An expatriate American in France helps a Bosnian Gypsy gain asylum. A deeply moving story of Love, Marriage, & Language.
Europe is, once again, filled with refugees from sudden warzones. Meho, possibly a Bosnian Muslim along with his second wife & three children, have made their way West from Sarajevo. With a life full of music & loss, his arrival in Ellen Aubert's life is like the kiss from the prince to awaken sleeping beauty.
Gadji is a Romany word for stranger or foreigner, not one of us. Ellen Aubert, married to a Frenchman with full grown children already out of the nest, soon becomes an intimate as she recounts the stories of the refugees she meets, teaches & offers comfort.
From her staid & sterile marriage, Ellen's emotions are awakened as her life intermingles with the passions & dramas of asylum-seekers, & Meho in particular. His ebullience in the face of deprivation, & his persistence in attaining legal immigrant status in France, turns Ellen's life inside-out.
Intervowen are stories of other refugees from other war torn regions -- Chechnya, Bulgaria, Russia, Bosnia -- whose lives Ellen touches, one way or another, with disastrous & redemptive results.
Into her erstwhile placid, hollow life, where she works as a teacher of French & English to these refugees, come the winds of change. She is drawn into their transient, makeshift lives with heartbreaking & mesmerizing power. Slowly this cocooned, ordinary, muddle-class wife, is emotionally re-awakened, & draws her distant, detail-obsessed husband, Jacques, into the maelstrom. Who knows if they'll survive together!
It is through her contact with her daughter, that Ellen receives a soupçon of sanity, as she becomes absorbed in the lives of her refugees. It is through Jacques' participation, or lack thereof, in their marriage that Ellen's passions become focused elsewhere.
In Gadji Louise Domaratius offers us a potpourri of the shards of relationships, glimpses into a hardscrabble way of life, into the myriad ways we humans deceive & comfort each other.
“Beautifully written”, is what has been said about Gadji, & I cannot think of a better phrase. Just enough evocative writing to paint the pictures, tell the stories, & watch the age-old seduction & redemption at work.
Louise Domaratius comes by her stories honestly -- she is an American who has lived & taught in France for years. While she has written many short stories, this is her debut novel.
I sincerely hope there's another one in her. Very well done!
(10/20/02)
Rebecca
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