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calleo-bricriu · 3 years

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I just blew apart the identities of a good 30-ish people on my mom’s side of the family, and it’s a brilliant, wonderful feeling.

There is backstory here, because it doesn’t make sense without it, so grab a snack and get reading. :)

I did the thing I'd sort of half-ass promised my mom I wouldn't do back when I had medical genetic testing done so insurance would cover a few things back in 2016.

That testing was the one where the genetic counselor asked me several times if I was "absolutely sure" I had no Ashkenazi ancestry and after the third time I got a cautious response of, "It's just that you have a lot of markers only found in those populations; the chances of them all being spontaneous mutations are next to zero." then moved on going over the rest of the results.

Insurance ended up covering what it needed to cover, and I had asked my mom about it as she's been really into tracing both sides of the family trees back as far as possible and it's been possible centuries back due to very good paper trails.

She didn't know what I meant by Ashkenazi which is fair enough as most people in the US only know the word because it shows up on medical forms as a yes/no checkbox.

"Jewish. The sort that wasn't just a conversion."

That got a LOOK, and not a confused one a vaguely frightened one and asked where I got that idea.

Told her I had to do medical genetic testing earlier in the year and the genetic counselor had mentioned it and told her in what context.

Got told to "leave it".

Whatever, I'd recently had fairly major surgery anyway so wasn't really in the mood to dig or push about it.

The next year my ex bought one of those "23 and me" type tests for me because I like completely useless things like that, and that one came back with a not insignificant amount labelled Ashkenazi in the mtDNA haplogroup, which would be on my mother's side.

I asked her about it again and showed her two genetic test results, one a formal medical one, and one that had matching genetics that was, you know, not a formal medical set of genetic testing.

Got told to leave it again.

Fine.

She'd also forgotten that she'd added an account I'd made on Ancestry so I could look through the family tree and all the scanned documents (parish records, birth, death, marriage certificates, immigration paperwork, etc...) because it all went back sometimes until the 1600s.

...and I noticed most of went back that far was on my dad's side or on really remote branches of my mom's side.

On her more closely related side, the family she had that emigrated over from Germany in the late 1800s went back to the 1700s, but she's Polish as well.

And the Polish branches stopped at 1930.

They were extensively documented in 1930, with birth certificates, parish records, and immigration papers as they'd all come over to the US from Poland--right around 1930.

For the hell of it, I saved copies of all of that documentation she'd uploaded, and also figured, hey, they're running a 'join for 3 months get a silly DNA kit!' thing, I'll do a third one.

Did a third one.

Got the same results.

Also found that it was less that there was somehow a convenient lack of parish records older than 1930, and parish records don't just disappear, parish records, especially from Europe, are typically very easy to find with minimal difficulty, but I couldn't even find these NAMES earlier than 1930, including the family names.

The thing is, my definitely influenced by being on the autism spectrum special interest period of history is 1900-1945.

One thing you remember, if you do enough more than casual reading, is one of the chief ways Jewish families both got out of Europe more easily AND into the United States more easily in the 1930s was paying to have entirely new identities forged.

New names, new notable dates in terms of births, marriages, etc, and parish records proving they were either Catholic or Protestant. Usually anyone coming from Poland would have gone with Catholic as that's one of Poland's major religions.

Any previous records that would indicate they were anything but Catholic was typically destroyed out of fear of it being dug up and used to deny emigration or immigration (and remember, the United States routinely turned away refugees fleeing Europe if they were found to be Jewish).

So, I went back.

This time, instead of asking, I took the paperwork I'd saved and printed with me, handed it to her, and said, "These are forged. They weren't Catholic. These aren't their names. Does anyone still alive have the older records?"

Her response was, "I thought I told you to leave it!"

"Does anyone alive still remember?"

"...no. Leave it alone."

Turns out, she'd figured it out based on the cutoff date of the records and knowing history in general, but never said anything because, as the conversation later brought up, "It'd throw too many people's identities into chaos." and reiterated multiple times that they converted which, technically true, but it really doesn't...count if you're forced into it out of fear of ending up dead.

