My Summer Vacation Hanging Out with Yugoslavian Mobsters

In pre-gentrified Hamtramck, Michigan.

June, 2008

I pack my things and check the time. It’s early. My ride pulls up, the engine quietly purring in the pre-dawn glow of summer.

Later at a gas station somewhere off I-80 in Clarion, Pennsylvania, a clerk there asks if I would like to make a donation to a local foundation that helps cancer patients.

“How long will it take?”

“You just have to give your name and address. It’s—”

“Sorry, I have to go,” I said, leaving with a cigarette in my hand.

We’re driving to a small ethnic ghetto called Hamtramck on the outskirts of Detroit. My friend, a tall and stern Yugoslavian named Mirsad, is seeking a driver’s license. He can’t get one back in Connecticut because his student visa expired. And he needed me to go with him on this trip. I originally declined since the “invitation” seemed shady, but quickly learned that I had no choice in the matter. Besides, I needed a vacation. I’d just graduated college and had a hard time adjusting to all this free time while friends were still finishing up school. Lots of time had already been spent alone in my humid bedroom all summer, surrendered to the idea that my life was screwed after pursuing a liberal arts degree that seemed to only prepare me for unemployment.

“Justin, you need to go. You have no idea how important this is to me,” he told me over the phone just eight hours earlier. Mirsad, a 24-year-old from Montenegro—once a part of the former Yugoslavia—said he needed to meet with people to get him a license. I have known him now for a couple of years, and always found him to be extremely loyal and a good person to talk to. Later on, I would learn the real purpose for the trip: I was the unknowing accomplice in a money holding scheme for a bunch of Yugoslavian mobsters.

I worked with a bunch because they owned a lot of restaurants. They aren’t the overly mythologized and glamorous Italian-type mobsters we are conditioned into seeing on TV. They were the types that would walk in during the middle of a rush at a restaurant their “family” owned and sit down with their leather jackets to play dominoes, expecting full service. They’re intimidating, yet subtle. If you screwed up an order, they’d throw a plate at your head instead of cutting your hours. But they always had your back. My Yugoslavian friend Alden once chased a dude out of a diner with a chair because Alden thought the man had the wrong tone talking to me one night.

When civil war broke out in Yugoslavia in the early 90s — a deeply complicated and sad story of a country destroying itself — Mirsad’s father urged him to flee to America. When you flee a place as a refugee because your country is tearing itself apart, you really value simple things like friendship in your new transplant home. Mirsad was a good friend. Different from most of my American friends: charming, sarcastic, and sometimes too serious and too hard to read. His face always seemed to always be veiled in mystery, projecting that thousand-mile stare. He had seen some messed up shit. He once told me that during the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, he saw a woman have her unborn baby ripped out of her stomach and replaced with a dead dog. I don’t even think Stalin’s people did stuff like that.

In Mirsad’s case, he went to Ohio on a student visa, but then moved to Connecticut to help run family restaurants. But his visa expired, his international driver’s license fooled only so many cops, and he needed to get a real job, with benefits.

“Who are these people?” I asked. We’re coasting along I-80 into Ohio now. It was a question I probably should have asked before committing to this trip. He said something about friends of his uncle, and the military. I continued spacing out.

Our ride consisted of prolonged moments without speaking, the occasional comment of the God Fearing man speaking to us on the radio, and an agreement to stop because we were both starving.

Eleven hours later. We pull up alongside a torn up sidewalk. People smoking cigarettes on their front steps eye us inside the car, which is significantly nicer than any other car parked here. Up ahead, an old man with a mustache and gray t-shirt stares at a group of children playing in the street. It’s 6 p.m. The weather is sunny and the first thing I notice is that it is significantly cooler here.

“Justin. Don’t say anything. I’ve never met these people before,” Mirsad tells me while unbuckling his seatbelt carefully. He seemed calm as all hell, while I was slowly losing it. Great, I thought. I’m in a fucking mobster movie, and I’m about to enter the alien household of some war-torn Yugoslavian refugees, the only fool who doesn’t speak a lick of Bosnian.

I felt a panic attack coming on and walked up to the brick three-story house with Mirsad, trying very hard to talk myself out of just leaving this situation. We walked down a narrow alley to the backyard, which is small and fenced in, like all the other backyards here. Everyone shakes hands. Booming introductions and back slapping as we sit down on the porch table. I notice the horizon slowly recede to a hazy purple-red sunset, and introduce myself to Amil, who seems to be head of the household here. About 35-years-old, but an old 35, complete with gold and silver teeth and what seemed to be a permanent five o’clock shadow. His wife is already coming out of the house with Turkish coffees and Heineken. I pick up Mirsad saying my name, but beyond that, I have no clue what they are talking about. There are two kids as well. Very young, playing with toys and running around. Two more men come through the backyard, hands extended for the greeting. Our host quickly fires up the grill and throws on some lamb. A sense of time begins to disappear.

