The Bronx Ink

As war progressed in Kosovo in 1999, 7-year-old Ariana Metalia sat in front of the television in her family home in New York and watched the bloodshed taking place more than 4,000 miles away.

“My parents didn’t hide anything from us. Every day we came home from school, we would watch the news,” said Metalia. “They wanted us to see what was going on.”

Metalia, a first-generation Albanian-American whose parents immigrated to the Bronx from mainland Albania, is one of an estimated 100,000 Albanians currently living in New York City.

The majority of Albanians to emigrate between the 1970s and 1990s, did so as refugees. Like Metalia’s immediate family, some came fleeing political persecution under communist rule in Albania; others fled war in Former Yugoslavia, where ethnic Albanians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo were the targets of ethnic genocide.

Despite having never lived through the violence first-hand, Metalia represents a community of Albanian-Americans born in New York City after their parents immigrated. It’s a generation left to grapple with the impact of familial trauma. 

Now, she is part of a team of young Albanians working to establish a mental health day for the Albanian community. The event would be the first of its kind to address what she said is a need for open conversation about trauma and grief.

“Because my parents were so active in supplying weapons and funding to help my cousins rebuild their homes during the war, I felt like we were a part of it,” said Metalia. “Nobody in my family died in Kosovo, but it’s just been drilled into my head how devastating these situations were.”

Metalia, whose childhood experiences led her to pursue a career as a licensed mental health counselor, said that the exposure to trauma, combined with a cultural stigma against getting help in Albanian communities has taken its toll.

“People are walking around like zombies with post-traumatic stress disorder, and nobody is doing anything about it,” said Metalia. “People can get better if you provide the resources for them, but I mention therapy and Albanians look at me like I’m delusional.”

That’s something that she is hoping to change.

Inherited trauma and unspoken grief

Vlash Parubi doesn’t like his wife’s Okra stew.

The traditional dish—called Bajme in his native Albanian language—is a savory blend of onion, garlic, tomato and lamb, simmered with the summertime vegetable until the flavors fuse.

To his family in the Bronx, the stew is a piece of cultural heritage, but to Vlash, Bajme is a sore reminder of an earlier life lived out under communist reign.  Like most young men who grew up in The Eastern Bloc, Vlash served mandated time in the Albanian national military before immigrating to New York as a political refugee in 1990.

He doesn’t speak much about what happened during his two years of service in the mid 1980s— a decade in Albania defined by economic hardship, violent imprisonment and global isolation—but one of the few things his children have come to understand about that time in their father’s life, are his eating habits. For dinner in the military, he’d eat Bajme every single day.

Now, he can’t bear the thought of the taste.

Maria Parubi is Vlash Parubi’s oldest child.

The 23-year-old’s Instagram account is decorated with photos of beautiful Albanian landscapes and portraits of her posing in front of them.

In one photo, she stands alone, wearing a white dress, speckled in blue, while looking out onto a jagged mountain range covered in patches of dark greens that turn pastel under the shadows cast by the clouds above. In another, she stands smiling with her brother as the sun sets on a village in the backdrop. Her caption reads, “Home is where the heart is, and ours will forever belong to Albania.”

But Parubi’s relationship to the country of her family’s origin isn’t so simple.

Born just a year after her parents immigrated in 1995, Parubi said that preservation of Albanian identity was important growing up. Throughout her childhood, her parents spoke fondly about their home in Albania, dressed her in traditional clothing and spoke Albanian language in the household to instill the connection to their Balkan homeland, but neither her mother nor her father ever spoke about the hardships that they faced.

“My dad will talk about the happier times or about the future,” said Parubi. “But when it comes the darker stuff, it’s like that time period doesn’t exist.”

Parubi said that the absence of conversation didn’t result in the absence of tension derived from her parents’ past experiences. Her mom has panic attacks. Her dad suffers from depression.

“The older I get, the more I understand what my parents went through, and the more I can make sense of how their experiences affected my childhood,” said Parubi. “As a child, you become what you see. We inherited our parents’ trauma and now we have to make sense of it.”

Denise Hien is a clinical psychologist and researcher who has studied the impact of transgenerational trauma on families for the last 30 years.

“I’ve worked with a lot of individuals who are survivors of genocide or persecution, where the children were suffering from PTSD even though they had never been exposed to the direct trauma,” said Hien. “Absolutely, trauma can be transmitted and carried from one generation to the next.”

According to Hien, there are two major pathways through which trauma can be transmitted. The first is when children are overexposed to the stories that their parents carry.

“If the parent is talking about horrific situations in a way that a child is unable to process, it can be overwhelming and could manifest in anxiousness or depression later one,” said Hien.

The other is when parents are unable to bring words to their experiences and that can result in tension that is also detrimental to a child.

“It’s something you certainly saw in Holocaust survivors,” said Hien. “Many would never speak of what happened. The theory is that that silence then goes on to live an unconscious life that’s transmitted and held by the children of the family.”

