Yugoslavia, My Fatherland

4

The day I first heard the word ‘seconded’ was the day my mother shut herself away for the first time. I’m not sure what my father had told her, as he wouldn’t let me go back home with him when we returned from the market. Instead he told me to play in the courtyard until he called me in for lunch. This was the first, and last, official order I received from Colonel Nedelko Borojević in my life, but it had been uttered in such a way that its militaristic nature was in no doubt. I obeyed without objection. I was left to wander aimlessly, while father broke the terrible news about us having to move to Belgrade. I’ll never forget the silence that clouded the room when I came home: Normally, we kept the TV or radio on, so we wouldn’t hear the buzzing of the fridge. My mother dragged her clothes out of the large wardrobe in the hall and dropped them onto the bed, in the bedroom. The only thing on the dining table was a plate of macaroni with minced meat and some Parmesan, a clear message for me to eat lunch and ask no questions. My father told me, in passing, that we were going to Belgrade for a while because of his job, and that mother would pack my things. The next time he circled by me, he added that I could go back out and play or watch TV, but I wasn’t to hang around the apartment after lunch, because everything had to be put away before we left.

In the evening, the phone rang and father informed us, with a voice like a TV newscaster, that the army truck would be in front of the shop in ten minutes, and we should begin carrying things outside. At that same moment, my mother burst into tears. Father tried to hug her and lean her head on his shoulder, like he had the time they informed her that her cousin, Gregor, had been killed in a car crash. But now she just pushed him away, grabbed the largest suitcase in the hall, and started dragging it toward the door, all by herself. Father tried to rip it out of her hands, and kept saying that it was too heavy, and that she shouldn’t be so stubborn, but mother carried it down the stairs and out to the front of the apartment building, and even to the parking lot in front of the shop, where she finally dropped it, exhausted, so that it struck the ground with a loud thud. Then she sat on it and cried some more, while my slightly confused father carried the remaining things out by himself, telling me to stay with mother in case she needed anything.

It wasn’t too long before our neighbour, Enisa, appeared in front of the shop. Whatever the hour, she kept constant watch for what was happening in front of her house. This time, she ran out to say goodbye to us, wearing only a bathrobe and her husband’s shoes. My father tried to tell her that we’d be back soon, but Enisa just nodded and repeated, ‘May luck travel with you, stay healthy and happy wherever you may be!’ Then she kissed me on both cheeks and my forehead, told me to be good and obey my parents, so I wouldn’t add to their troubles. I still didn’t know what their troubles were, but rather than explain, she just squeezed me tight and said, ‘My dear, my sweet child,’ and began crying even harder than mother.

The truck eventually rolled up and Shkeliqim, the driver, saluted us and began to load our suitcases and boxes into the back. My mother had to step off her suitcase, and she went to hug Enisa, so that they both watched Shkeliqim through teary eyes, as my father calmly passed him one piece of luggage after another. When the last backpack was loaded, and Shkeliqim was tightening the tarpaulin, I felt a sting in my own heart, and nearly joined in the crying. I had this sinister premonition that my summer had come to an end even before it had started. That father would never again take me to the Golden Rocks beach after lunch, so I could jump into the sea from the incremental boulders.

When we turned out of our street, Shkeliqim said that we needn’t stay awake on his account, and that we were welcome to go to sleep, because the drive would be long and tiring. He was suspiciously happy, talking a lot, laughing even more, while we silently stared out at our last journey past the theatre, the Golden Gate, the Arena. Soon my birthplace receded into nothing more than those clusters of distant fireflies on the black horizon that mother always loved, but now she intentionally turned her back on them, so she wouldn’t have to see them dance.

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Years before, my mother — then a young pedagogy student from Ljubljana — had arrived in the city of Pula just before ten in the evening. Her head was glued to the window of the little green train, watching with increasing excitement as the thousands of lights that first glittered in the distance, grew larger and closer and then morphed into shapes. She knew that, somewhere in the midst of those lights, on Platform 2 of the Pula train station, Lieutenant Borojević awaited her, dressed in his army uniform and carrying a single red rose, which he tossed nervously from one hand to the other, leaving tiny thorn-tracks in his palms. It was like this every time, and part of her felt that it would be better if he didn’t bring her a rose — after all, it cost enough to earn her love: Lieutenant Borojević had to buy time off-duty with a litre of grape schnapps for Captain Muzirović, so he could remain with her until 4am, when the green train returned to Ljubljana. But Borojević was a gentleman, and thought it only appropriate that an officer of the Yugoslav People’s Army welcome his ‘Slovenian girl’ with a rose, and then take her to the ‘Hungarian café’ for cake and lemonade, hold her hand as they walked along First of May Street and across the forum, kiss her cheeks at half past three and wish her a safe journey home. Who knows how much grape schnapps Captain Muzirović put away, and how many times the ‘Slovenian girl,’ Dusha Podlogar, watched with the same excitement, through the same window of the same green train as the same lights slowly expanded, while thorn-trails formed in the palms of the same nervous lieutenant, before he finally summoned the courage to kiss her on the lips for the first time, as they sat on a park bench. Or did he unclip her bra with his shaky hands, and even touch her erect nipples? Who knows if her lieutenant once welcomed her with a woollen army blanket beneath his arm, instead of a red rose, and took her to a gloomy, lonesome place, instead of to the Hungarian Café? Perhaps comrade Dusha then missed her train back home, unable to pull herself away from his strong, lusty embrace?

