“What?” asked the other one.
“That's my grandfather.”
“Who’s your grandfather?”
“The man she is looking for is my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather Daro?” asked the young woman working with my mother, totally confused. Zora now turned wide-eyed to the one in front of me. “The one who died a few years ago?”
“Yes, my grandfather Daro is, or was, the Bogdan she is looking for.”
Zora had apparently been telling the story of our fruitless search for her uncle. The young woman she was talking to continued, perplexed. “But your grandfather was not called Bogdan, like this woman's uncle. Your grandfather was Daro.”
The young woman, who told us her name was Tamara, said, “Well, he was also Bogdan Rojnič. After the first war, when the Italians were here, he officially changed his name to Dario—Daro for short. They had to if they wanted to stay and keep their jobs and homes. Slavic names were outlawed. So at work he was Daro, but at home he stayed Bogdan. Is that who you are looking for?”
“Bože moj. Oh my God,” said Zora. “Nowremember hearing he changed his name when we visited, but I forgot all about that. No wonder we couldn't find him!”
“You mean you’ve been here before?” the young woman named Tamara asked.
“Yes, my mother and I came just after the Second World War,” answered Zora. “We saw Bogdan and Roža and their son Matte.”
“Bože moj! Matte is my father. But he is called Milan. He still lives in the family home.”
“Oh dear. I can hardly believe this,” said Zora. “But actually, except for your blond hair, I can see the family resemblance.”
“But I had blond hair, Mama,” I interjected, laughing.
“Well, mine has some help,” said Tamara. “But I don’t think I heard about that visit. It was long before I was born. How, exactly, are you related to Bogdan?”
“I'm his niece, Zora. My mother was Katarina Rojnič, my father was Martin Marinovič.”
“Bože moj,” said an amazed Tamara one more time. “I’ve heard so much about your family. You lived across the road, didn’t you? And didn't you have lots of sisters? And one of you went to America?”
“Yes, there were seven of us children, all girls. I was the last one born here, the next two came after our parents fled.”
“What year were you born in?” Tamara asked.
“I was born in 1922.”
“And you’ve been gone ever since!”
“Yes, yes. My parents left Istria then. I grew up in Serbia and Croatia, and I’ve been living in America a long time. Since a few years after my visit here after the war. Your father was an idealistic young man then, and the Italians hadn’t even left yet.”
“Well, things have changed a lot since then. Hardly anyone even understands Italian any more. We also seem to be living through another war.” Tamara shook her head and paused. Then she continued. “And, as you just heard, Bogdan died some years ago.”
“Oh,” said Zora. “I was afraid that might be the case. He would have been very old by now.”
”Yes, that’s true. Even Milan is already a grandfather. My son Marko is ten.”
“My goodness, all these years . . .” continued Zora. “But that’s wonderful about your son!”
“And you said your name is Zora?” I could see a deeper question in her eyes, but I didn’t understand it.
Zora knew her name meant Dawn in Croatian, and that her parents had given it to her in a futile hope for a new dawn in their country after World War I. It was not an uncommon name where she grew up. But, as we were soon to learn, people of my mother's generation didn't have Croatian names, not in Istria.
“Yes, yes, I’m Zora,” Mama replied quickly, “and this is my daughter Tania.”
“Jako prijatno! Very nice to meet you!” The young woman turned to me. “So you’re from America then. Which part?”
“We live in San Francisco.”
“I vi govorite po našemu! And you speak our language!” she exclaimed.
“Of course,” my mother immediately interjected, proudly. “Both my children govore po našemu. I promised my mother they would, and there was no way I would disappoint her.”
“Was your husband a Serb?” the young woman asked. I wondered briefly why she didn’t say “a Croatian,” but the thought slipped my mind almost before I was aware of it.
“No, he was Russian. They spoke Russian with him.”
“Joj, joj, joj. You lived in America all this time, and your children spoke both your languages. And we think it’s too much to ask that our children learn English, which the whole world is now using. And they can listen to it on TV!”
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. But it doesn’t matter, you speak po našemu perfectly! Wait until I tell my father you are here! He will be so pleased.” She clapped her hands in front of her in glee. “Will you have time to visit my family?”
“We would love to visit your family!” I replied. “It’s the main reason we came here, along with seeing the home my mother was born in.”
“I will call them and tell them you are here. Can you come back in a couple of hours when I am off work and they have had time to get ready?”
“Of course,” I replied. “My husband is in the car; we were just on our way back to our hotel in Pula. We can come later this afternoon, but we don’t know where to go!”
“Of course,” she laughed. “I’ll meet you at the town square and lead you up, all right? It’s very simple, we’re just halfway up the hill on the street from the sea to the church.”
“We know, we know,” I muttered ruefully, almost to myself. We had followed that description endlessly while looking for a house that was simply not to be found.
“That would be lovely,” said Zora. “We can be back by four, can’t we, Tania?”
“Definitely,” I said. “We’ll see you then!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Visitors from America
Matte, or Milan as everyone called him, was beside himself with joy.
