 This is the Alta Fellows reading. Each year between four and six thousand dollar fellowships are awarded to emerging translators, meaning either unpublished or minimally published, to help them pay their hotel and travel expenses to this conference. This is an extremely competitive process. And you'll see in the front of your program, bios of all these six that were chosen this year. It's why we only have an hour for six people to read, which is why I'm being such a stickler for time. Please read their bios. These are phenomenal new translators. We're very, very lucky to have them here. I'm very glad I'm not a young translator because I would have no chance at this point if I were to compete with any of them. The Alta Travel Fellowship is funded by a combination of member dues and private donations, and we are just very grateful that we're able to come up with this money each year and have these young people read for us and be our fellows. Are there any former fellows in the audience? Okay, so I know there are more here at the conference who may have not trickled in yet. Well, we're very glad to have them part. Obviously, this is a wonderful way for Alta to grow as an organization. So please read the bios. I'm going to let them take over the reading, and I will ask Annie to begin. Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me okay? Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Marianne, for the introduction. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Annie Tucker, and I translate from Indonesian, and I can't help wanting to say I've seen in the materials it as Bahasa Indonesian. It's either Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian. So just since I'm sort of an ambassador, I wanted to put that out there. So now I'll begin. Eka Kurniawan is a young writer from West Java who has published three novels, three collections of short stories, and one work of literary criticism. This evening, I'm going to share the opening passage of Eka's first novel, Chantik Ituluka, or Beauty is a Wound. Upon its publication in 2002, Beauty is a Wound elicits critical praise, a wide popular readership, and with depictions of mass killing, rape, insanity, and bestiality stirred up a fair amount of controversy as well. It also introduced Eka's signature style, which is influenced by Sundanese myth and legend, Indonesian pulp horror, and the magical realism of Marquez and Rushdie. This combination contributes to a voice that is at once both highly original and emblematic of post-New Order Indonesian literature, which over the past decade has swelled with gleeful experimentation and roiled with a surrogate socio-political critique. The novel's opening illustrates this style and voice while introducing the main character, a self-possessed Dutch Indonesian prostitute named Dewey IU. In hearing it, I hope you will get a taste of Eka's vibrant and dark fairy tale Indonesia, and why his work has come to be described by readers in his country as an insolence to be proud of. In Bahasa Indonesia, the opening of the novel reads, Sorry Hari di akhir bulan marit, Dewey IU bangkit dari kuburan setelah 21 tahun kematian. Seorang boca gembala dibuat bangun dari tidur siang di bawah pohon kembulja, kencing di celana pendeknya sebelum melolong, dan keempat dombanya lari di antara batu dan kayu nisan tampa ara bagaikan sekor macan dilamparkan ketengah mereka. It's just getting started. One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewey IU rose from her grave after being dead for 21 years. A shepherd boy, awakened from his nap under a frangipani tree, peed in his shorts and screamed, and his four sheep ran off haphazardly in between stones and wooden grave markers as if a tiger had been thrown into their midst. It all started with a noise coming from an old grave with an unmarked tombstone covered in knee-high grass, but everybody knew it was Dewey IU's grave. She had passed away at 52, rose again after being dead for 21 years, and from that point forward, nobody knew exactly how to calculate her age. People from the surrounding village rushed to the grave when the shepherd boy told them what had happened. They gathered behind cherry shrubs and jatropha trees and in the surrounding banana orchards while rolling up the edges of their sarongs, carrying children and clutching broomsticks stained with mud from the fields. No one dared get too close. They just listened to the uproar coming from that old grave as if they were gathered around the medicine peddler who hawked his goods in front of the market every Monday morning. The crowd wholly enjoyed the spectacle, not caring that such a horror would have terrified each of them had they been all alone. They were even expecting some kind of miracle and not just a noisy old tomb, because the woman buried inside that plot of earth had been a prostitute for the Japanese during the war and the kiai always said that people tainted with sin were sure to be punished in the grave. The sound must be coming from the whip of a tormenting angel and so they were bored, hoping for some other small marvel. When it came, it came in the most fantastical form. The grave shook and fractured and the ground exploded as if being detonated from underneath, triggering a small earthquake and a windstorm that sent grass and headstones flying and behind the dirt that rained down like a curtain, the figure of an old woman stood, looking annoyed and stiff, still wrapped in a shroud as if she had only just