My mother didn’t talk about this, of course, but she did talk about how she began buying her co-worker toffees so that she wouldn’t tell their mutual boss that she liked to take naps in the small warehouse of the shoe shop on Tito Street, because she was so exhausted from catching the train almost every day and then running straight from the station to work in the morning. Mother also spoke of how her colleague used to tease her, saying that this had been going on long enough for her to expect a ring instead of a rose, but she’d reply that she was just having fun and was in no rush. She also liked to add that any girl would be afraid to marry someone who looked that handsome in his uniform, because a girl could never be sure if it was the uniform she liked more than the man in it.

Before Dusha could unpick this riddle, her colleague had grown tired of her repetitive work, and of the toffees. And it wasn’t too long before her boss had also stumbled upon his salesclerk, curled up like a baby among the shoeboxes on the warehouse floor one afternoon.

But since misfortune never walks alone, comrade Podlogar, a notorious snoop from a nearby town, heard through the grapevine that his model daughter, Dusha, who worked so hard at the shoe shop to earn her keep, hadn’t been seen at the Faculty of Education in ages. Dusha’s father, Dushan, was a special sort: he had reluctantly moved away from his modest home, where he had dragged himself after the first heart attack, which resulted in obligatory invalidity retirement from his long-standing career as the staunch police commander of the small town. But when comrade Maria Podlogar, a former secretary at the primary school, who made a hobby of keeping tabs on the moral meanderings of the neighbourhood, commented one day that it just wasn’t right when parents don’t know what is happening with their own children, Dushan felt forced into action. It was never his choice, but he went about it professionally.

So Dusha not only lost her job at the beginning of March 1978, but former police chief Podlogar made sure, in his own special way, that her wayward ways would be punished, and she ended up loosing her rented apartment very quickly. While Dusha was still a theoretically diligent student in Ljubljana, her offended father had silently accepted the gall of her decision to leave home, putting up a good façade when the neighbours inquired, claiming that he was proud of her, supported her. ‘A student needs complete peace and must be close to the faculty,’ Chief Podlogar would say, projecting confidence in his deliberation on the immutable laws of student life, which were utterly unknown to him. Those he spoke with, however, knew even less than he did. In order to avoid admitting that Dusha had escaped his parental control, Dushan Podlogar convinced himself and the neighbours that her departure was all part of his master plan.

But Chief Podlogar’s house of cards began to collapse the night that Lieutenant Borojević summoned up his courage, after a whole evening of preparation, and requested the band on the hotel terrace to sing ‘Hey Hey Hey We’re Not Going Home Yet,’ (the only Slovenian song in their repertoire) so that he could grab a dance with the beautiful Slovenian tourist. It was not long after this that Chief Podlogar lost faith in his own lie. As a last grasp, he tried to reel his head over heels daughter home as soon as possible, and set her up with a ‘dream’ job at the local leather plant, which was certainly a form of punishment as far as she was concerned.

But the machinations of his carefully prepared correction-plan graphically demonstrated that comrade Podlogar did not know his daughter at all, despite his conviction over the years that she was his favourite. This infamous snoop, who the local hooligans used to justifiably dread, never took seriously the hereditary stubbornness that he had passed on to Dusha, though stories of it had been circulating for long enough. Podlogar’s plan had been to force Dusha’s Ljubljana landlord with a report since, like so many landlords, he had never registered the fact that he was subletting his apartment. So Dusha was kicked out, and Dushan might’ve thought that she would have slumped down on a street corner, before humbly sulking home to daddy. But instead, she went straight to the train station and waited, for the last time, for the green train. Carrying two small suitcases, her stubbornness dictated the rest of the story — she was determined never to return to her father’s village, not even for a Sunday lunch. She rode off towards the lights of Pula, believing that this very evening, her lieutenant would be waiting for her with a rose in his thorn-scratched hand, on Platform 2, and for the last time.

But as luck would have it, Lieutenant Nedelko, on the very evening that should have been the most special of his young life, failed to remember that it was Thursday. Thursday evenings saw a special ritual at the Karl Rojc Barracks. Around seven, Colonel Neven Barac, fresh from the shower and anointed with smuggled Italian cologne, set out for dinner at the Fisherman’s Shed Restaurant with his mistress, Zhana. The soldiers in Pula were well aware that the good colonel was officially on call at the barracks on Thursdays, and that he also, unofficially, cheated on his wife, Ivana, in room 132 of the Brioni Hotel, his coital maneuvers squelching over a stomach full of grilled squid, mixed salad and a litre of red wine. But the soldiers guarded this secret as if it were treasonous to release it. When Ivana called, as she did on rare occasions, they meticulously served their country by explaining to the wife, without a blush of guilt that ‘Colonel Barac can’t come to the phone right now.’ Only once had a new-recruit, an ethnic Albanian, told Ivana that ‘the colonel is in the barracks, but not exactly in the barracks,’ but Barac had managed to explain this away by saying that the man understood Serbian well enough, but hadn’t known what he was saying. And so the secret remained secret.

