Little Bastards in Springtime (2 page)

We’re all walking in the same direction down from Maršala Tita to Obala Kulina Bana. Everyone ignores the shops and cafés, the food smells and coffee smells. The water-hungry Miljacka is close and I want to stand on the bridge to watch the brown water and beer bottles and deflated balls go underneath, but we can’t get out of the crush, we have to keep going. Papa is somewhere in front of us. Every now and then I see his hat bobbing along, the black hat he likes to wear. His hair is very long these days, gets curly when it grows beyond his ears. He knows many people here and wants to talk to all of them, one hand grabbing the back of their neck and the other waving in their face. He walks sideways so he can look into their eyes the whole time. He’s very intense, Mama says.

Mama knows people too. She is always calling out to someone. “Yoo-hoo, Milan, yoo-hoo. Over here!” “Hello, Zlatko, let’s meet for coffee soon.”

I recognize that tone in her voice. She’s on the edge of a meltdown. It’s how strongly she feels about this. She’s very passionate, Papa says.

“This is our chance,” she said to Papa over and over again this morning when we were getting ready to leave the apartment. “This is our chance. We must take back the moral leadership.”

“Yes, yes. Do you have to shout in my ear? I’m standing right next to you. Standing, waiting.”

Mama, rushing around the apartment as usual, looking for something. “But this is our chance. We can’t be complacent now. We must be heard.” Her umbrella, in her hand, finally.

“Yes, for Christ’s sake, you know I agree with you.” Papa, rubbing his face with impatience. Papa hates to wait. He wants to be in the action right away.

“This is our chance to take hold of history. We are the majority, we must drown out the fascists once and for all.”

“Sofija, I know all of this. Can we just
go
?” Mama, suddenly crying, trying to get her raincoat off the hanger in the hall closet, which has too many coats in it. Crying is something she’s doing more of lately.

Papa, holding her in his arms, rolling his eyes at me and Dušan over her head.
Women
, he mouthed at us, then waved us out the door. But he’s a crier too.

By the time we got to where the march started, Mama and Papa were walking hand in hand, all calm and collected again. I turn and there are Amir and Edin elbowing their way through the marchers, chasing after someone. Maybe it’s someone else from school.

“Can I go with Amir and Edin?” I ask Mama.

“Are you crazy?” she says. “We’ll never see you again. Can’t you see how big this is? So many people.” She grabs my hand. I yank it back. She shouts Papa’s name. “Lazar,” she yells. “Lazar. Where is that irritating man?”

Then he’s right here at our side. He’s wearing a big smile on his face. He hugs Mama, then lifts her and swings her around. I don’t know where Dušan is. He’s sixteen and goes wherever he wants. He met up with his friends at the beginning and they’re probably drinking beer somewhere. Papa’s lecture in the elevator on the way here didn’t suddenly change him. “Progressive grassroots politics is vitally important, Dušan. Now more than ever. Pay attention and participate in the democratic process.” Stuff like that, which Papa likes to say.

“Hasan is here,” Papa says. “And Juka and Raif and Ivo. Anyone who’s anyone. This is the real Yugoslavia, the true Sarajevo. Artists, writers, professors, journalists mixed in
with everyone else. All nationalities, no nationalities. Demos triumphing over ethnos.”

“Yes, yes.” But Mama looks like she’s going to cry again. That strange pull around the edges of her mouth.

Papa winks at me.

“Put him on your shoulders,” Mama says. “Let him see the size of this demonstration, this people’s rebellion against the fascists. Jevrem, read all the signs you see. Read them aloud to us.”

“He’s ten, he’s too goddamned old,” Papa complains, but he grabs me by the hips and heaves me up, groaning and staggering around. I knock off his hat by mistake and he calls to Mama, “Quick, quick, pick it up, pick it up.”

“I’m eleven,” I shout into the noise. “I’m eleven.”

From his shoulders I can see the backs of thousands of heads. They’re floating all the way to the government building, which stands so tall and shiny in front of us, and the parliament building next to it. I turn and look behind us. I see thousands of bobbing faces edging forward, staring at me. My heels bang against Papa’s soft belly. I haven’t been up here for years. I remember when my legs stopped at Papa’s collarbones. I remember placing my dirty paws in front of his eyes, pinching his nose, pushing my face into his hair, the smell of his warm scalp.

“There are some signs in English.”

