LovestoryPart1
The Macedonian Emigrants’ Carousel: Love Stories Introduction
Following my travels all over the world, I have published numerous texts and publications about the Macedonian emigrants who live in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. In addition to our talks about their golgotha, their typical problems and issues of an intimate nature were not avoided. Their genetic connection however with their families is very characteristic. This book titled “The Macedonian Emigrants’ Carousel” bears witness to this claim. It contains 20 confessions of our people at different ages, from different social statuses and no matter in which part of the world they live they nevertheless cherish their undying love for their homeland, their Macedonia. The Macedonian man faces the fact that his major problem in the Diaspora is not only his day-to-day survival, but also his choice of a lifelong mate, to marry and start a family with, since marriage is holy for them and worthy of making great sacrifices. The intimate stories contained in this book confirm this fact best. No matter where the struggle for the roots of the Macedonian family commences, whether in North America, Europe, Australia, or other countries, what is important is that “blood is thicker than water”. And, consequently, the choice of the other half is neither easy nor uncomplicated. Regardless of the beauty, goodheartedness, ability and faith in married life of the Macedonians, the following stories show that the strict criterion for a Macedonian family could hardly be satisfied by women from other nationalities other than the Macedonian damsels, with a few exceptions of course. This book, however, dwells on these selected stories which offer the best explanation on this subject. Many different and exciting events which are unusual, piquant, tragicomic… take place within the love life of the Macedonians, not only in their fatherland but also in the Diaspora. The traditional philosophy of marriage for any Macedonian is based mainly on the understanding that each woman should find an adequate lifetime companion with whom to share the good and bad, while each man should find a mate who will give birth to his children and with whom he can establish a family of good reputation. But, there are many others who do not comply with these rules. However, they are given the opportunity to tell their intimate stories to a trusted friend and under exceptional circumstances. Nonetheless, the exceptions are not the rules and I leave them to the consideration of my readers.
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1. THE SOURED IDYLL
The following event took place in Detroit. One day I encountered an acquaintance of mine at the hotel where I was staying. Her name was Kate and I hadn’t heard anything about the why she “had disappeared” from Macedonia. I knew that she had moved away but I didn’t know where, in spite of my numerous contacts and inquiries of our emigrants on all continents. Our meeting was unexpected and exciting. It was a surprise for both of us. She came from a mixed family, from the southern part of Macedonia. Although she was married, she was as beautiful and charming as she used to be in her youth. She was a brunette, with long hair, prominent cheeks and attractive brown eyes. Word by word, starting from her youth and ending with her moving abroad and marrying Atanas K., she told me all about her rise and fall, living and working abroad. After her arrival in the USA, she had some problems adapting to her husband. She had met him in Macedonia and after a very short time she married him. However, she managed to overcome her nostalgia for Macedonia and succeeded in building her career as a successful businesswoman. She also told me that she fell in love with her husband, a Macedonian emigrant in Detroit. Such a love obsession could hardly ever be experienced she said. In regard to her storytelling,
I asked Kate to be honest and open so that it would be interesting to my readers. She agreed. At first she was uncomfortable but later she became more relaxed. She started with her life with Atanas by saying that it was a successful life in the beginning with many exciting experiences. They could afford such a lifestyle because he had a good income. He didn’t hesitate to fulfill all the wishes of his beloved wife. Whatever she wanted, he gave her. However, their idyllic life only lasted for the first years of their marriage. She was expecting their first child. Their yearning to start a real family was coming true and the dreams she had as a girl were also coming true. They were endlessly happy. But one day their hopes fell like a house of cards. The medical test results showed that she was not pregnant and that she could never have children. It also showed that Atanas was not at fault. This fact caused them both to feel sad and started to erode their idyllic life. Nevertheless, as time went by their mutual wound healed as if they had forgotten their sorrow. This didn’t have a significant impact on their love. On the contrary, their sexual life increased in intensity. Besides that, her sexual appetite increased and she couldn’t satisfy her desire for sexual games. Atanas enjoyed satisfying her desires in the beginning, but he became weaker partly due to his age but mainly because of the sexual