The Seventeenth Line

While wandering the stacks in my local library I chanced upon the book My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci. It was set out on display and, as any cat lover would be, I was immediately drawn in by the title and intrigued with the book’s cover illustration. A cat in man’s clothes.

Not surprisingly, My Cat Yugoslavia is not about a cat, though a cat does make an appearance. More on that cat later.

In the novel we move back and forth between the experiences of Emine, the mother, and Bekim, her son, as well as back and forth in time and place.  

Emine is an adventurous young girl growing up in a village near Pristina, the capital of Kosovo in the early 1980’s. Emine has spirit, she lively, seemingly smart, and she enjoys exploring the countryside. While out she encounters a young man from a neighboring community.  Their brief teenage flirtation quickly results in a marriage proposal. 

There is much pomp and circumstance leading up to her wedding. There is the dress, the family clothing, the dowery gifts, the food, the procession of family and the singing and dancing that go on for days.

I have to say, I especially enjoyed loved reading this section of the novel. It felt exhiburant and I relished learning about the cultural traditions.

Unfortunately the resulting marriage turns out to be unhappy. Emine finds herself trapped at home in a role, first as wife, then and mother, that denied her the adventurous nature so true to her. Her husband is bitter, unhappy and abusive.

And then war breaks out.

With war at home the family flees to Finland. In their new home they live on the margins. They go from a village to a city, from a rural home to an urban apartment, from family nearby to family they may never see again. The language, weather, topography, is all so very different. They are ‘others’ in their new home with no one to lean one but one another.

Bekim and his parents are not able to settle into Finland, a cold country.

Bekim struggles with acceptance and self-identity. He is both an immigrant and a gay man, a minority within a minority. Bekim is lonely and feels a lost. He makes the odd decision to adopt a pet boa constrictor. 

Enter the dangerous animal!  

Next, with a nod to Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, Bekim begins a relationship with a talking cat.  Bekim first encounters the cat in a gay bar where the cat is wearing human clothes and singing along to “Believe”by Cher.  Bekim is charmed by the cat and quickly falls into a romantic relationship with him. 

 “I had never seen anything so enchanting, so alluring. He was a perfect cat…. Then the cat noticed me; he started smiling at me and I started smiling at him, then he raised his front paw to the top button of his shirt, unbuttoned it, and began walking towards me.”

Bekim brings the cat home, catering to the cat’s every need, all the while the cat is cruel and dismissive. The cat is anti-gay and anti-immigrant and makes flagrant rude comments. Bekim’s relationship with the cat is challenging, to say the least.

All the while the boa constrictor roams Bekim’s apartment. Bekim is never quite sure where the snake is, and we are always a bit on edge waiting for the boa constrictor to make an appearance.  At moments, in particular when the cat is cruel, we hope that the snake will make an appearance.

Cats and snakes show up more than once in this novel, serving as symbols of the displaced, the abandoned and the dangerous people and situations that refugees experience.

The author, Pajtim Statovci, uses magical realism to bring to life the loneliness and disconnection that Emine and Bekim, Albanians who have migrated to Finland, experience.  

This novel isn’t a straightforward read. Things are not clear. It’s odd and uneasy. 

I think this unsettled feeling I experienced as a reader reflects the experience the characters have as they try to make a home in a new nation. This is coupled with the experiences they each have as individuals in bad relationships. They are grappling with their sense of identity.  Nothing is ever certain.

How do you understand yourself and your place in the world when all that you know is strange and uncertain?

I wouldn’t say this is one of my favorite novels and I’m not sure I’d easily recommend this book, but it’s a story that I’m really glad I read. I feel like this book informed me in some way and I haven’t quite caught on to the full lesson just yet.

I read this book in the spring of 2018, which at this time is nearly 3 years ago, and I still think about it quite frequently.