“Well, read them to us,” Mama says.

“I don’t pay attention in English class. It’s boring.”

“Well, you should.”

“
You
don’t speak English,” I grumble, but I try to sound out the words I see. “Our-nation-is-Yugoslavia. We-are-one people. Three-Lunatics-Miloševi?-Tu$$jman-Izetbegovi?, Resist fascism.” I’m yelling to be heard.

Papa laughs. “Could you have a thicker accent?” He does speak English.

“When will I ever need that crappy language?” I cry at him.

“You never know,” Papa says. He cranes his neck for someone else to discuss important issues with. “That crappy language runs the world. If you don’t want to lead a narrow life, you’re going to have to learn that language, now that everything’s changing.”

I look up. The clouds are thinning out. The hills surrounding the city are dark green. I see blue sky. Sometimes I wish I were a bird and could take off whenever I wanted. I’d fly high above all these noisy people, all trapped together in these narrow city streets. I’d soar into the mountains where there are trees and rivers and foresters’ cabins.

C
LOUDS
move in again over the city when evening comes. But the sunset shines through, painting bright red streaks in the sky and turning the hills purple and grey. I stand on the balcony with my Walkman plugged into my ears, watching the lights come on in the apartment opposite. I’m not listening to music, I just like to be alone sometimes. I listen to Sarajevo sounds. Cars, trams, muezzins from the minarets, bells from the churches. The shouts of kids playing in the courtyards.

Our apartment is full of Mama and Papa’s friends and some depressed relatives. The blare of their voices mixes with Rachmaninov blasting from our stereo. Mama listens all day long to the composer of the piece she is rehearsing. The twins Aisha and Berina are carrying trays of snacks. Their skinny eight-year-old arms can hardly hold them up. They keep bumping into people like bossy waitresses and saying, excuse us, let
us through, exactly at the same time, like they do. Dušan is the bartender; he’s allowed to have three beers and he’s already drunk them. Now he’s taking slugs of vodka from the bottle. My baka is pumping her fist into the air. She’s telling partisan war stories, I can tell by the way people are looking at her. Kind of proud, kind of pitying, kind of bored. They think she’s old-fashioned, all that tired old communist stuff from the past. She thinks they’re pathetic wimps, and says so to their faces. She made up her own name when she was a girl. She invented the life she wanted to live. She tells me that quite often. Soon she’ll say, “About our beloved leader …” and launch into a Tito story, her favourite kind.

“All the good people today are passive, too passive. In my day, we fought the fascists as soon as they descended upon us,” she shouts. “About our beloved leader, our Joza …”

And she’s off. The group around her begins to turn away, embarrassed little smiles on their faces.

“Kumrovec, his village, is in Croatia, so what? His ancestors lived in those hills and valleys for hundreds of years, so what? Did this make him a narrow nationalist? No, it did not!”

Only one of Papa’s students is still listening, and he’s blinking hard and rocking back and forth on his feet. Tipsy people are easy to spot. Baka doesn’t care, that’s the way she is, she keeps right on shouting.

“The important point is that we and Tito fought the Ustasha and Chetniks, those terrible nationalists back then, as much as the Germans and the Italians. We didn’t care where anyone came from, what religion, what home village, what region, we knew them by their politics alone. That’s all that mattered at that time. That’s all that matters still. It was death to fascism, freedom to the people! We fought on principle, not tribe. And now
see what’s going on. You younger generations are a disgrace.”

Ujak Luka, my wild uncle, mimics Baka behind her back. He’s tipsy too and he’s got a girl with him who is very pretty and young, maybe only seventeen. He drives Baka crazy, but they love each other, even though he’s irresponsible, a theatre person. Mama says he’s still a little boy, with all his different interests and ideas, his actor friends and their illegal ways, like smoking pot in front of the police headquarters and I’m not sure what else. Mama says he plays with fire, he rocks the boat, he’s always walking on the edge. Maybe he’s a criminal of some kind, but no one will tell me.

He sits down next to me and points at my Walkman. “What are you listening to, little Jevrem, my favourite eleven-year-old nephew?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I sometimes put earphones on so people won’t bug me. Then I can daydream without being bothered.”

“What do you dream about?”

“All kinds of things. What I’m going to do this afternoon, what I’m going to do when I’m a man, that kind of thing.”

