timmyjimi

I’m sitting at work on another slow Sunday afternoon.  Since I got back to Kvitfjell, I’ve reconnected with a lot of familiar folks from last year, but there is one that I’ve been wondering if I would run into again.  It happened yesterday.  We were closing Koia, and as Ståle was bending down to empty the dishwasher, an entire shelf of liquor came crashing down on him.  It took us a second to realize what had happened, make sure Ståle was alright, and assess the damage (which was remarkably no worse than a bottle each of Jameson and a tequila).  The other thing that was remarkable - and tipped us off to who was responsible - is that the shelf was in-tact.  The only thing that surprises me is that she waited so long to show up this season.  Now she’s back on the scene, up to her old tricks of playing behind the bar, moving skis around, and going crazy with the flames in the fireplace.  Even our guests are asking what’s up.

We met during my first visit to Sogndal. I had a couple days off work at Sognefjellshytta in May, and our chef suggested I check out the town that shares its name with the Sognefjord. After stashing my tent in the car, Snow White and I were off on a two hour drive down the mountain, and by the time we arrived, my stomach was grumbling. I walked into the first place I saw – Alanya Pizza – with my laptop hoping to find a wireless connection and ordered the “Sogndal Spesial” from two Arabs running the shop. I was unable to locate the network which they assured me was there, so one of them tried to help. Although we were unsuccessful, by the time I had finished lunch, I had also engaged in a conversation with Memet, an Iraqi seeking asylum in Norway.

He asked me where I was planning to spend the night, and when he discovered I had only a tent, he invited me to his house. With a bit of hesitation, I asked if I could get back to him once I had explored the area a bit more. After leaving, I regretted not taking advantage of the opportunity to become further acquainted, so I called him that evening accepting his offer to spend the night on his sofa. We passed the evening together in Sogndal over a beer and a salad, while I attempted to piece together his story through very broken English. Speaking to him was no easier than listening, as it wasn’t until then that he realized to his surprise that I was, in fact, not Norwegian but American. This scenario made me uneasy over the obvious peculiarity of our relationship, but I was soon relieved to understand that he had no prejudice against my nationality.

Listening to twenty-two year old Memet tell his story was an emotional experience. I had noticed a scar on his arm and asked where it had come from. It was, in fact, the reason he was here. He had left behind everything in Kirkuk (including his parents and nine brothers and sisters) less than a year earlier and paid thousands of dollars to be driven non-stop to Norway after being freed from a three month captivity by kidnappers who demanded a ransom. His family exhausted every resource in an attempt to provide the money, and when his captors left Memet on a dirt road, they broke his arm below the shoulder with the bone protruding from his skin. As he told his story, some children a few tables away accidentally burst a balloon, and Memet’s frightened reaction betrayed an association with terrorists of another sort. Something as innocent as a child’s popping balloon, to a victim of terrorism, was instinctively perceived as a deadly explosion.

To come to Sogndal from where he now lived, Memet would take a bus from a small group of cabins in a forest off the highway a few miles south of town. We drove there, where I was introduced to several other asylum seekers, most of whom Memet was able to communicate with using Arabic. As he introduced me, I was able to decipher that he did so by telling them I was Norwegian rather than from the United States. I asked him about this privately, only to learn that he was concerned that not all of his friends were necessarily of a favorable disposition toward Americans. And this was where I was going to spend the night, with Snow White and her American flag air freshener parked outside?

At once, I regretted my decision and entered Memet’s cabin with – for lack of a better word – terror. I was introduced to his three roommates, one from Morocco, one from Palestine, and another from Iraq; and I played the part of a Norwegian as best I knew how. This was not an easy task, considering that Memet’s friends were talkative and curious, wanting to know everything from the history of Norway to the details of the language. As far as I knew, I was somehow pulling it off, and by the time the evening was through, we were all gathered around a television in a small living space watching The Two Towers with Danish subtitles, interrupted only when the Palestinian stood up, placed a rug on the floor, faced south, and began to pray.

