“If I hear you speaking English one more time, I’ll wash your mouth with soap and then we’ll see what language you’ll choose to speak!” These words, or inevitably some variation of them—swap “soap” with “stuff your mouth with toothpaste” —were often whooped at me from a young age by an uncle who made it his mission to “militarize” me into being more Romanian. For him, and for so much of my family around me, there was a big fear that we second-generation kids would end up forgetting all of our cultural heritage and become their worst nightmare: maple-syrup-and-hockey-loving English-only Canadian children. Their belief that our loss of language would degenerate us into stereotypical Canadian citizens came from a mix of ignorance and fear. Language and identity are intertwined, so it’s not hard to see how my parents’ fear of me losing my ethnic Romanian language was a fear of me losing my cultural identity, a part of the homeland they had left behind. Romanian was my first language and continues to be the one I use at home to communicate with my parents and family. Despite our shared language, I often find myself caught in the complicated webs of translation—except instead of translating words from one language to another, I’m grappling to find a way to translate my parents’ histories and culture into something I can understand.
My parents immigrated to Canada in 1996 from the former Yugoslavia, what is now known as Serbia. Their immigration was spearheaded by the violent wars of national independence and the disintegration of state socialism by 1991. Marked by brutal ethnic cleansing and civil conflict, the Yugoslav wars are often described as the bloodiest wars since WWII. Only 18 years old, my dad was in regular army training when the stakes got real. He always tells me about the day the news came that Serbia and Croatia were at war. He recalls he was smoking a cigarette and playing pool, nobody was in proper uniform, everybody was still a teenager and thought that holding a gun was macho and cool. These were the conditions of army training received under the conscription requirement. The training wasn’t taken seriously and was more of a hyper-masculinized boys’ den than an actual training camp. That all changed within the course of one day, when my dad had to put down his pool cue and pick up a sniper. His captain told him to straighten his helmet and gave him five minutes to let his parents know. The morning after the declaration, my dad was sent to fight in the mountains, where he remained for over a year.
Once in a while, he’ll share some stories about his experience during that time. I want to listen and learn everything I can, but I admittedly struggle with putting this into practice. My dad and I aren’t close, but we’re not distant, either. Our relationship hovers in a space of uncertainty and in-between-ness. For the majority of my life, he’s worked grueling shifts in factories. This meant that we didn’t see very much of each other. When he is at home, he likes to drink, which makes talking to him feel like a chore at times. My dad’s a quiet man, except for when he’s had something to drink. Unfortunately, this means that the only time he wants to talk about his life back home or the war is when he’s inebriated and slurring his words. One of my biggest fears is not knowing—really knowing—who my father was before he moved to Canada. I’m terrified of the thought of waking up one day with him gone and not having ever taken the time to learn.
What troubles me the most is that it’s become increasingly hard to listen to and understand him. How am I ever going to get to know who my dad is when he needs to translate his experiences through the veil of alcohol? Perhaps this is a coping mechanism for trauma left unaddressed. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel angry that any communication between me and my father has to come through this “translator.” Lately, I’ve noticed that he won’t even talk about his experiences in the war in our native tongue. In all other areas of life, my dad insists on speaking Romanian, so his decision to choose English is mystifying. I asked him about it one day. “It’s harder for my tongue but easier for my brain” was his answer. I’ve wracked my brain to understand what he meant. Perhaps, while speaking English may be more difficult in terms of grammar and vocabulary, speaking Romanian or Serbian hits too close to his past. By using a different language than the one he used in the war, he distances himself from what he is talking about. I understand this need to distance oneself. But, while he may be distancing himself from a certain trauma, I am inevitably distanced from understanding him. Because English isn’t his first language, he’ll take long pauses, in the midst of talking to me about his past, to choose the “right” English word. Or he’ll ask me to choose the “right” word for him. But how can I, someone who has never experienced what he’s describing, ever be able to choose the right word for him? Is there even a “right” word to describe the mass genocide of your neighbouring country? Or to describe the feeling in your chest when you have to decide whether or not to shoot?
Nietzsche once said that “to use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.” Can my dad ever truly translate his experiences for me? In English, Romanian, or Serbian, can words suffice to communicate the uncommunicable? While I want to know as much of my father’s history as I can, I think I have to accept that certain experiences can’t be communicated to me. Despite sharing a language, a culture, and blood with my father, his past seems to be stuck in a cycle of inadequate translations, which I nonetheless hope to one day break.
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