Home is Where the Heart is

Mepéa had dressed like a westerner. She had tried eating like a westerner (but the food was too sweet). She had listened to the radio services that westerners listened to, the BBC and Radio Free Europe, and she had once used a smartphone. She liked to think she was more interested in western things than a lot of her peers, who were just waiting to go into the seminary school. Or the military. Rare was the student of actual literature.

And, yes, she spoke some English. She spoke it poorly, but this was not a source of
shame to her mind. Because for all of her flaws, Mepéa was still willing to try.

Could some of the others say the same?

The University of Zō Étrilō had around 20 students who could be classified as studying international literature. She was proud to be one of them. She was sitting in the university’s small cafeteria nibbling disinterestedly on a carrot while she thumbed through something she had gotten from the library. It was not a particularly interesting history book. She put it aside, and she picked up another one as her friend slid down to sit across from her, staring expectantly. Mepéa looked up from behind her translated copy of Hamlet, The Dane-Prince.

“Yes?” She finally asked. Daga pursed her lips in agitation.

“I did not find you at Mass today.”

“The library was open early.”

Silence. Daga spoke carefully.

“Was it open early, or did they let you in early because you sleep like an unowned dog on the front doorstep?”

Mepéa sighed and put down her book. She could see Daga counting individual spines in her stack. She stopped her once her eyes had moved up seven spines.

“Well, what did I miss?”

“You were asked after,” Daga said nervously.

“And?” Mepéa asked.

“I told them you were running late,” Daga said in defeat. Mepéa smiled.

“You are a good friend to me.”

“And a worse friend to Jesus Christ, for lying to the Reverend Mother. You are becoming a recluse and an obsessive,” Daga warned.

“I have read the Bible, and the Catechisms. I have not read the books in our new library,” Mepéa explained.

“And you will return to Church once your curiosity is satisfied?” Daga asked, raising a slice of steaming potato to her mouth.

“On my honor.”

“Well, there’s seven there. How many more do you have to go?”

“293, I think?” Mepéa said, waving the question away.

“I am sure this counts as a kind of Greed,” Daga warned.

“Perhaps a species of Lust instead?” Mepéa joked. Daga looked deeply offended, and Mepéa laughed in delight.

“Besides, all the books are pre-approved. There’s nothing bad in there, it is all
just...new.”

“You always were a strange one, and it is a good thing you have me as a friend. I
remember still when we were young, and you used to shove bread into the DVD players because you wanted to see if you could watch bread on the TV. Sister-Superior almost beat you to a coma, and then your mother dragged you home by the ankle.”

“How could I forget the joys of a childhood curiosity. Are you using that vinegar? Pass it here,” Mepéa said.

There was silence as the two ate. There were bells in the distance. Finally, Daga said what she had come to say.

“I am worried. I heard my mother talk again. If you don’t think my mother will just give me to the military–”

“Daga, we’ve discussed this and I do not think it wise to entertain idle thoughts.” Mepéa warned. Daga threw up her hands in defeat, but she could see that Daga was agitated.

“I am unfit to hold a rifle, Mepéa. And you know that last year's harvest was poor.”

Mepéa thought on this deeply for a moment, before deciding that, God forgive her, she was grateful to be an only child. Her mother did not have to make such calculations.

“It will not come to this. Soon, you shall have a degree from a real university, and this will give you opportunities,” Mepéa said. Daga looked unsure.

“You know, I was on the school computer and there is some mockery online of our
university. We are, at best, seen as quaint.”

“Who has said these things?”

“The English, on the internet,” Daga said glumly.

“Have you paused to consider that English grandiosity is only because they stole 3/4ths of their possessions from the Chinese, Greeks, and Africans? It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, Daga.”

Mepéa was, naturally, upset by her friend’s shame. It was true that the university (or the UZO, as it was described online) was a new institution. It was not august, or particularly desirable for foreigners to study in unless you were a linguist or a Germanist. Daga groaned, but pulled herself up, as if to endure. They parted ways shortly thereafter.

The library was beautiful to her. She could walk it and run her hands up and down the spines of books for hours. Her mother had one, a book, when she was growing up, and Mepéa had read it until the spine broke. She had run to her mother, weeping.

