PRISONERS OF AN INVENTED PAST
(A Peruvian's journey through the Southern Balkans)

José Luis Rénique

4

An appalling atmosphere of solitude prevails in this land devastated by the Yugoslav People Army's artillery during Belgrade's war against Croatia in 1991. We travel along empty roads and through soulless towns for more than an hour. Since 1992, Eastern Slavonia has been under UN administration. Today, only the checkpoints manned by Jordanian peacekeepers break the ghostly monotony every once in a while. Descending from a military truck profusely decorated with pictures of King Hussein, a blue-helmeted officer gives us directions to the Yugoslavian border. In the background a burnt field of sunflowers is marked as containing mines by a yellow ribbon around its perimeter. A forgotten land in a crossroad of history; a shameful black hole in the heart of civilized Europe.

Yet in this land of military memories and secular frontiers no other place could evoke history with more intensity than the Kalimegdan fortress in Belgrade. Built by Romans, Byzantines, medieval Serbs, Ottoman Turks, Habsburg Austrians and Ottoman Turks again, the Kalimegdan fortress is surrounded today by a sprawling park, filled with children, lovers, retirees, and old women offering beautiful crocheted tablecloths displayed upon its green benches. In the empty moat surrounding the fortress, tanks and pieces of artillery of the Second World War are in display. A dozen children climb and explore them apparently unaware of their once deadly purposes.

Yet it is Kalimegdan's location -at the point where the Drina river meets the Danube, the historical border between the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empires- that confers to this place its notable symbolism. One that has fired the imagination of several generations of Western travellers. "Ever since there were men in this region this promontory must have meant life to those that held it, death to those that lost it" wrote Rebecca West after visiting Kalimegdan on the brink of World War II. Wrote Robert Kaplan, more than half a century later, after walking over the flat sweeps between the two rivers, "I have always felt the exciting sensation of stepping into a frontier region, of being at the edge of something." Even after Belgrade became entirely Serb and the Turkish quarter was effaced, Basil Hall tells us, the Yugoslav capital "retained, in the European mind, the queasy, suspect status of the Other -non-Habsburg, non-Catholic." This literary cliché was contradicted by Belgrade's transformation into the capital of the most open communist country of Eastern Europe.

"While Westerners were surprised by Belgrade's cosmopolitanism, Soviet visitors thought that we were anything but communists" Jovanka told me a few days ago in Banja Luka. The crises of the 1980s, the war, and the economic sanctions, however, have taken their toll. A massive flight of highly qualified people, their places taken by an inflow of refugees from the countryside, has altered the face of entire neighborhoods. Moreover, it is the rise of Serbian nationalism in the wake of the Yugoslavian breakdown what to Western eyes have reinforced the "Eastern" condition of Belgrade. The rise of Slobodan Milosevic as the new Serbian caudillo appears as the central story of a sort of political regression described of Yugoslavia while most countries of the former Communist bloc seem to be moving more or less in the opposite direction.

As many of her fellow Belgradians, Jovanka is unhappy with the current isolation of her country. For her, however, Belgrade's role in the Balkan war resulted from the inescapable obligation to help "our brothers" outside of Serbia. A "good cause" that would bring so much sorrow and that would be so badly misunderstood by Westerners who failed to grasp Serbian defensive moves in response to Croatian aggression. Actually, she stresses, rump Yugoslavia is the only truly multi-ethnic republic in the Balkans while the Bosnian federation -as she says to have perceived in a recent visit to Sarajevo- is heading towards Moslem hegemonism. In turn, when I ask her about the treatment of the Albanian minority in Kossovo, Jovanka respons with another question -What would the United States do -she asks- if the Mexicans in California pretended to have their own schools with their own syllabus taught in their own language?

We talked to Vesna as we cruised the Danube on a boat that offers the only sightseeing tour available in Belgrade these days. She works there as a tourist guide. Like Jovanka, Vesna sees the Serbian role in the recent war as a "good cause" that turned up ugly. Now, she regrets the isolation of her country, the lack of opportunities, the numerous friends who have left. "At 35 years old," she says, "I feel that I belong to a lost generation. It is therefore for my daughter that I am working now and I am still not sure that I will be able to save her." Giving her daughter a strong education is her priority in a time when disenchantment and despair sets in. "We are living today what Marx called a time of primitive accumulation, a time when people with no scruples and war profiteers are those who have the upper hand. For those like me who have no heritage to claim or no political influence to trade, life is just like this, working hard with few expectations."

As night falls in we head to Skadarlija, an area of restaurants and night life. A high-school student speaking impeccable English comes to our rescue when we wander around Republic Square. He gently offers to walk with us to the place. "Is that where we can hear some typical Serbian music?" I asked. "Well, what they call Serbian music, yes, because it is actually Turkish," he replies, "but we do have very good rock, don't you know that?"

The next day, accompanied by Radovan and his uncle, a native Belgradian, we attempted to visit the Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples and Nationalities of Yugoslavia located in the monumental building that housed the League of Yugoslav Communists (LCY) for several decades. Billed by our travel guide as "the last Communist museum in Eastern Europe," we found its doors sealed and the building with an air of abandonment. We managed to talk to a guard after a while. The museum is still active -he assured us- but due to the scant number of visitors in recent times, appointments for tours should be made one week in advance. As we leave the area, a man shouted to us something that Radovan promptly translates: "Death to Croats and Muslims....Long live Serbia!" He is just a mad man, a drunk, says Radovan's uncle, hurrying us into the vehicle.

