World in Between

by Kenan Trebincevic

  “What does that mean?” I ask, getting out of bed. Because it’s freezing, Eldin and I have been sleeping in our sweatpants, long-sleeve shirts, and sweaters. Mom and Dad wear pajama bottoms with sweatshirts. Mom starts looking through our bags to find socks.

  “It means they can kick us out anytime,” Eldin says.

  I guess it’s good we haven’t unpacked.

  Fadil takes the day off to help us with our application. He leads Uncle Ahmet, me, Eldin, Mom, and Dad on two trains and a trolley to a big government building. Fadil has been in Vienna for seven years, is well-dressed, has a good job, and speaks German fluently, so he’ll be able to vouch for us if there are any problems.

  “Listen, Kenji,” my uncle says, struggling to board the subway with his crutches. “This country is treating us nicer than our own people. They took in a hundred thousand Bosnians, and they give us cash each month. They’re saving our lives.”

  When we arrive, there’s a long line of refugees from Bosnia and Croatia. I hope I’ll recognize someone. Everyone seems scared and helpless, like us. It makes me feel more normal to hear my language spoken all around me and to be with people who understand what we’ve been through. I realize how alone we were as the only Muslims in our Brčko apartment for so many months.

  “Keka!” yells a tall man I vaguely recognize from Dad’s gym.

  “Jusuf! How are you, my friend?” My father hugs him.

  Eldin nods, and Mom shakes his hand. We’re all happy to see someone from our town.

  “How long have you guys been here?” Jusuf wants to know.

  “Just arrived last weekend,” Dad says.

  “How is your family?” my mother asks.

  Jusuf breaks down in tears. “My Vehida didn’t make it.”

  Dad puts his arms around him. Jusuf says his wife was killed by a bomb. Mom tears up as he describes the destruction, just a few miles from our home.

  “We’re the luckiest Bosnian Muslim family here,” my uncle whispers in my ear. “We haven’t lost any relatives.”

  The six of us stand in the line for hours. To get visas, Fadil says we’ll have to show our passports and papers. At last we fill out forms that say our family of four can come here to pick up schillings each month, and my parents and Eldin sign an agreement promising not to get jobs. We’re now officially exiles, not legally allowed to work, and we’ll have to apply for new visas every three months to stay in Austria.

  As they stamp our passports, I look down at mine, labeled YUGOSLAVIA, the name of the country that threw us out. But it’s not my country anymore. It’s nobody’s. It ceased to exist when all the republics separated. My brother explains that all the Yugoslavians we knew are currently living in the separate nations of Bosnia, Croatia, or Serbia.

  Uncle Ahmet gets his stipend right then. We have to wait until next time.

  “Why don’t they want us to work for our money?” I ask my uncle on the subway ride back.

  “We’d take jobs from the locals,” he says. “Though not that many Viennese want to clean toilets.”

  “They don’t want to encourage refugees to move here permanently,” Fadil explains. “It would drain Austria’s resources for affordable housing, schools, and medical care.”

  “Well, it won’t be for that long. We’ll all go back after we win the war,” I say.

  Uncle Ahmet pats my head.

  * * *

  I’m regaining the weight I lost while we were in hiding, and I’m getting taller too. All my clothes feel too small. My corduroy pants are so short that my ankles get cold, so I pull my socks all the way up. I’m embarrassed by how shabby Eldin and I look next to the Viennese kids, who wear puffy down coats with fur collars, high boots, cashmere scarves, and sheepskin muffs. The only sneakers I have are so small, my toenail gets swollen.

  When I complain, Mom says, “Have gratitude we’re alive and safe. Other Muslim families in refugee camps here have to live in decrepit buildings with no windows or privacy. Or in tents in the middle of nowhere.”

  She stops putting our clothes in the dryer when she does the wash, so they won’t shrink. Another Balkan boy Ahmet’s family knows gives me his old pants and shirts.

  I wish I could still wear the panda sweater Majka Emina made me, but it no longer fits at all. I hope she stays safe in Bosnia. Mom keeps trying to phone her, but there’s no signal—the Bosnian phone towers are still screwed up.