“Došli ste iz Amerike da nas vidite! You came from America to see us!” he cried as we walked in. Everyone hugged and kissed, and exclaimed at the surprise of our visit, overwhelmed at the random chance that brought us to Tamara's counter at the bank.
Milan learned that Zora had lost her husband, and they exchanged children’s stories and spent a lot of time just sitting quietly and peacefully, absorbing. Amazingly, Milan’s birthday was that week and we were invited to the party on the following night.
At the celebration, tears and conversation flowed as if from a fire hose. Fifty years worth of stories as the older generation caught up on family and experiences. Those our age wanted to learn about life in America, and hear our thoughts about what was happening in Yugoslavia—or the country once known by that name.
The youngest ones had never met anyone from America. Tamara’s ten-year-old son Marko wouldn't leave my 6’6” tall husband's side.
“NBA, NBA,” he chanted at first. There was a famous and famously wealthy Croatian basketball player in America—Dražen Petrović, perhaps one of the best shooters ever—and all the young boys dreamed of the game as a way of escaping the drama and bad luck that was plaguing their own country.
Marko also ran around shouting “Rat, tat, tat! Rat, tat,” and pointing an imaginary machine gun. “Eliot Ness, Eliot Ness!” he shouted the name of the legendary prohibition agent from the 1920s.
I was afraid Harold would get sick laughing over this. Were those the impressions of America held by a ten-year-old in a war-torn country on the edge of Europe, in late 1992? Basketball players and prohibition agents?
It immediately transported me back to San Francisco in 1954. My brother and I, newly arrived, couldn’t speak a word of English. We needed to learn, and fast. But before we did, we would tear around the house with broken paint-stirring sticks in our hands, our version of toy guns. Pe
riodically one of us would face the other and snarl nonsense out of the side of our mouths, Al Capone style. I supposed Eliot Ness in 1992 Istria was only marginally odder than two young immigrants playing Al Capone when pretending to be Americans forty years earlier.
The birthday party for Milan included the entire extended family that was still in Istria. Several cousins had gone off to work in Germany. Those who—like my mother’s family—left when the Italians took over had never come back, even after the Italians were kicked out in 1947.
While Harold and I talked to the young people, Zora caught up on the family history. I heard vague references to someone in Argentina, something more about the relatives in Deda Marinovič’s house. There was clearly ongoing tension, but I was too busy translating for Harold and didn’t pay much attention. I was just thrilled she was absorbed in her family’s embrace.
We ate all my favorite childhood foods: grilled lamb skewers called ražniči, ground meat formed into small sausage shaped rolls called čevapčiči, grilled Hungarian peppers, and fresh tomato, cucumber and feta salad. It all could have come from my mother’s kitchen, but it tasted much better in the land where she was born.
“Tell us about the rest of your family, Zora. We haven’t heard from anyone since the war started. They used to come here occasionally, in the summer,” said Milan. “Have you been able to stay in touch with them?”
“I have,” Zora said, “but it has been very hard.”
Zora’s sisters’ families were now a group comprised of Serbs, Croats, Macedonians and Bosnians, and their religions included Catholic, Orthodox and Moslem. During the war, they were split into opposing camps and had no ability to communicate with each other.
Zora was the connector between the sisters. She could reach each of them by telephone, even though they couldn’t reach each other. At first, they were all anxious to hear about each other. Then it started. First the husbands started cursing the Serbs, or the Croats, depending on who it was. Soon it became clear that family was not necessarily exempt from the offenses committed by both sides and that neither side was anxious to forgive or forget. Then the younger generation, those my age, became more nationalistic than their parents. After all, these were not their brothers or sisters, but cousins whom they rarely saw and could easily move into the camp of the “other side.” Eventually, Mama just talked to each sister about her life and her family. It felt like the only safe territory left. They stopped discussing the other sisters, or the war, or politics.
Zora told them about all this, but also told them how happy she was that each of the sisters still had her family to take care of her.
“Slavića said it best, you know,” Zora continued. “She is surrounded by her six children and all the grandchildren. She doesn’t care what country she lives in, she just wants to give them all the love in her heart and to make sure they all grow up knowing they are loved. Maybe then they can someday all love each other again: Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bosnians.”
“Maybe,” said Milan, but you could tell he very much doubted it.
Tania and Zora visiting Medulin in the 1990s. Harold was taking the picture, Milan (also called Matte) is sitting, and young Marco is to the left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Zora learns her real name
We found our way easily back to the house the next day. Zora was specifically not invited to go into the house across the street, the one she had been born in and which had been sold at a bargain to relatives. The two families still never spoke, and we didn’t go into the reasons for this animosity.
After the requisite cup of Turkish coffee, we walked up the hill to the church and cemetery. Like so much of the area, it was rundown and looked almost abandoned. We searched in vain for old tombstones. My ideas of documenting the family tree vanished as we walked around, talking.