Not so different is the scene at Marshall Tito's grave, located at the center of a large complex made up of several museums and his former residence. Everything but the leader's tomb is currently closed. "No decision has been taken about what to do with these buildings," a guard informs us. Wearing sneakers and jeans, three young fellows accompanied by a uniformed soldier now replace the honor guard of not so long ago. Led by one of them we cross the residence's garden towards the "House of Flowers" -it was originally a greenhouse- that holds the white marble grave where Tito's remains rest. The famous peacocks that used to wander around the garden are gone although the sculptures presented to the leader by unions, professional organizations, towns, universities and foreign dignitaries are still there as stubborn testimonies of Tito's ascendancy. The whole complex, indeed, seems to be designed for grandeur. To endlessly glorify the memory of the founder of something bound to exist forever. Restaurants, picnic areas and other facilities are designed to receive scores of visitors. A family day of culture and recreation seem to be what the planners of this complex had in mind. The paths leading to the grave are wide enough to accommodate large crowds of grateful mourners, but solitude and abandonment is what prevails. Benches falling apart, grass growing up between the cobblestones, the sometime neatly manicured gardens receding into wilderness, deserted plazas and dry fountains complete the picture of vanishing glory. A trio of Bangladeshi diplomats and our group of two Peruvians, one Frenchman and a Serb from Sarajevo are the only visitors of this Sunday of August. As we approach the grave, in a last remaining reflex of a hopeless etiquette the guard in blue-jeans orders us not to stay more than two minutes near the tomb, then he turns back to the garden to light a cigarette. We stay with Tito by ourselves for as long as we please.

In returning to the vehicle we meet Radovan's uncle who had refused with blunt gesturing our invitation to tour the complex. "My uncle used to be a great supporter of the man -the nephew says- but he was deeply disillusioned when Tito granted the Muslims nationality status." At a distance, the silhouette of the Saint Sava church rises above the grey cement of post-war housing blocs. We visit the building after touring the luxurious surroundings of Tito's residence, an area where most of the embassies and dignitaries' villas are located including the one of the notorious Arkan, jealously guarded by a detachment of private bodyguards.

The cult of Saint Sava -the founder and first archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church- is at the core of the origins of Serb national identity. According to historian Alekxandar Pavkovic, moreover:

"The centrality of the teachings and of the cult of St. Sava, the spiritual father of the Church, distinguishes the Serbian Church from other Orthodox churches. In the eyes of the Serbian Church authorities, being a member of the Church founded by St. Sava marks that person as a Christian Serb."

He died on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1235, in 1595, his body was brought to Belgrade and burned on the hill where the erection of this church began in 1935. Basil Hall recounts the story of the project:

"The walls stood barely ten meters high when the Germans invaded in 1941, and after the war Tito never gave permission for building to continue, despite repeated requests by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Then, in 1984, for no obvious reason, the government reversed its policy, and when Slobodan Milosevic came to power in 1987 he aggressively supported continued construction (...) The importance the Church of St. Sava had assumed in the past couple of years as the Serbs grew more aggressively nationalistic could be inferred from the fact that special services had already been held in it (...) Thousands packed inside in 1989 for celebrating the 600 anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. In 1990, the Patriarch presided over another service marking the 300 anniversary of the great Serb migration led by Archbishop Arsenije out of Turkish Serbia into Hungarian Vojvodina."

St. Sava church is still under construction in mid-1996. No regular services are offered yet. In the back of the building, though, a small chapel is open to the faithful. A ceremony of Christianization is taking place in its the interior. Against the backdrop of fully decorated walls barely illuminated by the dim light of lamps and candles this simple ceremony appears powerful and moving, conveying a sense of veneration and tradition long absent in the Catholic rituals I am accustomed to. At my side, in a particularly grave tone, Radovan says "I will probably be doing the same pretty soon." "Why?" I replied moved by the sudden revelation. "Because I have to be baptized first if I want my child to get baptized" he responded with a sigh. At my request he then places his comment into context:

"My parents decided not to give me one particular religion, so that I was never baptized. I was taught to treat everybody the same, not to discriminate against people because of their religion or their nationality. And all of a sudden all this began. Because of the war, my parents had to leave Sarajevo and I had to go to the army. I was born in Sarajevo, it was my city, I did not want to live elsewhere. At the time of my enrollment in the Bosnian Army I was asked for my nationality. I don't know -I said to the officer- I used to be Yugoslav, I don't know what I am now.' What is your name' the officer replied. Radovan I told him. Ah,....Radovan, OK you are a Serb now.'"

Thus, Radovan spent two years in an Army fighting the Serbs. "During all that time, I did all I could do to keep myself far from weapons," he says. In doing so he ended up in an engineering battalion.

"We spent long periods out of Sarajevo, opening paths to keep supplies flowing into the city, constructing trenches and things like that. I'd rather be doing the hardest job but to get involved with the killing. Could you imagine a guy like me -says Radovan calling my attention to his feeble constitution- digging a three-meter ditch in one night?"

Now, after having his life torched by such a grievous experience, Radovan wants his one-year old son to be baptized under the Orthodox ritual:

"I don't want him to face the stupid situation of not knowing who you are when knowing who you are is a life or death matter. I want him to know who he is from the very beginning in case he happens to be around when this thing explodes again."

Radovan is working hard to avoid such a recurrence, however. He expects to migrate to Canada as soon as he gets the necessary funds. "I want to live as a normal person" he says. "A normal person who has a normal life in a normal country; in a country where you are defined only for your occupation and nothing else, where I can raise my child as a normal person, that is, with no borders in his mind." As we left St. Sava we saw the Bangladeshi diplomats surrounded by a band of gypsy musicians playing for them. Their music is cheerful but the sadness of their voices and their emaciated faces make it sound as a lament. We headed North again, toward the soulless towns and the successive borders Radovan is escaping from.