temperament of his woman. He didn’t try to find fault with Kate, but with himself. It was then that she started looking for satisfaction from other men. Atanas pretended that he didn’t see what was going on and resigned himself to the fact that he could only keep his wife by his side by doing so. When she spoke about the qualities of her beloved and respected husband, Kate also added that another Macedonian citizen in Detroit as a businessman, attracted her the most of all other Macedonians through his manhood, elegance, storytelling spirit and patriotic dedication, even during the first night of his stay. Their love affair burst into flame those few days he stayed in Detroit. This euphoria of love continued with great intensity even after he had returned to Macedonia. Soon after that, Kate told Atanas that she felt a great nostalgia for Macedonia and needed to visit her parents and friends, and asked him to let her go. Being careful not to hurt her, he consented, expressing regret that he couldn’t join her due to his business commitments. Then she started kissing and caressing him, promising that she would also visit his relatives and, if possible, she would try to find him business partners from Macedonia. She had never been so happy before. She felt as if she was going to Macedonia for the first time. Before traveling to her homeland, Kate contacted Me. She informed him of her intention to go to Macedonia in order to continue their sweet love affair there as well. She asked him to make reservations at the hotels where they would stay and to prepare himself for their new “Olympic meeting”. Kate was always passionate and thought that her way of making love was memorable. “Good love charges the batteries,” Kate told her friend, in Skopje, over the phone. The preparations for her journey took a long time. One day Kate landed at the Skopje airport where her friend welcomed her. He arranged her accommodation in a luxurious hotel and planned to take her to Bitola, Ohrid and Dojran where they would stay in the best hotels in order to experience to the maximum what could not be experienced anywhere else. In other words, to produce such “a documentary” about their love affair that it would be worth winning the most prestigious Hollywood award. Their meeting at the airport was also “hot”. They went to a hotel room to take a rest and to mark the start of their love life in Macedonia. It was understood that her friend wished her a warm welcome in his style and deliberate manner. Strangely enough she was surprised. Here, being on his turf, he was a better lover, by just a shade, than he had been in Detroit. While she was recollecting that a love life was a vital category in which there were no rules. According to Kate, love life was something that lovers created together regardless of the tradition and understanding about love in the country. Kate also told me about the case of her friend, whose husband simply weakened after two years and therefore couldn’t satisfy “his domestic obligations”. Therefore she was forced to look for satisfaction from another man. Her lover was also from Macedonia, as was Kate’s. The next day of her stay in Macedonia Kate and her friend enjoyed wonderful moments of happiness they felt in their search for it all over the Balkans and in America. Aware that nothing happens by itself and that happiness and attraction should be looked for and enjoyed to the fullest, the elixir of youth and passion. It is not purely by chance that love knows no limits, and that the love partners are simply infatuated. That was the case of Kate and her friend. During their stay in a hotel in Dojran when they were feeling “on top of the world”, they went out of the room and to their surprise saw the brother of Atanas who was staying in the next room with his wife. Atanas’s brother lived in Macedonia but at that time he and his wife were staying at the same hotel. Kate and her friend were surprised. In a word, they were awestruck by that unexpected and chance encounter. And, as in a movie, they shook hands and disappeared as if they had never met. Their encounter was never revealed to Atanas, but the family scar remained forever.2. A STRANGE TWIST OF FATE
I got on the plane in Frankfurt airport, flying to New York, and a man was seated next to me. It was the same man I had just met in the airport terminal. So he became my fellow traveler during this journey across the Atlantic. Fortunately this fellow traveler from Macedonia, who was going to visit his parents in the USA, was talkative and interesting, having a broad general knowledge for discussion. His name was Stefan N. He was a civil engineer and had traveled to Europe and America often. His parents came from Ohrid region and had been living in the USA for more than forty years. This time, as he told me, he was going there to see his mother who was very ill and who had, several times, expressed her wish to see him. Unfortunately, her illness prevented her from going to her homeland, Macedonia. We left Frankfurt airport and the plane took us high in the sky.
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It is preferable for most people to have such a talkative neighbour because the loneliness during long journeys can be a psychological burden. In addition to being talkative, my fellow traveler told me his story as well, which