  I wonder if we’ll ever reunite with our relatives or make new friends, or speak the right language. How will we pay rent and bills if we have no jobs? Aunt Maksida says Mom can babysit and Dad can shovel snow or work as a gardener to get extra cash.

  “But Dad’s not a gardener or a snow plower,” I say. “And Mom’s too old to be a babysitter.”

  “No work is beneath us,” Mom tells me. “Whatever job you get, you must be the best at it.”

  I’m glad nobody is pushing me to work, or to go to school where they speak a different language, surrounded by strangers. After Vik and my friends betrayed me and Almir and Omar disappeared, I don’t want to take a chance on new friends.

  Though we aren’t enrolled anywhere, Agnes Rath gets Eldin and me special student IDs so we can use public transportation for free. The red trolley cars are my favorite, a fun cross between a bus and the kind of trains we took back home. I’m impressed by how fast the underground trains go and how neat the Austrians are. I like the clean streets, with no shattered glass from broken windows crunching under my sneakers and no smelly, rotting garbage piled everywhere. But I wish I had something to do.

  After a week, I can’t believe I’m actually missing my old classes. Eldin and I are bored, so we just ride up and down the rails every day, picking up bits of German, memorizing each stop.

  “Karlsplatz, Landstrasse, Längenfeldgasse, Praterstern, Schottenring, Schwedenplatz . . .” I recite the funny names. “What’s the next transfer station?” I quiz Eldin, imitating the man calling out the names over the loudspeaker.

  “You tell me, you weirdo!” my brother says.

  One morning we get off at the Praterstern stop to check out the enormous Ferris wheel at the Prater amusement park. Eldin has enough change for one ride for each of us, and decides on the roller coaster.

  I’m scared of heights and fear I’ll fall out, but I don’t want to be left alone in the crowd either. So I go with him, keeping my eyes closed and my arm clutching his the whole time. When we get off, I feel dizzy and wobbly.

  “Man, I wish we had enough money to do it again,” Eldin says.

  We spend another afternoon at a toy store, where there’s no fee to try out video games, though the manager keeps an eye on us to make sure no one’s hogging the machines. Austrian kids we meet there, waiting to play Super Mario Land and Mortal Kombat, ask us questions I can’t understand, but everyone’s kind to me.

  Still, I’m on edge. I keep reminding myself to be grateful that we’re safe. But with no classes, sports, teammates, friends, or home of our own, I feel sad and restless.

  A wealthy colleague of Fadil’s recommends Eldin for a top-notch karate club, which allows him to enroll with no payment. He takes me along to the sports center, and they let me come in and watch as they do freestyle exercises. The sensei asks if I want to try, but everyone’s older than me, and I’m too intimidated. Plus, it doesn’t seem worth the effort to start anything new when I don’t know where I’ll be next week.

  I adopt Eldin’s radio obsession, checking constantly for war developments. At least we can listen to it at full volume here. The news isn’t good, though, and it looks like we’ll be staying in Vienna for a while. Everything’s in limbo.

  * * *

  In March, we return to the big government office to pick up our first payment. It’ll cover enough groceries until the next check. On the way back, I stop to drool over pastries in the window of a bakery: pyramids of muffins, tall cakes, different color tarts. Mom says I can pick one. I choose a sugar doughnut that makes my tongue do somersaults.
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  A few days later Agnes Rath stops by the apartment and tells my mother, “We just found out it’s illegal for kids under eighteen not to be in school, even for refugees. So I’ll enroll Kenan. It’ll help him learn German.”

  I’m not happy to hear this. I wish I could go with Fani, but she attends a private all-girl’s Catholic school, where my cousins Minka and Almira have also enrolled.

  The next Monday, Mrs. Rath takes me to a public elementary just a three-minute walk from where we stay. It’s a huge, five-story redbrick building. I’m worried about getting called on in class or picked on. I hope I can at least play fudbal at recess.

  She brings me to the sixth-grade teacher she calls Herr Huber. He’s tall, with combed-over red hair. Unlike Mr. Miran, who was serious in his brown suits, Mr. Huber wears jeans, with a colorful green button-down shirt. He makes the class laugh with jokes I don’t get. I laugh anyway, covering my mouth so they won’t see my teeth. They’re all watching me, and I’m afraid they’ll think I have no sense of humor.