Hien said that when there is an unspoken trauma in a family, children can develop related symptoms or disorders and not have an understanding of where they are coming from, much like Parubi’s experience.

“Throughout high school I was dealing with a lot of anxiety and anger that I didn’t understand,” said Parubi. “It wasn’t until I got to college that I was like wow, I can’t let myself become this.”

As Parubi began working to better understand her own battles with mental health, she also began speaking about her experiences with other young Albanians for the first time.

“I thought it was just me because nobody was talking about it, but now I’m realizing there are so many of us,” said Parubi. “I started meeting Albanians that were like me, more modern and wanted to let go and fix these generational traumas. It was really exciting.”

One of the young Albanians she connected with was Ariana Metalia.

“We try to find each other, even if just through social media,” said Parubi. “I have so many friends either from here or back in the motherland that I’ve never actually met, but we have these conversations all the time just because we post about them.”

Together, Metalia and Parubi are working to organize a mental health day for the Albanian community in New York City. Although they haven’t set a date yet, Parubi said that it’s a small step toward normalizing conversations about mental health and inherited trauma.

“My parents never had the resources to address their trauma and get the help that they needed,” said Parubi. “They did the best that they could with what they had, they gave me a future and made sure we had a roof over our head, but I’m realizing that there are things I need to address in myself and things I need to let go of that have damaged me.”

 “Now, we’re developing these resources for each other. A lot of us are getting information through education, and what you’re finding now is that the next generation is starting to have these conversations,” said Parubi. “I love standing up for people who are the underdog or who don’t have a voice. I decided I needed to stand up for myself. How can I expect my community to change if I’m not a part of it.”

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Walking east along Lydig Avenue in the Morris Park area of the Bronx, you can’t help but notice that Mark Gjonaj is the 80^th Assembly District’s new poster boy. His visage is plastered on the windows of businesses with his black hair brushed back and his brown eyes staring at those who pass by.

“Elect Mark Gjonaj. Democrat for Assembly,” the poster reads with red and white text on a blue background. Residents can follow the posters like breadcrumbs to Gjonaj’s Barnes Avenue campaign headquarters (decorated in the same colors as his posters), where he is running to be the next assemblyman for the district, which includes Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Van Nest, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Norwood, Allerton and Van Cortlandt Village.

More posters cover the walls inside the headquarters, along with newspaper clippings about his campaign and awards of recognition from various local organizations. New York voter registration forms are piled on a table underneath an informational poster that reads “How to Become President of the United States.” That’s a goal far from Gjonaj’s mind. He’s focused on his district. He’s focused on the Bronx.

Gjonaj, 43, beat incumbent Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera in the Democratic primaries on Sept. 13 by a margin of 11 percent. His challenger in the general election on Nov. 6 is Republican Nicole J. Torres.

Torres does not have any contact information available. Multiple calls and emails to the Bronx County Republican Party’s headquarters and to Bronx Republican Party chairman Joseph Savino’s personal office were not returned.

Should Gjonaj defeat Torres (which is likely in the heavily Democratic Bronx), Gjonaj will be the first person in the Assembly of Albanian-American heritage, representing a district where he has spent almost his entire life.

“This wasn’t about just having a voice, but the right voice,” he said. “The voice that would address the concerns and the issues of the 80^th Assembly District.”

Gjonaj was born on Arthur Avenue in the Fordham Area of the Bronx to Albanian immigrant parents. After 10 years there, his family moved to the Pelham Parkway area. His mother worked as a housekeeper in Jacobi Hospital and his father worked as a building superintendent.

“I spoke Albanian before I spoke English,” Gjonaj said. “The traditions of hospitality and respect were enrooted into me growing up.”

His ethnic identity is proving important to the Albanian community in his district. According to the 2011 American Community Survey, the Bronx has a population of 12,438 people of Albanian descent – more than any other borough in New York City.

“To the Albanians, it means a lot because for so long we haven’t had someone to represent us,” said Marko Kepi, president of Albanian Roots, a nonprofit organization with a goal of building a stronger Albanian community in New York City. He claimed that the Albanian community had to contribute to politicians in order to gain their support in the past.

“Now we have one of our own, Mark Gjonaj, in the Assembly, that can speak up for the community himself.”

Kepi said that most people of Albanian descent tend to be conservative in their politics, but that Gjonaj energized that group. Albanian Roots helped the Albanian community to vote, and Kepi says that more than 300 Albanians in the 80^th Assembly District registered as Democrats so they could vote for Gjonaj in the primaries.

Gjonaj said that though the Albanian community is only a fraction of the total population,  he can speak their language, which may make it easier for him to communicate about  community issues. He said that other elected officials have been supportive of the Albanian community, including Councilman James Vacca, Sen. Jeffrey Klein and Rep. Joseph Crowley.

