From Belgrade…

It was nearly three weeks ago now that J came to visit. It was lovely to see her and show off my city – even if she seemed to have brought with her weather from her native Toronto.

Barring something unforeseen, it was my last time to show off this place to a visiting friend. It’s become a routine – Kalemegdan, Sveta Petka, The Nikola Tesla Museum, burek, rakija – but with a few additions based on her interests and my favorite new discoveries – Kalenić pijaca and the fun underwear store at blok 70.

We spent a lot of time talking about identity, something that I spend much of my work life pondering, something that she was being forced to face throughout her travels in central and southeastern Europe because she does not look like everyone’s mental image of a WASPy flannel-wearing lumberjack Canadian. Her father is from Hong Kong, which, if one is fond of dividing human beings into fractions (I find it distasteful.) would make her half-Chinese. To further complicate things, her last name is Korean; no one is really sure how that happened.

“Where are you really from?” is the question that people keep asking.

I hoped it would be different when I took her to work—these are the people that spend so much time talking about chosen vs. imposed identities, after all. I was disappointed. A coworker became quite insistent with her “Where are you really from?”s. When J answered only with, “Canada,” my colleague assumed, “Oh, so you’re Eskimo?”

To stop the questions that were beginning to embarrass everyone, I finally took her aside and explained J’s father’s immigration.

Sigh.