  I hate being here, stuck in a sea of strange kids speaking a language I don’t understand. German is filled with short words, and after a while it sounds like a dog yapping. I’ve never seen so many people with red hair. I feel like a foreign freak. I keep my head down, wishing I could jump out the window.

  At the break, Mr. Huber calls three classmates over to meet me. Their names are Ivo, Olivia, and Tarik. Mr. Huber explains that Ivo and Olivia were born here in Austria, but their families are from Croatia. Tarik is a refugee from Bosnia, like me.

  “How bad was the war?” Ivo asks in my tongue. I’m so happy someone here understands me!

  “Pretty bad. There were dead bodies on a meat truck right down my block.”

  “Wow, cool,” he says, impressed.

  “Sorry,” says Olivia. They offer to be translators for me and Tarik until our German gets better.

  “What town are you from?” Tarik asks me in Bosnian.

  “Brčko.”

  He nods. “I was born in Orašje, half an hour from there. We escaped last month.”

  “I know your village,” I tell him.

  “I hope we’re kicking some butt back home,” he says.

  I smile, high-fiving my new friend, the first kid my age I can relate to here. He’s staying in Vienna with a bunch of extended relatives too. If I get picked on, Tarik will defend me.

  “Yo, I have a lot of war songs on my Walkman,” he adds. He shows me a cassette tape filled with patriotic Bosnian ballads I recognize from listening to Eldin’s radio.

  When the break is over and we go back to our lessons, I like knowing Tarik can’t understand what the teacher or other kids are saying either. Being in the same boat with him makes me feel less alone. Plus, we have Ivo and Olivia to tell us what we missed. And Mr. Huber doesn’t make us take notes or do homework.

  Recess is great: Tarik and I listen to the music on his Walkman, and another kid lets us borrow his Game Boy. I’ve never played a handheld video game before. I want to get my own when we can afford it.

  In the afternoon, we have gym class. An Austrian kid asks me, “Fussball, Kenan?”

  I realize he means fudbal. Aha. That’s my ticket! I can’t wait to play, but I want Tarik on my team. “I’m with him,” I tell Mr. Huber in broken German. He nods and puts Tarik and me together. We fly down the field, passing the ball to each other, and Tarik scores with my assist.

  “Tor!” everyone yells, which must mean “goal” in German.

  “Tor! Tor!” I cry, pumping my arms in the air. My heart pounds against my rib cage. I haven’t felt this happy in nearly a year.

  * * *

  “Me and Tarik were the best fudbal players on the team,” I tell Eldin that night.

  “That’s not saying much in Vienna,” he jokes, since they’re much better at skiing and sledding here than at fudbal.

  The next day, Ivo and Olivia tell us that our class is going to take a fun field trip to a park later that week. Everybody’s bringing their own lunches to eat outside, so on the morning of the trip, Mom packs me a tuna sandwich for the picnic.

  When I return from school that afternoon, she gives me a special present: a notepad with black and white graphite pencils that she found at an art supply store. “This will keep you out of trouble,” she says.

  I love it, and I love having something new of my own. I draw for hours in my free time, making pictures of tanks, planes, and rifles, and of boats sailing under the blazing Balkan sunsets I miss.

  Sixteen

  April–June 1993

  Everyone in our family reads Oslobodenje, the international Bosnian newspaper for refugees, filled with updates and pictures of the war. One day in April, before school, Mom cuts out an ad for a contest for young artists and shows it to me. I look over the rules while I eat breakfast at the small table—since we can’t afford to get more furniture, we take turns eating there. You’re supposed to submit two illustrations inspired by your current life.

  “I want to enter this,” I tell her.

  “You should. You’re a great artist,” she says.

