I didn’t have any problems as an Albanian because I was able to talk back to them. When Albanians were seen only as street cleaners, I was not a street cleaner, I was a child of rich parents. We rented an apartment, we had beautiful clothes, we studied, which meant we had very good material means, so we never felt like street cleaners. I didn’t identify with the street cleaners or with the bakers, and I was able to fight these concepts when they said that I was different. “All Albanians are one, but you are different,” they’d say. I used to argue them, “I am no different, we are one, we are Albanians, we are one, and we are all good. You are also street cleaners and bakers,” because they differentiated us and I used to argue with that. They would apologize, because I was able to confront them about their racism or discrimination on the same level. I never understood that until I went to America. When I went to America I understood the discrimination of African Americans, of the native Americans, and I understood that I too was discriminated. When I saw what happened to them I would say but we too have experienced this, this too happened to us. So my patriotic awareness began in America, not in Kosovo, not in Serbia, it really began in America.
I lived a bohemian lifestyle in Belgrade. I used to go out every night with artists, I traveled and I enjoyed life. Studying took the back seat, I wasn’t so interested in studying because it wasn’t that attractive. I finished language and literature at the department of Albanian studies in Belgrade. On June 20, 1980, there was an opening in a student exchange to America, to go and learn the language and work for three months, and I took advantage of this because I wanted to go to Mickey Mouse.
All my life I fantasized to go to Hollywood and become an actress, so something like that happened and of course [I fantasized] entering television. While going there on the plane I made a pact with myself. What do you want to be in America? An actress…but you don’t know the language that well, my accent was very strong, and my English wasn’t that good, I only knew 50 words altogether. Be a painter? No, life was too poor for artists, you had to suffer before you emerged. Dancer? I had gained a few pounds, No, not possible. No acress, no dancer, no painter. No one could live off poetry, so no poetry either. All right, I will be a writer, maybe I will make it as a writer. So I decided this on the plane: to be a writer.
When I landed in New York, New York was magical. Tall buildings, lights throughout the night, I stayed in New York four days. I had in my pocket the 50 dollars that my grandmother had given me, I saved those, and I knew only 50 words of English, I arrived in New York with that.The first thing I bought was a tee-shirt and a watch with Mickey Mouse that cost 40 dollars at that time. So I spent almost all my money and I had only 10 dollars left. The bus ticket for upstate New York, the place where they sent us to work, the Seniors Resident Hotel, cost 20 dollars. I didn’t have enough for the ticket, but I found 20 dollars in the street. God, I was so happy. They sent me to work to this seniors hotel for Hasidic Jews. So I bought the ticket and went upstate to work.
My first job was to fix the rooms, push people on their wheel chairs to the dining room to eat, and entertain old people. I worked there for four months. It was a fantastic experience, because I had no clue who the Jews were, I never saw them before, I never met them before. Since I was a Muslim, when I understood who the Jews were, I worried that maybe they would hate me. But they gave me much love, they gave me so much love, so much understanding, they taught me how to take my first steps in New York. For example, I didn’t know, and when they gave me tips, I would say, “No, no, it’s our tradition to help you and bring you to the room, I can’t.” Then the lady of the hotel told me, “Hey, you will be poor all your life. Why don’t you take the tips?” “No, it’s our tradition to help them and push them,” I said. “Ok, take the tips and bring them to me,” she said. So I started to take the tips and gave them to her. Like that, she saved two thousand dollars in tips for me. Because I, with my morals (laughs), my grandmother’s tradition, all that didn’t work. All of a sudden I started to use my grandma’s tradition, I really used it.
Other life adventures begun in New York, I decided not to go back to Kosovo, I wanted to live. When I returned to New York from that village with four thousand dollars, I went straight to the Bronx to live, a place where all Albanians lived. I rented an empty apartment, the only thing I owned was an old typewriter. I decided to use those four thousand dollars to publish a newspaper and I called it The Student Voice. I started writing about Michelangelo, other philosophers, Gandhi, whatever, I wrote about many things that the Albanian community then didn’t have a clue of, they weren’t on that level, nor had they the desire to learn. But I wanted to teach them philosophy and I spent all my money, I printed the newspaper with hundred mistakes, and went door to door to sell it. This newspaper never made more than 20 dollars and I lost all my money. This newspaper only had a first edition and died after the first edition with my own money too. I went on to become a waitress because I had to eat, but no problem. Like this, my adventures began in New York.
