Diaspora Diaries
Diaspora Diaries: Sophie Steger, A Makedonsko Devojče Living in Canada
The Zelnik in the Lunchbox Growing up diaspora is strange: as a child, you notice all the ways your family is different; as an adult, those are often the things you hold onto the tightest. For Sophie Steger, a Macedonian-Canadian born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, that journey began in a loud Macedonian home filled with grandparents, food, traditions and a culture that followed her far beyond the front door. There is a particular kind of childhood embarrassment reserved for children of immigrants, and it usually arrives at lunchtime. Around you, other kids begin pulling out the foods that television commercials have assured everyone are normal: crackers arranged neatly beside slices of processed cheese, juice boxes, individually wrapped snacks and, if the universe has truly smiled upon them, a Lunchable. Then there is you, unwrapping the tin foil. Inside: zelnik. “Sometimes I would be a bit embarrassed when my mom would pack me Macedonian food for lunch,” Sophie remembers. “I would be opening up a tin foil wrapped zelnik and my friends would be having Lunchables, which were much cooler at the time.” At eight years old, there is no explaining to your classmates that one day they will pay $14 for something “artisan” wrapped in brown paper while you will spend your adult life trying to recreate the exact taste of something your mother casually packed into aluminum foil on a Tuesday. Childhood has a funny way of making us want what everyone else has. Diaspora life has an even funnier way of making us spend adulthood longing for what we once tried to hide. Somewhere Between Mississauga and Bitola Sophie was born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, but inside her childhood home, Canada could occasionally feel very far away. Both sides of her family come from the Bitola region of Macedonia—her father’s family from the village of Grešnica and her mother’s from Budimirci. Her grandparents lived in the same house as Sophie and her parents, so Macedonian wasn’t a language reserved for holidays or occasional phone calls to relatives overseas. It was the language of home. In fact, Sophie learned Macedonian before she learned English. The house itself operated according to a volume and pace familiar to many Balkan children raised abroad. It was, in Sophie’s words, “very LOUD.” There was a garden “the size of a hockey rink”—a reference only a Canadian would make—peppers hanging in the basement to dry and others being pickled for winter. Saturday mornings meant watching the Macedonian program together, followed by soap operas with her grandparents. And, of course, there was always food. “There was always food on the table and usually someone stopping by for coffee,” Sophie remembers. Family wasn’t something scheduled into life; family was life. Meals were shared, weekends involved relatives, and plans became family discussions. School, friendships and seemingly minor decisions could suddenly require the participation of an informal Balkan parliamentary committee. Sophie remembers her Canadian friends having a little more independence. At her house, “there were more rules and a lot more questions.” Anyone raised Balkan already knows them: Where are you going? What are you going to be doing? Who is going to be there? Have I met their parents? What exact time will you be home? A spontaneous Friday night plan could require the diplomatic skills of a United Nations negotiator. Staying out late, going to parties or taking trips with friends weren’t necessarily impossible; they simply required a full proposal, supporting documentation, character references and several rounds of negotiations. “Where Are You From?” For many Canadians, this can be a simple question. For children of the diaspora, it rarely is. When someone asks Sophie where she’s from, her answer is Macedonia. Growing up surrounded by her grandparents and Macedonian culture, she considered herself Macedonian. It was only later, as an adult, that “Macedonian-Canadian” began to feel like a more accurate description. Her maiden name often started the conversation: Terzievski—or Terzievska, depending on whether there happened to be another Macedonian in the room ready to correct you. People struggled to pronounce it throughout her childhood. They would ask how to say it, give it a try and inevitably get it wrong. Then came the question: Where are you from? Macedonia. And often: Where is that? Rather than diminishing that identity, those conversations have made Sophie more conscious of its uniqueness. “It makes me realize that my Macedonian identity is unique and not familiar to many,” she says, “which makes me somehow even more proud.” Maybe that is one of the quiet transformations of growing up diaspora. As children, we desperately want our differences to require no explanation; as adults, we begin to understand how precious they are. Too Macedonian. Too Canadian. We asked Sophie whether she has ever felt “too Macedonian” around Canadians but “too Canadian” around Macedonians. Her answer required exactly three words: “All the time.” Three words that probably have more than a few people nodding as they read this. You learn to move between worlds without consciously realizing you’re doing it. It looks like English and Macedonian in the same conversation, Top 40 followed by the dramatic opening of Svadba Golema on your Spotify playlist, bacon and eggs for breakfast and tavče gravče for dinner. Sophie learned Macedonian first, but today