The Middle of Everywhere (25 page)

Jasminka seemed less tormented by identity issues than many of the young adults I met. This was because she lived at home and had great respect for her family. She had the memory of her father to hold her life in place. She was reasonably adept at cultural switching.

We took our trays to the dish line. I thanked her for the interview and offered to help her in any way I could. She wrote down my phone number. As I watched Jasminka disappear in the swirl of students, she looked like an American college student, but she was not. She had a history and a belief system very different from the other students. She would have an arranged marriage when she was in her late twenties. She was a devout supporter of the KLA. Her dreams were Albanian dreams.

In some ways, young adults are our most vulnerable newcomers. Many are on their own, American style, but with no money, education, or connections. Often they are less adept than adolescents at cultural switching. They are behind educationally and slower than teenagers to learn English. They are at an age when they can get into all kinds of American trouble—with drugs, alcohol, gambling, and credit cards.

Young adults usually want to go to school, but there are many hurdles. After age twenty-one, refugees are no longer allowed to attend high school. They may have serious gaps in their educations and have no idea how our system of community colleges, universities, and trade schools functions. Without a cultural broker interpreting the arcane language of academia, refugees have trouble making it through the college system. One Syrian student worried her brain wasn't good enough to learn physics. With her limited discretionary money, she bought ginkgo to improve her memory. A Turkish student noticed there were no people who looked like her on campus.

Those young adults who remain with their families are often the primary wage earners and the liaisons to the English-speaking communities. In many cases, their parents are slow to adapt or disabled, and the young adults must shoulder the burden of supporting the family. They often are the drivers, the schedulers, and the ones who fill out forms and translate. And yet, in many cases, they are expected to remain deferential at home and they are not allowed the freedom of young Americans.

When the parents are dead, young adults also become the legal guardians of their younger siblings, which means they must be present at doctors' and dentists' appointments and meetings with the schools. In the role of family workhorse and leader, young adults can rapidly become overwhelmed and they burn out.

Young adult refugees have many memories of home and there is a stronger sense of exile than with younger people. They must ask, "Who am I in this new land?" Young adults may also have come from cultures in which identity is derived from caste, family, or position in one's tribe. The whole concept of individual identity is new and yet, in America, many of the markers for the old identity are not present.

Finally, negotiating sexual relationships and finding a marriage partner is problematic. Dating, sexual relationships, and courtship are complex even for native-born Americans. These activities require judgment and the ability to send and receive subtle signals. They involve understanding the nuances of flirting and knowing how to set limits and negotiate consensual sex.

In our culture, dating begins as early as age twelve or thirteen. By the time most Americans are in their mid-twenties they have been learning to date for over a decade. As young adults, they have had trial-and-error learning and they've talked to dozens of friends about their experiences. They have read books, listened to songs, and seen movies that have taught them how to manage their dating.

Newcomers often have had none of these experiences. Many come from cultures in which young men and women have no contact with members of the opposite sex, except for their relatives. They have no scripts for actively seeking out a partner, winning that partner's affection, and negotiating a relationship. Our ways of dating are incomprehensible to many newcomers. Indeed, what we consider dating, they have been taught is deeply sinful.

Many young adults want to marry, but they have absolutely no idea how to go about finding a mate. If they proceed as Americans do, they will alienate members of their own culture. They are not supposed to be dancing and talking to members of the opposite sex. However, if they wait for someone to arrange their marriage, they will remain single. They don't know where to go to meet a potential marriage partner, what to say to a member of the opposite sex, what behavior is appropriate for dating, or how to ask someone to marry them.

Refugees in Lincoln may want to marry someone from their culture, but there are no potential mates in Nebraska. As young adults from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia have grown to trust me, they often ask, "Do you know someone I can marry?"

When refugees try to approach someone from another culture, they are liable to make serious mistakes. A local woman tutored a Congolese man in English. At their second session he asked for her hand in marriage. He was very upset when she turned him down. He assumed that if she spent time with him she wanted to marry him.

There are many misunderstandings about the signals certain behaviors send. Many women from traditional cultures dress in fashionable and sexy American clothes but would be deeply offended by American-style sexual advances. Or they have been warned that all American men want sex and they are frightened by even the most innocent offers of friendship.

In some cultures a kiss is a prelude to sex. Women are very careful about whom they kiss because to them it signals a sexual commitment. Once they have kissed, they will have sex. American men find these women incredibly cold—until they talk them into a kiss. Then they are amazed at how rapidly the women hurl themselves at them. On the other hand, the women are deeply disappointed in American men. They think that a kiss is a marriage proposal and are heartbroken and angry when the man doesn't offer to marry them.

Dating and courtship are emotional minefields. The misunderstandings that inevitably occur are so often embarrassing, scary, or painful that newcomers withdraw from all attempts at courtship. Then they are lonely. A woman from Belarus spoke of "womb pain," which she attributed to the desire of her womb to carry a child. But she was thirty-three years old, spoke little English, and was unlikely to ever marry and have the children she so deeply wanted.

One women from Moldova kept falling in love with her married supervisors at work. She felt ashamed and guilty about this. She couldn't understand why this happened. I told her, "You are falling in love with the idea of a good husband, someone who is respectable and would care for you. Your yearning for this is understandable." She was grateful for my explanation, but I couldn't find her that caring man she so deserved.

Lonely adults from countries without any tradition of dating or courtship need help navigating the stormy seas of dating relationships. They are not going to find a partner in the bars, and they often don't have friends to introduce them to eligible partners. We could use a marriage broker in our town, or at least a class: Finding a Mate 101.

