Have you come to stay?
Photography: Meta Krese
Text: Meta Krese
Foreword: Sarival Sosič
Poems: Maruša Krese
English translation: Veronika Fürst Ažman
Translation of poems: Tina Mahkota
City Art Gallery Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2003
Migrations are also in my family. My grandfather’s grave is in Latin America. To his pregnant wife in Bogneča village in Dolenjska, after they sold their best field for a ship ticket, he sent a single letter with a single dollar and a promise that he would soon come for her and their children. He never dropped a line again. He vanished somewhere in Argentina or Brazil, we don’t even know which end of America. My father, who moved from the countryside to the city, promised his mother that he would find him. He failed. Maruša, my older sister, decided on nomadism and promised her children that they would find her grandfather’s grave together. Maybe now her children will promise their children to follow the path of their great-grandfather, who left only one letter behind.