Why did you leave paradise?

giuliakollmann

by giuliakollmann

Story

Every day we ask others how they are and hope they will not tell us. When we are not well, we also lie. “Why did you leave your beautiful country?” I am asked, immediately facing the internal dilemma: will they handle the truth?

It doesn’t matter what this truth is. There is no normal, acceptable reply that makes the decision of leaving one’s country lighter in the eyes of those who ask about it. Answer that it is economic opportunities, a better job, and your listener will start clutching their pearls, concerned that you may detail either your professional misfortunes or the grim political outlook of your land. Say that you’re just seeking new experiences and the aftertaste is either of too much volatility and unattachment or of provoking a certain kind of guilt in the less adventurous. If you mention it is safety, just wanting to live somewhere you can ride a bike alone drunk at 3AM without fear of being robbed, raped, or murdered, the audience is immediately lost.

It goes on and on and on. Nobody wants to casually hear about LGBTQIA+ trauma, about being afraid of holding hands. The many times a woman was morally and sexually harassed at work due to the pervasive macho culture in her country is too much information. Religious, ideological, ethnic persecution are not the best conversation starters.

“Do you miss your family a lot?” Is there any other possible answer than “yes” when doing small talk?

I was once at an originally-intended work gathering that ended up being just me and a colleague having drinks, and she asked me the fateful question. I took a deep breath and decided to be honest. I told her how fragmented my family actually was, how much resentment they were able to muster and hold on to, how barely existent my relationship was with my parents. “Why do you go to Brazil every year then?”

“My friends, my husband’s family. And the beach, and the food, and the familiarity of being home.”

She was a refugee from North Vietnam. Her family flew in the late 1980’s when she was still very small, and she was raised in Europe. “It must be at least nice to know and miss where you came from,” she told me after a deep slurp of her Aperol Spritz as we watched the sunset over the Spree from the coveted river-front wooden benches we had secured at Holzmarkt, one of those signature, improvised, hipster Berlin places where somehow the whimsical and the magical are mustered out of some strings of colorful fairy lights and old wooden crates.

She had never gone to Vietnam after fleeing and had long lost her Vietnamese citizenship. She thought of visiting, but could not quite frame this project: a home she did not remember, a family she’d have to honor without ever having met.

Few decisions are more difficult than the one to leave the people and places you’ve always known and loved behind. Whether it is to preserve our sanity, our identity or our physical safety, we do it because we believe we are not fully supported where we come from, and that is a story no small talker can really bear.

© giuliakollmann 2023-01-11

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