Free Street Without a Name by Kapka Kassabova Page A

ashamed of,’ my mother’s cousin said. She was a medical journalist, and had a big, sensuous mouth that laughed a lot. ‘On the contrary, I’m proud. Yes, we live in a shitty one-bedroom flat with a cat and an occasional grandmother, and I know exactly when my neighbour has diarrhoea. Even so, I have a medical degree, a journalism degree, a PhD, and three languages. My childrenare well brought-up and well-dressed despite the empty shops, and I can make a birthday cake without flour, sugar, baking powder, or milk. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s
them
, not us!’
    This struck me as a clever argument. But it didn’t help my mother. In fact, it made it worse. It confirmed that we were living in a banana republic, but minus the bananas. It confirmed that the more languages you spoke, the more cakes without ingredients you made, the more political jokes you told, the more wretched you were.
    My first real encounter with the outside world occurred at age nine, in Macedonia across the border. The prosperous veneer of people and things there stunned me. They spoke almost the same language as us, and looked the same as us, but ate chocolates with hazelnuts and peaches without down. And bananas. I had never seen bananas before. They sat in a bowl on my uncle’s table. I didn’t dare touch them. ‘Are they plastic?’ I whispered to my mother. They were real. My cousins overheard us and laughed. I was mortified. Everybody gave me chocolates and patted me on the head. It was obvious that we were the poor cousins.
    The reason why we went to Macedonia – which was also inside Yugoslavia – was that my grandmother Anastassia (she of the seaside holidays) came from a small lake town called Ohrid. From there, we could see the hazy Albanian mountains. They looked no different from our mountains, but apparently they were.
    My uncle, a fat, jolly professor of physics, had been to Albania’s Tirana University many times, and he told us how the shops in Tirana had nothing except loaves of bread piled up on the floor. He told us how the border guards each time unlocked the eagle-embossed gates at the border, let my uncle and his driver in, and then locked them again. He told us that the people of Albania weren’t allowed to go anywhere,not even to the Brotherly Soviet Country. It sounded like a terrible place. So despite the humiliation, it was better to be the poor cousin and enjoy the perks than to have poor cousins yourself.
    Two years later, we went to East Berlin, invited by one of my father’s colleagues, a university professor called Wolf. The city looked bright and glitzy, a kind of dress rehearsal for a Western city. The large avenues and buildings, the blond people and
wurst
stalls, the foreign language, it all appeared festive and exotic to my eyes. Even the Wall, when we glimpsed it, was exciting, because on the other side was the West. We could almost hear the other side, almost see it. It was a mind-blowing concept, being so close, and I held my breath.
    My parents and Wolf stood by the Brandenburg Gate barricades, their backs to the Wall and its armed guards. They didn’t say much, they just stood there, as if paying their respects in a graveyard. Wolf’s parents were on the other side, and I wondered why, but I knew this was one of those questions you didn’t ask.
    My sister and I ate sandwiches with salami and gherkins. It was like picnicking on the outer edge of our world. We’d gone as far as we could safely go.
    That’s right, we were safe on our side – safe from the stresses of alien worlds. Perhaps, thanks to the Wall, I would never leave the Soc Camp – and perhaps it was better that way.
    After the picnic, we walked back along Unter den Linden, in the deep shadow of the Soviet Embassy, which was the size of a football stadium. I was happy. Like most people on our side, I had internalized oppression. The Wall was already inside me, the bricks and mortar of my eleven-year-old self. The Wall wasn’t a