Virtual Vita Nuova

Croatia Mon Amour

08 Aug 2010 1 Comment

by jasminatesanovic in Uncategorized Tags: Croatia, Max Frisch, Serbia

in english, en francais, na srpskom

I am happy to be a loser. I am glad that I come from a country, Serbia, which lost all the wars of the nineteen-nineties. I am rejoicing every day of the year that there are fewer and fewer nationalist holidays which celebrate civilian heroic losses and phony war victories. No one celebrates the historical loss of democracy which such events bring.

I am happy that I spent this summer in Croatia, on the Adriatic coast, the coast of my youth, where I first learned how to swim, kiss and drink.  The coast where my late father grew up and studied, and where he fought the Second World  War against Fascists and Nazis.  I had dreamed of retreating to that blue coast some day, in order to live in truth, justice, and peace, and maybe get some writing done.

History has changed Croatia.  I passed the national day of the Croatian liberation, the Fifth of August, in a region where that clash of arms was keenly felt.  The days of gunfire of Operation Storm were few, but the lasting effect was the massive exodus of the ethnic Serbian population from the Croatian territories.

Fifteen years ago, I was near that war border, meeting Serbian refugees, fleeing soldiers in trucks and cars, civilians on foot, women in their nightgowns with babies in their arms.  People without homes, money, food or water, with bitter, desperate faces.   Those Croatian Serbs were sacrificed by the civil war.   First they were exploited by their own Serbian nationalist government as proxies for a guerrilla war.  Then they were crushed and scattered by a newly armed and capable Croatian regular army.   Finally the treaty of Dayton signed in 1995 legalized the ethnic cleansing throughout the Balkan region.   So they knew their ancient homes and fields no more. More