My Cat Yugoslavia

by Pajtim Statovci

  A cigarette wet with spittle dropped from the corner of his mouth.

  I gave him a murderous look and hid the cat under my shirt. If everybody around here was as disparaging about cats as this man, I thought, it was best to keep it hidden.

  Once back in the hotel room I put the cat in the bathtub and took off my shirt, which had started to smell sour. It was covered in dark spots, grease from the cat’s fur.

  To my surprise, the cat turned out to be one of the gentlest cats I’d ever encountered. It was a real charmer. When I started running water into the tub, it looked up at me with its bright glowing eyes and didn’t seem to care a jot about the water flowing over its body. Instead it started to wiggle its bottom. If it had behaved differently I would have understood; if it had scratched or bitten me, I would have assumed that must be because it had been pelted with stones, taunted, and beaten simply for being a cat.

  Because its fur was so terribly tangled, I pampered the cat with fruit-smelling shampoo. Soon you’ll be clean, clean and happy, and you can eat as much food as you can manage, I said as I ran my fingers deep through its rough coat.

  As I fluffed its fur, the scratches and bruises, the wounds and scars were revealed one after the other. Of course, this cat had been through a lot, it had fought with other cats and gone without food for so long that it had shrunk to half its normal size. What a heartless and unpleasant thought. Yet this made it all the more extraordinary that the cat didn’t make the slightest fuss about its bruises. Instead it lowered its head, closed its eyes, and retreated to the far end of the tub as though it were ashamed of them.

  I dried the cat carefully and lifted it back into my arms. From now on your life will be different, I said. It will be a good life; I will make sure of that. You won’t have to go out into the streets or suffer ever again. I promise you that.

  Then I called room service and ordered some food for the cat, and the cat ate heartily. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, French fries and beef, creamy gravy and fresh white bread—everything I took from the tray and put on its plate, it ate.

  “Well,” I said.

  I smiled. I watched it and waited at the other end of the table to see whether it might smile back at me, but it was still eating, eating ravenously. Once it had finished its meal, it meticulously licked the plate and meowed for more.

  “You can’t eat everything at once,” I chided it in a fatherly tone.

  I stood up and went over to the bed to lie down. The cat hopped down from the table, ran across the room, and jumped up onto the bed. It climbed on my stomach and paced back and forth until it found a position that was so comfortable that it started breathing contentedly, as calm and relaxed as someone on holiday.

  Once both of us were on the verge of falling asleep and the cat luxuriously stretched its limbs and rolled on its side, almost from force of habit I placed my hand on its little head. The cat twitched as though it had flinched at its own dreams, and I began to stroke it. My hand first stroked its head and neck, then its soft, long-clawed paws and thighs, its stomach and back, and finally its tail and hind legs, and it purred next to me in such a way that I knew it was overjoyed.

  1994

  THE SNAKES

  One night my younger son Bekim started having nightmares that wouldn’t go away. He came into my bedroom shouting and holding a rolling pin with such force that his knuckles were white. A blood-red glow had risen to his cheeks. I grabbed him by the shoulders and asked what was wrong.

  He began telling me about his nightmare, about the snake dangling from the light fixture on the ceiling that was so long and powerful it only had to wrap itself round the lampshade once, then it could stretch out the rest of its body to reach him.

  “Shh,” I said. “There’s no such thing.” I tried to reassure him and send him back to his bedroom though he had his hands between his legs, which were tense and stiff.

  But he shouted again, and this time he shouted as though he was going to die. I ran to him and turned on the lights, took him in my arms, and told him there were no snakes in the room, not under the bed and not under the blankets. It hides when it hears footsteps, he told me.

  I couldn’t understand him. The dreams he told me about were terrifying. They featured cobras, their flared heads hooded, and giant boa constrictors that could crush entire buildings, and small black snakes with red eyes that could talk and threaten him. They wriggled around one another in such a tight ball that their skins creaked like wet rubber. Open your mouth and I’ll kill you. Go on, open it if you dare. These were the kinds of things the snakes said to him.

  “Shh,” I said once again, though I shuddered.

  I sat next to him almost all night. He slept quietly against the wall, his legs crossed, continuously flinching at his dreams. While he was asleep he ran his hand across the wall, touching its rough surface, and pressed his other hand against his face.

  A few evenings later I tried to get him to sleep by taking him into my bed, but all he did was howl. He clenched his teeth together and wouldn’t stop kicking. It was as though there was something right in front of him.

  “What’s the matter?” I cried.

  Eventually his shouting drove me into such a rage that I slapped him. I slapped him so that he would answer me. Or at least so that he might be quiet so that everyone else, his siblings and I, might get some sleep. But that didn’t stop him either. He didn’t feel a thing.

  The door opened and closed. Bajram walked along the hallway and into the bedroom, sat on the bed, took off his shoes, his socks and other clothes, threw them into the corner, lay down, and sighed with exhaustion.

  “Is he sick?” he asked.

  I told him the boy was having nightmares, violent nightmares about snakes.

  “It’ll pass,” he said dismissively.

  “And what if it doesn’t?”