been buried the night before. The people grew hysterical and ran away even more chaotically than the flock of sheep as their synchrony screamed echoed against the walls of the faraway hills. A woman tossed her baby into the bushes and a father comfortingly cradled a banana stalk. Two men plunged into a ditch, others fell unconscious at the side of the road and still others ran for 15 kilometers straight without stopping. Witnessing all this, Dewey IU only coughed a little and cleared her throat, fascinated to find herself in the middle of a graveyard. She had already removed the two highest knots on her burial shroud and now untied the two lowest ones by her feet to free them so she could walk. Her hair had grown magically so that when she shook it loose from the calico wrap, it fluttered in the afternoon breeze, swept the ground, and shimmered like black lichen in a riverbed. Her face was gleaming white, even though her skin was wrinkled, with eyes that came alive inside their sockets to stare at the people gathered behind the shrubs before half of them ran away and the other half of them fainted. She complained to no one in particular that the people were evil to have buried her alive. The first thing she thought of was her baby, who of course was no longer a baby. 21 years ago, she had died 12 days after giving birth to a hideous baby girl, so hideous that the midwife assisting her couldn't be sure whether it really was a baby and thought that maybe it was a pile of shit, since the holes where a baby comes out and where shit comes out are only two centimeters apart. But this baby squirmed and smiled, and finally the midwife believed that it really was a human being and told the mother, who was lying weekly across her bed with no apparent interest in her offspring, that the baby was born healthy and seemed friendly. It's a girl, right? Asked Dewey IU. Yes, said the midwife, just like the three before her. Four daughters, all of them beautiful. I should open my own whorehouse, said Dewey IU, in a tone of complete annoyance. Tell me how pretty is this youngest one. The baby wrapped up tight in a swaddling cloth began to squirm and cry in the midwife's arms. A servant was coming in and out of the room, taking away the dirty cloths full of blood and getting rid of the placenta, and for a moment the midwife did not answer because there was no way she was going to say that a baby who looked like a pile of black shit was pretty. Trying to ignore the question, she said, you're already an old woman, so I don't think you'll be able to nurse. That's true. I've been used up by the three previous kids and hundreds of men. 172 men. The oldest one was 90 and the youngest one was 12, just one week after his circumcision. I remember all of them well. The baby cried again. The midwife said she had to find breast milk for the little one. If there was none to be had, she would have to look for cow's milk or dog's milk or maybe even rat's milk. Yes, go, said Dewey IU. Poor unfortunate little girl, the midwife murmured gazing down at the baby's upsetting face. She couldn't quite describe it, but she thought it looked like a cursed monster from hell. Its entire body was jet black as if it had burned alive with a bizarre and unrecognizable form. For example, she wasn't sure whether the baby's nose was a nose because it looked more like an electrical outlet than any other nose she'd ever seen in her entire life. And the baby's mouth reminded her of a piggy bank slot and her ears looked like pot handles. She was sure that there was no creature on earth more hideous than this wretched little one and if she were God, she would probably kill the baby at once rather than let it live. The world would abuse her without mercy. Poor baby, said the midwife again before going to look for someone to nurse her. Yeah, poor baby, said Dewey IU, tossing and turning in her bed. I already did everything I could to try to kill you. I should have swallowed a grenade and exploded it inside my stomach. Oh wretched little one, just like evil doers, the wretched don't die easy. Thank you. Hi. My name is Tenzin Dickey and I am reading the poetry of two young Tibetan writers from Tibet. The first is Sakil Sita, a poet and an essayist from the town of Repgong in northeastern Tibet. Sakil Sita is a member of the third generation, a new group of Tibetan poets and writers constituting a new literary movement centered around the border town of Siling, Xinning and Qinghai at the very edge of the Tibetan plateau. These writers write primarily in Tibetan as opposed to Chinese. Sakil published his first piece in a literary magazine run by the local monastery and since then he has published his work in all four of the third generation anthologies of contemporary Tibetan writing. Sakil Sita's poem Repgong was published in March 2013 on the popular and prestigious online journal, Gendun Chumpel. The poem is an ode to the poet's hometown Repgong which has a hallowed place in the Tibetan consciousness. It has produced many of Tibet's most famous writers and scholars and is known for being a literary and intellectual cradle. This poem is a celebration and assertion of and also mourning for Tibetan identity and culture and history. Repgong Repgong Burn the offering of incense Blow the Dharma conch You are a blue altar for incense You are a dark fairy tale from long ago Oh Repgong, black fort of history where my father's bones decayed my mother's vital spirit scattered Sometimes you are