English is the language in which her brain instinctively responds. She still understands Macedonian better than she speaks it, and she knows the classic diaspora experience of having a relative speak an entire sentence to you in Macedonian, understanding every word perfectly…and answering in English. And yet there are certain words English simply cannot replace. Like lele. Go ahead. Try translating that one. We’ll wait. Growing up in Canada may have changed which language Sophie reaches for first, but Macedonian has left its little linguistic fingerprints behind. There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Food When we asked Sophie what her Canadian friends would immediately identify as “very Macedonian” about her, she didn’t mention language, religion or national history. Her answer was much simpler: “Always preparing WAY too much food.” Few things explain Balkan culture more efficiently. You are expecting six people, so naturally you cook for fourteen. Guests insist they’re full; you become personally offended. Their objections are disregarded, and more food appears. Hospitality in the Balkans is rarely subtle. It is edible. That same sense of abundance shaped Sophie’s childhood. Traditional meals kept Macedonia present at the family table, while church, community and the calendar carried the rest of the culture forward. Her family attended Macedonian dinner dances and picnics, went to church and volunteered at Mississauga’s Carassauga Festival of Cultures. At home, traditions marked the passing of each year: a coin hidden in the zelnik for New Year’s, Easter eggs coloured together, roast pig for Orthodox Christmas, Kolede, fasting before Christmas and Easter, Macedonian music, oro and video calls with relatives back home. None of these things carried the entire weight of preserving a culture on their own. Together, however, they built a world—a little Macedonia recreated in Mississauga. Perhaps that is one of the beautiful things about growing up abroad: your roots find ways to reveal themselves. We put on folk costumes and dance the dances of generations before us. We sing songs whose words have travelled farther than we have. We prepare the same foods, repeat the same traditions and, for a moment, feel connected to people and places thousands of kilometres away. It is a feeling difficult to explain unless you have been lucky enough to inherit it. “Understanding My Culture Is Understanding Who I Am” Culture follows us into adulthood in ways we don’t always anticipate, and relationships are one of them. Growing up, Sophie says there was an expectation that she would eventually end up with someone Macedonian. Today, what matters most isn’t simply whether someone shares her background, but whether they understand how deeply that background shaped the person she became. “My Macedonian culture is something that is very important to me and plays a huge role in my life,” Sophie says. “Understanding my culture is understanding who I am, how I was raised and why I do certain things.” Participating in that culture, she adds, is a bonus—another way to make sure traditions aren’t lost. Introducing someone to the Macedonian family, however, is another matter entirely. We asked Sophie which is harder: introducing someone to her family or explaining her family to them. “Definitely introducing them to the family!” she answered. “Too many questions will be asked! Too many opinions will be made!” Some cultural traditions, apparently, are in absolutely no danger of disappearing. The Macedonia We Inherit Through Stories Nostalgia is rarely grand. We imagine we’ll miss countries and cities, but sometimes what we really miss are sensations. For Sophie, Macedonian childhood can be summoned through the smell of ćevapi on the barbecue, tulumbi for dessert and the sound of Makedonsko devojče. Some of her connection to Macedonia, however, comes not from her own memories but from those handed down to her. Her father would tell stories about Mount Pelister near Bitola and its natural springs, a place Sophie came to associate with the Pelisterka mineral water she knew growing up. She still wants to visit it. There is something profoundly diaspora about wanting to stand somewhere simply because someone you love once stood there. We inherit geography that way: villages through our grandparents’ stories, mountains through our fathers’ memories, songs before we understand their words and places that somehow feel familiar before we have ever seen them. When we asked Sophie what part of being Macedonian makes her proudest, she didn’t say the food, the music or even the traditions. She said: “The community connection.” Perhaps that is the thread running through all of it—the zelnik in the lunchbox, the peppers in the basement, the two-hour coffees, the questions before going out, the Macedonian words that refuse to leave, and the stories of places still waiting to be visited. Growing up between cultures can make home difficult to define. Sometimes, though, home isn’t a country at all. It is the people, rituals and memories that continue to find us wherever we happen to be. And, more often than not, there’s something waiting for us on the table. Diaspora Diaries Diaspora Diaries is a Balkanish series sharing the stories of the global diaspora community—the people growing up between cultures, languages and definitions of home. We tell these stories because family histories deserve somewhere to land, and because sometimes the most powerful reminder that we belong is discovering that someone else has felt exactly the same way.