“That’s good, little Jevrem. A man without a dream is a dead man. Everyone should dream. Don’t say anything to anyone, but I’ve got my dreams too. I’m going away. Far from this nightmare, far from these zombies that have taken over our country, stumbling along our streets oozing dying brain cells out of their noses and ears.”

I laugh, I can’t help it. Ujak Luka is a funny guy.

“It’s like we’ve forgotten we’re a sophisticated, civilized country; we’ve sold our souls for a worthless idea that’s never worked for any nation in any time. We’ve let the losers take over.”

Ujak Luka is not tipsy, he’s completely drunk, his eyes shiny red marbles, his breath smelling like fire. “Don’t tell
anyone, Jevrem, but I’m going away with my girlfriend; this place has become ridiculous. Even my oldest friends avoid each other, from one day to the next, infected by this deadly illness called nationalism. It’s pure bullshit.” He sighs, rubs his eyes with one hand.

Papa is lecturing a group sitting around the dining room table. His voice bellows when he drinks and drowns everything else out. Ujak Luka points at Papa, pokes me in the ribs with his elbow.

“See, he thinks he’s immune to the spreading plague,” he says, rolling his eyes, lighting a cigarette. “Do you want a drag?”

“The media, it’s our only hope,” Papa proclaims. He’s chain-smoking today. I guess he’s decided to put off quitting until life is less tense. “We must gain the upper hand on the airwaves again, and in print, change the tone of the discourse, eclipse ethno-nationalist politics, forge a post-communist democratic citizenship, maintain communities of affinity over communities of biology and tribe. There are journalists who will write anything for a bribe, but there are more of us who are ready to write the real story—but no newspapers or magazines will take our pieces, not even abroad.”

Ujak Luka repeats each of Papa’s words into my ear, with a high whispering voice. “Do you know what all of that means, Jevrem?” he asks me. “All those big, fancy words?”

“Yes … no,” I say.

“Do you know that it’s all been said a thousand times and not made any difference?” Ujak Luka’s face is red and sweaty.

I nod my head, then shake my head. Dora, Orhan’s wife, is talking with Mama in the corner, their heads bent together, their faces serious and pale. I wish they’d brought their son Zijad along. He’s my age. I’d have something to do.

“
Ethno-politics, democratic citizenship, communities of affinity versus communities of tribe
,” Ujak Luka repeats. “As if those words will reach people. Where is the talk about bread and jobs for every human body? That’s the point.” I feel drops of his spit on the side of my face. “The other side is telling unemployed men how their jobs were stolen by hostile neighbours, how they’re going to be wiped out as a people if they don’t take up arms and fight. Who do you think they’re going to listen to?”

A group of men stand by the window. They talk over each other and gesture at the city.

“It was a terrible mistake, a criminal mistake, of Germany and the U.S. to recognize secession so soon, that’s been the biggest mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake, was it. The destabilization tactics were intended.” Papa shouts over them all, and next to me Ujak Luka rolls his eyes again, sighs, twitches his face, shrugs his shoulders, picks at his fingernails.

“No safeguards in place to manage the fall out over minority rights. They know it’s all going to explode and end Yugo and socialism, which is what they want. Small free-market states, ownership of our resources, access to cheap labour.” Papa is standing up now, throwing his arms in the air. “Just another move in the neoliberalization of the world.”

I know it’s serious what Papa is saying but he looks silly.

“Just keep on talking, talk, talk, talking,” Ujak Luka sings quietly into his glass. “If the richness of countries is measured in words, our Yugo would be on top. But it’s not going to help, it’s way too late for that.”

“The Balkans, as wild and savage.” Papa looks like he’s about to climb on the table. “Our ancient hatreds, and all that crap. That’s the Western media’s story and the whole world will
believe it one hundred percent after reading the newspaper for two minutes.”

“Hypocrisy, injustice, imperial bullying, the Congress of Berlin,” a lady pipes up.

“Friends, calm down, come back to earth. We must talk about how to protect ourselves now as individuals, that’s all that’s left us,” a tall, skinny colleague of Papa’s says. “We’re surrounded on all sides by weapons shipped from Israel, South Africa, Europe, America.”

“He’s right,” Ujak Luka whispers to me, pointing. “That one, he’s nailed it. It’s going to happen, the whole place is going to burn like a country-size incinerator. Where would you go, if you could?” He puts his arm around my shoulders and looks at me like he really wants to know.