't conjoined. The girls' eyes are just like Bogdan's, and it's only there that I still see him. The girls are in sixth grade. Their math teacher is Violeta, the same Violeta who taught Srebra, me, and Bogdan. She was the youngest teacher then, and we teased her in a mean way—scribbling on the radiator ribs in white chalk, because we knew she got cold easily and always leaned against it. The white marks on the radiator rubbed off onto her black skirt. Or one of us would pull out her chair just as she sat down. She'd fall, get up, start crying. She never reported us to the principal. Marija and Marta say she's very nice and everyone respects her. There are other younger teachers now, and the students joke around with them instead, taking pictures with their cell phones, while the teachers shout and threaten to send them to the principal.

We live with my father. He's old and forgetful. He doesn't wear anything—no sweater, shirt, anything—that doesn't have a breast pocket, even at home. He carries his glasses there and an old pen with the word
London
on it that I brought him from London a long time ago. He stands on the balcony every morning waving to Marija and Marta as they head off to school, and then, at noon, when they come back, he's back out on the balcony waiting for them. Sometimes, he'll come inside and say, quietly, “They're not here. Where are they? What's with those children?” Then, when he sees them coming, he runs back in and says, flushed with excitement, as if they were guests who hadn't visited in a long time, “Here they come!”

I work as a journalist for Radio Global. It's a radio station that, in 2006, after much bickering and a tug-of-war with the government, got permission from the Council of Radio Broadcasters to broadcast in Macedonia. It was founded by someone who came back from the United States with a PhD in media management. When I applied for the job, he told me, “Our station will be different because it'll be global, not just Macedonian.” He added that the radio's editorial offices would never close; there would be three journalists on duty three nights a week, collecting news from foreign agencies, and then immediately—at most, fifteen minutes later—broadcasting that news in Macedonian to a Macedonian audience. Therefore, it was important for each journalist to have an excellent command of a foreign language: English, French, German, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Greek, or Spanish. We also had a journalist, Avni, who spoke Albanian, because our director wanted to comply with the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which had provisions for the wider use of Albanian in the country. He hired other journalists who knew languages not represented in the editorial office. “We want world coverage,” the director said. “You journalists will establish connections with your listeners, anticipate the kinds of comments that will be called in, and you'll encourage them to call.” “But what if we hear, at two in the morning, something like a terrorist attack in Paris?” I asked. “Everyone will be asleep. Wouldn't it be better to use it as the lead story on the early morning news?” “You really think so?” he said, staring at me in astonishment. “Believe it or not, there are many people, too many, who aren't asleep at two in the morning, for one reason or another,” he said, adding, “If they already can't sleep, they can at least be the first to hear breaking news. We will be instant radio, no matter how American that sounds. We'll announce news from the global to the local, which is why we call ourselves Radio Global.” I accepted the job. I didn't have any other opportunities for employment. I had graduated in law with very low scores. I didn't have a master's or doctorate. I had never gone back to request the torn-up master's diploma on migration studies from the University of London. But I knew English, and the director wanted people with a great deal of life experience.
That's what he asked, looking at me skeptically, “Has anything really happened to you in your life?” “I had a sister, a twin. We had conjoined heads. We lived like that until we were twenty-four years old. Then we went to London for an operation and Srebra did not survive. Later, I returned to London. There, I completed a master's thesis on migration in literature, but I refused the degree because my mentor revealed my life story to everyone, which I had wanted to keep secret. My boyfriend was killed at the Bulgaria-Macedonia border. He was a counterfeiter of passports, but I didn't know that. I was framed. I was pregnant. I gave birth to twin girls. Ten months later, I had to leave them and go to prison. I spent seven months in Idrizovo. Then I sued the state, and was paid 20,000 euros in compensation for false imprisonment. Marta and Marija are now five years old.” I told him all this in one breath. He looked at me, jaw-dropped. “Oh, that was you! Then you are quite aware,” he said, “that every pain is both local and global. Yours is precisely that.” And he hired me. All my colleagues have interesting life stories. Most often, they had returned from abroad because of some turn of fate or because they were consumed by nostalgia. They're all interesting, open, spirited. Everyone has a degree, some from Skopje, some from universities in the world's largest cities. We are all about the same age. They have families and children, either scattered around the globe, or here, in Skopje. Some hurry home after work, others go anywhere but home. I'm one of those who never goes for coffee or lunch in town, but hurries home, where Marta and Marija wait for me. They were five years old when I started. My father gave up the big room for us, and we partitioned it with a bookshelf so I could have a desk with a computer and a bed. Marta and Marija have their own corner where they sleep, play, and study. My father sleeps in the small room. He never complains. Because I'm a single mother, our American-Macedonian director gives me some privileges. I work four hours a day, from eight till noon. But three times a week, I have night duty in the editorial room. I collect a wide variety of news items, which I translate as quickly as possible and then report to our listeners. They call in immediately with comments and questions. Even I couldn't believe how many people in
Macedonia are awake in the middle of the night. Cups of coffee, cans of Red Bull, and coffee-filled Ferrero Rocher chocolates keep me on my feet. Of course, there are also my two colleagues, with whom I often laugh, not for any particular reason, except exhaustion and too much caffeine in our veins. Night brings people closer than day does. But it also divides them. Impure friendship is a contamination of one's inner space, a poison that requires removal and purification from the toxic substances: a path, a prayer, a cleansing of the body and soul. Loneliness can be an ascetic cure for the heart, the soul, and the mind. But our friendship at Radio Global was pure, equitable…an eco-friendship.

