My cousin Arma from Sarajevo settled in some old fishing village on the Pacific Coast in America. She lost everything in the war—her house, business, friends, lovers, the Sarajevo side of our family. She thought she’d stay in Sarajevo, at first. She watched many leave in droves after the first sniper shot that little girl in the independence celebration. The man whose proposal she’d long neglected left her for Germany, taking his neighbor’s niece—as she’d suspected—and wouldn’t even kiss Arma good-bye. Arma, in the meantime, helped many of her neighbors escape through the tunnels to the airport until she herself followed the line out of the city, out of Bosnia and Europe forever she says. 

Arma opened a restaurant on the edge of an American fishing town. She served ćevapi, burek, zeljanica, baklava, soup, makaroni, pita with potatoes, even cheeseburgers, whatever she thought the Americans might eat. She decorated the restaurant as if she’d ripped off an estate. White was the predominant color. Lace served as tablecloth. Tins and precious metals were adorned by photos of ancestors or famous (and thereafter known as Great) people in our history. She put our new country’s yellow, blue, and white starred flag in every corner and laid out books and paraphernalia recording the war, the history of the people, and our best beer. A small number of Eastern European descendants were scattered across the town and quickly found her restaurant. They were grandchildren or great grandchildren of émigrés from the late 1960s or even the early 1900s and further back in our history of histories. Like many that left at that time, they’d hid their identities well but amongst their families spoke in the old language and served the old food. As their descendants aged, they clung to memories of those long-gone grandparents. They followed the war but only in the beginning, thrilled to see the new Croatian republic. Many had visited Split, Dubrovnik, and the Dalmatian Coast. Arma’s Restaurant—her food that is and some of the words on the menu—were as close as they could get to ancestors or their memories from vacation. 

Arma took to eavesdropping, particularly on Helen and Gillian, co-workers in their late 60s and granddaughters of Croatians. Her most regular customers.

One day Gillian walked in, giddy. She laid her purse at her feet and didn’t even notice it had collapsed to its side, spilling onto the floor. 

You are not going to believe this. She reached to pinch Helen’s free hand. Helen was intrigued. I met this woman. Of all places, at the DMV! It came up that I was taking Croatian language classes and that my family’s Croatian. So she tells me ‘I’m Croatian’— 

No kidding? 

Yeah, no, she says ‘I just got dual citizenship.’ I was like ‘Wow, you can do that.’ So—

How did she get that? Helen whispered, lowering herself to lean in to hear Gillian, who was shorter than Helen and tended to drop her voice at the really important parts. There was no one else in the restaurant but Arma. She began to wipe off the counter from the side closest to the two women. She knew about this language class. It was called Bosnian 101 but the book had a picture of the Dalmatian Coast and was titled BEGINNER’S CROATIAN. 

Right, I’m getting there. So she says, ‘I paid this lawyer to do all the paperwork for me. Deal with the  government, the embassy, and all the bureaucratic stuff—and in Croatian.’ She said they’d take it well that I was studying Croatian. 

Means you’re serious. 

Exactly. 

Arma stepped in, stepping over the strewn contents of Gillian’s purse. The same? she asked and both women raised their crouched heads. 

Yes, Helen said for them. Go on, she said to Gillian when Arma walked away. From the kitchen Arma barely heard the rest—except this from Helen: Oh my God; you know they’re part of the E.U. now? You could get work over there, like a really good job with E.U. benefits. 

Arma dropped the burek before Helen and zeljanica before Gillian. 

Be honest, Helen said. Which passport would you rather be traveling the world with?

Gillian took a long sip of her Diet Cola. But it’s a thousand dollars. 

Helen sliced into the burek. I’d do it. 

The woman ate and Arma laid out utensils for what she hoped, today, would be a busier lunch crowd.

My son, Gillian began, after a long while, her chews wet and audible in her consonants. He’s half Croatian. Bob’s family’s Irish, you know. Anyway, I bet they’d do it for Josh, too.

Bob’s Irish? 

Well, he is adopted you know.

So his parents were Irish? 

His parents were Minnesotan. His stepdad was Irish. 

Gotcha. 

Arma learned the nuances and sayings of American English this way. On the outskirts of the commercial district, the restaurant claimed to be closed for a two hour stretch to let her ready for dinner. But often she sat in a wicker chair outside the restaurant’s front doors, waiting to rise and serve anyone who passed by inquiring or hungry. She smoked the cigarettes we’d sent her (bunched in between packages of Kiki sweets, Kraš Bajadera chocolate, and anything new with our flag on it; sometimes making it through customs, sometimes not). Sometimes her American boyfriend helped her cook. Other times, he read magazines in the kitchen. Many times he wanted to correct Gillian and Helen, so Arma gave him the dinner shift instead. 

