Elena Georgiou

Writer, editor, and professor Elena Georgiou: author of Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants and mercy mercy me; co-editor of The World in Us...

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The Small Vibration of a Moving Vehicle

By e g

How Will You / Have You Prepare(d) For Your Death? *

I have betrayed so much of the life I was expected to live. I got away with choosing my own lover. I got away with choosing more than one lover. I got away with having to make the choice of a lover from only one gender. In love, I chose freedom. So in death, I feel like I’m supposed to do what is asked of me—burial, not cremation.

But where is the right ground to be buried? Is it the place that I yearn for that doesn’t exist? If I choose this imaginary location, would anyone ever come by to pay their respects, show up with flowers? (How would they know how to find me?) Would old friends sit by my graveside, eating cheese and pickle sandwiches, whispering their secrets into the soil? (I have a wish for all the secrets that are ever whispered by a graveside to be about love.)

I have given some thought to being turned into ashes. Ashes recognize the complexity of living; they allow themselves to be divided—one scoop in the sea, another scoop on land, a third scoop flowing wildly out of the window of a steam train.

I have already tried setting myself on fire. What I remember most is that after this burning it was difficult to ride in the car—as the burns began to heal, the scabs dug into my flesh. The small vibration of a moving vehicle was my biggest fear. Once the bandages were removed, there was a map of my homeland on my stomach, and the city of my birth on my left hip.

 

* This question comes from Bhanu Kapil’s book The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey St. Press, 2001) The book is structured around the responses to twelve questions. Bhanu encouraged me to give responding a try. And so I am.

NEW BOOK FOR 2018!

The Immigrant's Refrigerator
Fiction. Short Stories.
GenPop Books, 2018

If luck is on an author’s side, a book reaches its audience at the right time. Elena Georgiou’s The Immigrant’s Refrigerator can confidently make this claim. Populated with a cast of characters that shine the light on what it means to be an outsider in the early part of the 21st century, this story collection takes its reader into the private lives of those who have entered a country legally, others who were forced to enter illegally, and the rest who call a country home as a result of birth; characters searching for what they need to sustain them on their journeys towards a future that will not only be a place of refuge, but also one of hope.

Read more about The Immigrant's Refrigerator

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