Another aspect that may have helped Gjonaj topple Rivera is the fact that Rivera was fighting political scandals, including allegations that she used taxpayer money to hire her former boyfriend Tommy Torres in a part-time consulting position. The story made the front page of papers such as the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Rivera has maintained a low profile since losing the election, but she is on the ballot as an Assembly candidate for the Working Families Party. She is currently being investigated by law enforcement agencies, including the Bronx District Attorney’s office and the state Attorney General’s office.

“The primary reason to vote for him was that the other candidate, the incumbent, was sullied, was deeply stained, was seen as involved in scandal,” said David Luchins, chairman of the department of political science at Touro College and a resident of Pelham Parkway.

If Rivera’s scandal wasn’t enough of a boost, Gjonaj’s campaign has had the advantage of being well-funded.

Gjonaj attended St. John’s University in Queens and earned a degree in marketing. He is the president of M P Realty Group Corp., a real estate brokerage firm that he founded in 1999, and manages the sole property of Kramlaup Realty Corp. – an apartment building in City Island. His only political experience is as a member of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. Gjonaj insisted that if he wins in November, he will give up real estate brokerage and management to work full-time in the Assembly. He said that the business would stay in the family.

From May to September, Gjonaj’s campaign received $264,443 in contributions. Many of those came from realtors, law firms and construction companies, as well as individual donors. In comparison, Rivera received $157,497.69 in contributions from March through September.

Luchins said that registered Democrats in the area received at least a dozen mailers from the Gjonaj campaign regarding Rivera’s scandals.

“When you spend an enormous sum of money and the tabloids of the city [are] running front page articles about your opponent and then you print those and hand those out over the district – I’d be rather stunned if the guy would’ve lost,” Luchins said. He added that the Bronx democratic political machine may have “pulled the plug” on her, believing that the battle wasn’t worth fighting.

The Gjonaj campaign did have some strong challenges to overcome. Rivera was  a well-known, respected name until the scandal hit, and Gjonaj’s Albanian heritage may have been a deterrent to some Democratic voters. The district is 44.95 percent Hispanic.

Gjonaj made a name for himself in the community through a number of services and events. His “Gjonaj Cares” initiative sends street cleaning crew down 204^th Street in Norwood and Lydig Avenue in Morris Park, picking up trash and litter on the high traffic streets. The Lydig Avenue cleaning began in July and expanded to 204^th Street in August. He also holds weekly barbecues behind his Morris Park headquarters on Sundays, where his yellow-shirted volunteers grill hamburgers and hot dogs while he has time to chat with residents. The barbecues began in June, the month after the Morris Park campaign office opened.  The campaign also hosted a blood drive in August.

“If conscientious is a good word, he is extremely conscientious,” said Jeffrey M. Panish, a volunteer for the Gjonaj campaign.

“In the community he’s known as ‘Mother Teresa with a credit card,'” Kepi said (Mother Teresa was also of Albanian heritage). “Whoever went out to ask him for help, he always helped them out. Luckily, he’s a successful man, money was not a problem for him, so he ended up helping a lot of people financially.”

Gjonaj said it’s his job – whether or not he is elected – to assist the community (Panish said working with Gjonaj was a form of “give-back.”). Because his parents received community help when they immigrated, he feels he needs to help others.

“That’s a debt that I owe,” he said. “My parents have taught me that you can never give enough. And treating people the way you want to be treated has served me very well.”

In the run up to the general election, Gjonaj is placing an increasing emphasis on jobs in the Bronx.

“One in six people can’t find a paying job,” he said. “It’s a top priority and it should be for all of our elected officials and community leaders.” He said that he and his team would be spending several weeks outlining programs to create new jobs.

To boost the economy, he hopes to use his business experience to find and use underutilized resources. He suggested that the Bronx’s parks could be used to boost tourism. He also hopes to help create a service industry that will provide more jobs.

Panish said that Gjonaj has considered the possibility of a hotel near the Bronx Zoo and botanical gardens that would keep people in the Bronx if they visit the parks or if they visit students at Fordham University.

Gjonaj is also focusing on the Bronx’s youth. He pointed out of his office window to the Bronx’s P.S. 292, under construction across the street. He feels that schools should be open longer hours to provide safe spaces for children and to provide extra help for students.

Gjonaj’s two sons, Nicholas, 13, and Joseph, 12, both attend public schools in the Bronx.

He also thinks that employment for youth can help the community.

“Putting them to work will help build their character,” he said. “It will help build their responsibility. I’ve done it all as a kid from selling flowers on street corners to delivering pizza. And I’m proud of it.” He did note that this would be extremely difficult in the current economy, when jobs are still scarce.

Gjonaj said that he is humbled by the way the community has embraced him. If he wins in November, he will represent the 80^th District, but having been born and raised in the Bronx, he aims to keep the whole borough on his radar.

“I look at the 80^th Assembly District without any boundaries,” he said. “The borough of the Bronx is a soft spot for me. I believe that this borough has its better days ahead and with the right leadership and the right focus, it can be the borough that by all intents and purposes it should be.”