“Fear not, Little Mouse,” she had said, “I shall buy us another Small Catechism.”

True to her word, her mother had done so the next week and left it on her pillow with a simple ribbon bow. It was among her most cherished memories. Her mother had always been like that. Tall, severe, but possessing a deep well of compassion for her only child.

The library was a small room. More like a cellar. Cold, but in a cozy way. Like you want to snuggle under the bed with a headlamp.

“Hello Mepéa,” says the librarian. Mepéa smiled, her scars twisting in ways they should not. As a child, she had become sick, and only barely survived it, but had been left disfigured.

“Good morning. I beg you, will you tell me if you have anything new in English?”

The librarian nodded.

“I shall take them,” Mepéa said firmly.

“And this on top of the 19 you already have?” The librarian challenged.

She nodded. The librarian sighed.

“Return them in 4 weeks. Do not make me find you again.”

Mepéa beamed, and thanked the librarian with reverence before skipping out.

The world outside was cold, and not in a comforting way. It was a biting cold. Vicious, even. The wind howled with malice and threatened to push over one of the smaller women moving through a grassy courtyard that squelched wetly underfoot.

Mepéa breathed deeply, ice air stabbing at the inside of her throat and nose. She loved the late autumnal months. She could not stand the summer heat.

When she was inside again, she looked into her arms at the books she cradled.

The university was an old monastery. It was first Catholic, and then Lutheran, and then bombed by the Nazi Party, and rebuilt. Now people discussed things like Gloria Anzaldúa’s How To Tame A Wild Tongue and the concept of Exigence. But it was damp. Old stone and emergency wood repairs turned into foundational infrastructure coated in concrete.

She entered into the interior of one building, and it was silent in a distant way. Wind howled somewhere. She sat down in the corner with the brightest of the fluorescent lighting available. She curled up into a stone alcove as water dropped off her nose and into the now open book in her hands. Spine cracked in her thumb, gripped, and the book just smelled new. It was so beautiful as, somewhere in the damp and cold, a choir began to chant.

Her own mother had called English foreign and degenerate. Mepéa had once tried to explain how originally it had been another Germanic-like language like Tíþan. But the English had, a long time ago, been conquered by the French, or else people who spoke French, and now it was different. Her mother, ever distrustful of the foreign, responded by banning the presence of non-Tíþan language books in her house.

“It is one thing to speak multiple languages, Little Mouse,” her mother had warned, “but this is not neutral.”

Mepéa was shocked at first to hear such an intellectual rejection of English from someone like her mother, who did not learn to read until she was 19 and still needed a little help sometimes from her daughter. But what shocked her more was how, over time, she began to agree with her mother. Most of the rest of Europe was bilingual. But they weren’t exactly lining up to learn Tíþan, far from it. The expectation seemed to be that her country would be the one lining up to learn English. Even the Germans had become Anglicized.

But Mepéa still reads English. Still made poor translations, as best she could, in a series of notebooks. But when she can remember to go to church, her voice is among the loudest in the Tíþan services, and she will recite the commandments in her mother tongue to herself as if to remember what she is.

Mepéa was on her way home from campus for the weekend and was trudging along the dirt path faithfully with a large stack of books under her arms. Her mother lived in one of the nearby villages that had electricity, and she was grateful that she was able to do this more often than not. The University, for all its perks, did not have home-cooked meals. Once, some distant monarchy had brought, or tried to bring in, something called a burger joint, and the food was almost inedible. No one went to this shop, and a few months later, it was gone.

Her mother, in contrast, was a wonderful cook. She had once caught a fish at 9 in the morning, bartered for bread at 11 in the morning, and somewhere between the two acts had scavenged up a fruit spread, and at noon she had a plate of steaming, warm food on the table in front of her. This was the day before she had gone to the University.

“Eat, Lord knows you won't be at that school. You have seen the letter for how much this will cost?” Her mother had said. Mepéa nodded from behind a mouthful of bread.

“Yes, mother.”

“And Daga is going with you?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Too many siblings, that one. I would have taken her, if her own mother was not so
stubborn. You will watch out for her?”

Mepéa nodded as she shoved fish into her open mouth. Her mother sighed, looking at first frustrated and then fond.

