Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 77

(¼) “I grew up in Russia. My mother was a severe...

(¼)  “I grew up in Russia.  My mother was a severe alcoholic, so I spent my entire childhood in a home for troubled children.  Some of the kids were violent.  A lot of times there wasn’t enough food.  On the weekends my grandfather would pick me up and bring me to see my mom.  But she was always so drunk that we’d never speak.  I had plenty of opportunities to be adopted over the years.  Families would visit the orphanage from all over the world.  But I always said ‘no.’  Because my father was still alive.  He was in prison but he was still alive, so I always imagined that eventually he’d come for me.  Then one morning when I was nine years old, I woke up and my father was there to bring me home.  It was the happiest moment of my life.  I finally thought we’d be a family again.  But my joy only lasted for a few days.  Because he went back to doing criminal activity.  He began to drink heavily.  And soon he was beating my mother.  After a few months he abandoned us and I went back to the orphanage.  On Christmas Day they told me he was dead.  After that I had nobody.  My teacher became like a mother to me.  Her name was Anna Mixailovna.  I’d be a criminal without her.  She brought me little gifts to comfort me.  She encouraged me to read and paint.  She showed me the right path.  But she made me promise: ‘The next time you have a chance to be adopted, you must accept.’”
(Florence, Italy)

“At the beginning it was really nice. Especially after the...

“At the beginning it was really nice.  Especially after the twins were born.  They filled our lives.  And I felt like I could count on him.  We were on the same page about everything.  But as the kids grew older, differences began to emerge.  Mainly about how we should raise them.  I’d want to go one way.  He’d want to go another.  And he began making decisions without consulting me.  We stopped communicating.  And when we did talk, all the sentences felt premade.  I didn’t feel listened to.  And things became tense.  It felt like two feet in one shoe.  I didn’t want to share my bed with him.  I wanted out.  But I was afraid to leave because I knew that he needed me.  He relied on me for everything outside of work.  I even took care of his sick mother.  But whenever I asked for things, he was always busy.  Then one day I decided I was done.  He pleaded.  He said it wasn’t fair.  And that he loved me.  And he couldn’t make it without me.  We’d been together for thirty years.  We grew up together.  For our entire lives we’d been in the same boat.  But in that one instant I was able to separate myself from him as a person.  Suddenly his problems were his problems.  And my problems were mine.  And I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I’d never be able to do it.”
(Florence, Italy)

(3/3) “During that first year I lived in a small town in the...

(3/3)  “During that first year I lived in a small town in the deep south of Italy.  I’d sell toilet paper and tissue on the street to survive.  Everyone told me that I needed to get to Rome.  I recognized the name ‘Rome’ because I cheered for the football team when I was a kid.  So I began hanging around the bus stop.  Eventually I met an old man who spoke Arabic, and he helped me get a ticket.  He gave me biscuits and food and sent me on my way.  When I arrived in the city, I was overwhelmed.  It was so busy.  I went to the police station because I had nothing.  And they were very kind to me.  They brought me an Arabic speaker.  They connected me with a foster family, and they were very good people.  They gave me a home.  They taught me Italian.  They helped me go to tourism school.  I’ve been in Italy for six years now.  I’ve got a good job in a kitchen.  My goal is to be a chef, and every day I’m learning something new.  My mother is very happy now.  She knows I’m following my dreams.  She calls me her ‘little chef.’  Every time we talk I give her a different recipe.  And I send a lot of money back home.  The only thing that drives me crazy is she won’t stop working.  She tells me that she’s using the money to build a house for me.”
(Rome, Italy)

“I was born in a house right across the street. It was a normal...

“I was born in a house right across the street.  It was a normal childhood.  But I left home when I turned eighteen, and after that it was a life of destruction.  I used heroin for the first time on August 16th, 1962.  I know the date because it was my birthday.  I kept it under control for a little while.  I could work a job between injections.  But soon I was borrowing money from family and friends.  Then I was stealing things.  And for the last fifty years I’ve been living on the street.  There were a lot of dark times that I’ve deleted from my mind.  But these past ten years have been the best of my life.  I finally got clean.  I don’t have the urge or obsession anymore.  Right now there are two drug dealers on the bench across from us, but I’m not even tempted.  I mind my own business.  All my time is spent in this square.  It’s everything to me.  It’s literally my home.  We’re sitting in my giant living room right now.  That bench over there is my bedroom.  And the market across the street is my kitchen, if I’m short on money, they won’t let me pay.  Everyone here helps me a lot.  I talk to the elderly people.  Sometime I watch the children play.  Everyone knows me here.  Just ask.  Everyone knows who Stefano is.”
(Florence, Italy)

(2/3) “We were at sea for six days. There were ninety people...