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Diaspora Diaries: Anastasija Perincic Lopes, The Place You Live Isn’t Always Home
Diaspora Diaries: Anastasija Perincic Lopes, The Place You Remember Isn’t Always Home Anastasija Perincic Lopes was three and a half years old when her family left Trebinje for Canada in 1996. She remembers almost nothing of life before they left, yet she has always had a deep sense of belonging tied to the home she left. Anastasija Perincic Lopes doesn’t remember leaving Trebinje. There are no vivid childhood scenes of Bosnia and Herzegovina before Canada, no remembered final morning or journey she can reach back and retrieve. She was three and a half when her family immigrated in 1996, and although she has returned many times since, her earliest memories belong almost entirely to Canada. Ask her where home is, though, and the answer becomes more complicated. When she returns to the Balkans, she says it feels like going “home" and that "I sometimes feel like a guest in Canada.” It may be an unexpected answer from someone who has spent almost her entire life here. But memory and belonging are not always the same thing, and many diaspora stories don’t fit neatly into a single box. A Family That Couldn’t Fit on One Map When people ask Anastasija where she is from, she often gives the answer that leaves the most room for the truth: Former Yugoslavia. Her family tree travels across borders that have shifted more than once. Her father’s paternal roots reach to the Dalmatian island of Rab in Croatia, with an Albanian ancestor further back in the family line. His maternal side was Serbian, from Topusko in Croatia, with roots reaching into Montenegro. Her mother’s family is Serbian and has been in Herzegovina for generations. Anastasija describes herself as “Serb, Canadian with a sprinkle of Croatian,” but adds one important qualification: “Balkan first, always.” It isn’t difficult to understand why. Her family arrived in Canada with very little family nearby. It was Anastasija, her parents and her older sister, with extended relatives living farther away. So her parents did what immigrant families often do when relatives are separated by geography: they found people who eventually stopped feeling like friends and started feeling like family. Her parents built friendships with other people from the former Yugoslavia, and Anastasija remembers looking forward to weekends spent with those families and their children. Canada may have been where they were rebuilding their lives, but inside that newly built community, there were familiar customs and people who understood where they had come from without needing the story explained first. The Weird Balkan Kid School was different. Anastasija was bullied. Other children thought her name was strange. Her food smelled unfamiliar to them. They noticed her clothes, her family and the language they spoke. Even the way her mother dressed her stood out. Her mom had European taste, which meant that before Anastasija could explain why her family was different, sometimes she simply looked different. Her older sister experienced it too. As a child, Anastasija resented being moved somewhere that made her feel like “the weird Balkan kid.” At home, there were fresh, home-cooked meals over the processed foods she saw in her Canadian friends’ homes. Serbian was present in everyday life. There was slava, Vidovdan, folklore and a social circle built largely around families from Ex-Yu.These were ordinary things in her house. Eventually, Anastasija began trying to make one part of that identity less visible. “I was embarrassed to say I was Serbian,” she remembers. Serbia, in her experience, came with negative associations she was too young to control. It didn’t receive the easy recognition she saw attached to other European identities. It wasn’t received with the same excitement that other kids got when sharing their cultural background,”It wasn’t cool like saying, I’m Italian.’ People love Italians and Italian food.” Serbian was harder to explain. So, for a while, she tried to hide it. Now? “I’m proud of it.” Please Don’t Tell Me Who I Am There was another side to growing up between places that left Anastasija feeling othered just as much. People would call her Canadian. On paper, that conclusion made perfect sense. She had arrived before her fourth birthday. She couldn’t remember her life before the war. Canada was where she went to school and where nearly all of her conscious childhood unfolded. But being told she was “basically Canadian” by her Balkan family never felt like a compliment. It felt like someone else was editing her story. “It would bother me when people would