“You are my pride and joy. No matter what happens, I am already proud of you. You are so much more than I was at your age.”

And then after Mepéa had finished eating, her mother braided her hair gently. It was the last time she had done so.

“How do I look, mother?” She had asked after. Her mother had smiled.

“Like a scholar.”

Mepéa blinked the memory away. The road was ending. Her home was near.

The door opened, and her mother was striding across the lawn with a large smile,
bringing her youngest and only daughter into a fierce grip. Mepéa looked up into her face, and it was like looking into a mirror. The same brown hair, brown eyes, and aquiline nose. The eyes that looked down at her seemed more weathered, more distant, but focused. Like a hawk overhead. Mepéa gripped her mother tightly as they stood in the tall grass outside the little hut she called home.

Dinner that evening was a grand affair, and the table almost bent under the weight. She ate all she could and more, and begged to take the rest with her.

“Do they not feed you?” Her mother asked sharply. Mepéa shrugged.

“They do try, but they have brought in something called a vending machine to do it for them, and this naturally has caused some controversy. One of the girls figured out how to trick it and–”

Her mother grunted, and Mepéa fell into silence at once while she chewed.

“And what have you learned?” She asked. Mepéa fell silent. She looked around the
home. Two rifles over the fireplace, one (allegedly) from the 1800s, and the French invasion. The other from the Russians. They looked functional. There was a fire going right under it, and the wood popped like it was supposed to on days like this. A tiny radio was sat on the table by the door where coats were hung. She thought she saw a mouse run by quickly. She blinked.

“I have learned a song, an American once. Our new Professor taught it to some of the other girls. It is called Babylon is Fallen. Shall I sing it to you in English or Tíþan?”

And her mother made her choice, so Mepéa stood and began to chat.

Sir, ki mlíf-germi toanidam, daganim, Izat étrilō eōmērtóþis daganim. Sionōs gáyéyōs znóg upanun, Féf sōs silóyorta hot ēþan. Unsara Shilohis mlíf zō ptēs, Lupōm-fmózat léslutyu hhíyinyþim, Babylon kegidam, mí miþ mahyōn.

Faþí sōs ōsím mid skalki istan, Fi kúms ki istan? ēþgakídaþri merg mlíf atíl fmóz,
ēþandaþri, “Oh alas, alas.” Fmózat mlíffápim, yús émí féf zþinkōmsof, Noáz féf ltílhos, akípniþa féf ki; Babylon kegidam, mí miþ mahyōn.

Lupōm-fmózat in Sionōs pēpg fápim, Christ ud-sir hosenat hosenuþa; Mid zmí nraþa fyefandaþri Faþí ki znóg merg úþtunþko upanan. Babelis rēayēþōs weis gósidē, Féf unsara ekōhltílhos nōh istan, Babylon kegidam, mí miþ mahyōn.

Her mother applauded, and demanded to hear it in English. So she sang again.

Hail the day so long expected, Hail the year of full release. Zion’s walls are now erected, And her watchmen publish peace. Through our Shiloh’s wide dominion, Hear the trumpet loudly roar, Babylon is fallen to rise no more.

All her merchants stand with wonder, What is this that comes to pass: Murm’ring like the distant thunder, Crying, “Oh alas, alas.” Swell the sound, ye kings and nobles, Priest and people, rich and poor; Babylon is fallen to rise no more.

Blow the trumpet in Mount Zion, Christ shall come a second time; Ruling with a rod of iron, All who now as foes combine. Babel’s garments we’ve rejected, And our fellowship is o’er, Babylon is fallen to rise no more.

And although her accent was terrible, and she stumbled horribly, and she might have invented the pronunciation of some words on the fly, Mepéa sang the words with spirit and determination while her mother watched impassively. There was applause at the end, and a deep smile that could only be described as maternal and kind.

“You are a good daughter, Mepéa,” she said, “don’t let the Europeans take that from you.”

Mepéa brooded on this for many years after.

Morgan Kier is a pen name. She is an immigrant from Edinburgh, Scotland. Her debut literary work, Étris Ga Vol.VII No.I, has been published in Triptych’s Chapbook series. When not scribbling in notebooks, she can be found joyfully annoying her girlfriend with blurry photos of their restless cat, named William Howard Taft.