Our family routine permitted us every year to spend more than a month at the seaside. One of my uncles had a beautiful house in a small place on the Adriatic Riviera and we would have the privilege of spontaneously melting into the scenery every summer.

It happened often enough to call It a habit that I would wake up before anyone else. I would love to wander in the garden in the silence of the morning. The sun would be still mellow but already strong enough to invite the little lizards to join me on the stairs and stone pavements. It would be my time to play with them while the rest of the family was still asleep. They would be so friendly to me and come into the palm of my hands so I could pet them on their head. They would close their eyes and seemingly smile. That connection and fascination with little lizards that started when I was two years old never left. I was known in the family as a lizard whisperer.

After 23 years living in Holland, I have been reminded that I might share a story with the ones that we call refugees. Soul searching and trying to understand how all this makes any sense... good guys, bad guys, people that save you, perspective, and only questions left. Born a stranger, living as one, searching for a home but only finding a solution in adjusting the lens. All other ways lead to suffering…

Time was never passing for me in a linear way, and my age did not follow the expected curve of life. In my small years, I was able to offer mature reactions as they were asked of me and I felt as if a grown-up person was living inside of me. Maybe this is just in general one of the qualities of time, but sometimes the feeling I have is as if living life backwards, going forward in time and age to be born again, while shedding more and more layers off the child within me.

From time to time, there are moments where I get overwhelmed by triggers that make me think about my roots, belonging and passions as driving forces towards that youthful eternity, moments like when someone dear passes away, moments in which I feel the reality is shifting… 

When I emigrated to The Netherlands, I left my hometown in the middle of the night. It was not one of those nights when the streets were pitch dark and only the light of the moon was showing the silhouettes of the ghostly town. Not one of those nights you walked almost running, hoping you will soon find yourself in the safety of your home, passing the places known for hosting packs of street dogs or potential maniacs. At home, the candlelight would give a sense of comfort and warmth in the fascinating silence. Silence in which you don’t only experience the lack of sound, but also lack of vibrations. No waves of electricity. It is a silence in which your bones rest and which makes you whisper out of humble respect…

I left my homeland when I was a young adult. As I was running, the ground of the country I was leaving behind was crumbling and dissolving into dust. Often since then, I felt like a visitor in my own life. 

I took off, not daring to look behind or ahead. As I felt my father’s hands lifting me on to the first step of the bus, which drove me away in the middle of the night into my future full of hope and worth living, my mind went into a state of a blank. I can't remember anything about that trip…

When God was creating a life for me, for some reason, understandable only in a far future, he had me born in a northern province of Serbia, an eastern republic of a country that doesn't exist anymore, Yugoslavia. My mother language was Hungarian and I was, therefore, a different kind of a normal kind of an accepted sort of folk, which belonged to the colourful bouquet of nations and nationalities that enjoyed the open doors of paradise and the beautiful brotherly feeling of equality and opportunity…