Of course, many young adults do find people from their own cultures to date and marry, and increasingly they date Americans or refugees from other cultures. We see interesting mixed couples in our cafés—Kurdish and Latino, Vietnamese and Afghani, Sudanese and Bosnian. Some young adults participate in arranged marriage in this country. And, of course, some do not want to marry.

The two stories that follow are of young adults in our community. The cultures and external circumstances are quite different in some ways, and yet all the young adults are struggling with work, identity, and relationship issues. No one is terribly happy. The late twenties is not a happy age for many people in America, especially if they are refugees.

"
I was born in the wrong time.
"

I met Thiep at the Student Union just after Thanksgiving. There was a fire in the fireplace and Christmas carols played in the background. Thiep was twenty-five, weighed maybe ninety pounds, and had an earnest face. She was pretty, but she wasn't about being pretty; her experiences had led her to a search for deeper meaning.

We bought cups of hot tea and settled in for a talk. I asked one question and then mostly listened. Thiep could have talked for hours.

"I was born in the wrong time—1975 in Vietnam," she began. "It was a time of distrust and disbelief, right after the war. Thirty-six hours after I was born, soldiers came to my house and arrested my father. It was six years before we saw him again. My grandfather and uncle were in prison, too. Many people starved to death."

While her father was in jail, she and her mother lived with her mother's family, simple country people. Their door was never shut and neighbors ambled in and out. She could go into any house in the village without knocking. No one cared about the war or politics, only food and shelter for their village.

After her father was released, they moved into his family home, which included seven uncles and two aunts who had moved to Saigon from the north so they could worship in a Catholic church. Before the war, this family had been wealthy and had associated with the French. Her father had been a captain in the army. He was a proud man who never learned to ask for favors. Now they were broke and the men were unemployed. Thiep's uncles were smart, but because of their history they were not allowed to study or work. These uncles and her father never recovered from the family's loss of status. Thiep's mother was a seamstress, the best wage earner in the family.

Prison changed her father, who had been optimistic and kind before the war but was now distrustful and bitter. When her family asked old friends for help, the friends would quietly disappear. Thiep interrupted herself to say that she didn't judge the people, but the times. It was dangerous to be helpful to a family like hers.

At school Thiep was teacher's pet and class president. But she knew her education would come to nothings Because of the family's political past, Thiep would never be able to go to college.

Thiep paused briefly and looked around the cheery room. She said, "I want to tell you about my uncles. I think of them every day."

One of these uncles knew Latin and French and loved to write and conduct music. He lived an artist's life and didn't care for money at all. The other uncle dreamed of becoming a soccer player. They had no hope for a good life in Vietnam and they planned a daring escape. They slipped onto a boat with others who were escaping with the help of "snakeheads," or paid guides. They were at sea with sixty people when a storm blew in. The fishermen all rushed to shore, but the escapees couldn't go to shore or they would be arrested. So they chose to brave the storm, and at dusk the boat capsized. Everyone on board was killed.

Thiep's family went to recover the bodies. They found the body of her youngest uncle. It was a rainy day. Thiep thought, "God is crying with us." They never found the body of the educated uncle; they think he may have accidentally swum toward the sea. They made a cross for him by a tree and left an offering of chicken and wine. They brought the other uncle's body home. At his funeral, many women cried as the handsome soccer player was buried.

Thiep stopped talking and cried for a while. She said, "I have had more life than I wanted."

Thiep's family arrived in the United States jet-lagged and with pinkeye. That first night they stayed with a Khmer family, then they moved into a basement apartment. Thiep said they were like rats in a cellar. They didn't know how to cook on American appliances and no one came to visit. One day the baby had an ear infection. They called 911 but none of them could speak English. Later, the phone company traced the call and reported the emergency. A fire truck and policemen arrived but the family still couldn't explain why they called.

Slowly the family adapted. Her dad got a job as a floor polisher and learned to drive a car. Thiep had her first day of school. When she walked into high school, she couldn't even ask where to go. A Vietnamese student helped her get started and soon she was settled. She helped the other students and the teachers in any way she could. She rapidly learned English and passed through the ELL levels. She was what my aunt Margaret called "green on top," someone who loved to learn.

Thiep made many friends, but didn't feel close to anyone. "No one had my experiences." She felt that, compared to most Vietnamese young women, she was more serious and mature. She was unsure how to really be close to Americans or Vietnamese. She said, "I don't fit anywhere. I am not like the people in either country." She laughed. "I get along better with teachers than with anyone else."

Her teachers made her feel like somebody. She had never felt like a real person in Vietnam. She wrote to a teacher, "ELL students are poor. But we have red hearts and we offer them to you."

At the university, she studied physics. She knew almost all the Asian students, but she was afraid of close relationships. She'd never had a boyfriend or even a date. She said, "I wouldn't know how to handle that."

Thiep was a strange mix of strong and vulnerable, confident and shy. She reminded me of a story my mother told of a man without a country, condemned to always keep moving, to never setde down and be at home. He sailed from place to place, always wanting what he could not have, terra firma, and an identity as a man from a particular place.

Thiep had job offers from big companies on both coasts. But she would never work for money. She wanted to help Vietnamese people keep their old culture, but with open hearts, ready to embrace what is good in America. She said that in many families the old spoke only Vietnamese and the grandchildren spoke only English so that the generations could not talk to each other.

Thiep wrote poetry and stories. She wanted to bring the generations together. But most of her themes were painful ones. She leaned toward me as she whispered, "I need to rearrange the landscape of my mind. I am not a very happy person."