Memet and his roommates were equally generous as they were curious. As asylum-seekers, they are provided with a place to sleep and the equivalent of four hundred dollars a month, hardly enough for groceries when you take into account that Norway is one of the most expensive countries in the world. Yet, they insisted on not only providing me with a place to sleep, but also feeding me with a meal, including homemade Moroccan bread and tea. Despite their kindness, I attempted to hide the fact that I remained somewhat troubled over whether I would make it through the night in one piece and drive away safely the next morning. Which I managed to do after a few hours of light sleep.

Memet and I stayed in touch after our chance meeting, and by the time I was camping in Kaupanger earlier this month, Memet was visiting his brother in Bergen. Upon Memet’s return, he contacted me: the same evening of my previous blog post, without regard for my intentions of roughing the free life by the sea, he insisted that I stay with him in the new house immigration services had provided for him in downtown Sogndal. Memet now lived with his previous roommate, Mohamed from Morocco, along with Morry from Guinea, Isaack from Kenya, and David from Iran. Although Memet’s bedroom was hardly larger than the tent I had been sleeping in for the past week, he offered me his floor as a place to throw down my mat and sleeping bag, and once again I was subject to the overwhelming generosity of a group of people who had left everything and now lived on little more than I already did myself. No matter what time of day, every time I walked into a room, my empty hands were filled with bread and tea, if not more. Nearly every evening, Memet and I were treated with a new dinner invitation from other asylum-seekers living in Sogndal who had heard that a visitor was in town. On at least two occasions, I was offered multiple dinners by different people living in the same house, leaving me at a loss for the appropriate way to respond. At this point, I had come out of the closet as an American in Norway, and my new friends could not wait to show their hospitality. I was a pauper being treated like a prince.

I spent the following weekend with Memet before driving to Fåvang on Thursday, where I have been staying with some good friends from last winter, and I have had time to reflect on the few days I spent in Sogndal. Although my time there was short, it was one of the most profound experiences I have had over the past year. As unbelievably (and almost unbearably) generous as Memet and his friends were, it was their own circumstances that left the biggest impression on me. In less than a week, I met a least a dozen men from Iraq alone (one of whom had worked for three years with the U.S. military as a translator), as well as men from Syria, Yemen, Eritrea, and Nigeria, in addition to Memet’s roommates from Guinea, Kenya, and Iran. Each of them had their own story of leaving families behind to find a new life after escaping from oppressive governments, destroyed homes, or the immediate threat of radical terrorists. For many of them, Norway was just the next stop in a string of European countries where their journey had met a dead end.

I met more immigrants in Sogndal than I did Norwegians, and I wanted to know what had brought them here. At the same time, I had to get used to answering the same question. These people were here out of desperation, and they were struggling to assimilate themselves into a remote country of people who gave them strange looks and spoke a difficult language. As soon as they learned that I was American, they did not understand how I could possibly choose to be in Norway of my own free will. The United States is the one place they could imagine finding a new life, yet for them, the American Dream was out of reach. I would hear them speak of America every day with both hope and resignation to the likelihood that America was more of a fantasy about the future than a realistic aspiration. It has been a welcome change of pace and perspective to be living in Europe, but when I listened to these men, it made me both proud and deeply grateful to be an American.

After a few days in the house, it occurred to me that perhaps one reason I was being treated so well as a guest was simply because it was something for them to DO. The Norwegian government provides enough for them to survive while they wait for a thumbs up or down on their asylum application, but most of them are not allowed to work (something we had in common). We did manage to pass some days together picking raspberries for cash from a Romanian family of seventeen, and when I saw that the Africans were able to bring in more than twice as much as I did in the same amount of time, I visualized in my mind how industrious the African-American slaves must have been. I don’t mean that in a negatively racist way, but I thought I was working hard until I saw how well they did their job, and in good humor to boot.

Another reason they likely treated me so well was that even though I was a white man relatively at home in Norway, I viewed them as equals. Though it is a credit to the Norwegian government that they try to help these people, the majority of Norwegians do not respond favorably to foreigners attempting to lay down roots in their country. As opposed to the melting pot of the United States, Norwegians have historically been a very reserved and private people, and it is not difficult for me to see both sides of the coin. I do a double take myself when I see immigrants here and acknowledge that their presence threatens to compromise the distinctively Norwegian culture that I love so much. But how can I not have sympathy when a man like Memet tells me that his life is in danger in his own home, and then proceeds to show me such kindness in a place where he is not likely to receive the same treatment from the people he meets on the streets of Sogndal?

