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2026-02-27
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More than two decades earlier, 19-year-old Jovan fled Montenegro to avoid military service. He crossed the ocean below deck on a steamer, the cheap end of hope. Wooden bunks were stacked three high, passengers shared tin cups of thin soup, and sleep came in stolen fragments punctuated by the engine’s pounding.
He’d built a life by force of will: a family, a home, a job below ground. Now, he drives himself forward again, step by step, mile by burning mile.
A century later, my cousin and I walk the same stony path until it disappears beneath asphalt. Instead of fear, we carry water bottles, smartphones, the luxury of choice. But our lungs still sting on the grades. And we bring a question.
My great-grandparents crossed water and rock to plant roots in unknown ground, hoping their children might belong. They wrestled with a new language and customs, and never saw their families again.
I’m here to map the silences they chose to keep, the identities they held or hid, the costs they absorbed to belong. Is their way of securing our future what I’m meant to honor now, as deportation lists circulate again and citizens are recruited to carry them out?
What keeps faith with the dead?
He’d built a life by force of will: a family, a home, a job below ground. Now, he drives himself forward again, step by step, mile by burning mile.
A century later, my cousin and I walk the same stony path until it disappears beneath asphalt. Instead of fear, we carry water bottles, smartphones, the luxury of choice. But our lungs still sting on the grades. And we bring a question.
My great-grandparents crossed water and rock to plant roots in unknown ground, hoping their children might belong. They wrestled with a new language and customs, and never saw their families again.
I’m here to map the silences they chose to keep, the identities they held or hid, the costs they absorbed to belong. Is their way of securing our future what I’m meant to honor now, as deportation lists circulate again and citizens are recruited to carry them out?
What keeps faith with the dead?
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