like the cool breeze streaming through the high mountains Sometimes like the clear water sluicing through the low valley Precious to the king's heart like its heart-blood boiling is the glittering rongo monastery a black tent resplendent amid blue grass or a line of young wild yaks on mountain crags Oh Repgong, fatherland famed Repgong of history where the dust has not yet settled You are a song to sing a dance to dance where the poor dream joyful dreams their rich display color turquoise and corals and the lonely down their drinks in one shot Every morning and every evening the red valley is wreathed in a belt of smoke like the chest of a freshly slain yak as the smoke rises curling into air where there is cause and effect whatever the season or the time of day when I bind my pain and gaze at it you leap at times into the sky and eagle at times fall into the water like an autumn leaf this may be the sinful karma of your unhappy deed the divining sign that your soul stone will disintegrate like a camel in the desert an exiled people has no traces of their journeys and sufferings Repgong, a land from which the young wish to leave to which the old wish to return burn the offering of incense blow the Dharma conch you are a blue altar for incense you are a dark fairytale from long ago the second poet is called Ngarma he is a young and emerging poet from Amdo northeastern Tibet also this poem was published in Gendengchampel in 2011 Ngarma is also a composer of the lyrics for the song New Generation by the Tibetan rock band Yunduk which has become an anthem for Tibetan youth in both Tibet and in the Exaldas where I cross the world Ngarma is the pen name of the poet Jikshal Kap Tibetan writers usually use pen names and the word Ngarma means anger the present of the past only 23 in a mountain range of regret what is this, what is this from the door I invite a drop of light dust particles assemble here the tea has long grown cold much that has cooled cannot be warmed again all these various incomplete drawings can't be erased I can't forget unfinished works breaking the three unbroken arrows on my clock I disarranged the twelve numbered hours in the morning hid from myself wrinkles on my forehead a vehicle drags a tale of black smoke rushes east at dawn and returns west at night near the highway I see a couple kissing happily I see in my mind not my past but their future only dreams plumb the mind's depths the forgetful mind makes me feather light one day as you see me flying that's an illusion but another carrying me that's real my hair fell and grew my eyes popped out of the dark as the thorn bird loves the thorn so I love the world my steps grow smaller my body bends one by one I forget names linked in the letter sleeping in this desk facing me those brought away by guardians of the dead must be dead I have received no response from my friends in another place at another time in a smoke-filled bar they ponder country and neighbor regret my late arrival the darkness is like closely laid black bricks I recognize everywhere as my home and in my home there is no fire even in winter no flowers even in summer various objects in the distance burn in the distance images I can see have their essence so do my birth, growth, sickness and death an essence that is interlinked how do they connect? smells and sounds that can't be touched that collapse and scatter and the root of my soul scattering how do they connect? my soul and clouds that glide overhead the owl swooping in the armpit of night lands on wingtips of white light this town is the inner heart of chaos I have spent my days and nights on its streets and shops and bookstores with an old key from my front pocket I open an old door lay on an old bed dreaming old dreams the news is today's but I feel like yesterday right now even an hour is a single rosary bead refusing to move rolling my thumb is all the duty I can manage just now there can be an afterlife or there can be no afterlife thank you good evening first I just wanted to say how honored I am to be here with you all tonight I'll be reading oh I'm Meg, Birkebeen and I translate from the Catalan in Spanish and tonight I'll be reading from Yusia Ramiz's short story Cycle the Port Yusia Ramiz was born in Mallorca in 1977 and moved to Barcelona at 18 to study journalism which she now regrets Ramiz is currently a columnist for El Mundo, Time Out and El Periodico among her own published of war figure three novels the second of which he goes surfing won the Jusapla Award in 2010 her latest project all that died among the bicycles that day has been held as one of the most powerful generational stories to emerge from the Spanish crisis although all of Ramiz's fiction strives to draw out that sense of dislocation provoked upon returning home a place that for Ramiz straddles both Spanish and Greek cultures the stories within this collection seem especially disconcerting but I'll leave that up to you to decide El Port U Record unerisor deberat per las farmigas El trabarem prop de casa y volverem alimentarlo a mieta tetraprec la mademati era mort Record que el mejama va voler testar una farmiga para que los ginezos las mengen y se la andugué a la boca cuando en cara era viva y escopí per qué colla Record que la meva cocina va a traer un nomatic de l'embarcador y que em va botar un cranc y la meva cocina s'espantar y deja caer la roda que es la fal cranc que va a traer el budeis per la boca That'll make sense in a second The Port I remember a