But regardless of the reasons for their generosity, it was genuine and warm, with an Arabic and African flare that stood in stark contrast to my own Norwegianness. And while some of them struggled to establish a sense of normalcy here in Norway, they also somehow managed to stay optimistic. In fact, they challenged even my own feeling of freedom in my current circumstances. For example, David the Iranian, whom I lived with, was not immediately open with me. But when he invited me to join him in his room for tea one evening, we stayed up past one a.m. as he described to me how he had become an evangelical follower of Christ during a three year stay in Greece and then encouraged me in my own faith. Another twenty-three year old man, Khaled, told me that after his first brief meeting with me, he had spent time thinking about my situation and challenged me (with a bright smile on his face) not to waste my time, to consider my state in life and to evaluate my goals for the future. It amazed me that someone with such a seemingly discouraging history was able to look beyond it enough to offer such sound and insightful advice to someone he hardly knew.

Now I sit here with a wealth of opportunities ahead of me. After witnessing first-hand that such advantages in life are by no means guaranteed, I feel that it is my duty to make the most of them, not only for myself but for others. I have always considered myself a Norwegian American, born in the United States but Scandinavian by heritage. One of the reasons my Sogndal experience was profound is that even though I have always had an interest in people of other ethnicities, it drew me toward the world in a way I had never felt before. No matter how much news I read online or watch on the television, it is never as real as meeting the people from the cultures and catastrophes that are being reported. My eyes have been opened in a new way, and I have also made a new group of friends, whom I hope to meet again in the future. At the very least, I look forward to introducing them all to my sisters when we drive through Sogndal in a couple of weeks.

Last October, the backpack that accompanied me to Oslo was filled mostly with camping equipment. My uncertain plans forced me to consider the possibility of roughing it in the Norwegian winter. But fortune favors the brave, and apart from the loneliest night of my life (which I now look back on as my rite of passage to an incredible year), and an emergency stop in Otta to repair my brakes last month, all this gear has been gathering dust.

One year ago, I was living the college graduate’s dream in an upscale yuppie pad on the top floor of a converted stone church on the outskirts of the WSU campus. Every morning, I hit the snooze button as long as I could before driving a new V8 pickup three miles down Grand Avenue to pour my first cup of coffee and then sit down to entertain myself with a chair on wheels and a computer screen for the next eight hours, at least. I was having fun, and I loved my job.

Now I live in a single-room apartment with a zippered front door where the rain on the fly or the sun through the sidewall is enough to roll me out of bag. The distance to the toilet and tap is the same as it is to cast my line into the world’s longest, deepest fjord for dinner. Across the water, I have an unbeatable view of one of Norway’s largest remaining viking stave churches framed by towering, snow-capped peaks. I feel as though I have truly graduated, finally chased my dreams.

…

Snow White is parked outside my tent with everything I own. She and I have been through good times and bad times over the past year. The beginning of June was one of the bad times. I had just found out that my application for a summer work permit had been denied, and on an afternoon drive to hike up to Nigardsbreen (an arm of mainland Europe’s largest glacier), we found ourselves being backed into by a bus full of tourists. Snow White has a big heart, but a pitifully weak horn, and the Norwegian bus driver didn’t stop before he had bent, cracked or scraped every piece on the front of the car. Thankfully, the injury was only external and mostly cosmetic, with one of the headlights now better aimed to inspect the quality of the asphalt than to observe oncoming traffic.

Norwegians are capable of anything when they put their mind to it, but the process is usually agonizingly slow. It took the government months to process each of my work permit applications, and filing insurance claims has proved to be no different. Three weeks after the accident, I was moving out of my work and living situation at Sognefjellshytta with little progress on where, when or how I could get my car repaired, and I was leaving the country. I parked Snow White with her lazy eye outside Lars’s house in Ringebu and took off for Denmark, then Germany before returning last Tuesday.

