By Olivia Maria Hărşan
Migration is a poem I wrote about six years ago. It details the transition and hardship of moving from a country of birth to an unknown new place. Once someone migrates they are stuck in limbo between the country where they have moved away from and the country where they have chosen to live. This is an issue that I have raised in my studies on Eastern European cinema - from a diasporic perspective. Romanian born director, Radu Mihaileanu, has a Jewish background and lives in France - so what does that make him?
This little piece of prose is the story of my family's migration from Romania to Australia back in 1991 when I was three years old.
Prologue.
Violently
exposed to this unknown world-
Humidity’s
odor shocks me.
What
of this foreign language that... drowns... my ears
Past.
Three
years old, on my mother’s hip, I depart from
All
I know. Str. Anton Pann, Sighisoara.
"Where
is Grandma?"
This
is our home now
At
this I feel a tear.
By
thirteen, I emerge being accepted for the way I match my words to those that
feel it counts-
"What’s
this?" they say, "You’re not from here"-
"Of
course" I lie, full of fear, knowing that
they may, in the canteen and the courtyard and the classroom
Slide
away into the corner where I do not sit.
Future.
And
what will happen at thirty-three?
What
of this distant accent can I still speak?
"It’s
nearly gone!" my mother weeps.
You
let go of your native speech
For
you were weak
And
let them change
Your
mind and your writing hand
Where
all your selves once lay
But
so quickly diminished when those kids
Said
you pray-
"Why
are you different?" they asked.
You never answered, instead you let them
make you someone else.
How
sad it makes your world
And
mine.
My mother, Mona, and I when we arrived in Germany,
on the way to Australia.
