We’re sitting in her large kitchen, high ceilings and coarse wooden beams above our heads, a modern fireplace next to an old woodstove, and at the far end an extra staircase, which was once used by the servants so as not to disturb their employers when they were headed up to the second floor. But for a moment I forget where I am. Something happens. A wave washes through me. Turns my cheeks warm and red. Pride. That’s what I feel. So much pride. The first thing I ever hear about my dad—and it’s that he was successful.

“So . . . what did he do? Dad?”

“He helped during the civil war.”

My cheeks are pulsating now. With even more pride.

“How?”

“You were born around the time the war began, 1997. That’s when your dad made most of his money. He smuggled weapons. Over the river and across the mountains to Kosovo. But later, when everything was over, when peace came, he needed to find a new market. So a year later you all moved to Sweden.”

My aunt shows me more pictures. Of my family. What we looked like when we left.

“I remember thinking, this will be the last time I ever see you. I don’t know why, I just knew. This is from the airport.”

A slightly wrinkled photograph. As if somebody had balled it up and thrown it away, but regretted it and smoothed it out again. My whole family. The only picture where we’re all together. And Mom and Dad and Eliot and Julia and even me, none of those faces feel like strangers.

That’s us. That’s who we were.

“There’s a picture I want you to see.”

At the back of the album.

“This.”

A portrait, but a small one, about the size of a passport photo. Older than the others, you can tell from the quality of the paper and the style of clothes.

“Your grandfather. My and Mirza’s father. You never met him. He was in prison. For a very long time. He did the same thing as your father—used the river to smuggle weapons.”

It must be obvious to her that I don’t understand.

“Your grandfather was a criminal. They were illegal weapons. Just like the ones your father smuggled and sold. That’s what he was successful at.”

My red, warm cheeks. The wave that washed through me. The pride. I don’t really know what to do with it now.

“We grew up in this house. Me and Mirza. He made up his mind when we were young. Your father wanted to be like your grandfather. But I decided to do the opposite—try to live another life. And I chose right—just look at how it turned out for your father.”

She doesn’t sound bitter. It’s no I-told-you-so. Sad. That’s what she is.