Snow

It wasn’t clear when the wish of living in a snowy city occurred to me. I lived in a tropical city called Ho Chi Minh or Sai Gon; the use of both names to be politically and diplomatically correct. Ho Chi Minh/Sai Gon was hot, giving me the habit of breathing like pigs and flapping my shirt for cool air like mad people. During such breathing and flapping frenzy, I stared at photos of foreign countries on calendars my aunt and dad took from their companies. I started liking those pictures with snowy scenery because the hot Sai Gon never snowed, and because it was hot, I was only able to spot sweat flowed.

That is the representative image I have about foreign countries: snowflakes fall, long and curvy snow-white roads drag to the horizon, and cream-like snow dunes cover small wooden houses. Perhaps this was why I developed this strange liking to Russian war movies—to show respect from one little brother to another big brother Communist country–were shown regularly on Vietnamese TV channel before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I watched those movies with the Bolsheviks wearing soft, furry winter hat and winter coats waddled in snow in places almost-seem-without civilization. And I heard adults’ comments, “it’s just the same being an exile in Siberia.”

I always thought that once I left Vietnam, I would be able to see snow fall. I thought of a winter day sitting in a small room with the lo suoi and listening to the ringing bells of Christmas. I saw snow. I sat in a room with lo suoi. And I heard the Christmas ring-a-bell. But I never experienced them at one occasion. I wish someday after opening my eyes in the morning, I looked outside the window, and there it was, the snow had fallen. After leaving Vietnam, I lived in California that was, for most Vietnamese, heaven because its weather compared to other states, closely resembles weather in Vietnam. Similar to Sai Gon, how can California pull from its bag of trick any snowball in the city.

Then, each year, as the end of December was near, I thought of myself sitting in my room and looking outside to see the falling snow.

Sarinka, meaning little Sarka, woke me up in the morning, “Cindy, it snows!” I was in the morning sleepy mood when I peeked outside. I only saw some light color of white on the roofs. “It is not so much,” I said and fell back to sleep. Half an hour later, I was woken up by the bell from a local Roman Catholic Church and looked outside. The white color on the roofs, by now, had sharpened. The green bushes in the garden were almost covered in snow. And there it was, snow flakes dropped outside my room window.

I jumped to Sarka’s room and yelp, “Sarka, it snows!”

Sarka was sitting on her bed smiling. She said, “Cindy, it’s Christmas! I am happy” I wish you a mery Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! So we sang for a whole minute.

I came downstairs for a bath and remembered Vietnamese lyrics from an old French song “Tomble la neige.”

Oh sadness, I cy for my lonely life. Hide the shroud on my funeral. The snow never stops falling…

Hmmm, it is strange! Who wrote such depressing lyrics? Snow is joy but not melancholy. But I’ve forgotten that this is my first snow experience in a city, in my room. Perhaps, in a few months, I would do the same and beg for the snow to stop falling.

Sarka and I asked the house owner to take a photo for us in the front yard. We, dressed completely in black from heads to toes it if weren’t for our blue and pink scarves like two black spiders in an extremely colorful-dressed city, walked hand in hand down the hill and headed toward the Old Town. Each of us carried a nylon bag of trash to drop it off in a trash bin down the street.

I left Sarka at a peraka meaning “bakery” so she could by bakery for her breakfast. I continued my walk to work, thinking of the winter shoes, the knee-high socks, and the coats thick enough to cover my and long enough to cover my behind I will have to buy in the next few weeks.

18.11.2005
Sarajevo