After she left the room, we stared at the floor in silence, feeling the full weight of her story. Speculations, disbeliefs and questions ran one after the other in my head into a blurry train of nonsensical thoughts; some darker and more appalling than others. Was he already suicidal even before they got together? Maybe the husband was the one who tipped off ICE about her illegal status. Is the story real? I hope this is not emotional manipulation – coming up with a sob story so we’d stay longer at her place. Would anyone really make up a story like this for a few extra bucks? Does she share this with everyone who stays with her? Or was our questions too intrusive and too personal that it accidentally pry open the door she’d rather not share? What do we do now? In the past I would have been so bothered by these thoughts, as if these were indications of my ill nature, my lack of humanity. Now I just acknowledged them and treat them like a dark passing cloud – watch and let go. I remembered what the meditation retreat taught me: My thoughts aren’t me. It’s my action that counts.
I decided to be sympathetic to her plight but maintained a degree of skepticism – just in case this was a complicated ruse on her part to fleece us. How exactly, I didn’t know. But I figured there was no harm in maintaining a healthy dose of cautiousness. There’s something embarrassing about being so calculating, and I mourned for my naïve self who died a long time ago. The world must have looked so different to this Selina who would’ve bought wholesale whatever story people told her. But truth be told, I was quite annoyed by her decision to share her troubles with us. Now that we knew what she’d been through, I felt the need to tiptoe and handle her with care the way I would treat anyone in bereavement, which was not the relationship that I had envisioned between a host and a guest.
As we waited for dinner, we went downstairs and hung out with the Czech family who were also staying at the guesthouse. They seemed care-free and unencumbered by our host’s suffering as far as we could tell. We asked them where they came from and they – mostly the son, the only one who spoke English in the group – eagerly shared their two-week road-trip itinerary. Perhaps she didn’t share her story with them. She probably had better sense than to ask the boy to translate her misfortune to the parents and his little sister, blow by blow.
Then appeared a boy from inside the house. He ran towards the gazebo where all of us were sitting and started climbing onto the dining table and jumped up to hang from the joist of the gazebo roof, screaming excitedly. The Czech family looked unperturbed by the sudden chaos created by this little devil. They scooted to the side to make room for the commotion and continued playing cards, occasionally holding one hand out to prevent the boy’s legs from hitting the side of their heads. I knew immediately who this boy was. He’s Konrad, our host’s son, the remainder and reminder of her marriage to the dead husband.
Like any three year old, he was rambunctious, endlessly energetic and constantly in search for entertainment. One minute he was jumping up and down the dinner table, and running around kicking his soccer ball the next minute. His arms and legs were covered in scabs and scratches, his hair matted with dirt and dried grass. At some point, the Czech boy just about had enough of the little rascal and picked him and held the boy up; his arms were long enough so that the boy couldn’t do anything but flailed his arms and legs helplessly. “Put me down!” the boy screamed in English. “Only if you stop shouting,” the Czech boy said. After that the boy calmed down for a little bit. But he spent less than a minute being shy with me and just as quickly grabbed my hand and invited me to climb down the short ladder down onto the pig enclosure. The pig was less interested in playing than we were. Occasionally the pig would sniff at the plastic soccer ball, but the boy would chase the pig with such ferocity that the pig dashed away fearfully. When he had enough of pig chasing, the boy found an empty water drum and decided it would be fun to get inside the drum and roll down a small slope.
An old woman, looking like a Russian babushka, wearing a loose farmer blouse, a long black skirt and scarf over her head peered into the pig enclosure. She spoke to the boy in Albanian and the boy replied in English, defying whatever request she had asked him. She looked at me as if asking if the boy was bothering me. I shrugged and smiled. Not a bother, I tried to tell her, though I wasn’t sure myself if I really wanted to play babysitter. It was amusing to watch the boy squealing in pleasure as the drum rolled down the slope with him inside. But the question was: would I still have chosen to hang out with the boy had I not known his life story?
