Romanians in Queens

(click here for the Romanian version)

The train passes over Queens, under Manhattan. Queens is just that, a huge conglomerate of neighborhoods, fractured among all kind of ethnic groups, trying to define itself some way, then giving up. A vast repository of immigrant America. Contemplated from Queens, Manhattan seems to be a legend.

I was several times in Queens. First time I was at a factory there, to see someone. The factory is no more, they relocated to Texas or Florida, I don't know exactly. Harmony was a big Romanian restaurant, it was sold, now it's Indian.

Once I was in Ridgewood, in search of Romanian places (a friend in Bucharest had told me that Ridgewood should be the neighborhood to find Romanians living in). I took the subway somewhere from Manhattan. As soon as I entered the car I heard two youngsters speaking Romanian. They were coming back home from a movie theater. I considered addressing them, only I was too timid and I decided to wait a little bit, then I kept on being discreet. I was looking at the other passengers: could have been some of them Romanians? It was one of my first visits to America, I didn't know much and I was excited, and certainly scarred.

A woman entered the car and started to preach the Gospel to us. Some people started to make fun, mocking seriousness, adding to each of her sentences That's right! She was going on, apparently unperturbed. A guy was replicating with a Hallelujah now and then. You could read on his poker face that he was actually making fun. I was asking myself whether he was a Romanian. Probably not, anyway, who cared?

I left the train in Ridgewood and started to look for something Romanian, a church, or a store, or a restaurant, or people on the street speaking Romanian. Nothing of the kind. I asked several guys. Nobody knew. I realized that the Romanian community there was among all kind of other small communities. At last a black lady knew something about Romanian places there and gave me some directions. Of course, with my lack of practice in English it was difficult to understand from her the name of the street, I got it after several attempts: Seneca Street. I found eventually a small Romanian restaurant where I had a great cup of Turkish coffee: blessed taste.

Last time I was in Queens to visit a good friend, Laurentiu, he was going back to Romania. We had a wonderful coffee and pastries at a Greek cafe, served by a Brazilian waitress. We went then to Casa Romana, and spent an unforgettable evening there: Gigi Marga gave a recital with melodies that were pouring drops of longing into my soul. Longing for my friends remained in Bucharest, longing for places in Bucharest, longing for all my years there. I went after the recital to Gigi Marga and I thanked her. I remembered when she had been singing in Bucharest Dance again: the actual title was Twist again, but twist was officially prohibited in Romania those years.

Suddenly two belly dancers appeared in the restaurant and started dancing. Everybody there were Romanians, but the two girls. Well, nobody's perfect, as it goes. How is belly dance? It's magic.

Queens and Manhattan, Queens and Bucharest, journeys in space, new discoveries, new friends, longing for the old ones, journeys in time, surprised by the present, imagining the future, charmed by the past. Mihaita, my classmate from primary school, he told me firstly about the Romanians from Queens.

I am now in Amtrak, coming from Boston, thinking at all this while trying to record a video. It's sunset. Viewed from Queens, Manhattan is blurred, the misty sunset of Childe Hassam.





(New York, New York)