Fate brought me to a job where I had to take care of three children, whose mother had died. They were Jewish, and their father was a famous lawyer and they hired me. I started with my devilishness. For example, I had to go for the interview and I didn’t have what to wear, except a pair of black worn out pants. How could I go to the interview with those pants? I wetted them so they could look black. I wore them wet. When I arrived for the interview they brought me to a room with white couches. Oh Mother!…How to sit on those couches with wet pants? I sat with wet pants, trying to play the role. They asked me, “Do you know how to cook?” “Yes,” I said. “What do you cook?” “International food,” I answered. “What kind of international food?” “Italian, Greek, Turkish.” “What kind of Italian food, spaghetti?” they continued. “What kind of Turkish food? Musaka?” they said, and I repeated their words. “Ah! beautiful,” they said. I spoke like that, I looked good during the interview. After five days, they called me and told me that I was hired.
I started to work. The house was very big, white couches, two dogs, one black and one white, three children, fantastic. I had no clue of how to cook, I had never cooked two eggs or anything else. But I was the first white person in their service, so they were very happy to hire me, because I was a white person and from Europe. The lawyer knew the history of Kosovo better than I. He had books about all the oppressions, so it was there that I learned the history of Kosovo, who killed who, about persecutions and suffering. I learned everything from this Jewish man, in his service. One day his wife told me, “Do you know why we hired you? We felt very sorry for you. The day you came for an interview, you must have been so afraid that you peed on our couch. We had to get the cleaners to clean the couch.” I told her, “I didn’t pee, I was wearing wet pants because I didn’t have better pants for the interview.” (laughs) Anyway, that was my first adventure, and the lawyer’s children were very loving, the children of rich people. Because I grew up the same way, with wealth, I didn’t have the feeling that I was lower than them. I had the feeling that I was high enough, and used to tell them my grandmother’s stories. They loved me a lot and I loved them.
I used to call my grandmother on the phone to ask her how to make burgers, how to cook this and that. So I learned how to cook, while cooking for them, I really learned how to cook. I learned to cook my grandma’s dishes little by little, how to make pita [pie], and they loved all the food I made for them. This was a family that I adored, it was like my family but without violence. They were sad because their mother had died, they were rich like my family, but they were sophisticated and talked around the tables about all sorts of issues. I mean, I transformed the pain that I had from my family, and I acted like a family member in that artificial family that fulfilled my need and my pain from the separation from my family. My fate was a bit sadder, that was my fate.
One day I went to school to learn Hebrew, the Hebrew language. I used to write very well, and I started writing poetry in Hebrew. During the day I worked with the children, at nights I went to learn Hebrew. One night, while I was crossing the street, a car hit me, and there was like a premonition, somehow I had the feeling that something was going to happen, while I was walking my legs stopped and the car hit me. I knew the car was going to hit me. I had the out of body experience of death before dying. My soul left my body before I was hit by the car, I experience that. I saw the whole planet, I saw the house where I was born, I saw the house where I was living, I saw my body and it seemed so small. I thought, “Oh, my God, I was locked in that body.” Everything felt like eyes, without a body, totally free, there was no more limitation of the body. I saw how the car hit my body, how my body fell over the car, then went under the car and remained in a sitting position. A loud voice echoed saying, “Go back, go back! {in English} “I don’t want to go back,” I said. Then [I saw] a light, thin like hair. Was it imagination or wasn’t imagination, I don’t know, but I never forgot that feeling. Like a hair, it entered my body. Then I opened my eyes and a man was holding me. I grabbed his coat {grabs her own blouse} and said, “I believe in God, I believe in God.” {in English} Then he said, “Shut up woman, no one stops you, just shut up.” Then I passed out and went into coma for four hours. My left leg was destroyed, I lost 40 percent of my hearing, my spine was damaged, my lower back was in bad shape, I was paralized from the waist down. I stayed in the hospital for a year and a half.
I had many surgeries in the hospital. They straightened my leg somehow because it was frozen, bent. I laid on my back for a year and a half and was very bored in the hospital, I couldn’t accept my fate, and I turned into a lifeless body. From the waist up I looked beautiful and my friends would tell me that when they came to see me. I had long hair, I was young and beautiful. I used to laugh and tell jokes and they came to be entertained, and they stayed with me in the hospital. But I couldn’t move from the waist down. I joked a lot in the hospital, I used to press buttons, my luck was that hospitals in America were like hotels. I pressed the buttons and called nurses showing that my bed moved upwards, and I would say, “My legs moved.” “Please don’t play like this, we have hundred things to do, don’t call us,” they would say. “My legs moved, my legs moved.”
