Those letters from Kosovo

Whenever I head back to visit my parents, Mom has this tradition of bringing out the old family albums. She loves spending evenings flipping through the pictures, reminding my brother and me that we should capture more moments. The other night, as we were watching TV, she mentioned she still keeps all the letters we received from our relatives during our early years in Italy. It hit me like an electric shock.
“Get them out now,” I told her.
Little did I realize the emotional journey I had signed up for.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand my sensitivity and an easy predisposition to emotion. This predisposition peaks when I think about my parents’ first years in Italy. Just reading a few sentences of those letters is enough to make my throat tighten. So, that night, I took a quick look at them, knowing if I started reading, I would burst into endless tears. I wanted to avoid that, especially with family around. Part of it is a silly sense of shame, and part of it is wanting to be alone to fully embrace my emotions without having to say I’m fine. It would ruin the moment.

Waiting until everyone went to sleep, I began reading. The letters are dated from 1995 to 1998. The first thing that struck me was how they managed to send them. The next day, Mom explained that they didn’t use the postal service; instead, they waited for some Kosovar friends in Italy to take the letters to Kosovo and give them to our relatives. The same process in reverse. An exhausting, endless wait where several months could pass between each letter. How do you wait so long just to know a loved one is doing fine?

Many things about those letters caught my attention. The beginnings were always very cordial.
“I, …, greet you, my brother, your wife, and your son. I decided to write this letter, and above all, I hope you are all well.” The polite introduction was followed by a flood of feelings – love, lack, sorrow, hope, and longing.

In our culture, feelings aren’t openly expressed. No matter what happens, there’s always some restraint. It’s strictly observed in sorrow, and somewhat less so in joy. The letters, I realized, were where they let go, away from prying eyes. In those papers, I saw the sentimental part I had never seen of my people.

The situation in Kosovo at that time was quite challenging. My parents often repeated the word “nothing” in their stories. Nothing was moving. Finding a job was virtually impossible. No sign of change. A flat calm. A daily struggle for survival. For every family, the person who managed to emigrate became the lifeline. In this case, it was my father. I always thought of my parents’ pain in having to leave everything and start a new life. Only by reading those letters did I realize I never thought about the other side – those who stayed behind, waiting for news, trying to imagine what it might be like in Italy.

That’s how I discovered all the pain of my uncle, a few years older than my father. His letters always began by assuring my father they were fine. Instead, he worried about my father’s struggles.
He tells him, “I know you’re pushing ahead with your chest,” an Albanian expression meaning giving everything you have.

In another part, my uncle talks about my cousins. They ask when I’ll come back to play with them and how their eyes widen every time he mentions one of us, convinced we might appear at any moment. He also mentions recording a cassette tape of them reading poems and sending cassettes of popular music bought at the bazaar to my father.

I can’t help but be moved by my uncle’s sensitivity and love as he buys something from the market to help my father with his homesickness and pain. His brother’s good coming before his own. My heart swells thinking of my little cousins reading the poems and my uncle recording it all, unaware of the comfort they provided my father.

Then there’s the year everyone expected us to return for New Year’s Eve, but apparently, we couldn’t make it. My uncle can’t hold back the pain, using a strong Albanian expression that’s hard to translate.
He says, “We are going blind from not seeing you.”
The letter ends heartbroken.
“We were convinced we could see you this year, but you couldn’t make it. Apparently, life never goes as one hopes.”

There are also moments of happiness in those letters, especially after my brother’s birth. Best wishes and congratulations. Everyone asking Mom and Dad if the little one is quiet or restless and nervous like me. Fortunately, my little brother has always been a quiet one. I swear, they actually wrote “nervous,” referring to me. I was two years old the last time they had seen me, I was already nervous, apparently.

What stays with me about those letters is the layer of grief that accompanied the lives of my parents, our family members, and our people in general. I’m reminded of Oriana Fallaci’s words to Pier Paolo Pasolini: “Melancholy you carried on you like a perfume, and tragedy was the only human situation you really understood.”

Thinking about my parents, my family, and my people, I’d say they’ve always carried pain with dignity, showing restraint and preventing themselves from fully letting go. Suffering, absurdly, seemed to be the human condition they most understood, the one in which they felt most comfortable. Joy and happiness left them exposed, without tools, unprepared for how to navigate those moments.

So, I can’t help but wonder if it was worth it. While it’s touching to relive those moments and see the good we’ve done over the years, I question at what cost. I wonder what I would have said to them if I could go back to the time they decided to leave their land. Now, I’d probably tell them not to. Not to leave their land, not to go so far away from their loved ones. I wonder why they considered our dreams more important than theirs.

I recall the happiness and pride they felt in supporting us and celebrating our achievements. Their words for each milestone.
“Your achievements make us feel less tired.
Your achievements show us that it was worth it.”
I wonder how much longer this lie they tell themselves can keep them alive. I’d want to go back in time and tell them to stay, to fight for their dreams.

I carry with me the humanity I found in those letters – the pain, the love, and the depth of certain passages. I love writing, and letters are something that makes my heart tremble. The idea that a moment, a feeling, can remain forever on a piece of paper drives me crazy. Realizing my predisposition to emotion, I’ve come to understand that through tears, silence, and writing, I can overcome any difficult moment.

“I’m a master of speaking silently – all my life I’ve spoken silently and lived through entire tragedies in silence”
Fyodor Dostoevsky.

“I exist because I write,” I repeat to myself more and more often. I don’t know how a person experiences emotions, but I feel that what I experience is too strong to express verbally. I have this perception that my body might explode if I were to express it verbally. That’s why I find it easier to put everything in writing, accompanied by tears. But by now, I’ve realized that this is the only way that allows me to live the moment, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative.

The emotion of holding letters received, or written years before is a gift I wish for everyone. I conclude by recommending you to handwrite from time to time. I hope you have someone to whom you can dedicate your words. In case you don’t, write to yourself. Someday, those writings will fall into your hands again, and it will be great to step back in time. You will get emotional, maybe you will cry, maybe your heart will shake, and most likely you will have a couple of laughs thinking back to what you were, and you might be happy with what you have become in the meantime.

Gezim Qadraku