That's also the side of the family that, even by 2017, I didn't speak to most of them unless forced to do so because they're a lot of very rural, very right wing, very openly neo nazi jackasses.

That last part? That part is important. That last conversation about it happened in late 2017.

My mother knows me well enough to know that the first set of thoughts through my head absolutely ran along the lines of, "I'm telling these assholes at the next family reunion because they deserve to have their entire belief system and sense of identity shattered."

Also, that's the side of the family when, back around 2012 or so, one of my definitely unpleasant cousins cornered me to talk about the "shared interest" we had in what that dumb motherfucker termed "world war 2" and got his nose broken by the cousin with purple hair and multiple tattoos for saying we had a lot in common so--saying I don't get along with that side of the family is kind of an understatement.

If they're not afraid I'll also break some bone they possess for existing within punching or steel toed boot kicking range, they openly dislike me, which is fine, it's a very mutual feeling.

And there was a long talk of, "Could you not? Just ignore them, they're stupid, but they're harmless." which was mostly "it's kind of a hassle when you physically assault one of your asshole cousins at a picnic".

By that point I rarely went to those things anyway as free food didn't make up for having to listen to them say words where I could hear them so, whatever, I told her I wouldn't say anything.

Most of them hadn't spoken to me in years anyway but a few of them stayed in spotty contact on Facebook and in an often not used outside of planning reunions group that they'd invited me to join partially so it looked like they were 'making an effort' and also because the place we use for those stupid family reunions is owned by my parents (and I'm also on the deed) so I'd be one of the few people that would have a legal right to tell them all they weren't allowed to be on the property.

I accepted the invitation, just never really paid attention to it because, again, I do not like these people on any level.

Turns out, this evening, I stopped thinking they were even remotely harmless and was reminded that they still existed because they started using that group as their apparent safe space to talk about their views on current events; it’s very possible they may have forgotten I was even in the group as they added me close to 3 years ago and I’ve never posted anything.

So, I’m sitting there after work, watching these absolute shitstain excuses for people be smug about some imagined ‘win’, and I decided to remind them I still exist.

My first, last, and only post to the group: "FYI, none of your grandparents were Catholic. They were all Jewish. You're all ethnically Jewish. See you in July! :)" posted all of my genetic test results, the family trees where they were all included because, shocker, we're all related, scans of the forged records with large notations over all the forged information, and left the group.

Blocked the rest of them, and let them blow my phone up for awhile with calls I didn't pick up, texts I didn't read, and voicemails I didn't listen to--and blocked their numbers as well.

Earlier in the evening I mentioned in Discord that I was probably going to hear from my mother about it and I did (they’d long since removed my dad from the group over the MAGA hats in the firepit thing that happened last July, and my parents share a Facebook account), but it was a short and lovely text exchange of:

"What did you do?"

"I told them."

"Oh. Well, they're all assholes anyway. We should be back on Friday."

Also, nobody is going to see them in July because LAST July after they turned up after my parents told them there wasn't going to be a reunion due to Covid, about 30 of them showed up and that was the summer that I got the text from my mom asking if I was going to stop by.

"How many MAGA hats are out in the yard?"

"Hang on, I'll ask your dad."

20 minutes later:

"About a dozen."

"How many would I be able to throw in the fire pit before it'd cause an issue?"

"Hang on, I'll ask your dad."

20 minutes later, and a reminder for those who don't know, my dad is 6'8", built like a tank even in his 70s, and has a white beard down to his waist (Pointless bonus: When he was younger it was orange and his hair was a slightly darker orange than his dad’s was.). Ex-Navy Vet, took a fish bait he was grinding hooks on to the EYE a couple years ago and just sort of calmly walked upstairs to say, “I think I need you to drive me to the ER.” to my mom (whose response was to start laughing and tell him she TOLD him to put safety goggles on so they’re both a little...odd.) about it, not generally the sort of person anyone wants to even begin to fuck with despite the fact that he’s incredibly calm and even tempered:

"8 and they all left about five minutes ago."

