We are Emigrants

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

A letter from Norway flew into my mailbox the other day, where the same as me"

Both phrases are throws, simple, generalized and extremely understandable for the majority of "not" abroad and "not" in separation. In general, they are not even banal.

Own funeral … Hmmm. It is said loudly, beautifully, mercilessly, with a swing and a bold point at the end. And I would like to change: Emigration is Parting … Parting with the city in which you studied and fell in love. Parting with friends. Parting with family and friends. (With mom, the only person who will prepare breakfast for you and pat you tenderly on the head: "Get up, daughter!"). Parting with the native language, which sounds at every step and therefore imperceptible. Parting with the Motherland, where at any point you still felt "at home" and which now is thousands of miles away …

Emigration is a voluntary parting with the acquired and livedwhere a part of your life is forever.

- Why did you leave Ukraine? - I asked Lena in the student canteen, in the long break between the written state exam in language proficiency and the interview.

- And what shone to me there? I'm from the west side, half-breed. Not a word in Ukrainian. If only to move to Kiev, where there is more work! So, my family decided to send me to finish my studies in Europe, so that after graduating from university to try to stay. Or get married, or so, settle down.

- How did you find the money for your studies? Are your parents rich?

- The Lord is with you! It depends on where and how to study. Yes, "Master" is expensive, but an ordinary university in Germany is almost nothing! The state pays, you just need to know the language perfectly and to have money for housing with food. So my parents directly told me: "We'd better humiliate for another year or two, so that later you would help us from there in old age." I entered first in Germany, then transferred here, next door. In the evenings I earned money by cleaning, somewhere two or three hundred euros a month comes out. Enough!

- But the student visa is over? How did you manage to stay?

- How how? As everybody! I met one here. Turkish, but with a permanent residence permit. He teaches at the college. Such a good one! We have already traveled with the family to get acquainted.

- Do you like it or so? …

- I love, - says Lena and smiles sweetly. - There he goes, my Turkish honey …

An unexpectedly tall, handsome man of a very intelligent look comes up to us, kisses Lena on the top of the head and shakes my hand: "Good dien!" "There are such … Turks!" - I think it's unethical …

Another friend of mine left for the States, where for the first two years she wandered and suffered terribly, sending me screaming e-mails, but was not going to return. “It's bad for me now, because there is no good work and the language is still so-so,” she wrote to me, “but in a year or two everything will be better! You know, it’s so good in fact! And I have prospects! to do in your Nizhny Novgorod with a pedagogical institute diploma? At school for a penny, like a mother all my life? And here I am now in web design courses (who would have thought!), orders have already begun to appear!"

Now she (along with the boyfriend that has appeared) makes good money and is going to pick up her mother as soon as the issue of buying a house is resolved.

With me, fate also decreed strangely. I have always been a patriot and a Russophile, and in principle shouted at every corner: " emigration is a betrayal!"And now I'm thinking:" Betrayal towards whom?"

To your own family? My parents are unspeakably happy that their daughter is finally "attached" after a difficult divorce, and my grandson - after many years of fatherlessness. I have a good family and a caring husband who became a dad for my nice boy and a support for his father-in-law and mother-in-law. (Well, it didn’t work out in the Motherland for some reason! But here it did!) We go to my parents in the summer, they visit us on Christmas and New Year.

Betrayal of friends? Unlikely. If before they gathered in a small kitchen with cockroaches, a bottle of vodka and boiled potatoes, which are not removed by any dichlorvos, now - in my "new" house, in an incredibly beautiful European country, where they come with great pleasure to also chat heart to heart with beer with shrimp. Yes, less often! (Well, when you are over thirty, everything happens less often in Russia …)

A betrayal of language and culture? Russian is spoken in my house, my husband very touchingly tells us "my murzilki" and communicates freely with Russia on the phone. Having bought a satellite dish, Russian TV channels appeared. The Internet is generally an indispensable thing: radio to you, MP3, and women's sites, and letters, of course … Russian books, however, mostly in translations. Russian icons on the walls. And even a bowl of Olivier for the New Year!

Betrayal in relation to … the Motherland? No, rather we saved her from several hungry mouths …

Of course, I am exaggerating and oversimplifying, because the matter is not only about financial well-being, although it is important for any normal person. The point is moral satisfaction and the usual female happiness, which many of us, "defaulters" have found here.

For many, a foreign land has become a second homeland, and, moreover, a beloved one. The path to such a conquered happiness is hard and difficult. Do not think that, having set foot on a foreign shore, you will have everything at once! Will not. At first there will be nothing. But if you really want to and do not give up, in time everything will work out.

I am an emigrant, although I have not changed my Russian passport, and I do not plan to "renounce" my citizenship, if local laws permit. I can stay. I can come back. I am a Russian, currently living in the country that I have chosen for myself.