  The desperation in my voice made him sit up from the sleeping position he had just assumed. Shut your mouth, of course it’ll pass. Bajram pressed his hand against the boy’s red, sweaty forehead.

  “Shh,” he said, trying to comfort the boy, but the crying wouldn’t stop. “They don’t exist,” he continued. “I’ll kill them if they come here. I’ll kill them all with my bare hands. I’ll tear them to pieces.”

  I wanted to stop him saying another word. The confidence in his voice made me wish he wouldn’t touch the boy. I wanted to crack him over the head with a chair, shout right into his ear, tell him that’s no way to comfort a small child. These were nightmares, not an ice-cream cone he’d dropped on the floor.

  “Shh now, shh now,” he repeated as though he had finally found a solution. The boy was kicking and screaming, his face was taut, and for a moment it looked as though he had stopped breathing altogether. I shook him, but this only caused more wheezing and crying.

  Bajram stood up angrily and knelt down in front of the boy, took him firmly by the shoulders.

  “What do you want?” he shouted, shaking the boy. Louder, louder, each time tightening his grip. I began to pity him. Bajram was shouting at him and I was shouting at Bajram, our selfish egos preventing us from understanding why one nightmare could be such a big deal. Why couldn’t he just go to sleep again once he realized it was only a dream?

  Finally Bajram moved his hands beneath the boy’s arms, took him even more firmly, and shook him so hard and so long that the crying finally stopped—because he had lost consciousness.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” I seethed once we had carried the boy back to his own bed and returned to our room.

  “Are you going to tell me how to raise my children?” he shouted and punched me in the chest with such force that it felt as though someone had dropped a bowling ball in a pool of water. One more time, he said. Do that one more time. It’ll be the last thing you ever do.

  As I lay beside Bajram and listened to his loud snoring, I sensed the sweat tingling on my forehead, the hairs stuck to my neck, my cold shallow breath that barely made it in and out of my mouth.
How could he fall asleep so easily? At a moment like this?

  —

  We took the boy to the doctor. During the therapy sessions Bajram sat in the cafeteria. He was ashamed of having to talk about matters like this through an interpreter. He couldn’t bear one of his compatriots seeing him in a situation in which he was unable to cope by himself.

  The hospital smelled of metal and disinfectant. The boy chatted with the female psychologist in a room that was brightly lit and almost devoid of furniture. At the beginning of the sessions they talked in general about animals. The psychologist drew up two lists: the first of animals the boy liked and the second of animals he didn’t like.

  Later on the psychologist showed me the lists. The first one included dogs, birds, fish, dolphins, and monkeys, and the second featured sharks, crocodiles, lions, tigers, and cats. She explained that children like animals with which they associate safe, positive images.

  “And they reject animals with negative associations,” she stressed. “Animals that they consider threatening and dangerous.”

  She placed a finger on the second list. Can you explain why he might have put cats on this list and not the other one? I couldn’t answer because I didn’t understand the point of the question. We hadn’t come here to talk about cats but about my son’s nightmares. On our next visit she asked the boy the same question. Don’t know, he answered.

  I told the woman that I didn’t particularly care for cats either, I am like my son. They are too erratic, too quiet. I said I couldn’t understand why Finnish people kept them as pets because in Kosovo the cat is considered a dirty animal. I expressed surprise that she was asking so many questions about cats and none whatsoever about snakes.

  The following week the psychologist showed me a picture of a tree with two thick branches: one represented the journey into my son’s mind and the other our journey out on the other side once we’d dealt with the root of the problem. The idea of this therapy was for us to gradually shed our emotional baggage—in this case the snakes—by looking into the mind.

  It was only after several months of therapy that the psychologist first mentioned snakes to the boy, though his symptoms hadn’t subsided. Most nights we had to listen to his cries, and we pitied him so much that we devoted all our spare time to him. We bought him what he wanted, we watched all his favorite TV shows, and on quiet nights we prayed that the nightmares might finally be gone for good.

  They drew pictures of the animals on the second list, talked about them and their role in nature, looked at photographs and later on even watched videos of them. The psychologist told him normal facts about these animals: how they behave in their natural environments, what they eat, and how they spend the winter.

  With each animal the psychologist asked him whether he found the photographs frightening or whether he might do something as brave as stroke the animal in the picture if he had the chance to do so. One by one, none of the animals seemed threatening any longer, and only then did the psychologist talk about snakes.

  According to the psychologist, nightmares like this can be caused by almost anything at all. The human mind is as fragile as paper, and it can tear at any time. Nightmares can be set off by a scary film or a horror story, an event that shocks the mind.

  She was convinced that this was not about a fear of actual snakes but about things the boy associated with snakes, the images and memories he had of them.

  Eventually I suggested to Bajram that we move somewhere else, as we hadn’t yet properly settled in Finland. It would do him good, the light, it’s so dark here all the time, I said. But then Bajram secured a job in Finland.

  He started teaching Balkan languages in different towns, places that during the 1990s saw an increase in immigrants, notably from the former Yugoslavia.