The doctor said that I wouldn’t be able to walk without support. I could make it to the wheel chair if my spine got better, and that would be a miracle. I used to say to the doctor, “You are wrong, God didn’t create me like this. I have to get up on my feet, I have a lot of work to do.” And after one year and a half I got up on the wheel chair, then using all my strength, I got up on my feet and made the first steps. I will never forget my first steps. It took me 45 minutes to make one step, only one step. My body wouldn’t move, tears were pouring and so was my sweat while I was hanging on the bars of physical therapy, I had to hold on, but I couldn’t take a step.
It took me six years to learn how to walk again, I walked again, I was tied with metal braces, from here {shows from the waist to the ankles} I had my legs from here to there, like this. I returned to the family that I had been working for, they accepted me like that. I went to school like that, the doors to the school opened up. When Joshua, the boy I took care of, grew up and got into Sarah Lawrence College, I went with him and his father to the college to help him settle in, and when I arrived to the college I fell in love with it. It was so beautiful, like in fairy tales, those stone buildings, so I sat down and started to cry and cry. The accident had not happened yet, this was my first year. So I went to help the boy, and while I was crying his father said to me, “Why are you crying?” “This school is not for me, I am poor, a servant.” Then he said, “You never know Malush, you never know.” He used to call me like that, “Malush.” I said to him, “Don’t joke with me, I don’t have money, I don’t have papers, I don’t even know English. This is just a dream. Look at your son.” Then I continued to cry.
That night God sent the father such a headache that he couldn’t lift his head up. Because there was a freshmen party to welcome the students, Joshua asked me, “Please come with me, everyone has a parent with them, please come with me.” I said, “Okay,” so I went with him, there were free food and drinks. I started to drink, and I got so drank, I got wasted. I told them I knew how to play Mozart on the piano. What Mozart? I had never played piano in my life. I started playing the piano. Americans are so nice, they are kind, even when they see a stupid person they don’t interfere. So I am playing and saying, “This is Mozart, this is Mozart.” They nodded, “Very good, very good.” What Mozart? A professor saw me there, he was a writer, and he started talking to me. We spoke for five hours, his name was Allan Gurganus. I have no clue what I must have said. I was so drunk and wasted. I only remember when he said, “I love your mind, I want you in this school. Do you want to study?” “Yes,” I said, “I’d love to study, but I don’t have money.” “I will get you a scholarship, I want you in this school, call me in three days,” he said that night. He gave me his card, but on the third day I was hit by a car and everything was over.
A year and a half later, Allan Gurganus saw Joshua and asked him, “Where is that woman you brought to the party?” He said, “She had a car accident.” “Ah, brother, can you bring her because she will lose her scholarship if she doesn’t come in six months. Her scholarship is effective for two years, but if she doesn’t come it will be lost.” Then Joshua called me, “Please come, come, because Allan Gurganus wants to see you.” I showed up tied up in braces and crutches. When he saw me like that, he started to cry, “What happened?” he asked. “A car hit me, this is what I have turned into,” I said. “Will you come to school?” he continued. “Yes, I will come to school.”
Well, where my life ended in one moment; it started again at that very moment. The school opened for me. Now I had to find a way to get to the school. It was my dream. The body no longer was important, really it wasn’t important. How to go to this school? How to go to school?So I began to talk to the people who sent me every day to physical therapy, there was a church there, I had finished my job with the Jewish family. I began to hang out with Christians, there was a First Baptist Church, they came and volunteered to take me to the church, gave me food, and I learned the Bible. I learned all about Christ, I wanted to be like Christ, because Christ was the most beautiful element in my life. He was very beautiful, he was true love, I became friends with Christ. And I said, “I will become like Christ or there is no other way. It was Christ that healed me.”
One day I was crying, and a man who drove me every day asked me, “What’s the matter?” “Brother, I got a scholarship for college, but I still have to pay 1500 dollars, and I don’t have that.” And he gave me a 1500 dollars check as a Christmas gift. This happened. Now, I needed 10 dollars every day to get to school and pay for buses and trains from New Jersey to Bronxville, New York. And I only had 1 dollar in my pocket but stopped by a diner to get a cup of coffee with my last dollar, thinking my life is a tragedy, always tragedy, tragedy after tragedy, and I am crying. The owner asked me, “What’s the matter?” “I got a scholarship to go to school, and someone gave me 1500 dollars and I only have 1 dollar left and can’t get to school.” “Can you work?” he asked. “I can work, but I can’t walk,” I told him, “I can work.” “Ok, come tomorrow at four in the morning and open the diner.” “Okay.”