hedgehog devoured by ants we found it near the house and wanted to feed it milk from the tetraprec carton it was dead by morning I remember my brother wanted to taste an ant because the Chinese eat them so he popped it in his mouth while it was still alive he spit it out because it stung I remember my cousin pulled out a dock tire at the pier and that a crab jumped out she got scared and let go and it crushed the crab it pushed the guts right out through its mouth Psst, afterward we hurled the body into the water and watched it float I remember the time I picked up a log and pinched a lizard hiding underneath I could swear it cried out I spent some time observing that detached tail my cousin, brother, and I I don't come here often and these memories have nothing to do with nostalgia three she caught me pinging standing up with one leg on either side of the toilet she asked what are you doing? I answered I'm in training she wanted to know what for to be a boy when I got older that I needed to prepare myself my mom, Mumara didn't understand a thing I had to explain that when you're born a girl you turn into a boy at 14 just like if you're a born a boy your sex changes then too she said no her eyes is wide as saucers what do you mean no? it isn't like that she insisted I thought she was just treating me like I was stupid and I reminded her that my older cousin had been a boy before growing up Mumara denied it your cousin has always been a woman I got mad how could she say otherwise with evidence like that I remembered perfectly that my older cousin had been a boy and that his name was Joanne Mumara, astonished laughed under her breath but I noticed and demanded to know why she was laughing what was so funny why did she want to trick me like this what did she think that I didn't remember or maybe she thought I was an idiot she told me I couldn't say that word idiot, idiot, idiot I repeated and afterward I ran away so she couldn't spank me with the slipper five we would play superheroes at recess we tied our school smocks around our necks like capes and pretended we were 16 because then we could have boyfriends we invented our own Prince Charming usually movie stars like Superman Paula was really tall and clumsy, just hideous she had a patch glued to one of the thick lenses of her glasses her hair was frizzy and gray and she had long fingernails her teeth small with gaps in between she had a lisp we called her the witch behind her back but she was our friend if she turned into a creature she'd easily be a snake one day she said she'd be the boy six the man hit her accidentally afterward she kept running without even acknowledging us shit begonita cried out which embarrassed me a bit because we couldn't use that word at home she suddenly realized that her hand was bleeding I didn't know what to do it grossed me out she was crying from shock to me it was the dirty blood of dogs of cats and fish in fur in nary blood it made me sick a woman came over to see what had happened she asked where begonitas burns were what insurance she had things she couldn't answer she said she'd take her to the emergency room begonitas kept asking me not to leave her all alone at eleven I answered very seriously no, I've got to go my parents will get worried if I miss the bus this woman will take care of you and I left her like that with another stranger seven do you want to get married wrapped up in my legs both of us lying on a bed of white sheets sweaty and naked it was summer then he uses those words that so overwhelm me I respond the time for stupid questions is from six to six fifteen in the morning and now he has to take me home I remember his name but I won't write it down just in case just in case in his written presence is still as resounding as the one in my memory of that night I knew one day I would tell him yes we'll never meet again eight yellow crates for hauling glass bottles our checkered butt sitting on those crates would you like some more coffee we'd play house and I was always the guest yes, please my knees fully bent the hammocks are fort sometimes the dolls too but we usually didn't play with dolls and grandmother's biscuits nine is that a hand over there it was my cousin who found it we ran over to the rocks and flip flaps the man reeked of fish and flies swarmed around his neck his head was gone I don't remember a screaming or running away or why we wanted to touch him with a stick nor do I remember who we went or what we wanted to tell him about or when I only know that the police came because they told me so afterward and that I wet the bed that night I was a big girl by then already nine now it's my body that floats thank you hiya I'm Alice Guthrie and I'll translate from Arabic so my friend academic Zahir Omarin was born in the Syrian city of Hama in 1985 just three years after the massacres of 25 to 35,000 people committed there by the Assad regime that's Assad the father you're about to hear an extract from a story called milk, Halib in Arabic taken from his forthcoming collection Tales of the Orant River this book is not only the first ever literary work to openly address the massacres but in another huge break with convention the stories are written entirely in the local oral dialect rather than in formal standard Arabic reflecting the way they've been handed down until now orally here as in each story in the collection a parent is telling their child a tale from the events the euphemism universally adopted until now in