The Gashi's are having an exciting week!  Yesterday, the youngest - Mentor - started school.   Tomorrow, the two teenagers - Bashkim and Valbona - start high school.  And yesterday, they found out that their father, Fehmi, stranded in a Turkish refugee camp all this time, has his Canadian visa, and should be heading Canada-ward within weeks.

Needless to say, the family is ecstatic.  We've pieced together that Fehmi got separated from his family when he went with some of the older children to a nearby town (from the Macedonian refugee camp) to get some medication.   He had forgotten something at the pharmacy, and missed the bus back to the camp.   His children didn't miss the bus. They ended up reunited with their mother and siblings, and Fehmi ended up getting shipped to Turkey.  We really have no idea how they pieced together what happened, but by the time they arrived here from the Canadian base where they had been for two months, they had a phone number in Turkey that they could use to reach their father.

So, Papa will be arriving soon. After, we expect, his wife and two oldest children have started English-language school next week.  And then, we begin to get Fehmi settled: doctor's appointments, language assessment, and so on.   It should be easier this time around, since we know what we're doing.  And he won't be doing anything that someone in his family can't tell him about, since they've all been through it.

It's the small things that will take some catching up, for him, I would think.  We found out only yesterday that this family didn't know how to make sandwiches; in their village, children came home for lunch, so bagged lunches were a foreign concept.  And then there's the television with so many channels.  And buses that go long distances.  And, of course, there is just getting reacquainted.

I await his arrival with some trepidation.  I've watched the females in the family, especially, come out of their shells, and become more outspoken, more forward, if you will.  I've watched the two older boys become leaders in their family.  I've watched Hanushe, mother of the brood, put her foot down in ways that were obviously a surprise to her offspring.  They've all grown, in the vacuum created by Fehmi's absence.

Being pessimistic in the face of change (based on repeated but outdated experience), I fear that he will cause them to revert to their former selves.   I worry, in particular, about the women.  Will he support them in their desire to skip language training?  (We've presented it as a "no choice" thing, but they were reluctant; it took the white-haired lady among us to persuade them.)  Will his smoking mean an end to the family's living well within their modest means?  Will he resent us and the role we've come to play in their lives?  In short, I'm worried that he might be an asshole. 

I remind myself, though, that he has been involved in raising these children, and that Hanushe has been happily married to him for more than twenty years.  At least happily enough that she has missed him terribly and been anxious to have him join the family in Canada.  The rest of them are lovely.  Surely he won't be some horrible specimen who somehow infects this family and makes them unhappy to be here and reluctant to settle in as they need to.  Surely, as has often been the case in recent years, my pessimism is misplaced.  And, even if it's not, our job is to support them as a family, and to help them all settle into Canada as long as they choose to make this their home.  So bring on Papa, I say!

***

An aside: I'll find out tomorrow what my fate as a doctoral student is.  The faculty that mark the comps will meet at 9:30, and then I'll be in a meeting with them and the rest of the faculty at 11:30, when they meet as the school's management committee.  (I represent doctoral students on the management committee.   Odd, that, when I'm older than many of the faculty!)  I suppose I could ask them when I arrive whether I'm still a student and whether I'm therefore a legitimate member of the management team.  Or I can hope they'll reassure me before I have to ask that.  Film at eleven.

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