Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [85]
Jasminka said she would not date until she was ready to marry, after she finished her business degree and found a good job. She would never marry an American, because he wouldn't understand her history or her religion and she would never marry anyone who didn't love her mother. Jasminka said, "I go out with my friends. My mother even trusts me with young men. She knows I will never betray the memory of my father."
Jasminka said she had bad dreams and flashbacks. She often woke in the night thinking she was in a basement being bombed. She worried she would go crazy if anyone in her family died. On the other hand, she was hopeful about her life now. She was working for her family and for her own future. Her little brothers would not need to serve in the KLA. In school it was hard to compete with students whose first language was English. She had trouble understanding her teachers and she couldn't afford to buy all the textbooks. Still, she was passing her courses and hoped to be an office manager someday.
Jasminka seemed less tormented by identity issues than many of the young adults I met. This was because she lived at home and had great respect for her family. She had the memory of her father to hold her life in place. She was reasonably adept at cultural switching.
We took our trays to the dish line. I thanked her for the interview and offered to help her in any way I could. She wrote down my phone number. As I watched Jasminka disappear in the swirl of students, she looked like an American college student, but she was not. She had a history and a belief system very different from the other students. She would have an arranged marriage when she was in her late twenties. She was a devout supporter of the KLA. Her dreams were Albanian dreams.
WORK, RELATIONSHIPS, EDUCATION, AND IDENTITY
In some ways, young adults are our most vulnerable newcomers. Many are on their own, American style, but with no money, education, or connections. Often they are less adept than adolescents at cultural switching. They are behind educationally and slower than teenagers to learn English. They are at an age when they can get into all kinds of American trouble—with drugs, alcohol, gambling, and credit cards.
Young adults usually want to go to school, but there are many hurdles. After age twenty-one, refugees are no longer allowed to attend high school. They may have serious gaps in their educations and have no idea how our system of community colleges, universities, and trade schools functions. Without a cultural broker interpreting the arcane language of academia, refugees have trouble making it through the college system. One Syrian student worried her brain wasn't good enough to learn physics. With her limited discretionary money, she bought ginkgo to improve her memory. A Turkish student noticed there were no people who looked like her on campus.
Those young adults who remain with their families are often the primary wage earners and the liaisons to the English-speaking communities. In many cases, their parents are slow to adapt or disabled, and the young adults must shoulder the burden of supporting the family. They often are the drivers, the schedulers, and the ones who fill out forms and translate. And yet, in many cases, they are expected to remain deferential at home and they are not allowed the freedom of young Americans.
When the parents are dead, young adults also become the legal guardians of their younger siblings, which means they must be present at doctors' and dentists' appointments and meetings with the schools. In the role of family workhorse and leader, young adults can rapidly become overwhelmed and they burn out.
Young adult refugees have many memories of home and there is a stronger sense of exile than with younger people. They must ask, "Who am I in this new land?" Young adults may also have come from cultures in which identity is derived from caste, family, or position in one's tribe. The whole concept of individual identity is new and yet, in America, many of the markers for the old