Reminders of Home, In a Home Far Away

2010-04-21 (수) 12:00:00

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It’s hardly unusual for Americans to display items from other traditions, as a decorating choice or to remind themselves of their travels. But some people have recreated their homeland at home.

For Marko Albrecht, 29, whose mother was from Finland, the inhouse salute to his heritage is a wooden sauna. Mr. Albrecht, a multimedia producer and the owner of a social media marketing and branding firm, grew up in Chicago and lives in Woodbridge, New Jersey, with his wife, Danielle, 28, a vice president of a commercial real estate brokerage.

“You go in there and you feel like you’re away from the world, completely relaxed,” said Mr. Albrecht, who uses the sauna several times a week.

The Albrechts’ 160-square-meter three-bedroom house is sparsely furnished but speckled with Finnish trinkets. Curvy Iittala glassware sits on side tables, the shower curtain is by Marimekko, and on the walls are plates with scenes from a Finnish epic and wallpaper depicting the European white birch, Finland’s national tree. A reindeer skin presides over the Scandinavian-inspired living room furniture .

A Soon after his mother’s death, Mr. Albrecht had the Finnish coat of arms tattooed on his right shoulder, followed within a couple of years by the Great Seal of the United States on his left.

“Even though I’m proud to be an American,” he said, “I have to be this super-Finn and represent.”

Dr. Eman Hamad is a Palestinian- American, and her apartment in Riverdale, in the Bronx borough of New York City, pays homage to the entire Arab world: red-and-black tapestry cushion covers from Jordan; a beaten metal table from Syria; and five hookahs, each from a different Middle Eastern locale: the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and, yes, Egypt.

“I’ve always wanted to have a place that’s back home,” said Dr. Hamad, 34, who moved to Jerusalem from California when she was 7, and returned to the United States for college and medical school. “The U.S. is my home, but I wanted to have that cultural home.”

When Indur Shivdasani, 64, the retired owner of a chemical marketing company, was growing up in Mumbai, his family home was decorated like “a middle-class English house,” he said. Now, thanks to his wife, Aroon, who also grew up in India, their garden triplex in the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York is a virtual gallery of Indian art and culture .

Standing sentry over the dining room table is a male mannequin representing a servant found in an Indian home. The mannequin wears traditional Indian dress, a tunic called a kurta, and pajamalike pants. “We don’t want to erase who we are,” he said.

If it were up to Rima Al Sabbaghre, 37, she would be in her native Syria, not Wayne, New Jersey, where she lives with her four children and her husband, Nabil Al Midani, a radio production assistant in the Department of Public Information at the United Nations.

The family moved to the United States more than a decade ago because of their daughter Sedra, now 11, who has Down syndrome. Mr. Al Midani said the medical and educational facilities in the United States better enabled Sedra to lead a rich life.

The main room of their four-bedroom house is ringed by what appear to be ranks of thrones. The tall wooden chairs are ornamented with mosaics of six-pointed stars and abstract motifs in pearlescent shell, wood and stone. A sofa, its back two and a half meters high and bearing the same minutely detailed artwork, has pride of place in the rectangular room, while a dining room set and sideboard with similar designs sit resplendent nearby.

“It’s more than beautiful,” Mr. Al Midani said of the furnishings. “It means the culture, the life, the family and everything at home in Syria.”

By SARAH MASLIN