Photo by HEATHER AINSWORTH The Sarajlija family, which owns the Stari Grad restaurant in Utica: Members of the family are, from right, Angijad with his daughter Elma, 4, and his wife Aida with their son Amar, 1, in front of their restaurant in Utica.

Immigrants strive to preserve their past as American life shapes their children's interests

By KRISTA J. KARCH
Observer-Dispatch

Photo by TREVOR KAPRALOS Ahmet Tricic drinks Bosnian coffee at Europa Foods, a Bosnian-owned restaurant in Utica. Coffee is a key part of Bosnian culture.

Angijad “Ango” Sarajlija gave up his full-time gig as a traveling musician in favor of a steady day job a few months ago, with the hope that tending bar at his Stari Grad restaurant would allow him more time with his wife and children.

But between belting out Bosnian tunes in the microphone in the corner and acknowledging his guests by name when they appear in the doorway, Sarajlija is serving up much more than the thick, black coffee the patrons are instantly offered.

Passing hours this way, taking in the sounds, smells and tastes of old Bosnia in the tiny corner restaurant tucked away on Elizabeth Street, encourages tradition, said Harris Sabanovic, a frequent customer at Stari Grad. He is sure there is something in the coffee.

“We want to be Americans — everybody does! But he is saving my life with what he is doing here,” he said, nodding toward Sarajlija. “If I couldn’t drink this coffee ... he is saving my life!”

For Utica’s many thousands of refugees, life is a daily balancing of the adjustment to American culture and the pull of the old country.

For all but the youngest, it is difficult to feel whole without honoring, even clinging to, the trappings of the culture in which they were raised.

In multiple areas of life — language, food, religion, clothing — preserving one’s culture is a priority that meets with constant challenge.

At Stari Grad, the powerful scent of espresso fights with cigarette smoke, and patrons are transported back to Bosnia — the Bosnia they knew before the war.

“People are a little depressed here. I mean, we left it all there. We live life, and we love life. But some Bosnians are depressed,” Sabanovic explained. “If I’m depressed, the coffee, being here, gets me through it.”

Sabanovic, 24, slid up to the bar at Stari Grad and leaned over a steaming demitasse of espresso.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, politely oblivious to the swirling clouds that billowed from other tables.

Sabanovic moved to Utica at 19, leaving his parents behind in Sarajevo. He doesn’t expect them to ever join him in the United States because they hold tightly to traditions they fear would not translate to a life in America.

“But I know I can build my respect anywhere,” he said. “I can build my tradition.”

While some refugees grasp their traditions and hold to them desperately, others resist the practices that defined the lives of their ancestors.

Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, believes a balance must be reached in order to have what he calls successful acculturation. Often, he said, refugees find themselves at one extreme or another.

“The Sudanese youth dress and engage in their environment a lot like young African-Americans,” he said. “That would not be typical of their cultural environment back home.”

But on the other hand, some larger groups have weaved a web of interdependence that excludes the larger community.

“It works well now, but down the road that might create difficulty,” Vogelaar said. “You need to engage the entire community for success.”

Sarajlija named his Stari Grad (translated “old castle”) restaurant after a castle in the town he comes from in Bosnia. A mural inside the restaurant showcases the towers and turrets that drew tourists from miles around. At Utica’s Stari Grad, patrons gather to share drinks and listen to Sarajlija’s live music.

“We don’t just work hard because of the war — we worked hard before the war, saving the pieces, our pieces of Bosnia,” Sarajlija said. “Through the centuries, Bosnia has been owned by many different countries: Turkey, Yugoslavia. Even though we are here in the United States, it’s nothing new for us to be saving pieces of Bosnia.”

But those pieces seem unfamiliar to some children whose memories of their parents’ homeland are dim or even nonexistent.

“I’m not worried for myself about losing the culture,” said Aida, Sarajlija’s wife. “But I worry for my kids. I want them to keep something. I want them to keep the language.”