Syria to refer to the massacres in Arabic it begins yeah yeah that's right there's absolutely no one in the whole city she hasn't breastfed even your older brother actually she fed in when my milk dried up during the events she rest in peace is that why he used to call her yamal when he was little yeah exactly we got him used to doing that when he was really small and he would blow her mind when kids called her that she loved it what's more like your brother of course in those days there were so many tiny babies whose mothers had passed away in the events when they were still breastfeeding every time we found an orphaned baby who needed breastfeeding we'd take it straight to om mahmood and then of course there are all the babies whose mothers milk had dried up from shock and terror like mine had and om mahmood my god she was incredible she was such a warm motherly person that her breasts were like cream churns swollen with this rich nourishment which somehow or other never dried up luckily for all those children even at the time she was probably getting on for 40 but yeah a lot of teeth what trouble and heartache that story brought to some of us later on why? what happened? what happened? all the families got mixed up no one knew anymore whose child was whose or like what happened with ibn sikr ugh it was such a terrible thing what happened? I'm getting there love, hang on when they raided bayn al-hayrain in 82 during the events apparently there was no one left alive from that neighbourhood to even tell the tale very late one night the baker, abu khaldoon he was very well known in hammerback then actually because his bread was as fluffy and light as whipped cream such great bread anyway late one night he had someone knocking really loudly at his door and in those days you see we all knew that a knock on the door in the night could only mean two things we were either going to prison or going to be executed so abu khaldoon got himself up and quickly said goodbye to his kids and then to his wife and he put on his sheepskin coat it was bone cracking cold out there and he opened the door and there on the doorstep he found a soldier standing in the bitter cold night with a tiny baby in his arms still in it swaddling chilled to the bone and crying its eyes out with his eyes full of tears the soldier put the baby into abu khaldoon's arms and said take this it's all that's left of bayn al-hayrain as abu khaldoon the baker tells it himself I took that baby and I tucked him in between my two children in their bed and straight away he warmed up and fell asleep I got back into bed with my wife and I made a vow to God himself right there that this baby would be one of my own children the next day there was a sudden raid on our neighbourhood and they banged on the door they were coming to get me but then the soldier who brought me the baby that night recognised me and he spared me by the grace of that child I was saved well that baby had still been breastfeeding when it lost its mother so it needed milk abu khaldoon threw herself at the problem with a passion soaking tiny scraps of bread in water and trying to feed them to the little one but he was only a newborn he wasn't ready for solids at all and before even a couple of days had passed he started getting weak and ill and he'd screamed so much he'd lost his voice that baby was on the brink of death basically abu khaldoon was absolutely losing it he started rushing around searching frantically for milk all over the city but there literally wasn't a drop of milk to be had in all of hama right then it wasn't milking season yet it was February and the sheep wouldn't produce any milk at all until the middle of March and then abu khaldoon heard that om mahmud was breastfeeding all those orphaned children he picked up the baby at once and he rushed over to her place om mahmud says that when she saw ibn sikha crying noiselessly like that half dead something happened inside her and her milk just started gushing out like never before in those days I was constantly taking your brother around to om mahmud's place so she could feed him too my god I'll never forget what it was like son we were practically queuing up to get our babies fed her house wasn't big and we'd take her whatever god provided one of us might have an egg for her another brought some bread maybe someone else brought some meat or a bit of veg because all of us were really up against it you know really struggling to feed our families yeah yeah what happened to ibn sikha then well ibn sikha grew up into a boy and abu khaldoon was his father he'd adopted him and he brought him up very well writing him about religion and morality and good manners he grew up into a young man with impeccable morals eventually abu khaldoon decided it was time to get him married and so he got him engaged to this gorgeous girl as pretty as the moon called Fatima I still remember her sure enough they got married of course abu khaldoon had always really really spoiled ibn sikha like no one's ever been spoiled before or since he used to say to the rest of his kids if it wasn't for this boy I wouldn't be here with you today I owe him my life the lavish wedding he laid on for him was the talk of all hamma om mahmud danced this incredible wild dance at the wedding and she didn't cover her hair in front of ibn sikha she said this is the one child who I've never forgotten feeding he latched on my milk would come down in such torrents I could have fed all the babies