Those who maintained those secret Thursday nights were well-rewarded, not only for those expected to respond to potential calls from the cuckolded wife, but also for the guard duty of having to ‘keep a close eye on Captain Muzirović, and not let him out of barracks for all the tea in China.’ You see, Neven Barac’s Zhana had once been Captain Emir Muzirović’s Zhana, until the latter had discovered, to his horror, that there were multiple officers in her life, to which fact he responded that he didn’t ‘waste his time and his cock on whores.’ But of course Muzirović never really got over her and put on a brave face, as he knew that she secretly met with his married friend, Neven Barac. Unlike the impassioned Muzirović, Barac spent only his time and reproductive organ on Zhana, and wasn’t in the least bothered with whatever she might be doing, if it was not a Thursday. But Thursdays were killing Muzirović.

He finally broke down while watching his friend prepare for one such Thursday, whistling a popular song, ‘This is Our Night.’ First he ritually downed a litre of Lieutenant Borojević’s grape schnapps, in a further attempt to repress his pain and then, at the climax of his delirium, vacillated between a desire to apologize to Zhana on his knees for his ugly words, then propose to her, right in front of Barac, the restaurant staff, and any random cluster of German tourists or, Option B, throwing Barac through the window of the Fisherman’s Shed Restaurant, straight into the sea. But rather than enact either of these options, with a little help from the soldiers on duty, he merely fell asleep in his office, putting off the difficult decision of whether or not to snap into action until the following Thursday.

Alas, it was the following Thursday that Dusha fled Ljubljana, and the soldiers on duty were sparse since Filipovski, the flag-bearer on call, had forgotten to tell anyone what it really meant to be ‘on duty’ on Thursdays. So Nedelko Borojević was on his way out of the barracks, when he noticed the conspicuous absence of any snoring coming from Captain Muzirović’s office. A minute later, Filipovski announced that Muzirović had left the barracks, drunk, shouting ‘I’m gonna fuck fishing pimps and their pimpy fish,’ whatever that meant, but Filipovski knew what would happen next. Instead of going to the train station, Borojević was forced to sprint to the Fisherman’s Shed Restaurant, to intercept a disaster of wide and resounding social dimensions. This meant that Dusha Podlogar was left without a rose and a thorn-scratched hand for the first time and was abandoned that evening, like a lost little girl, with her two small suitcases on Platform 2.

Who knows if it was because she had nowhere else to go, or simply because Dusha Podlogar was the way she was but, after waiting an hour, Borojević’s ‘Slovenian girl’ marched directly to the barracks. She stormed past the guards, as decisively as a military parade, and almost bumped into Lieutenant Borojević and Colonel Barac as they jointly supported the dead drunk and snoring Captain Muzirović. When he saw Dusha, Borojević dropped the captain in astonishment, so that he fell to the floor, which did little to sober him up. Barac thought Dusha was a lost tourist, and was about to step forward and direct her to the nearest hotel, when she spoke.

‘Nedelko, marry me. For God’s sake.’

At this, Captain Muzirović began to shout from the ground that no one should mention God in the barracks and that, in front of the ‘honest world,’ they would all marry her if she so wished, and that he was ordering Nedelko Borojević to marry this brave comrade. Nedelko himself seemed to be wrestling with his own neck muscles, but he finally nodded. Dusha dropped her two small suitcases and jumped into his confused arms.

My mother asked my father to marry her on 9 March 1978, and the big event came two days later, on Saturday, 11 March, despite a brief intervention from best man, Captain Emir Muzirović. He was still nursing the worst headache of his life and, while the bride and groom kissed, he swore to himself that he would never so much as smell grape schnapps again, deciding to drink only plum brandy from that day forth.

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In the middle of one of the longest nights of my life, our chauffeur, Shkeliqim Idrizi, noticed that I couldn’t get to sleep, and started explaining to me, in a whisper, that the lights to our left came from Hungary, the lights to the right from Bosnia, and that Serbia and Vojvodina were straight ahead of us, where there were no lights to be seen. He went on to tell me that if you drive on from Belgrade, taking the road past Niš and Užice, you’d reach Kosovo and his village, where Fadil Vokrri’s father had also been born. My blank stare disappointed Shkeliqim — I’d never heard of the greatest of Kosovan football players.

His whisper-tour of our motorway path eventually helped me to sleep and, when I woke, it was dawn and our truck was parked in front of Belgrade’s Bristol Hotel.