#ooc #politics #I NPC those jackasses all the time as relatives that Calleo either generally fucks with and occasionally kills #they definitely deserve that treatment in fiction too #family #I got to shatter the general identities of at least 16 people tonight #and do not regret it #30 if you count their spouses and older children #16 if it's the actual direct cousins #long post

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svrpvnts-blog · 5 years

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⋆ ◦ ° ☾ jon hamm + cismale + he/him — have you seen salvatore vestri? they sure have been hanging out at andy’s jazz club & lounge a lot recently. they are a forty-seven year old known as the butcher, and they currently work for the cobras as an assassin, which they’ve been doing for twelve years. a bisexual gemini, they are diligent + buoyant, as well as atrocious + turbulent. overcoats, rosaries & the smell of roses.

hello, icons. it’s me again aka ron. this time, i bring u my old boy sal. i hope y’all like him.

the story of salvatore’s life begins way before he’s even born. it begins in sicily, with his father giuseppe and the vestri family. tired of being exploited by their employers and the current italian political situation, the family of butchers emigrates to america, hoping to live the american dream of becoming successful.

they own a quaint shop in bensonhurst, brooklyn. the vestris have been butchers since the late 1800s, or that is what giuseppe has heard his whole life. they make a living out of cutting meat, deboning and extracting the organs out of animals, unaware that their trade will serve them for more than just that.

it’s when giuseppe’s father falls ills that the older son takes over the shop. trying to increase the profits, he goes to the sicilian union, and meets people. someone always meets someone, and that is how giuseppe finds himself in the middle of men who have their own little thing going -- their cosa nostra.

soon enough, the shop becomes a trading point. brown packets of meat stained with blood hide the weapons and the drugs inside. to the outside world, the vestri shop is just another family run business, but the world salvatore is born into is the inside one.

his father meets his mother, filippa, two years after joining the mafia. a year later and they’re expecting sal. salvatore inherits his grandfather’s name and hands too agile for his own good.

soon after, the vestris welcome three more children. but sal is the apple of his father’s eyes. he sees the way the boy clean cuts the meat, how he’s never squeamish, even at such an early age, and most importantly, how he just nods and does what he’s told. it never seems like work to sal, because deep down, his father knows he’s inherited the liking to the blood, to the smell of steel.

sal’s initiated at fifteen. it turns out that killing a man isn’t very different than killing any other animal. in fact, sal has a dark curiosity when it comes to opening them up, seeing that the tangle of veins and muscles are just an empty shell.

from then on, salvatore becomes a machine. deadlier and more nimble with every kill. he’s known as a fixer, as a ghost. if you want a problem solved, call on the butcher. but even a ghost has enemies.

the vestri shop catches fire when salvatore is in his mid twenties. only one casualty: giuseppe. losing his father is a blow to sal, and he can only think of one thing when he learns that the fire wasn’t accidental: revenge.

he’s relentless in his quest, tracking and killing and butchering. but with each hit, the satisfaction of watching the light leave his victim’s eyes is greater. he’s got it down to an art, making a weapon out of a simple object.

when he’s finally done, sal decides to employ his services elsewhere. leaving the younger vestris to rebuild the shop. of course, he gives his share accordingly. until he hears of valdez, a town known for its gangs. and where could a butcher be needed if not there?

of course, he has his share of regrets. like a good catholic boy that he used to be, salvatore knows that what he does is monstrous. he’s haunted by the names and the faces of every single hit, but he can’t stop. it’s not only that he doesn’t know how to do anything else, it’s that he’s good at this.

despite his dark upbringing, sal is an easy talker. he doesn’t really pay a lot of mind to who’s in what gang, but he doesn’t like traitors aka people who leave one gang and join the other. it’s one of the rules his father guided himself by. but he’ll talk with anyone who’s willing to listen

doesn’t get angry easily. he has a cold type of rage. his father used to tell him that when you get angry you get stupid, and salvatore has nailed being cold blooded to an art.

loves music and usually likes to do his hits listening to jazz or classical music.

only wears well pressed suits, occasionally sheds the jacket and walks around in suspenders, because he’s an old man.

likes pretty, interesting people who are highly damaged so he can exchange experiences.

prefers to keep to himself the horrible things he has done. does he regret having done them??? probs not.

so polite and so friendly that you might forget he’s a killer, but it be like that sometimes.

strangely enough, hasn’t killed any animals ever since he stopped working at the shop. honestly, he hated killing animals.

loves to gamble a little. he likes shining things.

here’s his pinterest board: https://br.pinterest.com/namorbe/s-vestri/

if you’d like to plot with this off brand john wick, please hmu or like this post.