For the next couple of hours, I am silent at the table chain smoking Marlboro Reds. I don’t even smoke cigarettes. Just figured I might as well find a hobby while I am here. A kid around my age comes from the backyard carrying two twelve packs of Heineken and four packs of cigarettes. He gives me a beer and a box of cigarettes.

“Here you go my friend,” he says with a smile and only a slight accent. Yes, I thought, English. I might be able to fire off more than two words an hour and someone will know what I am saying.

By nighttime, the conversation seems to take a turn for the serious. I can tell Mirsad is talking some sort of business with Amil, but Amil is laughing, for reasons unknown to me, and it seems to be ticking Mirsad off. He had turned down alcohol the whole night. I could tell he was serious.

Amil’s wife has just put the kids to bed. I find out she speaks a bit of English, but not much. She is about 30-years-old, with sad eyes. She recollects both in Bosnian and English, fleeing Bosnia in the 90s. Mirsad translates for me. She saw her brother shot dead in point blank range right in front of her. She was with Amil at the time, but they were just friends. He was leaving for America, and on a whim, asked if she wanted her to go with him. They fled here to Hamtramck, where there is a strong Yugoslavian population, and started a family. She took care of the kids while Amil worked at the Detroit Axel Plant, until is shut down and moved to Mexico. He’s now unemployed, has a house and a family to support. He clearly looks stressed out, and is complaining; his hands waving in the air. European men always seem to be fighting when they talk to each other, but it’s just that they always happen to be in the middle of a very passionate argument. Our talks turn to politics when Amil mentions the upcoming presidential election. He seems optimistic. Adela speaks warmly of Hillary Clinton, as most Yugoslavians do because they love her husband. She seemed shocked when I told her she voted for the Iraq War.

Mirsad told me we should go to bed. I was still unclear of the fact of whether we were getting a hotel or sleeping here. We insisted on leaving, but they quickly ushered us to their sweltering hot third-floor attic, where two beds were waiting for us. I barely slept that night, horrible fever-dreams swirling in my head. I awoke in the morning gasping for air. Hungover and sweating balls and paranoid about where I was. Outside, Amil’s mother brings out Turkish coffees on a silver dish. I turn my face to the morning sun. A hot wind already coming off the lakes. I get a phone call from my good friend, who made an unexpected return back home from Sweden. “Yea, so, um, I’m in some town in Michigan. Nobody speaks English. I’ll call you if I get back, BYE.”

Amil is the last one to wake up. He is visibly hungover. We all laugh and drink our coffees. The boys make a plan. I have no idea what it is, but I know I will be along for the ride, for good or ill. We hop into Amil’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and drive about five minutes to some uglier part of town. Immediately I understand that this is the most hood place I have ever been to in my life. Paper everywhere, bottles, holes in the road, broken glass, faded and old store fronts. Very skeletal, very scary. I’ve been to some shady parts in Europe, but this place was Eastern Europe meets Compton, just too much for a semi-privileged boy sinking deep into depression to handle right now. He parks the car in an empty lot and lets Mirsad out. I still have no idea what is going on. I suspect he is going to walk into the DMV with a straight face and try and get a license. But who knows. He disappears, along with Mirsad. I’m standing in the middle of this ghetto enclave and quickly realize that I am the only white boy here.

I decide to go find a bathroom, a terrible idea at this time of day. There is no one out in the streets, despite it being early morning and stores are everywhere. I walk into one store, looking for a bathroom, doing my best I-come-in-peace introduction. “Guys got a bathroom?” I ask the big burly man sitting at the counter.

“Nah.”

“Okay cool.”

So I’m walking up and down the street, like an idiot, hoping to see Mirsad’s face. No luck. I’m starting to sweat, my head begins to hurt; my vision getting blurry. Why couldn’t I just say no to this trip and be fine with hiding in my room back home? Was this really how it was gonna end for me? Just disappearing crossing the street here?! I literally thought about just running until I found a police station.

Visions of gang intimidation and police brutality. Stompings, clubbings, the whole nine. I make what seems to be the tenth lap within a five hundred foot radius. Am I a pawn? Was the plan to leave me out to dry the whole time? I will never know what it is like to hold a real job! Oh, the horror!

Mirsad comes out. I can’t tell by the look on his face if he got the license. Amil pulls up out of nowhere. I raise my hands in the air as to say, “What the fuck, man?” I start speaking to him aggressively in English. He doesn’t understand me. Mirsad said he couldn’t get a license. Hamtramck is a shit hole where laws don’t exist, but he couldn’t get a license. We arrive back at the house. Mirsad and I say our goodbyes. Everyone seemed sad, though they had only known each other for a day.

“What a waste of a trip,” I said. Mirsad pops the trunk, and Amil throws a bag in. I open it and see it’s all rolled up hundreds. I start laughing, firing off a demented cackle that I had been developing since the trip began.