September
longer, the world is selling out of pencil sharpeners and The Great
Gatsby, and evening porch sitting is reaching its prime. I’m writing
this in the middle of a marathon day-trip to Chicago, and Fall feels
thick here. Across the street leaves are wrinkled up like raisins and
dangling over a masked man with a leaf blower. Mother Nature is on the
edge of her renovations, tearing down to build back up. You breathe the
air in through your nose and it seems to clean you from the inside out.
For me, September tends to mark the start of something. I have my
own New Year, like the Chinese have theirs, and this New Year is
beginning like the last few – with a plane ride into a raw timetable,
marinated in excitement and sprinkled with a pinch of anxiety.
On Tuesday I board a plane for Montenegro, a small country that a few
months of Spanish class would lead you to believe rests in the black
mountains of South America. This, of course, is not true. Montenegro
is here – across the water from Italy and nestled among
the nations formerly known as Yugoslavia.
I am traveling to Montenegro with a young fellow named Vedat Sutaj.
Vedat is a sixteen-year-old boy from Konik, a camp of Kosovan refugees
outside the city of Podgorica. Vedat came to the United States of
America almost 5 years to receive medical treatment. Here is an excerpt
from the CBC website:
When Vedat was still a baby he contracted tuberculosis.
Though he survived the disease’s effect on his lungs, it also attacked
his spine where it began to eat away at his vertebrae. As he grew older,
his spine became more and more malformed, creating a large hump on his
back and causing his internal, vital organs to be compressed.
I have been living with Vedat and his host family, the ever-gracious
and always-exciting McCarthy’s, for most of September. Currently he
spends most of the day in a wheelchair, but is able to do some walking
once a day with the help of crutches and leg braces (we are picking up a
new set of braces in Chicago today).
a Renaissance companion – somewhat of a cocktail between physical
therapist, counselor, drill sergeant, friend, and helpless unlingual
foreigner (shaken, not stirred). The transition from being a guest
teenager in the suburbs of DC to reintegrating with his family in Konik
will be no doubt be drastic and difficult for him – but it will also be a
sweet reunion and, hopefully, a kind of new beginning for Vedat and his
family.
Or feel free to shoot me an e-mail me to let me know you’d like updates.
Matt