#outlaw.intro #violence tw #death tw

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deeisace · 6 years

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hmmmm

i like to think there are a lot of interesting folks in my family

or there were, at least

well, yeah okay my recent family is pretty weird also

but just to list some odd/interesting/cool folks? i think, anyway. because i’m thinking about it and i can’t research bcs i turned off my ancestry account bcs i don’t have £15 a month spare

uhhh anyway okay

most of these you will know i’m sure, cs i do talk rather a lot of nonsense fairly often

because letterkenny has reminded me of the existence of canada-

henry bird, ghost child. the only record of him ever that i can find, ever, is the passenger list of him going over to ontario in i forget if it was 1873 or 1878, but he was 8 years old, and i assume he is a cousin of mine somehow (since he went over with my 4th-great grandparents, an aunt and her neices/nephew(/stepchildren - the aunt, Grace, married her sister, Thirza’s widower, 6 months after her sister died, and who died 6 months later)).

on the subject of Canada, Willie Bird, my cousin four times removed, who became a mountie in somewhere called Moose Jaw (someone who is from there is called a Moose Javian, which is fuckin amazing) in his early 20s/the late 1880s, and I can’t find a mention of him following that, in 1891. His sister Ann married a postman and moved to Ohio, where it seems she fairly immediately died, and his sister Thirza married someone called John James Nicholson, stayed home in Dufferin County, Ontario and named her second son Beryle.

Ellenor Moore, an aunt of mine, whose husband Thomas was in fact legally married to the woman next door - they had 10 children between the three of them over 15 years, with most of the eldest listed to Ellenor, and most of the youngest listed with Mary - or at least, they lived in that manner, according to the 1891 census, although the youngest two, the same age, had swapped residence according to their baptisms - John was baptised to Ellenor but lived with Mary on the census, and Selena was baptised to Mary but lived with Ellenor. I couldn’t find baptism records for most of the elder children, however. Of course I don’t know their lives or their reasonings, but I like to think they were happy, living in such a way, even in 1870s-1890s(etc) rural Lancashire.

Alfred Wyatt Pettit, my 3rd-great grandfather, the cheesemonger apprentice turned coachman - turned tram driver, turned omnibus driver, turned omnibus conductor. He really must’ve hated cheese - or just really liked these new motor cars, I suppose!

Redvers Madge, my 3rd great uncle. He just has a funny name, tbh. I’m not at all surprised he went by Henry. Jack, why on earth would you do that to your youngest son?? The rest of them had normal names, f god’s sake.

On the subject of odd names, tho - Thirza Bird, Devereaux Aland, Wyndham Evans (on my father’s side), Wyndham Madge (on my mother’s side), Mark Darke, Horatio Fox... A set of sisters all called variations on Mary - Mary, Maria, May - with Elizabeth and Charles the youngest two siblings. And a set of sisters all with flower names - Daisy, Violet, Ivy, Hyacinth (who hated her name, and was called something entirely unrelated as soon as she was able to protest) and Lily - where all the boys had, again, normal names - Charles, Sam, Eddie and Cyril.

Alice Fox, who came from a family of criminals - or at least, her dad (the aforementioned Horatio Fox, “a rough-looking fellow [and] lazy, drunken vagabond”, according to the papers, who I talk about here a bit) was terrible in at least most ways you can think, to his family as well as himself, and seems to have been in prison more often than not, fortunately - and one of her aunts was the 1870s equivalent of a shoplifter, whilst the other caused a lot of bother fighting with her neighbours, and the last married a policeman, which must’ve caused some family drama, I imagine. But Alice married a baker, who’sone and only mention in the local paper was that once he got fined for leaving his car outside a shop for too long, which spooked a horse, in 1912 - so while that’s no proof, I do hope her later life was happier than her childhood.

