My Cousin

by Ajla Dizdarević
Collage by Eva Long

Amir sits across from me, legs spread out on the couch he’s claimed for the next half hour, or however long it takes him to smoke a couple cigarettes. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and Lacoste Café is nearly empty; only a few young men are smoking from nargile as their unamused girlfriends sit beside them.

“It’s more fun at night,” Amir says, tapping his cigarette at the edge of an ashtray placed in the middle of the table. “More people come out at night.” He lifts his cigarette up, puffing on it before exhaling. Fine lines are starting to set around his eyes, making him look older than 24. Everyone in Bosnia looks older.

The sun hits his face, and I see so much of myself illuminated in the slope of his nose and the upward tilt of his eyes. The shape of his jaw is familiar, too, but everything else—his voice, his height, his being—is foreign to me. The skinny little boy I used to run around and climb trees with is a man now. I don’t know what to say.

“I don’t love you,” I blurt out. Amir laughs, and I quickly add, “I mean, my uncle on my mom’s side told me the other day that he loves me, and I just thought, wow, how can he love me when he doesn’t even know me?”

“Did you tell him that?” Amir asks, snuffing out his cigarette before reaching into his box of Marlboros for another.

“No,” I say, “I didn’t. How could I say that to his face?” Amir laughs again and says, “You just said it to mine.”

“Yeah, but it’s different with you.” I sink back into my seat, thinking about what to say next. I haven’t been to Bosnia or spoken with Amir in over a decade, but I still remember when we were kids, throwing jokes at each other and refusing to mince words in the way only cousins know how to do. I sought Amir out to talk with him, expecting revelatory, earth-shattering conversation after years of silence, but I don’t think that’s how it works here. All people in Bosnia want to do is smoke and take small steps towards answering the ephemeral question of “how are you?” A waiter comes by, and I ask for non-carbonated water. Amir orders a Coke.

“You don’t drink?” I ask.

“No,” Amir says. “I used to, but not anymore. I’m trying to be more religious.” He takes a drag from his cigarette before continuing. “Muslims aren’t supposed to drink.”

“You’re not supposed to smoke, either,” I point out, and he laughs.

“Well,” he says, “we all have our vices. Aren’t you Muslim?”

“Kind of,” I say. “It’s hard to explain.” The waiter returns with our drinks, and I nod my head. “I don’t believe in god, but I’m still Muslim. Like how people are culturally Jewish but not religious.”

Amir squints, twisting off the cap of his Coke bottle and asking, “What do you mean? What do you live for if not god?”

“Myself.” I pause. “But I don’t think it makes me happy.” I don’t know what I expected when I decided to visit Bosnia again. Maybe some kind of break from my life in America, some kind of sanctuary where I could feel whole. Bosnia as the place where I could fix myself and not have to feel too American for my family or too Bosnian for my friends. But I’m noticing that my problems seem to follow me, even here where everyone looks like me and knows how to pronounce my name. I wipe some condensation off my glass before asking my cousin, “Are you happy?”

“Of course,” Amir says. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I stay quiet; talking about these things is hard enough for me in English, let alone in Bosnian when I have to fumble around for the right words. Amir takes another sip, relaxing on the beat-up couch that’s god-knows-how old. I reach across the table to set my drink down, and Amir catches my wrist.

Amir looks at me, but I don’t know exactly what I see when our gazes meet. I try to make out distant memories in the shadows of his face: playing in the shallow water of a river, petting kittens in the attic, pleading with him to kill a spider in the hallway to my room. Small happenings that don’t mean much but stayed with me all these years. I wonder what stayed with him once I left 14 years ago, what little things he pieced together to keep me whole in memory. It’s easier there, where we exist as kids and don’t know how much we don’t know each other.

“I have a dog.” I look away, focusing on the Coke bottle in his hand. “She’s always biting me. It leaves marks sometimes.” Amir doesn’t respond, as if he’s waiting for a qualifying statement that will give him the truth, but I stay quiet. Some things aren’t meant to be shared with strangers.