I was pleased to find letters from both my insurance company and the bus company’s insurance waiting for me at Sognefjellshytta when I dropped in. These confirmed that the bus bore responsibility and that the repair would be covered in full. I drove to the designated body shop in Sogndal (two hours west of Sognefjellshytta) only to be told that there would be no repair, since the agent at the insurance company was interested in a cash settlement for the value of the car. News to my ears, and the agent is now on vacation for the rest of the month. I will not complain about extra cash, but extra patience is a virtue running thin.

So I’ve thrown down camp here, three miles from the body shop, and I will wait. I will wait at my own pace – reading, writing, fishing and hiking to my heart’s content. The weather has been stormy, but I’ve been itching to do some down and dirty camping all year, and I’m not about to go asking around for couches to sleep on – neither out of pride, nor because there is no one that would put me up, but from a desire to be free. As I await my final paycheck from Sognefjellshytta, I will save what money I have left by living cheaply, and I will appreciate every moment, unattached from schedule and expectations. Carefree, for the time being, on these thirty square feet of earth I call home.

Until a few weeks ago, I had been part of the underground labor force, working illegally in Norway and making a reputation for myself as the Kvitfjell “Mexican.” This wasn’t because I had been dodging the authorities or avoiding the process of legitimately integrating myself via the expected process of immigration. It’s just that the process takes time, and only after several visits to various law enforcement and tax offices was I finally issued a tax card and the equivalent of a social security number. Without that number, I had been unable to open a bank account, get payrolled, or even register and insure my car. Finally, right before Easter, the paperwork came together. Now, I just needed to take a trip to the bank, make a phone call to the insurance company, and visit Statens Vegvesen, a.k.a the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Which is why I had a bad feeling when I got a phone call on the evening of March 22. I hadn’t had a chance to do those things yet, and on my way down the mountain after a late shift at work, a friend of mine was on the phone needing a ride from Fåvang. The bad feeling I had at this point came from a combination of circumstances:

Numero Uno) It was Easter. Normally, there aren’t a lot of patrol cars around these parts. But I had heard that they tend to show up during holidays, especially Easter.

Numero Dos) I started driving much more carefully and infrequently after a friend of mine convinced me of the consequences of driving an uninsured vehicle, even on the mountain. I had successfully avoided those consequences to this point, and now I was only days away from getting Snow White on the right side of the law.

Numero Tres) It was late Saturday night. If I was gonna see a cop, it was now or never.

Numero Cuatro) I knew I might not pass an alcohol test. In fact, I had even called up my neighbors who work at the hotel to hitch a ride down. But after getting no answer, I took the risk of driving home. Disclaimer: You should understand that I was nowhere near being under the influence. Much earlier in the day, I had a few tastes of drinks that had been accidentally prepared or turned down by the guests at Koia. Had I been driving in the States, I wouldn’t have thought twice about my condition, but the limits in Norway are next to zero. Even certain non-alcoholic foods can put you in dangerous territory.

So I was on my way down the mountain when I got the call, and sucker that I am, I didn’t want to turn down a friend in need. I made it to my driveway at the bottom of the mountain and heard the angel whisper in my ear, “Stop here.” I continued towards town. As I approached Fåvang, I considered parking and walking the rest of the way, but since it was what turned out to be the coldest night of the year (nearly ten below), I ignored my better judgment and continued the last few hundred yards to where my friend – and a parked police car – were waiting for me.

They nailed me for a headlight that has been malfunctioning for months. I replaced the bulb once in Oslo, but it still only works when it feels like it. That cold Saturday night, it didn’t feel like it. So I drove past the police car, into the parking lot, and went inside to get my friend. Five minutes later, we walked out:

Good Samaritan: “So, why do you think that cop is parked there?”

Carefree Swedish Chick: “Well, you know, sometimes people get into fights.”

We got in the car, buckled up, and pulled out. Followed immediately by the police.

Victim of Murphy’s Law: “I hate when police follow me.”

At which point, they flashed their lights, I pulled over into a gas station, and we waited.

Officer: “Førekort og vognkort, takk.” (…license and registration, please.)

Ignorant American Tourist: “Hello! “

Officer: “Oh, yes. You speak English?”

Fluent Norwegian Speaker: “Yes.”

I had to resist the instinct to respond in Norwegian or let on that I understood every darned Norwegian word he said. But I did my best to play dumb. Not that I expected to get off scot-free, but this was my maneuver of damage control. The ensuing conversation consisted of me telling him I didn’t have registration, him telling me I didn’t have insurance, me telling him I was working on that, and him telling me that it was cold outside.