Ah, who else, now.

John Stuart Scarth, who was a son of a gun - although not in his manner, so far as I can tell. He was born, impossibly, on a ship on it’s way back from Malta. Impossible because although his dad was a soldier, the regiment he belonged to would not be in Malta another 30 years. He lists himself as being born in Lisbon, however - but although his daughter must’ve got something wrong - or I have, or someone has - he must’ve told her that story, for her to remember it and tell it to the author of a genealogical book about posh people in Illinois. I’m not entirely sure I believe that book, that she was "a lady of culture and refinement”, since that is certainly not true of any of my more recent relatives (refinement?? nah), although I do believe the book/her that her dad was the precentor of St Magnus’ Cathedral, sort of like a choir master, for 40 years, and had “a peculiar talent” “in vocal and instrumental music”, and valued music far above his trade (which was tailoring, same as his dad - who also had the same name) - I know from the Orkney papers some of the songs he sang, and that he had a “neat manner” and that he sang as entertainment for the local Temperance League meetings sometimes - which is why I say he was not a son of a gun - although his place of birth makes him one.

James Linklater Fergus, the first actual Scouser in my family (although Lancashire goes further back some, on another branch), a sailor on a steam ship who died in Alexandria, Egypt, after stepping on a rusty nail - or at least, that is what I assume from “puncture wound, sole rht foot, 10 days hosp”.

Betsy Evans, my 4th-great aunt, from Darlaston, who listed her occupation as “latch-press” in 1871 - I know of course it means that she made latches, in a factory or suchlike, but it seems so much like an old-timey word for a thief, doesn’t it? I can quite imagine her making the locks she will later break into, though I’m sure that’s a foolish thought if ever there was one.

Alfred Cotterill, my great great grandfather, who emigrated to Boston and came back not two years later - to join the war effort, for ww1 had begun (supposedly, according to his grandson - but he married in april 1914, in Newport, Wales (to an awful woman), and the war did not begin until july - so unless he was clairvoyant, I fail to see how that was the case. He had a tattoo, on his right arm, although I’ve no idea what of, since I can’t find his blummin war records, can I? He spent most of the war as a POW, in the salt mines - he was shot in the leg in no man’s land, and was reportedly glad the germans picked him up instead of the british, since it meant he kept his leg, rather than the british, who had no time or resources, just amputating it.

Richard Mussard, a cab driver in London in the 1850s etc, who lived near two train stations and did so alright for himself that he owned his own cab after some time. He became a cabbie before the advent of The Knowledge, and so must’ve been one of the first to have to take it. I’ve no idea of his parents, but London in 1800 seems to have had two Mussard families - one, lightermen (sort of like ferrymen, only for things rather than people, working with the currents and with long paddles used for steering) from Battersea, or the other, a middle-class fencing/dancing instructor to boarding schools who did indeed have a son called Richard, although it was his middle name and not first. I don’t know how Richard might have got from an alright middle-class background to ferrying people between train stations for a pitance, and I would not wish such a decrease in fortunes upon him, but I do hope I’m decended from a fencing instructor anyway.

---

I think that’s rather enough, I suppose - I’ve run out of people that other people seem to find interesting, and I’m sure if I continued I’d bore you. And it’s midnight.