(2/3)  “We were at sea for six days.  There were ninety people on the boat.  They put me in the very bottom and I was almost dying.  There was a Syrian man down there with his family, and he kept asking me: ‘Why are you doing this?’  I thought I’d made a huge mistake.  But on the eleventh of August we reached the south of Italy.  We landed on a beach filled with sunbathers.  Everyone on the boat started to run in different directions.  I was so weak.  I ate some apples off a tree.  Then I went straight to a park and fell asleep.  When I woke up, I knocked on the door of a random woman, begging for water and food.  She gave it to me then she called the police.  They wrote down that I was Syrian and brought me to a refugee camp.  That’s where I finally met another Egyptian.  He helped me find a phone and call my mother.  She was so angry when she answered.  She told me that she’d been searching for me for weeks.  She thought that I was dead and somebody had harvested my organs.  I told her that I was in Italy, and she said: ‘Where is that?  Is it nearby?’”
(Rome, Italy)

(1/3) “My father was working on a construction site and a piece...

(1/3)  “My father was working on a construction site and a piece of iron fell on him.  He lived for a few more days, and right before he died, he said: ‘Don’t worry.  You are a man.  You are strong.’  But I was only eleven.   At the time I was taking my entrance exams for middle school.  I had three younger siblings, and my mother couldn’t support us on her own.  She tried.  She’d spend all day on the sewing machine.  But it wasn’t enough.  Our town in Egypt is famous for linen, so I started working in a factory at the age of twelve.  My mother begged me not to work.  She’d fight with my bosses.  She even told me that I didn’t love her because I wouldn’t go to school.  But I had no choice.  All the money I made, I gave to my mother.  She’s like a goddess to me.  But she always found ways to give it back.  She’d sneak it into my lunchbox.  She’d buy me things.  And she wasn’t working any less.  So after a couple years I decided it would be best to leave.  One morning I was in a café and overheard a group of men talking about immigrating to Europe.  I told them I wanted to come.  I lied to them.  I told them that I didn’t have a family and I was all alone.”
(Rome, Italy)

“I was living in Romania when the Soviet Union fell. For our...

“I was living in Romania when the Soviet Union fell.  For our entire lives we’d been communists and suddenly we were capitalists.  Some were good at it.  Others weren’t.  My husband and I tried to invest in a computer business, but we lost everything.  We were evicted from our house.  He was able to live at the university because he’s a professor, but I was forced to move back in with my mother.  That’s when I made the decision to leave the country.  My husband wouldn’t come.  He’s not impulsive like me.  I took a bus to Italy and within three weeks I was out of money.  But I was very fortunate.  I found work as a home health aide for an elderly woman.  Her children treated me like part of the family.  We ate all our meals together.  They didn’t ask me to cook or clean.  And I made more in a week than I could in a month back in Romania.  Every day I rode the bus to their house, and that’s where I met my new husband.  His face was always in a book, so it was a year before we actually spoke.  He’s gentle.  He’s calm.  He’s kind.  The hard times are gone now.  I’ve forgotten about them.  And don’t worry about my ex-husband.  I bought him a house.”
(Rome, Italy)

“Every single night I call my dad before I go to sleep and he...

“Every single night I call my dad before I go to sleep and he tucks me in even though I can do it all by myself, and he lies on the bed next to me and he hugs me and tells me that he’s proud of me and that I’m a champion.  It always helps me fall asleep.  And he says that it helps him fall asleep too.”
(Rome, Italy)

“I was naive. I was coming to Rome from a very little town. I...

“I was naive.  I was coming to Rome from a very little town.  I was Catholic and truly believed that people were good.  And I was seventeen.  Everyone around me was talking about love, and being in love, so I wanted to experience it myself.  I met him at an audition.  Both of us wanted to be in films.  He was thirty-eight: tall, very attractive, and working as a stuntman.  He wanted to spend all his time with me.  I thought I was in love.  But after several months of living together, I began to realize that it wasn’t meant to be.  But the more I withdrew, the more controlling he became.  He went everywhere with me.  He’d lock me in the house.  Whenever he left town he’d take away my documents.  And he warned me that if I ever left, he’d go back to my hometown and make a scandal.  Reputation was something back then.  So I was terrified.  When nothing else worked, he would beat me.  He was proud of it.  He’d smile when someone noticed my bruises.  For three years I lived like this.  I came to believe that the only way to free myself was to kill him.  But I didn’t want to go to jail, so instead I became very sweet and compliant.  I convinced him that I loved him.  And that I was happy with our life.  So he became less guarded, and one day while he was at work, I took a taxi and escaped.  From then on I started looking out for myself.  I became cold and detached.   I promised myself that I’d never fall in love again.  And that if someone fell in love with me, I’d use them.  And that’s why I’m a bitch.”
(Rome, Italy)

“We were studying abroad in the same town in England. The first...

“We were studying abroad in the same town in England.  The first time I saw her I was like: ‘Wow.  She’s nice.  It would be amazing if I could talk to her.’  But she was older than me.  She was fifteen.  And I didn’t really know how to talk to girls.  But one weekend our whole class took a field trip to Birmingham, and I noticed that she was sitting alone on the train.  It seemed like my chance.  So I gathered my confidence, sat down next to her, and just started talking: ‘What’s your name?’, ‘Where are you from?’, this kind of stuff.  Suddenly she started searching for headphones.  She’s looking through her bag.  She’s asking people around her.  It was a complete disaster.  I didn’t know what to do.  Luckily she couldn’t find any.  It will be our two year anniversary on August 30th.  It’s funny to look back.  We were so young back then.”
(Rome, Italy)