Elma, 4, and Amar, 1, mingle Bosnian and English when other Bosnian children come for a visit, but continue to speak Bosnian when it’s just the family.

“I absolutely, 100 percent want my children to be American, but keep the Bosnian tradition, that Bosnian respect!” Sarajlija said. “There is something that is not existing in Utica right now: respect to parents, to family, to grandparents.”

Other ethnic groups are simply trying to make it in a culture worlds apart from the lifestyle they once experienced.

“A lot of parents are working two jobs and don’t have the time to talk about Vietnamese culture,” said Andy Huynh, who was adopted from Vietnam as a child by an Irish couple in Syracuse. “It’s so hard for them living paycheck to paycheck.”

But at the Nguyen Phat Oriental Store on Bleecker Street, Vietnamese patrons turn shyly away from outsiders who occasionally wander into the store. Their daily lives preserve their culture for the children who tag along behind them, fingering the bright fruits and vegetables.

“She lets them pay when they can,” Huynh said, nodding toward the owner, a woman who is constantly moving. “Sometimes, when they get tax refunds, people pay her several thousand dollars for the entire year.”

While some avoid venturing beyond linguistic havens like Nguyen Phat store, others eagerly seek a life immersed in American culture.

Mohammed Alshaman came as a refugee from Iraq in 1994. He lives with his fiancee and their two children in Rome. He tells his children pieces of his life in Iraq but wants to raise them as Americans.

“I’m not forgetting my culture, but one thing that is big in my life is that I didn’t see freedom there in Iraq. I see it in America,” Alshaman said. “This is my country now. Someday I will visit my family in Iraq but only because I miss them so much. But that’s the only reason I would ever go back.”

Alshaman received his United States citizenship in July.

Singing together at the Slavic Pentecostal Church on Herkimer Road, refugees from the former Soviet Union believe they are finally practicing their true culture.

Nikolay and Lyubov Boyko fled their native Moscow with their 11 children in 1991 because of religious persecution. “In the Soviet Union, we belonged to an underground church,” Lyubov said. “We met in apartments, and sometimes in the woods.”

Lyubov remembers the humiliation she suffered as a child when her teachers and classmates attempted to discredit her faith. She was determined that her children have different memories.

Now, she teaches Russian-language classes at the church to ensure that children will always be able to participate in Russian worship services.

“It’s easier for them to just speak English,” she said. “When we first came, my children began speaking to each other in English, and I didn’t know what they were saying to each other. I was scared.”

Lyubov said the main reason she teaches Russian is so children can worship together with adults at the church, but also so they can communicate if they return to Russia — as missionaries, she hopes. “Just be a Christian,” Nikolay said. “It doesn’t matter whether Russian Christian or American Christian. Just be a Christian.”

Leaving danger behind is possibly the only common denominator among Utica’s thousands of refugees. The types of danger are vastly different, but most agree they have found relief from it here.

“We spent years in a war, and every day someone was killed or wounded,” said Azijad Sarajlija, Ango’s brother. “We are safe here.”

But nothing can replace what they had, before civil wars engulfed entire nations, fracturing cultures and dispatching countless lives to the farthest reaches of the world to piece together the remains of shattered dreams.

“We lived a good life in Europe. We are trying to have Europe here,” Sabanovic said. “We’re trying to build something that’s impossible.”

Still, Bosnians in Utica use these avenues to bridge the ever-growing gap between the culture of their childhoods and the culture that will claim their children.

“He’s sending his kids to an American school,” Sabanovic said of Sarajlija. “He knows they’ll learn something good there, but they’ll learn something even better here,” he said, gesturing toward the bar and restaurant.

The tables, empty now, are filled on Friday evenings, when local musicians take the patrons back to their homeland through the strains of Bosnian music — pop and traditional, upbeat and mournful. Sabanovic swept his hand toward the wall adorned with a mural of the original Stari Grad. “That’s important,” he said. “That’s the important thing.”