What would you do when some distant relative calls you out of the blue from your country of origin and says its urgent,
call back? Easy, call back and see what the problem is, right? But what would you do if that distant relative who carries the same family name calls you from your country of origin at a distance of lets say 50 years since the last attempt and that occurred only through older relatives who have long passed away and had emigrated overseas to Canada or the US almost a century ago. Some would have jumped on the situation and gone to work immediately to get in touch. I held back. Such was a situation that faced me again after about 30 when I last got a call from someone looking for lost relatives.
Then that person was reticent to explain to me the connection. It was a lady who claimed to have the same family name as my father, but when I asked her about her other relatives to get a family tree out of the situation, she backed down. It seemed she was disillusioned with the prospect of finding some connection. I on the other hand had already lost my father and my mother wasn't in to speak the same language that would have likely made her feel more comfortable.
The latest episode began with a strange ring on my phone that had to be a long distance call which broke up. Some after I got a message that was either Russian or Ukrainian, since it sounded from that neck of the woods. I thought the person must have been overly assuming his lost relatives would only be able to understand those languages. After all the years have passed; all my older relatives have long gone from my father's generation and mother is well on in years. Sure enough a few days pass and I get a call, this time in good English from a young man introducing himself with the same family name as my father had before emigrating to Canada in the mid 1920's. He said what city he was calling from only I wasn't sure if I had understood that well but failed to say what country. Lets not forget the ex-Soviet Union is now splintered into many republics and the city could be in White Russia, Bielorussia or the Ukraine for all I know. Iwas given his phone number without the area code which we are so used to having here at home. So even if I were interested I would have had some research to do before being able to call back. Who was this young man with the same family name? There are many on the web with same current family name living in the US and Canada who are not related to me, so why would he be related even though he has the same family name? And after so many years, not speaking the same language and not having any direct connection to who would have decided to call "urgently" I wasn't interested in becoming a sponsor overnight . I no longer had the drive I had 30 years earlier to investigate the nature of calls such as these.
Others will argue that one should keep in touch with your family and relatives, that's a good thing. But I believe in keeping in touch with family while they are alive not when they are generations removed and there has been an absence of contact except for an 'urgent' call every 30 years. Experience has taught me that it would be likely the young man was directly looking for support either in his travel to Canada or in being sponsored by a relative such as myself, if indeed I was a relative.
I also wanted to get the opinion of my older siblings who also share the same family name. None were interested and for the same reasons. I would have liked to be a little more responsible in making some initiative but how well would that have looked knowing that I am just making ends meet in Canada as a writer, artist and teacher.
What is my message in all this? Many of those would have arrived from Iran and other countries over the years have lost some contact along the way with family that decides to stay. It would be best to keep in touch with them while they are still alive and instill that process into the next generation if these relatives are ever going to reunite with those that have emigrated. This may be wishful thinking, most often I think a family split is inevitable especially when large geographic distances are in between, the older connections have died off and the new generation living in the 'new' country has values completely different from what was in the old.