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Beating
the odds
Hiding in the freezer compartment in the hold of a fishing boat, Artan Serjanej and his most trusted friends waited, listening intently. They had made it though the locked, guarded entrance to the seaport -- Serjanej, then a stevedore, had a pass and bribed the guards to let his friends through, saying they only wanted to get in to buy fish from the fishermen. They managed to find their way to the boat captained by their friend and co-conspirator, and quietly stowed away, unbeknownst even to the other fishermen in the boat's crew. Now, two Albanian soldiers were on board, conducting a routine -- and, thankfully, cursory -- once-over of the boat before giving the captain the go-ahead to leave the port of Durr‘s and head for the fishing grounds. It was 4 p.m. on Jan. 6, 1989. Serjanej and eight close friends, including the boat's captain, had embarked on a desperate attempt to leave their native Albania forever. Escape by sea had been tried 40 years before -- an attempt made famous by a didactic government-sponsored movie well known to most Albanians, said Serjanej. In that instance, the navy captain who tried to defect with his friends relayed the information that he was responding to another boat's distress call. A soldier on board was suspicious, and became more so when no boat in distress could be found. When the captain told him what was really going on -- that this was an escape, not a rescue -- the soldier shot and killed the captain, turned the boat around and returned to Albania a great hero. Serjanej and his friends knew that if they were caught, the consequences would be severe. Retribution, not justice, was the primary business of the courts. A friend of Serjanej's had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to defect to Macedonia. And Serjanej had witnessed the mock trial of three other acquaintances, petty thieves who stole such hard-to-get commodities as bread and chickens to feed their families. They'd been framed, tried, tortured and sentenced to death for a murder Serjanej was certain they didn't commit. After they were executed, the men's bodies were put on display. Determined not to share such a fate, the friends had agreed to torch the fishing vessel, and themselves with it, if they were apprehended before reaching Italy. To that end, they had brought several additional cans of gasoline on board. For Serjanej, life in Albania held such a bleak future, it was worth risking his life to leave. His schooling ended and his work life began at age 15. The home he shared with his parents and brother consisted of one room in a two-room apartment. A family of five lived in the other room, and the two families shared the kitchen and bathroom. Given such cramped quarters, tensions often ran high. And marriage was clearly not an option. "Albania was very poor and communism was very strong," Serjanej said. "I couldn't be happy there. I couldn't follow my abilities or my interests." Working on the docks, Serjanej met people from outside Albania -- most from other Eastern Bloc countries -- and he could see that they were better off than any Albanians he knew. He decided that his only hope was to leave his country and find a new life elsewhere, even though it meant risking his life. Two hours after leaving port, the captain ordered the fishermen to go below to sleep. Then he locked the steel door that was the only entrance to the crew's quarters. Serjanej and his friends went up on deck and kept a lookout all night for any ships that might be in pursuit. The journey was slow. The fishing boat was an old leftover from the Stalin era. Maximum speed was 9 miles per hour, and the distance was about 90 miles. The trip seemed interminable. At about 5:30 the following morning, the fishing vessel docked in Brindisi, Italy, where Serjanej and his friends were granted political asylum through the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. A new life Serjanej lived for more than a year in a refugee camp in Naples, where he spent every free minute studying Italian and became fluent. Finally, he and his companions were sponsored for immigration to the United States by the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit. He arrived in the United States on March 28, 1990.
In Detroit, Serjanej got a janitorial job in a factory, where he stayed after hours to learn how to spray-paint Ford auto parts, and moved up to become a painter when a position opened. He studied English as much as possible and met a woman who was just finishing medical school and who "turned his life upside down for the best," as he put it. She was to become his wife, Marianne Soden Serjanej '87, DO. "I knew enough English to ask her out," said Serjanej. "But what I knew was very limited, so I asked her constantly, 'How do you say this, how do you say that?' After two weeks, she said I was driving her nuts with all my questions and told me I should go to school. I thought, at 25, I was too old. But she said, 'No, in America you're never too old to do anything. And you can do anything if you're smart.'" Next, Marianne bought Artan a GED study book. He studied three or four hours a day following a 10-hour work day, and passed the GED examination in April 1992. Soon after, the couple spent two years at Tulane University in New Orleans, where Marianne did her residency, Artan began his college education and their son was born. In 1994, the family moved to Binghamton, Marianne's hometown, where she practiced general internal medicine for United Health Services in the First Ward, her old neighborhood, until last year, when she and Artan opened a private practice, Maine Medical in Endicott. Meanwhile, Artan attended Broome Community College, then Binghamton University, and became a U.S. citizen in 1997. He went on to earn his law degree at Syracuse University in 2000. Artan has provided legal assistance to Kosovar refugees through the Refugee Resettlement Program in Binghamton. He worked as the district representative for Broome and Delaware counties for U. S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey until January of this year, when he shifted his focus to studying for the New York state bar exam and working as chief administrator for Maine Medical. Serjanej intends to practice law as soon as he obtains his license; to that end, he is doing an internship with Binghamton-based attorney Stanton M. Drazen. "The sky's the limit in America," Serjanej said. "Work hard, be ethical, honest and straightforward, and do your best -- and you can always achieve what you want."been abandoned, or like a Cinderella character -- but who ends up, because of their obstacles, creating something fantastic in their lives." |