#ancestry #nonsense #if you should like to know about my recent family?#my mother is a disfellowshipped jehovah's witness who moved to france to spin alpaca wool and grow oyster mushrooms in her spare time from w #working at a chateaux #my stepdad is a blacksmith #he also used to write radio jingles and was an actual hatter once - one of the doctor whos complimented one of his leather top hats once #and he was a hairdresser #one of my brothers (fagin) studies theoretical physics; one (alfie) is a mechanic and the other works somehow in finance?? idk what joe does #my youngest sister's mum is a barrister who works in a bookie's; and my eldest sister is an au pair in london #i think that's rather enough nonsense for tonight i'm going to sleep

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ashwinraghu · 7 years

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Eight Impressions from Albania

Limar

This is Mani, the forty-something schoolmaster of the village of Limar in the Zagoria Valley in southern Albania. Limar has 21 families still living in it, and, in the only school in which Mani teaches, 8 students. Cimi and I had reached Limar after an all-day hike along the valley of the Zagoria river, crossing it on a beautiful stone bridge that was built by the still-remembered local ruler from the early 1800s, Ali Pasha of Tepelene.

The school in which Mani teaches is just behind the church building in the foreground. To get to the nearest paved road it is either a trek of a few hours accompanied by mule or horse, or, for the few who are lucky enough to own or have access to a rugged Mitsubishi or Toyota 4x4, a rocky 90 minute drive through a ten-feet wide path rutted into the mountains.

In the winter when there is six feet of snow or in the rains in late summer when parts of the trail start washing off, those thin paths cut into the mountainsides become almost impossible to pass. Except for coffee beans and flour to bake bread which they buy in sacks and transport by mule from the nearest town at the start of every winter, the people of these villages are entirely self-reliant. Every house - including Mani's who put me up for the night - grows tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onion, white beans. They will also own a few sheep and perhaps a cow for milk, yoghurt, cheese, and only on the rare occasion, meat. Along the fences or on raised rods in the garden, vines of grape with which they will brew raki at the beginning of autumn, the strong local alcohol drunk in small shots - right from seven in the morning sometimes, as strong accompaniment to the day's first strong coffee.

Improbably on the night I was there, all of the above ingredients seemed in harvest. This was the meal Mani's wife had put together:

Mani's two children have left the village. In contrast to most families in the region whose next generation only manages to find unskilled, informal work in nearby towns to get by, his children have left for bigger things, their father's schoolmaster ethic behind them perhaps, to go to University in the capital Tirana, the son to study Finance, the daughter Teaching.

With the turning of time there would be one less family - at the very least - in the mountain village of Limar.

Cimi

"What will happen in the next generation, Cimi?", I asked as we walked on the next morning, leaving Limar's schoolmaster and its locked-shut church (more on that later) behind us.

"Village finish maybe", Cimi replied, without having to think too much about it. "Or maybe if proper road come...", although his shrug suggested that he thought that an improbability.

Indeed Cimi had been pointing out emptied-out villages and hamlets all through our wander across these valleys. Part of the reason for this emigration is to do with recent history: until 1990 Albania was behind the iron curtain and largely closed to the outside world. Part of the government's policies -- implemented via ID cards and endless check-points -- dictated that people had to live and die in the village where they were born. Cimi, now in his late thirties so until turning a teenager under Totalitarian rule, spoke of growing up in a family of ten children, in the winter not enough woollens to go around, his parents subsistence farmers whose surplus if any was bought by the state, and given little other scope for expanding their income.

When Communism fell in 1991, not only did many rural people emigrate to towns and cities, emptying out villages like Limar, almost a million out of the country's three-odd million went abroad, to the nearby countries of Greece and Italy first, later to Germany, the UK, and even America, far away.

Cimi though did not want to leave. He knew enough stories of friends and siblings abroad struggling for decent work and to be paid fairly that he decided to stay. He only had seven years of school: the minimum mandated under Communist rule. Then he became a shepherd, internalising every path and creek in these valleys. In Permet, the town where he lives and where I stayed for a few days, there are new houses coming up on the edge of town, most of which, he says, are being built by people who moved to Greece to work. In this remittance-driven construction opportunity he along with some of his brothers have found work as builders, and in the warmer months, a relative prize of 30 euros a day guiding tourists and hikers through his patch of the country.