  He left early in the morning and came home late at night, but still it seemed as though Bajram was with us all the time. We couldn’t have our own space, because he had always reserved the bathroom. Or he was in the living room watching television, snoring on his bed, or wanted his dinner.

  The children began to grow and started to make different demands on us, asking for things, time, clothes, toys, makeup, sanitary products, and more space, because there was no room in their bedroom for anything except their beds. Their possessions couldn’t fit in the wardrobe.

  A small apartment like this isn’t designed for such a large family, I complained to Bajram, and when he said we couldn’t afford anything else I suggested we sleep in the living room and give the girls a separate bedroom. He answered by muttering that when you are the one paying for all this, you can make the decisions.

  Bajram stood up and went into the children’s bedroom.

  “Who do you think you are?” he asked them and kicked our middle daughter with his heel as she sat on the floor, making her crawl to the other side of the room.

  And her expression. I’ll never forget what my daughter looked like at that moment: her lower lip drooped down to her chin, and she scratched her side and turned to watch the television as though she wanted to hide how terrified she was. I haven’t brought you up to behave like that. You’re prepared to have your mother and father sleep in the living room, is that it?

  I watched as the children gradually began to avoid him more and more. Soon I was the only one to know about it when their shoes wore out or when they needed a new toothbrush. Why don’t you ask your father? I once asked my eldest daughter. He could buy you a new pair of mittens to replace the lost ones. She looked at me dumbfounded, leaned her head to one side, furrowed her brow, and said she would rather go without mittens than ask her father for anything.

  I swore to myself that when Bajram came home that evening I would ask him. When did you turn into this kind of man? Your children are afraid of you. But when Bajram came home he wrenched the door open and slammed it shut again and tore the shoes from his feet so that they struck the wall like stones.

  His heels battered against the linoleum floor as though someone were beating it, and he yanked the refrigerator door open so violently that the milk carton almost toppled out and fell on the floor, and he slammed his glass down on the kitchen counter so hard that it almost smashed, poured the last of the milk into the glass and drank it, and once the apartment was filled with the hoarse up-and-down gulps of his throat, I rubbed my earlobe and asked him whether he would like to eat now or rest first.

  12

  When people ask my name I sometimes give them an honest answer, but just as often I say it’s Michael or John, Albert or Henry, because that way I avoid the next question, which is, Where are you from?

  —

  I always wonder why people want to know that. Are they asking me because they are genuinely interested in my home country or in order to make judgments about me? Because it’s one thing to tell someone you are Swedish, German, or English and quite another thing to say you are Turkish or Iranian. It’s only very rarely that someone’s home country is of no significance at all. When I invite people to my apartment they generally accept, because they are fascinated by the fact that I own a snake. They take off their shoes, step inside, and see the terrarium with no snake inside it. Oh.

  When I tell them it’s probably under the sofa they stop at the living-room door and ask why I decided to have an animal like this as a pet. Before answering I always have to correct them. This isn’t any old snake; this is a boa constrictor.

  On a few occasions I’ve told them the truth and said I don’t know, because I’m actually afraid of snakes. Still, most of the time I simply say that I got it because I know a lot about snakes, because they are calm creatures, suitably independent, and don’t need much looking after. A snake is the perfect pet for someone living alone.

  When I start pulling it out from under the sofa, my guests suddenly need to go to the toilet, and when they come back they have to leave, they back off and start putting on their coats. It’s too big and terrifying as I wrap the length of its body round my shoulders, and its skin isn
’t slimy, as they’d thought, but dry like soft plastic, like shining silicone.

  A giant thing like that, wow, they gasp as they open the door. Aren’t you afraid? What if it gets into the toilet and slithers down the drain? They close the door after them, and I wonder why they ask things like that about the snake. It could just as well learn to moisten its skin in the toilet and slither out again. Or learn to do its business there just like everybody else. Is it really the case, I wonder as I stroke its coarse head, that people expect the worst of it simply because it is a snake?

  1995

  THE IMAM

  Bajram had heard of a Turkish imam living in Helsinki who had the power to exorcise evil spirits from the body. Three days later he knocked at our door. He had a congregation of more than a hundred members in Helsinki.

  When the imam stepped into our house, there couldn’t be any crosses on display. If the remote controls had accidentally been left across each other they needed to be moved and placed adjacent to each other, because otherwise the exorcism wouldn’t work. We took all of the cotton swabs out of the bathroom cabinet and placed them in a row on the floor, we emptied all possible cupboards and drawers and placed their contents in similar fashion on the chest of drawers, on the floor, and on the beds. Worst of all were the clothes in the cupboards because their sleeves might have accidentally folded in a cross. Then there was all the cutlery in the kitchen drawers, the forks, the knives. Eventually we stuffed all our clothes, cutlery, and food into enormous black garbage bags and took them out to the car.

  “Only God can help him,” said Bajram. “God will judge every dead Muslim, and he will torture any who have lied and who do not pray. All those who have been unfaithful. All those who have sex out of wedlock and who drink alcohol.”

  The list of transgressions and those who would be tortured was so long that there was surely no Muslim who had not lapsed at some point. Even Bajram himself used to say so.