We had mounted ten clocks on the wall of the office like those in hotels that show various local times: one set for Skopje, one for London, for New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow, and other cities around the globe. Radio Global was the first station in Macedonia to learn on November 5, 2006, that Saddam Hussein had been sentenced to death. On February 15, 2008, we broadcast the proposal suggested by UN moderator Nimitz for renaming Macedonia: The Democratic Republic of Macedonia. “Like the Congo?” a listener asked. “So will our language be Democratic Macedonian? And will the people be called Democratic Macedonians?” Some of our listeners thought it was the most acceptable proposal. They thought that once the name question was resolved the country could turn to economy, employment, and human rights issues. I was at work when the news came in that Kosovo had declared independence. It was only two days after the Nimitz proposal for renaming Macedonia. While reporting on air, “After dreaming for thirty years of becoming its own country, Kosovo today declared its independence,” I recalled when Serbra and I were teenagers—standing behind the curtain separating the kitchen and the dining room, twirling the ends of our hair and tugging at each other's—and a TV anchor said that Kosovo was refusing to abandon its desire to become its own republic. A few days later, some relatives came to visit from Prishtina and said, “There's no living with those damn Shiptars.” I had been completely baffled, but Srebra was upset. Our temples were pounding. Srebra said that, most likely, the Albanians in Kosovo were saying the same thing about them: “There's no living with these Serbs!” I didn't know why people couldn't live with each other. “So let them separate!” I said to Srebra. “They can't. They have conjoined heads just like us. Still…” She was silent a moment before adding, “With surgical intervention they might. But blood will flow, and people will die.” That same year, at midnight on July 23, 2008, just as I was starting my shift in the editorial office, I learned that Radovan Karadžić had finally been captured. He had been living in Belgrade under an assumed name as “a spiritual explorer, with white hair and beard, dressing in black clothes, a doctor of alternative medicine and contributor to the magazine
Healthy Life
.” It was the biggest farce of the
twenty-first century. That criminal with an intellectual's face who, behind tear-free glasses, watched death take those he'd condemned. He had wandered around for thirteen years, traveling by bus and appearing at seminars. He had written articles, eaten, drunk, slept, dreamed. What had he dreamed of all those years? Did he have nightmares, or, under his assumed name, Dragan Dabić, did he have no ugly memories from his past? “The greatest psychopath of the new century has been arrested.” That's what I said on air, and a flood of calls immediately came pouring in from listeners who were still awake. Some rejoiced; others felt pity for him. The year 2008 was also the year the Summer Olympics took place in Beijing. The editorial office heard the news that, at the last minute, the president of the Chinese politburo replaced the little girl who was to open the Olympic Games with a song with another little girl, a prettier one, who, instead of singing, was simply going to lip-synch. The girl who had actually sung on the recording had crooked teeth and was deemed unsuitable to display to an international audience. I asked the listeners what they thought—would the Olympics be the greatest anguish in that girl's life? What impact would this event have on her? What would happen to her when she grew up? One listener said that it would be a good topic for research and someone would surely remember her and seek her out after ten or twenty years to learn what effect this political move in China had had on her life.

On March 25, 2010, I received a call from an editor at the
Economist
asking if I wanted her to send us an article they'd just published called “What's in a Name?” before it went online. I translated it live on air, encouraging my listeners to phone in with questions and comments at the end. According to the
Economist
, and to our radio station, that article received more worldwide commentary than any other. That day, we broadcast only news. No one felt like hearing about entertainment, but the listeners who called in still gave extremely amusing commentary. Or, perhaps more accurately—tragicomic. We all laughed at our own expense. On August 30, 2010, the BBC reported from a collapsed mine in Chile that the miners had made their first phone calls. Psychologists had advised the families to sound as positive and optimistic as possible. Each miner was allowed a one-minute call. Reality around the globe was becoming more and more like science fiction. Reality in Macedonia even more so. At noon on September 13, 2010, just as I was about to leave for home, all of Skopje's media outlets received an interesting tidbit of information: “Residents of Volkovo, just outside of Skopje, are to receive garbage cans.” Those of us in the editorial office laughed: What, they didn't have them before? The government constantly flooded Macedonian media and its citizens with slogans: Start a family. Have a third child. Choose life. Open your heart. Realize your potential. Knowledge is strength; knowledge is power. Macedonia—timeless. Macedonia—snow-covered. Read more. Be kinder. And on and on. I asked Marija and Marta if they discussed the slogans at school, and if so, how people reacted to them. “We don't talk about them,” Marta said. “But some of the teachers repeat them when they try to give us advice. Especially the one that goes, ‘Knowledge is strength; knowledge is power.'” “They seem to think that one is very insightful,” said Marija, always more critical than Marta, through her laughter. “What about when our gym teacher called on Mia today and asked her to repeat that dirty sentence after him?” Marija said. “What sentence?” I asked. Marta turned red, but Marija bravely stated, “‘Maxi-maxi, prick like a taxi.' Is that normal?” No, no it wasn't normal, just as nothing else was normal. Especially when you're a journalist, you're bombarded every day with all sorts of
information, and you see that it's not just your country, but the whole world that is turned upside down. Still, you feel the most sympathy for your own country…not for your country as a country, but for the people in it.