Bidaai

Perhaps this Communist-era closedness became so internalised after a point, a self-fulfilling prophecy that gave rise to a self-censorship, that has led to keeping this small European country off the map even in the 21st century. In my fortnight there I did not see - apart from a few groups of German tourists here and there - foreigners of any sort until I reached the capital (and even there only a few), and certainly nobody of a different ethnicity. To say I stood out is an understatement. So imagine my surprise when while walking on the street I was greeted sometimes with shouts of "India - India!" and more often with "India - Bidaai, Bidaai!". What did this hindi-sounding Bidaai mean? That night at schoolmaster Mani's house after that sumptuous dinner I found out. I was called excitedly into their living room where this whole rural Albanian family, Mani, his wife, and his seventy-something mother sat glued to every subtitled word of a Zee-TV soap opera, complete with mother-in-law, daughters-in-law and servants in the background, improbably opulent house, ultra close-ups of fear and loathing all accompanied by a thunder-and-lightning background score.

"Bidaai!", the wife cried out to me as they made space on the sofa, pointing at the television and looking at me for reaction. "India!".

A quick perusal later of its wiki page unearthed this by way of synopsis:

“Sapna Babul Ka...Bidaai is an Indian soap drama that aired from 2007 to 2010 on STAR Plus. It tells the story of a father and his two daughters. Ragini and Sadhana are cousin sisters. Sadhana's father's only dream is to see her in the form of a bride. Living in the Sharma household, she manages to win over both Ragini's and Prakash Chandra's heart. However Ragini's mother, Kaushalya is hesitant to due the difference in skin complexion between the two”.

The whole family had by now turned to me, expectantly. "Yes, of course, Bidaai", I finally managed to grin in response. How could I not know it?! And so I watched an episode of Sapna Babul Ka...Bidaai in rural Albania, them hanging on every word of the Albanian subtitles and chuckling at the proceedings for the next twenty minutes.

Men of an older generation spoke equally about Raj Kapoor packing the movie houses. One night after many rakis and Gzuar!s the seventy-something waiter at the crumbling guest-house I stayed in in Gjirokastra, Shamsi, burst into a gap-toothed Albanian-accented rendition of "Mera Jhootha Hai Japani, Yeh Pathloon Englishthani ". He went on talk about how during Communist times most Western fare was prohibited, and Albania itself had no film industry to speak of. India - and China who were close ideological friends for a time - had provided a lot of this Balkan state's entertainment needs.

Not to say that a lone Indian traveller in 2017 is mistaken for someone from the movies or a television soap, but there was no doubt that these movements of the world had created in the minds of Albanians a positive impression of India and Indians, reflected in those cries of delight and recognition rather than negativity or suspicion as I walked along the streets of their towns and villages. I remembered my fortnight in Greece a couple of years ago, of facing intense glares and unfriendliness on the Athens metro. It took a day or two of wandering about to see that their associations of brown-skinned single men were of Indian and Pakistani illegal labour, scrap-pickers and asylum seekers walking the streets, increasing pressures - or so the perception went - on a country already in financial crisis. Hadn't the Greeks too enjoyed watching Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan once? They must have, but clearly those happy images of south Asians had been replaced by newer, less positive ones. --

Not that it never happened in Albania: it did, once. As I waited for a bus back to Gjirokastra one hot afternoon a shared taxi slowed down, then, the driver gesticulating with a wagging forefinger at me, came to a stop a bit further ahead. The kid waiting at the bus stop next to me got into the car with no problems, but as I started the driver stepped out to ask where I was going. Gjirokastra, I said. And where had I come from? England, Anglais. Indian from England. "No Anglais! No Anglais!", he said. Turisti, I said. I'm a tourist. "Kaa Turisti?!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up, What Tourist?! He shook off his sunglasses and ran his forefinger along his cheek. "Anglais No!", he said again, You don't look like you're from England. Then with a final wave of both hands, he drove off. It left me feeling flummoxed. A racist, I thought, this man was being racist towards me. The shared-taxi had sped away and the road was now empty. I looked around, and spotted the sign for the village across the road: GORANXI, written in the Latin script that Albania uses, and below it the village's name in Greek: Καλογοραντζή. We were twenty kilometres from the Greek border, on a highway that led north to Tirana and further out of the country. This very stretch of road had probably seen its share of asylum seekers over the last few years, on their exhausting trudge from making landfall in Greece, through the Balkans and central Europe to the promised lands in the North: this same taxi driver had probably been asked, and now felt complicit or compelled to assist in getting them across this small country caught in the middle. I took the personal affront far less personally after realising this, rebranding the incident in my mind as one that was not quite, or far more than just a straightforward case of racism.

