Brief for Open Call on Home: There are physical and metaphorical places that give meaning to the word ‘home’. What does home mean to you? How does it inspire or manifest itself in your artistic practice? How has your idea of home and your identity been challenged, misconstrued, and/or transformed over time?
Mos Harroni (Albanian) – “Don’t forget”
I walk through the door of my East London house, located in a Barking council estate, and I have arrived home. Taking my shoes off as it is custom, I greet my mother and father in Albanian. My home teleported me into a cultural in-between, where I was neither here nor there.
My home had nothing but relics of the past. Reminders of our history; indicators of our intergenerational trauma. I enter the kitchen, and I am taken to 1800s. My mother is baking Baklava, a family recipe she says has been in our blood for generations. She carries on this tradition, as it connects her to her historical matriarchs. Women that did so much yet reaped so little.
Women that simply carried on, even in the face of the violent displacement. My mother’s family had descended from a line of “Muhaxher.” Muslim refugees that were forced to flee their native homes in southern Serbia at the turn of the 20th century. For they had the “wrong” religion and the “incorrect” ethnic identity.
My ancestors would come to settle in Prishtina, Kosova – but would never forget the homes they were involuntarily made to leave. Three generations down the family line and my mother had to make that very same decision – leave her native land or be killed or forcibly displaced.
Yugoslavia was collapsing, and Kosovar Albanians were living under an oppressive system. My mother collected her memories, making sure that she knew exactly how to make the traditional foods that had existed in her family for generations, before being made to leave. And here she is nearly 30 years later preparing these dishes, in our east London home, giving these bricks and water so much meaning.
Because this isn’t just food.
It isn’t just tradition either.
Its connection.
It’s the reminder of the homes she once left behind. It’s the incorporation of the aromas of her childhood, into a space of unfamiliarity desperately seeking to make it known. It’s the deep-rooted ability my mother has in making foreign spaces home, out of necessity – a trait she inherited from those matriarchs bleeding through her veins.
I hear perpetual shouting from my living room, and as I walk in to my “salon” (living room), I am transported into a world of politics. My father was watching the Kosovan news (lajme) frustrated that the issues he left behind were still not solved, nearly three decades later.
I always ask my father whether he wanted to come to the UK, and he always responds with a very direct JO (no). That even though he has lived here for as long as he has, his soul still yearns to be “home”, among his 12 siblings and his mother – some of whom are no longer with us.
My father came from a line of farming folk, from the north-eastern part of Kosova. He says we have been farming folk for at least 8 generations back. I grew up in this east London home with the image of my grandfather, Nebih Gashi hanging proudly on our wall. But I saw the way my father looked upon his gaze. In a way that brought back his memories of Kosova, but also in a way that produced shame at the fact he left. My father never thought of leaving, and often tells me how he couldn’t believe that “Yugoslavia would do this to us”.
So, as I walk around what is my home, I am reminded by the homes my mother, father and ancestors left behind.
My parents engage in conversation with one another about whether it is “better here or there (Kosova)”. My mother’s response always centres around her children, “home for me is wherever my children are” she passionately evokes. My mother represented the strength and sacrifice’s so many women had been making for generations. She left her home, her relationships and everything she knew – so that her children would be raised in safety. While so very selfless – it was completely unfair that women had to give up their lives so that others could have theirs, even if it is for their own children.
But my father responds in a different way. While he also loves his children and is grateful to have found a new sense of home in the UK. The perpetual longing for the Kosova he left behind runs deep – internalising within him, potentially expressed in the emotional unavailability he has expressed to us at some points in our lives.
I wanted my parents to be like those I saw reflected on the television, connecting us to the outside world. I was negligent as a child. But a child wants what they want, and I wanted our home to be as it “should be.” The westernised dream I felt inadequate about not having. That while our home was located in the “right” place, in the west, it abided by and carried the traumas of the Balkans at its core – engraining our “otherness”. It was like an island with bridges connected to Britain, and much longer more fragile, yet determined ones connected to Kosovo.
These bridges to Kosovo sometimes made me feel like an outsider in my world and made me feel like my home was not good enough. But as I have matured, I have found the wonders entrenched at the core of my home.
This three-bedroom, semi-detached maisonette may be small, and it may be located in a council estate, and it may even be old – but this home served a vital purpose in my life. It laid down the most important foundations in educating me of the homes before me. It became the space of safety my parents were searching for, when they came to this country. It became their early stepping stones, as they made sense of the new world around them – while making sure to incorporate their old one.
But it also served the purpose of a time capsule, Kosova was and is entrenched to this East London home – even conveyed in our garden, that can easily be mistaken for a Mediterranean oasis in the summer. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So, as I go to set the table, for the incredible dish I helped my mother make. I make sure to set an extra metaphorical plate too.
For whom you may be thinking?
For the ancestors that we can never forget or leave behind. While I have learnt to engage with my history and trauma in a healthier way then my parents did. I make sure their memories aren’t forgotten, and most importantly that they aren’t left starving. For this is their home too, even though it’s some thousands of miles away from the one they were born into, and exists in a completely different time to them. Their memories flow through us, edhe nuk muj mi harru kurr (and I can never forget them).
What are some racial misconceptions / ignorant remarks people have made at you, about your culture or your identity?
Came to the UK for benefits.
Scroungers.
Why are you Muslim?
Why don’t you go back home?
Foreigner
You are not really British!
Your house is so nice for one in a Council estate.
How did you get here, via boat or lorry?
You’re legal right
Do you even have a passport
You don’t look like a Muslim!
You should just go back if you don’t like it here!
Why are you complaining?
How can you be Muslim, but your mother does not wear hijab?
Broken Englizh 