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Cultural Migration in Autobiography Grundtvig Partnerships 2009-2011

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

e-mail: kszia@komesnet.com.pl http://cma.internetdsl.pl

57

My better half Adriana Cela

On that long winter night we planned our life together: We didn’t need so much, just a job for him, a house to rent and some money. So he went back to Italy, to work and save. As for me, I did have a job which I liked very much…but and one night: “Do you want to join me?” I went frantic, thinking of parents, friends, my job, all my world, but his moving, tender voice was more important than everything else. “Yes!” I said……..Now he was sleeping next to me, while traveling towards our home, the long desired home I would furnish and embellish as I wished. We would have a wonderful time together, we would spend all the night out and nobody would be waiting for us. HE was what I missed, what made me complete, ‘my better half’! My better half was now sleeping next to me and I felt bad, I felt very bad, I wanted to shout: “ Stop!”. Why ‘stop’? What was wrong? What made me cry so painfully? Everything was as I had planned it, as I had dreamt of, but something, unpredictable, was hurting me. He was NOT my better half, he and me were one half, while the other had been left behind, in the country of the apples, and I saw myself as a quarter of an apple marooned in the country of pears. And then came for me the time to understand the meaning of the word ‘foreigner’. For the first time but not the last I felt I was a foreigner. Almost any time I met somebody the question was always the same. I could read that question on the very face of people, even before he asked me…he was there, smiling, greeting me and a few seconds later…done! I didn’t know the exact meaning but I didn’t like it, it was not a real question. I remember a lady: ”Your husband IS ONE OF US, isn’t he?” “NNOOO, he comes from the outer space, like me, I’m an alien!”, I answered ( silently to myself…). I couldn’t stand it! Why everybody seemed to think, to hope, that my husband were ‘from here’? Maybe, if so, I could change, and forget my traditions and my family wouldn’t be ‘foreigner’, maybe only ‘half-foreigner’…Why couldn’t they accept us the way we were and are. But there are so many differences?

Adriana Cela was born in Lushnje, Albania, in 1982. She lives in Castelbolognese, She is married and has a daughter.