  That evening, I do a drawing of a dove embedded in a broken missile. For my second entry I draw a boy sitting on a globe, yearning for his homeland. To his left, bombs drop on a cemetery filled with tombstones and crosses. I title it Sad Days. In a paragraph underneath, I write, “My name is Kenan Trebinčević. I’m a 12-year-old born in Brčko. Last year, we were thrown out of our apartment. My dad and brother Eldin were put in a concentration camp. My Serb best friends beat me up. My favorite teacher betrayed us. After nine months, my family of four escaped to Vienna, Austria, on January 3, 1993, to live with my Uncle Ahmet and Aunt Maksida on Fleischmanngasse Street.”

  Mom stamps the envelope for me, and we put it in the mailbox in the hallway outside our apartment, with plenty of time to make the deadline. Even though I know they’re going to announce the winner in two weeks, I check the paper every time we pass a store that sells it, just in case the judges decide sooner.

  Exactly fourteen days later, we’re out for pizza—with mushrooms, our favorite, and the only topping everyone in my family can agree on—and Eldin finds a copy of Oslobodenje at a stand inside the subway station on the way home. I watch as he sits on a bench and scans the pages one by one.

  “Ah, look, Chicken Arms, you won!” he yells suddenly, jumping up in the air. “Great job.”

  Dad picks me up and spins me around.

  “You’re a published artist now!” Mom says.

  The last time I felt this proud was when I scored the winning goal during recess back in Brčko. I’m pumped to be recognized for something other than sports. We all crowd around to examine the paper carefully. There’s my drawing, along with my paragraph about the Serbs who turned on us. The article also notes my full name and when we escaped, plus our new address.

  A week later we get a letter from Dad’s colleague Truly, who saw Oslobodenje in Germany. I didn’t realize you could get this newspaper in a bunch of other countries! Truly sends his phone number, and that evening we call him from an outside pay phone to catch up and make sure his family’s okay.

  Mom kisses my forehead after they hang up. “I’m proud of you.”

  She keeps my drawing in her purse, showing it off wherever we go. I like letting people know what happened to us, and I’m awed that my art helped my folks find Truly.

  In the days that follow, we hear from other friends who are dispersed. The whole world of displaced Bosnians has seen my story. It makes me feel important and powerful.

  * * *

  But my power doesn’t help us feel at home in our tiny Viennese apartment. It becomes harder for eight of us to be crammed into a little two-bedroom. Something is going on with Uncle Ahmet. He’s eating dinner late and refusing to leave the kitchen so we can shower, even when it’s eight or nine p.m. on a school night.

  He stops sharing the soups and meats that Maksida cooks, so we go out for cheap pizza to stay out of their
way, or we have salami and cheese sandwiches in our bedroom. We try to sneak a shower in the afternoon while my uncle is napping. But if we wake him up, he yells, “Stop the damn noise!” If the door squeaks, he mutters, “Shut the hell up.” We’re clearly getting on his nerves.

  I don’t know who talks to the Raths about our troubles, but they find Mom, Dad, me, and Eldin a new apartment on Ungargasse, where we can live for a while before it’s rented out. It’s small, but has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a courtyard garden full of purple, blue, and pink flowers, and the wooden floors are shiny and smell like expensive polish. Everything echoes when we talk. I love how spotless and bright it is.

  We get two used beds, an old sofa, and chests of drawers that someone donated for refugees, and Enes gives me a G.I. Joe and a miniature toy tank, which I immediately treasure. For the first time since arriving in Vienna months ago, we finally unpack our clothes.

  My parents still don’t have jobs, and Eldin doesn’t work or go to school, but still, I almost feel normal again.

  * * *

  “I hear Sejo and Edita are here in Vienna,” Dad says one day in May. “At the Bosnian refugee camps. Let’s visit.”

  That Saturday, the four of us take the trolley and two subways to visit my parents’ friends, who are living in the make-shift migrant quarters that have been set up in a cold, sterile former hospital. It’s like an abandoned warehouse, with a broken elevator and only curtains for privacy. Even the hallways are used as rooms, separated by hanging bedsheets.

  I can hear everyone’s conversations around us as we walk up and down the halls looking for Sejo and Edita. Kids are yelling, shouts echoing. It’s dirty and smells of cigarettes. I had no idea it could be this bad here for people like us.

  “This place used to be a mental asylum,” Eldin says quietly.