Kitsa Kolbe | Public figures' migration stories

Unknown artist

I feel / see myself as a migrant. In a poetical language, I am a migratory bird from the South who fell in love in the North. And she wished to stay there! The yearning to the unknown was given to me by the migratory biography of my parents. I used it to search “my country”. Maybe because I was born in a stateless area. Therefore my migratory story is not connected to an object, but more to a feeling, the admiration of the unknown. What is there behind the border. I had the feeling that something wonderful was waiting for me there. But, at the same time, sometimes I was sorrowful because I left. Macedonia. Actually, migrants like to be able to be in all places they love at the same time. It is a typical romantic motif. I have never moved without a book and a notebook/organiser. Lately also, without one small icon of St. Nicholas. It is a remembrance from my childhood in Aegean refugee diaspora in Skopje. My great grandmother loved this holy man, protector of birds, searchers and migrants. The photos of my parents remind me of my family migration story. Both of them are deceased. In my childhood, we did not have photos older than the year when my parents fled through the border from Greece to Yugoslavia. All their photos and personal documents were left in their homes. They had not believed they would not come back home. I admired my friends in my childhood who possessed old photos and old objects. We, the refugee children, did not have anything older than ourselves. With our birth, the new life began. I took with me to Germany my great-grandmother’s serge (a twilled woollen fabric). She had it on when she was running across the border. I used to wear it when I was a student. It was woven by my great-grandmother. My books and my paintings symbolise my new life. The literature and the painting, also. Having the opportunity to be close to the German literature, I became aware of my strongest gifts – the language and the word, the painting, writing and the process of painting. I got there from Macedonia as a university professor. In Germany, I became a writer and a painter. The most prominent experience of migration was the knowledge that I was always yearning for the unknown since I didn’t know where I belonged. Today I think that the yearning for the world behind the border is deeply connected to my familial migratory heritage. When I was a child, my grandmothers, my relatives-refugees permanently retold something about the border. It made me frightened. But at the same time, it was telling me that there had to be something precious behind the border. Something that is so beautiful that cannot be never forgotten. Something similar to what was left behind the border by my relatives. Then I didn’t know what was that - actually, it was their old life, which they left in the war. I became aware of the real trauma of my migratory family only when I came to Germany. And then I started writing about it. It became my main topic in the works of literature and philosophy. I started to move to / in Germany in July 1981. I got married. My husband is German. My moving was organised in stages. Till the end of 1985, I still worked at the University in Skopje. I passed each semester there. During the vacation, my daughter and I went to Germany. At our home there where my husband was, her father. The love for my husband led me to move. I wanted to be there, where he was. And also, the wish that my daughter will know clearly where she belongs… When I visited Bonn for the first time, I had the feeling that I should have always lived there. At that time my husband was studying there. I admired everything! I knew Bonn from the history of German culture. Beethoven, whose music I love very much, was born there. Then I could pass the street where he was born, where his birthplace is still there. This feeling is even stronger now. Germany is my second country. My family is there and my friends. And also, the German art, philosophy, culture. I still esteem this Germany. It exhilarated me even when I was in secondary school in Skopje and when I read Thomas Mann. It is Germany, the country of poets, writers, composers. That migration experience has changed me a lot. I wished to become part of that culture as soon as it was possible. When I met my husband I didn’t speak the German language. In the beginning, I spoke with him in English only. After one year I started to speak German. I learned the language by myself. I was reading books and manuals. I still remember the first book I bought on the second day of my stay in Bonn. It was “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov in the German language. That was the first book in our mutual library. Later on, I landed it to an acquaintance, German artist. He moved somewhere and he did not return the book to me. So my first book bought in Germany became migrant itself! I didn’t forget the symbolic meaning of this book. Each moment of my life with my family, my husband and my daughter are my happiest memories. And now we have a grandchild! She was born in Cologne. And as it happens, she is six years old and she knows many carnival songs. She sings them with great love! I felt out of place only sometimes. After a longer stay in Macedonia during the summer, I would come back home, but I still had the odours of Skopje in my mind, I missed my Macedonian family the first two-three days. Although, when I entered our new home for the first time, I had the feeling that I already was there before. I found out that one cannot be at the same time on both places of his / her biography. At the same time, I felt that one can be at home everywhere. It is the place where the people you love reside. I am accommodated in my family. And my family is in Cologne and in Skopje. My home is my writing. The literature is the protected space of the author. It is his imaginary patrimony without borders. --- This story was contributed by National Library of Macedonia