He stripped Snow White of her plates while my friend and I watched him in the headlight, and he told me to park the car at the gas station. I wouldn’t be driving another kilometer without insurance, and though he initially offered to arrange a ride home (which was thankfully not appearing to be an escort to the county jail), my friend and I eventually found ourselves walking back to town to hail a taxi.

After leaving Snow White behind, naked and cold, the first thing I could do was laugh about it. I mean, I wasn’t going to jail, my car wasn’t being impounded, and my license wasn’t being confiscated. Plus, I didn’t have to take a breathalizer, and I didn’t even get a ticket. This whole thing was bound to happen, but instead of landing me in a heap of trouble, it was just going to make a good story. My enthusiasm faded as soon as the -10° weather permeated my jacket, or about two minutes. It took another thirty to get a cab, by which point I was pumping out jumping jacks to stay warm.

The rest is history. I had to manage a while without a car, but after two trips to Lillehammer and a $235 fine (yup, they got me), Snow White and I were reunited. I still consider myself lucky, and now I’m 100% legal. No more wife-beaters, no more Spanish accent, and no more black money. The next time I have to talk to the cops, they won’t even recognize me.

Koia has a motion-activated alarm system that we enable overnight. Several times recently, it has gone off for no obvious reason.

Behind the bar, we have a hinged paper towel dispenser. No matter what we do to keep it closed, it is always swinging open.

Today, when the dispenser fell open, I put two and two together. It wasn’t until later in the evening, after I had closed, that this realization scared me to death.

…

It has been warm and sunny here the past two weeks. I have been looking forward to the lunar eclipse that is happening tonight, hardly considering the fact that a lunar eclipse is often regarded as a bad omen.

This morning, however, I woke up to new snow, and the skies were overcast all day. By nightfall, the clouds had sunk to become a thick fog blowing in with force and noticeably lowering the temperature on the mountain. It was the kind of fog that made me feel like I was in a movie.

…

I closed Koia by myself tonight and told Lars that I would be staying late to upgrade the sound system. Our amplifier is on a high shelf above the paper towel dispenser; so after the usual cleaning routine, I was standing on a crate changing some cables when it first happened – a noise I hadn’t heard before – somewhere I couldn’t see. It could have been something falling off the wall, it could have been someone knocking to get in, or it could have been something blown over by the wind. Whatever it was, I looked for it, but found everything on the walls, no one outside, and my heart rate up just a bit. So I went back to work, alternating between the amplifier and the speakers outside to check their output and adjust the volume. Outside – in the fog and the wind and the cold.

Then it happened again. This time louder. This time definitely inside. And after frantically searching through and around the entire building, still no sign of what could have caused it, until I was frozen in my tracks. I thought of the paper towel dispenser, not because the noise could possibly have been the paper towel dispenser, for the noise was far too loud. I was petrified by something else I remembered:

Three hundred fifty years ago, long before the building was “Koia,” a girl who lived there was killed. In fact, she was suspected to have been slain at the exact location of the paper towel dispenser, directly below the amplifier and beside the panel for the alarm system. She was killed precisely where I was standing.

…

The last thing I do before I leave Koia at night is turn on the alarm, which has a short pre-delay. I do this immediately after I turn off all the lights. As soon as I engage the alarm – before it goes off – I have to walk to the front door on the opposite side of the building. In the dark.

Spooked, I finished my work as fast as possible and, after turning on the alarm, headed as calmly as I could for the door. Halfway there, I realized I had left my hat and gloves in the back. I knew I might have just enough time to retrieve them before the alarm would sound, so I turned around, reached blindly into the back room, raced for the door, and SLAM! The door shut behind me. I had already locked it before realizing that one of my gloves had fallen to the step below and that my hat was no longer in my hand or on the ground.

It was on the floor inside. And it still is. I was not going back for it, no matter how cold my ears might get on the five minute walk to my car. The dark, cold, foggy, windy, frighteningly endless walk back.

Once I finally made it, I peed in the parking lot. I had to, but it was foggy, and nobody was watching.

Nobody, except her.