call me Canadian and reduce my identity into what they thought it should be,” she says. “It’s like they were telling me how I ‘should’ feel.” That distinction matters. Anastasija wasn’t rejecting the country where she grew up. She was rejecting the idea that geography and memory gave someone else permission to decide which parts of her identity were legitimate. She may not remember Trebinje at three years old, but she remembers the visits throughout the years and how she feels at home in a country so far away from her home. “In my heart, I was always Ex-Yugoslavian.” Belonging, after all, isn’t something another person gets to calculate for you based on the number of years you have lived somewhere. What Our Parents Leave Behind Anastasija understood her parents’ decision to immigrate differently as a child than she does now. Her family was mixed; Serbian and Croatian and the war had made them feel as though there was no longer anywhere they were entirely comfortable. Canada offered safety, but beginning again came with its own cost. Her parents took jobs that did not reflect what they had studied or the lives they had known before immigrating. Their beginnings in Canada were humble. As a child being bullied for being different, Anastasija couldn’t fully appreciate the trade they had made. She knew what immigration had cost her: familiarity, extended family and the comfort of not being the strange kid at school. Adulthood gave her another view. “I understand their struggle now as immigrants, and I have more empathy.” That may be one of immigration’s quietest truths. Children grow up inside the life their parents fought to create without yet understanding what had to be dismantled for that life to exist. Appreciation grows through the years. The Grandfather Who Connected Her to Another Side For someone whose family history crosses so many places, identity has also changed with loss. Anastasija was close with her Croatian grandfather, and through him she felt a strong connection to that part of herself. After losing him, she felt that connection weaken and found herself identifying more strongly as Serbian. It is a reminder that heritage isn’t always inherited evenly. Sometimes one branch of a family tree feels close because a particular person keeps it close. A grandfather tells the stories, speaks the dialect, and embodies a place strongly enough that knowing him becomes a way of knowing it. When that person is gone, the connection can change too. Building a Family Across Cultures Anastasija eventually married outside of her culture. Her husband is Portuguese, which makes the question of “dating within the culture” considerably less important to her than whether a partner respects and participates in the culture you bring with you. For Anastasija, that matters very much. And she is grateful that her husband does. Perhaps that has become even more significant now that Anastasija is a parent herself. Her daughter is growing up with more than one cultural inheritance, just as Anastasija did. And rather than seeing that mixture as a reason to dilute the Balkan side of her identity, motherhood has made preserving it feel even more important. “Even though my daughter is only half Balkan, it’s still important to me that she understands her culture fully.” Anastasija grew up frustrated when other people tried to decide how Balkan she was allowed to feel because she had spent most of her life in Canada. Now she has the opportunity to give her daughter something different: the freedom to understand every part of where she comes from without being asked to rank them. At the end of our conversation, we asked Anastasija to finish one sentence: Being part of the Balkan diaspora means… “I have to represent my people well.” For Anastasija, heritage isn’t something to prove. It’s something to carry—with pride, with intention, and now, into the next generation. Diaspora Diaries Diaspora Diaries is a Balkanish series sharing the stories of the global diaspora community—the people growing up between cultures, languages and definitions of home. We tell these stories because family histories deserve somewhere to land, and because sometimes the most powerful reminder that we belong is discovering that someone else has felt exactly the same way.
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Diaspora Diaries: Danica Smiljanic, Co-Founder of Balkanish
Diaspora Diaries with Balkanish Co-Founder Danica Smiljanic: a story of heritage, identity & community. Discover the story behind Balkanish Balkan apparel, home goods & gifts from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia & Slovenia.
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