Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 4

Belgrade – A Conclusion – Part 4

I never cut my hair while traveling, but I did so in Belgrade. Why? Maybe so I could be in a closed environment with Serbs?

Psychologically, you cannot say anything bad about the person who tries to make you beautiful. I sat five meters across from Jelena’s former boss who had returned to work after recovering from an apparently terminal illness only to find she was now reporting to a former subordinate who was less qualified. Now she looked forward to her early retirement. While walking about the city, Jelena mentioned an invitation from a cousin whom she had not seen in a long time and wondered if I would not mind going there with her so she could spend time with both of us. I didn’t want to appear over-zealous, but secretly I wished Jelena would take the cousin up on the offer and take me there with her right then.

To tell the truth, I was eager to meet a real Serb, to sit in her house rather than trying to decipher random Serbs passing me by on the street. Jelena’s cousins kept asking me if they could fetch me juice or quick snacks. Their hospitality and friendliness didn’t surprise me because it was similar in Bosnia. Despite the horrible things they inflicted on each other, they are pretty much the same. Jelena relentlessly pushed, “Do that song!” After a few “no I can’t and no I won’t,” under the quizzing eyes of strangers I conjured up my strength to produce a wave of low noise out of my throat. “Lane moje oh vidah nah. Vise eh tuje. Kada te pomyslim.” This icebreaker has shamelessly worked every single time for me whenever I’m in contact with Serbs.

Like many Eastern Europeans, Serbs are dead serious about Eurovision, and certainly very proud of their culture. Bring up the talented Zeljko Joksimovic, singer/songwriter/musician, and his 2nd placed Eurovision song “Lane Moje” and you are guaranteed to charm a lot of Serbs. The word “Serbia” familiarized itself to me the very instant Marko turned on this song in a hot tiny dorm room in Gliwice. Though the laptop’s crappy speaker produced mediocre sound, I was immediately taken by the enchanting, melancholic melodies. Now and then when I listened to this song when living in Bosnia, I thought to myself: “how can people who create such beautiful music be capable of such things, massacring the Muslims?”

I was a little bit nervous when Jelena told her cousins that I was from Sarajevo. Over the years, I’ve learned to hide details that might connect me to the Bosnians when first meeting with Serbs whom I don’t know.

One night last year on the way home in Prague, the Czech Republic, I heard Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian language and stopped a group of tourists to inquire about their origins. They were very happy when I greeted them in their own language and sang a bit of their national pride “Molitva.” When you run out of topic to talk to people, maybe just sing. We giggled the whole way until one of them asked me, “How did you learn Serbian?” “Oh,” I unknowingly replied, “I lived in Sarajevo.” Then I could feel the subtle change in their looks and the smiles they passed from one to another. “So the Muslims there are friendly right?” “Yes, they are.” “They USED to be friendly,” one person sarcastically asked and answered her own question while her friends laughed.

Since then, “I lived in Sarajevo” was replaced with “I have Croatian friends.” Occasionally I ate cevapi at a Bosnian restaurant in Zizkov and always wanted to strike a conversation with the people who worked there. The problem is I have yet to figure out if they are Serbs or Bosnians. So for every juicy bite of the grilled cevapi and a slurp of salty yogurt is a stealthy slant at the apathetic woman drawing her cigarette and I wonder if I should ask for milk. (The only way I can tell a Serbian from a Bosnian is how they say ‘milk’. The Serbs say a quick, strong ‘mleko’ while the Bosnians (Croats and Bosniaks) say ‘mlijeko’ with a plain stretching ‘i’ sound.)

When you generalize the causes of your negative emotion, the negativity tends to be bigger than it seems. Up to then I had lumped Serbs together as one single source of evilness, as cold-blooded murderers and loony nationalists. Thus, the pictures I had of them were less than pretty. But I have since seen them as separate individuals, heck some even are my friends. I have realized that they are also ordinary people and tremendously affected by the mess they caused. The hostel-owner-cum-shepherd Ladimir, lethargically blew smoke from his cigarette while explaining to me how he and Serbs lived day by day, a philosophy which Jelena, my friend, also shares.“This is small fry,” he shrugged when I asked if the current global crisis affected Serbia. “We had worse,” he rolled his eyes. “It was hard in the 2000s, then before that during the war with Kosovo, and before that [the Bosnian war] and before that…” Other than Ladimir, others whom I met were women, thus in a way I could easily identify and sympathize with them.

They face the same problem like women in my society: a stay-at-home law student who takes care of her small child and ponders her professional outlook; a divorced survivor from a terminal illness wastes away the rest of her professional years waiting for an early escape; a young grad student who finds she no longer fits in her country. And there are countless nameless Serbs who sell on the street, lean idly by the windows because there is nothing else to do or dwell in the garbage ghetto. You and I and Americans draft list after list of plans to control and handle the unexpected as well as the expected events of our lives.

After all we control our destiny no? For us, it’s easier without the invisible hands which keep sabotaging our every move, shattering our hope and breaking our dream as it did in the ‘Balkan’. Who knows, maybe having no ‘life’ plan makes a bit more sense?

Belgrade – A Conclusion: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4