in the city from both sides of the river from al-hadid al-sukh and she worked her way around all the guests in turn telling him this is my son's wedding so time passed and seasons changed and Fatima fell pregnant but just two months into her pregnancy she lost the baby poor thing she got pregnant again there was a third miscarriage then a fourth the baby would die inside that poor woman's belly before two months were up every time poor Fatima her mother had passed away by that point and her father was a very old man so the women of the neighbourhood started to get really involved and they went to great lengths to help her what do you mean let me finish son you'll see they were so thorough they left no stone unturned in their search for an answer and in the end they worked out there was nothing wrong with the girl she wasn't ill but she too had been breastfed by a Mahmood during the events her mum's milk had dried up just like mine had because of everything that was going on so it turned out that poor Ibn Sikr had married his milk sister and that's why she didn't reach full term on any of her pregnancies thanks hi I'm Sara Novich I've been translating the poet Izat Saralić from the Bosnian Izat Saralić was born in what is now the Bosnian Serb Republic in 1930 at age 15 he moved to Sarajevo and remained there for the rest of his life much of his work is about his love for the city which he considered his home Saralić published his first poems when he was 19 and went on to publish 30 books of poetry he also worked as a journalist and translator wrote numerous essays and memoirs and was a professor at the University of Sarajevo though he's widely regarded as one of Bosnia's most famous poets English translations of his work are few Saralić's poems as I hope will come across here are characterized by spare language a dark dry wit born out of the socialist aesthetic and what I like to call Slavic angst the poems I'll read for you now are mostly all from the collection Sarajevo war journal which means Sarajevo war journal written in the first 30 days of the siege of Sarajevo in 1992 and published in 93 across the border in Slovenia of the book he's quoted as saying this is the only collection of which I can say I would have loved never to have written it he died in 2002 Sarajevo war journal published in 1992 Sarajevo war journal published in 1992 Sarajevo war journal published in 1992 Sarajevo war journal published in 1992 Sarajevo war journal luck Sarajevo style in Sarajevo in the spring of 1992 anything is possible you go and stand in a bread line and wind up in the trauma ward with an amputated leg afterwards you still say that you were very lucky after I was wounded last night I dreamt Slobodan Markovic came and apologized for my wounds I was the one and only Serbian apology this whole time and even that was just in a dream and from a dead poet patriotism of a Yugoslav writer a Yugoslav psychiatrist is successfully treating the mentally ill in Detroit a Yugoslav violinist is first chair at the conservatory in Brussels a Yugoslav mason raises new buildings in Stockholm a Yugoslav painter is the best in contemporary French painting the Yugoslav footballer is the best right wing back in the Bundesliga from our temporary or permanent foreigners one could assemble another little country abroad with representation from all trades except for ours literature connection between the mind and the body and the limitations of communication in general another part of the series was a novella about a young woman who smuggles in drugs from Mexico and works to assist terminally ill patients who wish to end their life and this was originally published by him under the pseudonym Angela del Fabro and the story inspired a movie that it's called Miele Honey in English that was shown at Cannes in 2013 I believe and this made it into this became the second part of the last novel in his pentology which is called Anometuo in your name and I'll be reading an excerpt from the first part of the novel that I'm working on translating now so here's a paragraph in the original Italian I know there's people in the audience who speak Italian so no judgment please ok my grandfather was a donaiolo recidivo humiliating dona lisa he hated his son the relationship between the two were difficult from the beginning and they got worse for this I doubted the version of my mother I doubted I doubted I doubted I doubted in the beginning let's go to the first page ok my mother always assured me that grandpa Marchello had never dared touch her but there were times I thought this might be a lie a white lie the only way to stop my father from killing him to protect them both in the end my grandfather was a recidivist womanizer which shamed grandma Liza and his son hated him it. Relations between the two had been difficult from the start and they grew worse with time. Because of this I sometimes doubted my mother's version of events. There was that one time for instance. My mother and my grandfather are in a light blue Fiat 500. They're returning to Trieste from Zone B. It's a beautiful March morning. The year is 1965. I am the eight month old fetus growing in the young woman's belly. Which truth be told is squeezed a bit too tight against the steering wheel. But she insists on driving. It's her car and her faith in the old man only goes so far. In 1965 Trieste has been an has been Italian for 11 years. But the feeling of separation remains. A split that is still clear in place