Double Negative
- Double Negative
After sixteen years, my parents are returning home.
On more than one occasion, my father has said: “There, I do not want to go. Here, I do not want to stay.”
The Bosnian language permits a double negative. English frowns upon it. I have not told my father that his life is not possible in his adopted tongue.
Father’s outbursts—I tell Mother—are caused by the impending change. My mother doesn’t buy it. My mother doesn’t buy much anymore. She used to buy all the groceries. Father was the chauffeur.
My brother and I will soon be living together. I am looking forward to it. I am not looking forward to it.
The greatest impediment to happiness, Bertrand Russell said, is imagining other people’s lives as better than our own.
Slowly, my father, my brother, and I are becoming imagined people to my mother.
What kinds of lives will she grant us, on which shore? [End Page 623]
alen hamza was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina and immigrated to the United States when he was fifteen. He holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. He has received a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and his work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Fence, and Narrative.