Around the same time Arma moved to the village she met Marijana. Marijana was a Bosnian Croat from Čapljina. Čapljina, on the border between Bosnia and Croatia, has a bloodthirsty history of genocide in World War II and again with the camps and forced exiles, the cleansing, during our war. Which was when Marijana’s brother had disappeared in the night. Though her father (on his deathbed but still following events) had said the point of the war was to fight, Marijana wasn’t sure whom her brother would be fighting for. She dreamed he was wise enough to leave, before any side claimed him—for dirty deeds or human sacrifice. Though she never knew her brother’s fate or the truth of what happened, she knew enough not to confuse the two. When her father died, Marijana asked a neighbor to bury him and gladly bolted to a refugee camp on the Croatian seaside to await approval of her refugee status. She opened a jewelry store when she arrived in that American fishing town, adding a small café counter. Marijana paid higher rent—nearly all her savings and all she made—to be in the central part of the commercial district. 

She and Arma spotted each other right away. They’d wave at each other at the market, even pick out vegetables together over heated debates on their quality. They had coffee at each other’s houses and often in Marijana’s café. Reminisce about the 1984 Winter Olympics, held in Sarajevo, how then they’d never have guessed this (a code for the ever-present war, its gruesomeness, the aftermath) would have happened or that, one day, they’d be in America, wrestling and clinging to sleep and dreams while sea lions barked under piers. Marijana was from the provinces, a village, so the town was not so small to her; she’d never been to a capital with the exception of her flight out via Zagreb. Arma had only ever lived in the capital, traveled only to other capitals. She wasn’t interested in the provinces and this fishing village was more an adjustment than America itself. They did not talk about Marijana’s missing brother and Arma didn’t tell her about the man that fled to Germany with his neighbor’s niece. There was a heat and a silence if conversations steered too closely to the war years and the situations in their respective places of birth. Though Marijana knew Arma was from Sarajevo and she knew what that meant and Arma knew Marijana was from Čapljina—and she, too, knew what that meant. So their talk became mostly of Yugoslavia and nostalgia for the good things and how to make it in American business. They’d speak around what they meant to say, letting the subtext settle. Both were comforted that, as exiles, they were no longer left alone to live with a sinking feeling of rejection. Something the American boyfriends sensed when they held them but could not name and could not reach. The look from one woman to another was enough, the right language to balm the pain.

Until late last spring, when Marijana’s jewelry/bead store/café failed.

°

What choice do I have? Marijana had joined Arma outside her closed ‘til dinner restaurant, its doors wide open. The women smoked downwind of the door and leaned back in their chairs. Well, what will you serve that will be different? 

You know, Hvartski stuff. 

I get their chocolate here. Arma handed Marijana a piece of the Bajadera chocolate she had left. Marijana chewed in quiet, holding her lit cigarette in waiting below her seat. 

You see? Not much business, Arma said, gesturing to her doors. And I even have a website, coupons, the Facebook, everything. 

Two teenagers, ears stretched and punched with giant holes, hair dyed neon and black, and backpacks deflated, sauntered by, glancing at the women from the sides of their lowered heads.

Marijana shrugged. There’s not much business anyway. It will be like I am cooking for myself.

Before Marijana’s opened, Arma told a delighted Gillian and Helen that—just for them—there was now a special: a $6 lunch for regulars. Maybe I will even do it at dinner, too, she thought aloud to the women, just for you. 

One day a filmmaker, at work on a documentary about the war and the people who rescued each other through Sarajevo’s escape tunnels, passed through the town on his way to a very important film festival. After peering in the town’s bookshop he walked into Marijana’s new restaurant next door. He recognized the words and the food, for she too served ćevapi, burek, zeljanica, baklava, soup, makaroni, pita with potatoes. He told Marijana of the movie. She insisted he must show the movie there, in her little town, so that the people might know what happened. So that townspeople might know her. She tried not to cry when she said it but nonetheless the conversation ended with her sinking into the seat opposite the filmmaker, the filmmaker passing her his restaurant napkin, embroidered Marijana’s, promising he’d return. 

°

After Arma hadn’t seen Gillian or Helen for a week, she lowered the lunch special to $4 and posted it in her window. 

That summer Tunnel to Freedom screened. The Eastern European bloc came out from the shadows, inviting friends and packing Marijana’s for the film. The Chamber of Commerce and Tourist Board had pictures taken of Marijana with the filmmaker, the mayor, and six great- great- grandkids of those from the lands of the former Yugoslavia. They all held a tiny Hvartski, Croatian, flag. Only the filmmaker hesitated.

They did not invite Arma. 

°

The crisp cool of autumn was on the town. Many of the tourists had fled. Fewer and fewer braved the fog of the coast for a quiet weekend away from their cities, suburbs, and homes. Arma’s boyfriend was back on the lunch shift. Since it was so quiet these days, Arma decided to take the risk and the long walk to  the post office at the center of town.

She pressed against the bookshop beside Marijana’s. The shopkeeper saw her but pretended to return to his inventory. Inside the restaurant were the youngest of the grandchildren, the toddlers from the photos  with the mayor; Arma remembered their smiles. Their mothers spread across four tabletops. In the far corner were two women, late 60s, passing a new blue passport with a checkered crest between them, their faces stretched in the smile of relief.