When I went home, my neighbor’s wife came out and, a synchronization of events, came out and said, “My father died and I am giving away his stuff. Do you want this bicycle? Do you know, maybe it will help exercise your leg.” “OK.” I biked from the top of the hill down the hill, to the diner at the bottom of the hill at 4:00 am, I was there in front of the diner {explains the street with her hands}. The owner was Greek, all the enemies of my people gave me jobs, but the enemies never treated me like enemies, they loved me. I never looked at them as enemies. His name was Bill, when I went inside he had lined up bricks behind the bar so I could place my broken leg on the bricks so I didn’t have to move it.
My job was this, pour Coca-Cola like this {explains with hands}. I had my leg on the bricks, I placed my crutches underneath, and only moved my right leg and the right side of my body. I picked up dirty dishes, then placed them on top of the bar and handed them to the kitchen, then poured more Coca-Cola {mimics the work}. I used to make about 80 dollars per day from the tips people gave me. No one looked at me as a disabled person. I finished work at 2:00 pm, took a taxi, put my bike in a taxi because I couldn’t go bike uphill to go home.
At that time I used to work for the famous actress Olympia Dukakis, I had left the family I was working for and I took care of her children and I cooked for them. Olympia was never home, so I made food from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm for the kids of Olympia Dukakis. I lived in the attic over their garage because the attic had a skylight and when the moon passed through, my bed was under the skylight, and I used to watch the moon and the stars, and the moon entered like that. I wrote poetry just because of the skylight. I lived over the garage without a bathroom, or anything, just because of that skylight.
Then, from 4:00 pm I walked slowly on my crutches to the bus, carrying the books on my back. I took the bus from New York to New York City, that took 45 minutes. When I arrived in New York I had to take the subway from the West side to the East side, then take another train to go to Bronxville, thus I arrived in Bronxville at 17:45, just a few minutes before six o’clock I arrived in Bronxville, took a taxi to the College and attended classes from six to nine o’clock, then I returned home where I arrived at midnight, I had only four hours sleep.
This lasted for two and half years. During this healing period, during my studies, these studies became an escape from the harsh reality of America. I mean, I had no papers, no money, no health, no family, I was all alone without anyone, the end of the end. The phenomenon was that I had many friends and escaped into the beauty of this College. I finished before Joshua. I graduated with honors in December 1985, having started in 1983. Imagine, I finished in 1985. Right after that, in 1986 I started my Master’s at New York University and this was by mistake, because that’s how things happen to me, I had applied to English literature, but they forwarded my application to Liberal Arts. I graduated in Performance Arts, Theater, this is what they told me, I forgot now what they told me.
However, my professional life in America began from the bottom, really from the bottom of the bottoms, meaning I worked 27 different jobs. I was a clown, wrote my songs, wrote my poetry. I painted my clown face myself, dressed up by myself, bought my own instruments, castagnettes for children, I did it all by myself. I worked as a clown in Harlem for six months of course without pay because they were poor, and it was there where my interest for humanity began. I always had in my soul the desire to help others, to lift them up, to raise awareness and help others because I felt that I was very lucky. As a child we were very rich, the first bicycle was mine, other children didn’t have bicycle, and I let everyone ride my bicycle in turns and I would be the last to ride my bicycle. Therefore, I was incredibly lucky in that aspect because as children we had everything, all the best things. I also wanted my friends to have it, because they didn’t have it, they didn’t have it. My first chocolate came from Italy, my first doll came from Turkey. It was very important to remember all these things in my life and help those who didn’t have [them]. This is where my involvement in the world of the less fortunate began. Thus, I went to Harlem every day to work with the children who didn’t have a chance to pay for the celebration of their birthdays, so I worked for free. In the end naturally I went bankrupt because I had to live. I had to tell God, “Hey brother, why do you send me these ideas? Why do you send these ideas to my head and I can never make money?” Ok, I had to give that up, so I gave that up.
I was dog sitter, baby sitter, old people sitter. I was a cook and became a master chef. I learned, I went from not knowing how to cook two eggs to how to cook different cuisines. I used to cater parties and made a lot of money, then I spent all my money on the poor. This is how I was always without money, really always without money. I never had money and I always had money. I don’t know how to say it. Little by little America was a very good thing, I wanted to grow, to become a human being, that’s what my grandmother wanted me to be. I went to all the theaters, saw some plays for 32 time. My record is the Phantom of the Opera, I saw it 20 time, I have memorized all the songs. I brought whomever came to visit, all my guests, to see the Phantom, I know all the songs, when the actors make mistakes, I know everything. I saw all the plays, all the operas, all the ballets, whatever was in season in New York, I saw it all with all my guests.