Different strains maybe, but the same global currents that had got me those shouts of recognition of "India! Bidaai!" had got me the cold shoulder from this taxi driver on the Greece-Albania highway. I got on the next bus which arrived five minutes later.

Continued here.

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calleo-bricriu · 2 years

Text

I posted 280 times in 2021

149 posts created (53%)

131 posts reblogged (47%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.9 posts.

I added 309 tags in 2021

#0 - 29 posts

#hp rp - 105 posts

#pics - 40 posts

#ooc - 35 posts

#divination - 32 posts

#tarot - 24 posts

#ministry of magic - 17 posts

#runes - 11 posts

#work - 9 posts

#corda-comminuta - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but hey when you gotta be nice without making it obvious you're being nice because the recipient either gets confused or annoyed by nice...

My Top Posts in 2021

My blackthorn is doing spectacularly, @misfit-herbologist !

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10 notes • Posted 2021-04-30 05:17:34 GMT

I just blew apart the identities of a good 30-ish people on my mom’s side of the family, and it’s a brilliant, wonderful feeling.

There is backstory here, because it doesn’t make sense without it, so grab a snack and get reading. :)

I did the thing I'd sort of half-ass promised my mom I wouldn't do back when I had medical genetic testing done so insurance would cover a few things back in 2016.

She didn't know what I meant by Ashkenazi which is fair enough as most people in the US only know the word because it shows up on medical forms as a yes/no checkbox.

"Jewish. The sort that wasn't just a conversion."

That got a LOOK, and not a confused one a vaguely frightened one and asked where I got that idea.

Told her I had to do medical genetic testing earlier in the year and the genetic counselor had mentioned it and told her in what context.

Got told to "leave it".

Whatever, I'd recently had fairly major surgery anyway so wasn't really in the mood to dig or push about it.

I asked her about it again and showed her two genetic test results, one a formal medical one, and one that had matching genetics that was, you know, not a formal medical set of genetic testing.

Got told to leave it again.

Fine.

...and I noticed most of went back that far was on my dad's side or on really remote branches of my mom's side.

On her more closely related side, the family she had that emigrated over from Germany in the late 1800s went back to the 1700s, but she's Polish as well.

And the Polish branches stopped at 1930.

They were extensively documented in 1930, with birth certificates, parish records, and immigration papers as they'd all come over to the US from Poland--right around 1930.

For the hell of it, I saved copies of all of that documentation she'd uploaded, and also figured, hey, they're running a 'join for 3 months get a silly DNA kit!' thing, I'll do a third one.

Did a third one.

Got the same results.

The thing is, my definitely influenced by being on the autism spectrum special interest period of history is 1900-1945.

So, I went back.

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10 notes • Posted 2021-01-07 02:18:18 GMT

Relax.

14 notes • Posted 2021-06-22 14:21:20 GMT

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16 notes • Posted 2021-03-14 20:06:21 GMT

It’s always interesting when the runes in the past, present, and future positions all say the same thing.

In this case, it was part of a fairly sarcastic answer that I could easily sum up as, “We know damn well you didn’t fail History of Magic.”

If I translate that into something a bit more polite it’s along the lines of, “There have been two major conflicts in the last fifty years. Look at the first one: Who won? Look at the second one: Who won? Look at the looming one and stop asking stupid questions.”

I didn’t say I could make it polite, only more polite than the terse response they actually gave.

In my defence, I don’t often like to jump out of the gate with a new set with anything terribly complicated. The fact that they were annoyed by it tells me they’re talking.

(( @lamentedhope may not like Divination but it sure seems to like him. :D ))

33 notes • Posted 2021-01-30 02:49:55 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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