“Oh, you won’t find any old tombstones here,” Milan said. “First of all, the old ones with Slavic names were all torn down by the Italian dictatorship in the early twenties. And we reuse gravesites here.” He told us that every fifty years or so they take out the old bones and bury the newly deceased in the same spot again. “Otherwise this cemetery wouldn’t hold everyone. You know this area has been occupied since before Roman times. This graveyard is ancient.”
Mama started talking about her last visit. “The last time I was here,” Zora said, “I was told that the authorities destroyed Slavic records. I never did see my birth certificate.”
“I don’t think your paperwork would have been affected,” Milan said. “Weren’t you born in 1922?”
“Yes, in July.”
“Well, the Italians had been ceded Istria by then. Those records were probably kept because there were no Slavic names recorded from the early 1920s on. That's why my name is Milan.”
“How can that be? My name is Zora, and I’m sure it was recorded at the church. My father said he met with Father Carlo personally.”
“He might have kept it to himself, to avoid upsetting your mother,” said Milan.
“Kept what to himself?” Zora asked.
But Milan had moved on. “I think you were born just before the crisis that forced your family to leave, right?”
“Yes. I was born in 1922, and Mussolini became the Italian Prime Minister a few months later.”
“Well, we can check at the church. They might have something. I doubt that you are part of the Italian Civil records. They only recorded the people who stayed. Do you want to go ask?”
“That would be amazing,” Harold said. He didn't know the town his grandparents came from, and here we were, with a possible direct connection to Zora's birth.
Fortunately it was Sunday, and we were able to talk to the young pastor, Father Dragan. His records were far from complete, but he did remember some old books from long before his time.
“The old pastors hid away some of the books or made copies, if possible. Let me see what I can find. There weren’t many from that period. It was when they were transitioning to government records rather than just church ones.”
“Marinovič, Marinovič. Here’s one from January 1919, shortly after the end of the first war. Born to Martin Marinovič and Katarina Rojnič. Girl, name of Slava.”
“Oh my, that’s my sister Slavića. Mine would be three years later, on July 21.” Zora seemed to want to move past that information quickly.
“Let me see if the next book is here.” He kept searching.
We waited expectantly.
“Here it is,” he said. “Yes, here it is. July 21, 1922. Born to Martin Marinovič and Katarina Rojnič.”
“Oh, Mama,” I said, excited. “That has to be you.” It was like being in the middle of an adventure story.
“Here you are,” said the pastor. “It says: ‘Girl, name of Albina.’”
“That’s not me!” exclaimed Zora. “Let me see that.”
He passed the book to her, looking concerned.
“The date is right, and my parents’ names are correct. But who is Albina? I’ve never heard of an Albina.”
“I’m afraid that’s you, Zora,” Milan said.
“What do you mean, me?”
“Well, think about it. Albina is Italian for Zora, or dawn.”
“Oh,” Zora whispered. “Oh.”
She just kept staring at the page with those words handwritten in ink on paper that was starting to yellow.
“I told you,” said Milan, “that they didn’t allow Slavic names in those days. Your father must have chosen the closest name he could. I know I was given the name Milan because Matte, their original choice, wasn’t allowed.”
Mama just looked at him, then at me, without saying a word. She backed away from us and sat down, speechless. She had just learned, at age seventy, that her father had kept something this important secret from them all those years. He was long buried, even if not in this cemetery.
What else might we not know about her family?
“Albina,” she said. “Albina.” She p
aused for a moment, remembering how much her parents had hated Mussolini and the Italians.
“Albina. You never knew that was the name they gave you?” said Harold, breaking into her thoughts. His next words caught all of us by surprise. “What a beautiful name!”
She stared at him, and slowly a big smile grew on her face. “Albina. It is beautiful. Thank you, Harold.”
“Shall we call you that from now on?” He smiled down at her, and she relaxed and hit his arm as she did when they teased.
“Oh no,” she said. “I think you can stay with Zora. Albina might be a nice name, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Doesn’t it make you angry?” Milan asked, clearly not expecting this reaction.
“No, I don’t think it does. My father probably didn’t have any choice. And you know, I didn’t live here through those times when the Italians were here. I don’t dislike them. The Italians in Trieste took us in when we had to flee Yugoslavia. They were good to us.”
“But what about the home you lost because of them, here?”
“For my parents that was important. They were never to have a house of their own again. But I never lived there. I never thought about it. It doesn’t feel like my home.”
“What does feel like home, Zora?” Milan continued.
Zora looked at me; she looked at Harold. I saw the new Zora, the reinvigorated proud woman who walked tall here, as she hadn't since my father died. I didn't know what she would say.
“My home is in San Francisco.” She nodded her head and smiled as she caught my eye, as if taking in her own words. “I have loved it from the day we moved in. I am an American. My children are Americans. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. And I certainly don’t want to hate anyone for things that happened years ago.”
“But don’t you miss our country, your country?”
“In the beginning, I missed my family terribly. Especially when we lived in the Campo. But I’ve been in America almost forty years, my children grew up there. They are very successful. It is my home.”
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