names. Zone A and Zone B. The city and its former eastern periphery. Two slices of the same cake that were divided with one cut of the knife in the 1946 peace agreements. Zone A controlled by the Allied forces. Zone B controlled by Tito. In 1954 when Trieste officially joined the land of La Dolce Vita. The split between the two zones would also become the split between two worlds. Capitalism and communism. The sky blue fiat of liberty and the rusting yugos of equality. But life of course is not lines on a map and the people of Trieste are still in the habit of making trips to Zone B. To this day the place name remains in the local vocabulary to indicate what is now just a tiny nondescript piece of Slovenia. A speck in the European Union packed with casinos and wellness centers. Many people at the time still own small plots of land just across the border which had not yet been confiscated. Some continue to conduct business in the nearby port of Kapodistria. But the vast majority of people went to Zone B to stock up on meat, cigarettes, and gasoline. And this is exactly what my mother and grandfather have done. There are 30 liters of diluted low-octane obitni benzene, that's normal gasoline, in the tank of our 500. A carton of filtered cigarettes under the driver's side floor mat and two kilos of pre-cut stakes hidden beneath my grandfather's shirt. The customs officers wouldn't look under the seat of a pregnant woman nor would they frisk an old pensioner. It was an admirable plan. In the back, in plain view, there was a bag of worthless little trinkets which sit ready for the question anything to declare. It hurts the Italian gas stations and butchers. It's a betrayal of the land of Ladolcevita. But who cares? Everything is cheaper there and more importantly we are Triestini, former subjects of the Hopsburgs, former citizens of Fascist Venezia Giulia, former inhabitants of the free territory of Trieste. Italy is far away. One didn't even need a passport to enter Zone B. All one needed was a laissez passé, a document that embodied the mix of sensations I felt as a young boy on those excursions. It wasn't a real trip abroad and yet I was crossing a border. I was entering a country where even the ice cream spoons were different. It was right around the corner and yet a mustachioed guard needed to let us passe. After the border stop, I was struck by a sad uneasiness. I was home but I wasn't home. They let me pass into that mysterious nation and every time I'd wonder what it would be like to live there to always eat ice cream with those strange little spoons that curled up at the end. To enter that gray building indicated by the triangular traffic sign with the mother holding her child by the hand just like the ones where we lived but with the word scola shouting from the bottom. Locov, Cusina, Sejana, in a country like this I wouldn't have been surprised if the mad hatter appeared. At any rate on that day in March I'm not yet born. My mother is a 26 year old factory worker on maternity leave with the profile and the chignon of Claudia Cardinale and my grandfather is a pensioner who obligingly accompanies his daughter-in-law on some errands outside the house. He didn't hate her anymore. Obviously he hated her at first. At first she was just a stupid refugee. Stupid like all the other Eastern refugees. Why would she run away from communism? Why reject the people's true liberation? In order to slave away eight hours a day in a factory in Trieste the Easterians ranked right below the wafer eaters, Southerners and Americans on my grandfather's list of personal prejudices. But the young woman had known how to quickly win him over. She'd listen patiently to his picker-esque tales. She'd help her mother-in-law prepare Sunday dinner with delicious Easterian subversions such as cavatelli with shrimp a la buzara and of course she agreed to let him accompany her to Zone B for the weekly shopping. For my mother that man with the eye of a wolf on the prowl was just an old grumbler with whom she passed a few hours talking about American sluts and the tricks employed by dishonest waiters. Even my grandmother felt he was harmless now to the point where often it was she who convinced her daughter-in-law to let him tag along so as to get him out of her hair for a bit. But how did my grandfather see himself? Did he see himself as a broken man when he looked in the mirror? After all he was only 68 years old with the broad shoulders of a young man and a receding hairline which rather than softening accentuated the sleazy air about him. Had he really managed to keep his hands off his son's wife? Then how does one explain his reaction that morning? The Fiat 500 stops in front of the Yugoslavian Sentry Post. One officer checks their laissez-passe. The other, standing a bit behind, looks at the two of them in the car. My mother doesn't know Slovenian but she swears that they didn't say anything. Not a raised eyebrow, not even a quick parting of the lips, but my grandfather heard it. In the officer's tight lips and their vacant eyes he saw the words that spoke his desire. Stari parsak jojena fjol. The old goat knocked her up. Without a second's hesitation he jumped out of the car and ran up to the Sentry Post shouting in his mother tongue. In a scene whose symbolism was all too obvious these quick movements made his shirt come untucked and the bag of meat fell to the ground. Thank you. I think this wonderful group of readers needs another round of applause.