When I first moved to Toronto, I was an impressionable young man of 15. The world I had known until then, was so different from the one in the new city. Cultural shock and confusion about what was right or wrong for a young man like me from the Middle East, were overwhelming. Looking around me, all I saw in the other students of my age, was a uniformity in the way they lived; drugs, beer, promiscuity and weekend parties where they got stoned and drunk.
Well, drugs and heavy drinking were not a choice for me. I was a “good old” Middle-Eastern boy after all. Think of me at fifteen, about fifty two years ago. Back home fingers were usually pointed at drug users and alcoholics. Besides, even though I did not understand it fully at that time, I feel that Canadian youth associated sex, drugs and alcohol with the idea of “rebellion”. Added to it was this sense of escapism that they thought was needed badly. I had done my “rebellion” before immigrating already…thanks to all my benevolent leftist teachers and mentors when I was younger in Beirut. As for escapism, I never believed getting high or intoxicated would solve my problems, of which I had many as a confused new immigrant boy. It just was not a choice for me.
As for girls, I had become so shy and unconfident, even though in Beirut I had been a normal, social boy. It felt as if, once I had moved to Toronto, my tongue got cut off and with the cultural estrangement I was experiencing, an extreme shyness and silence overshadowed my daily life. I was so shy that I would often choose to stay hungry rather than walk into the school cafeteria and line up for lunch. I thought everyone was watching me because I myself did not feel I belonged...I missed back home, and with hardly any English or friends (I had only one), I felt like a fish that regretted having dreamt about jumping out of the river unto land…now it realized water was the essence.
I say regretted because I do not want to lie to you and claim that I never wanted to go to Canada. In fact, I was excited that we were going to move there. But a few weeks or so after arriving there, I realized what I had left behind and my thirty-seven-year-long sorrow and longing, until I left Toronto, began during those early days. Sure, in those thirty seven years I lived comfortably, I got a university degree, I got exposed to many cultures, made friends, fell in love a few times and travelled to many places and so on. The fact is, despite all that the new country eventually offered me, I never felt at home. I always felt that I had to keep the memory of my previous life and all that my elders had taught me. I felt obliged to resist becoming North American. It was a long, exhausting struggle to keep my identity. Not as an Armenian…rather as someone whose roots had been chopped off and needed to wait for them to heal and grow again. I wanted my river back, like that suffocating fish.
Going back to the matter of girls, I still can not figure out why I felt that Canadian girls were unreachable or untouchable. Why was I so shy? Why was it such a big deal to ask any of the girls I liked at school (and I liked many, believe me!) for a date? After all, dating was so common from what I saw and most of the boys had girlfriends. Sometimes I think it was the language barrier. My English was so poor when I arrived in Toronto. I even attended a government sponsored language school for three months. It was for newly arrived young immigrants. For the first time in my life, I met some nationalities like Greeks, Macedonians, Koreans, Chinese and others. Everyone of us spoke little English and with a strong accent particular to their own origins. The majority were Greeks and Macedonians and they fought a lot about history and Alexander the Great. With the little English grammar they knew, they were very funny fights full of explicit swear words they translated from their languages to English and mispronounced them very often. The rest of us would laugh at how ridiculous they sounded. Anyways, after three months, I realized that my English was getting nowhere and on top of it, I was speaking broken English with Greek and Macedonian accent. I quit and registered into a normal High School.
So, here I was, enrolled in a school where I knew no one, suffering because of language limitations and shyness. You know how demoralizing that combination can be? Let me tell you! There was a very beautiful and charming Italian girl called Gina in one of my classes. She was like fire…energetic and mouthy. Everybody liked her, including me. But I had never talked to her and I never imagined I would dare to…who was I? She probably did not even know I existed. Well, on one of those rare days when I was eating my lunch alone in the school cafeteria, who comes with her lunch tray and asks, “hi Berge. Can I join you?” She, Gina, even knew my name! Of course she sat down. But that was it. For the next ten minutes that seemed like a hundred years, she munched one bite after another and I munched my own. My tongue was tied. I could not even breathe out of nervousness. I wanted to tell her so many lovely things, that I liked her, that she reminded me of the charm and elegance of the girls back home. But I was mute and sweating almost from the pressure that time was ticking away and soon I would regret not striking up a conversation. I was right! She finished her lunch, got up and before going, she just said, “thanks for the conversation”. She must have thought I was the dumbest guy. I think I was!!