Our host clearly had no time for the son. Between the time we arrived and dinner time, she had multiple errands to complete on top of preparing dinner. I saw her by the cow shed with a milking pail, then herding goats in the field, then on the vegetable patch picking peppers and cucumbers, then hanging clothes on the clothesline. Farm life is hard life, I thought. Whoever has a romantic notion of living in a farm to retire must have never lived on a farm before. Even with her mom helping her, there was never a moment of quiet for this woman; there was always something to do, something to fix, something to fuss over. Perhaps that’s exactly what she needed to recover from her grief, but that also meant she barely had enough time to pay attention to the boy, who luckily s seemed quite able to find playmates among the guests.
At 7:30, dinner was served. We sat down with the Czech family at the dining table under the gazebo; the benches barely fit the six of us. She had fried some trouts and pork chops for the Czech family, lamb legs for us, and fried potatoes and salad for all of us to share. Then the boy came over and inserted himself between me and the Czech boy, unabashedly picking food off the main plates with his grubby fingers. I had expected our host to come over and stop her son from disturbing the guests, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she set down an extra plate for the boy and served him a portion of potatoes and meat before retiring the kitchen and leaving the son in our care. Gabriel saw that the boy was clearly having trouble cutting up his meat and helped him out.
I looked around to see if anyone else mind this arrangement. Everyone was busy with their food. The Czech mom would sometimes gave the boy a disapproving look, but didn’t say anything. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking the same thing: I wondered why he wasn’t more well mannered, why the mother was so tolerant of her bratty kid’s behavior as he intruded on our dinner time, why she allowed us to be the babysitter. After dinner, I quickly brushed my teeth and waited until the kid was no longer in the house so I could go upstairs without being noticed.
“Why are you hiding from the kid?” Gabriel asked.
I rolled my eyes. I knew he was just teasing me but he made it sound like I was afraid of a three year old. So what if I was? I was afraid of saying no and setting boundaries to this kid. Except that he was not just any kid. This was a boy who I knew just lost his dad tragically, and probably had to live with a mom who still had not gotten over the whole episode.
I didn’t answer his question. “I’m just glad we’re leaving tomorrow,” I pronounced in a hush as I closed the door behind me.
“Why?” Gabriel asked.
His question surprised me. Had we not have enough drama and noise for the day? From the misdirection that caused us to be lost for hours trying to find the guesthouse, to her bombshell of a story, to the little terror we had to take care of during dinner.
“This is not a guesthouse. It’s almost like visiting family!” I blurted out, even though our families are actually much much more pleasant to visit in comparison. What I meant to say was that she had violated that unspoken rule that as a host, she should not have bothered us with her drama – be it her life story or her kid – and imposing this burden on us. Her confession was a rude intrusion on our vacation mindset. But as soon as I tried to recount all the things that bothered me about this place, it struck me that I was annoyed by this woman because she had served us the most real slice of Albania that we could have ever gotten. This was as local and authentic an experience as anyone could ever expect. As up, close and personal as it could be. She had removed the barriers between her – the host – and us – the guests – and invited us into her life just as she would an old friend, or a family member. This was her life in reality — not the happy, idyllic farmhouse life we had imagined and attributed to her, but real nonetheless. I should be grateful that she had let us in into her life, which was a privilege one doesn’t often have as a traveler. As travelers, we are often only allowed to walk through this glass corridor through other people’s lives that let you see (and take pictures) of what they want you to see, and nothing more. It’s a policy of non intervention: see but don’t touch. Watch but you never know if what you’re seeing is reality or an act they put up on your behalf. As travelers we don’t often get to share the worries, fears, hope and dreams that plague all of us, the things that humanity are made of.
And that’s one thing they don’t really teach you in travel guides. How to deal with the reality and humanity of other places, which aren’t always comfortable or convenient. In fact, it often feels awful. My first instinct is often to recoil in terror and demand something better, something more close to our standard – what we’re used to. Then the guilt for their suffering and guilt for wanting to be away from it all – the same way I wanted to run as far away from this woman’s suffering as possible. And I’m embarrassed to say that in this case, we did leave the next morning to go to another guesthouse that was closer to town and hiking trails. We probably could have stayed longer and be more involved in her story, but we chose not to.