One truth is that I had no interest in going to Montenegro. A friend of mine, U.S. Ambassador Sue K. Brown (ret) had invited me to visit her at her post in Montenegro. I resisted the idea at first because there were no people of African descent in the country aside from her and the Gunnery Sargent. My lived experiences as an African American just could not, would not, willfully risk the specter of being one of only three African people in the entire country. On her third casual invitation, I told her I would think about it but I wanted to do some research before committing. My research turned up Lopašić’s article mentioned in the previous chapter; that was the first shock—Africans actually lived in Southeastern Europe. The second shock was that some still lived in Ulcinj. I sent an email to Sue to share my findings and to tell her I would come.

There were scheduling conflicts related to Ramadan during the month of February when I originally planned to arrive so we settled on October, 2013. The visit to Montenegro was under the umbrella of the U.S. State Department’s Speaker’s Bureau Program. I was asked to present topical discussions in public venues about the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement centered mostly on Brown v. Board of Education. I was particularly excited to discuss this topic since I actually met the late Oliver Hill in his home several years before his transition. In addition to my public schedule, I also had plans to go to Ulcinj to meet the descendants of Rizo and Qhamill whom Lopašić wrote about in his report. Lopašić’s article was ethnographic in nature but the people he interviewed had been enslaved and that elevates his work to enslaved narrative status. I spent a day and a half in Podgorica before I traveled to Ulcinj. The first descendant I met was Filje Šurla Kastrati.

Filje was born in 1932 to Qhamill and an “unknown” father. I met her in her home, not far from the Hotel Dolcino where I had been staying. We drove through an alleyway and parked in a lot behind her house. Walking in single file, the four of us made our way along the cobblestone path occasionally stopping every few feet to lift an overgrown branch or vine blocking the walkway to take the next few steps. Following the cobblestone led us to the front porch adorned with all of the items that accompany front porches; a swing seat, starter plants, ferns that grew too big to keep indoors, buckets, bags, boxes, the usual culprits of large outdoor porches. Mustafa, a journalist and publicist, climbed the steps to knock on the door. As he poked his head through the glass panes on the side of the door, I turned around towards the street to barely notice the tiny sidewalk—like the ones found on Bienville Street in New Orleans— only to discover the reason we parked in an alleyway: there was no street parking for anyone in the neighborhood. As cars whizzed past the house at a steady pace, the sun struggled for a place between the fleeting overcast clouds to stretch out its rays on a chilly October morning. Amidst Filje’s mature fruit trees, the sun only slightly touched the decorative yellow wrought-iron fence raised above the four-foot concrete brick wall.

When Mustafa gave the signal to enter the home, we reassembled in our single-file line to enter the spacious two-level home decorated with cultural artifacts of the past. We followed Mustafa to a small room just off the main entrance of the home to the left. He gestured for us to be seated while we waited for Filje to join us. The small parlor was formally appropriated with a modest sofa, two wing-backed chairs and a Persian rug below a regular wooden coffee table. I sat on the couch at one end, Bernard and Sylvija sat next to me and Mustafa took the chair in the corner leaving the remaining chair for Filje. On the wooden table was a lazy Susan with nuts, cheese, crackers, light snacks for us to munch on. I politely refused the snacks when first offered but was told that if I did not partake, I would hurt the hosts’ feelings. I experienced this phenomenon in the homes of Ghanaians, Nigerians and Cameroonians who said that not eating or at least drinking water was a sign that my intentions were bad, so I ate and enjoyed the treat Filje prepared for us. I sat near the fireplace with a mantle that told the story of Filje’s family better than any words could ever describe. Old dusty black and white photos of her mother and grandmother, brothers, sisters, cousins; pictures stacked upon more pictures and not just on the mantle but on the walls and on every table in frames with glass so old they were clouded with dust.

Looking deep into the eyes of the people who had no names, with stories yet untold, I wondered where they might have come from in Africa. What were their favorite foods or songs? Did they miss the place called home? I became so deeply immersed in the possibility of their answers that I was startled when Filje walked into the room. Upon seeing this modest, portly woman sloping to about four feet tall, her velvety dark chocolate skin was comforting for as long as I had been in Montenegro, the only other person of African descent I had seen was Ambassador Brown. As I watched Filje shuffle her feet to sit in her chair, I noticed her knees and back were curved, bent as if they had been frozen in place. The flow of the conversation was challenging. Mustafa communicated with Filje in Serbian-Croatian, he then translated into Albanian to the other two translators who then translated to me in English. While the others engaged in the language translations, I studied Filje’s extraordinarily large hands that were also curved like the feet of a bird clinging to the limb of a tree. Trying not to stare, I looked for markings on her face or neck to see if she had been treated with traditional markings, one line if her family came from the village or two lines if her family came from the city.