It is not often that you read a novel that you know you will never forget. Mesha Selimovic's Drvish i Smrt (Death and the Dervish) was already my favourite Balkan novel, but now I have read his sequel Tvrdjava (The Fortress). Selimovic, I believe, was a Partizan during World War 2 but disillusion set in, particularly following the execution of his Communist brother for a trifling offence as an example to others; apparently he had taken (stolen) some requisitioned furniture from a warehouse to furnish a flat in post war Sarajevo for his new wife. Both novels are set in 18thC Turkish Bosnia and appear to be critiques of the new Communist order. Thank God for novels where truth can be told! And the issue is power versus truth, expediency versus integrity. Tvrdjava is set in Sarajevo and concerns the attempts of a young veteran of the Ottoman wars in distant Ukraine to settle back into his native Bosnia. Ahmet Shabo was one of the very few of his unit to survive and though traumatised by the horror of a pointless war he finds healing in the love of a young Christian girl. But the wisdom and the integrity of the man quickly bring him into conflict with the established social and political order. No crime is more deserving of punishment than to threaten the jealously well defended edifices of privilege and power.
The 2 worlds clash endlessly and inevitably. “Is honesty such a mystery to you, Mula Ibrahim?” he asks of his employer. “It's not honesty that's a mystery, it's your behaviour......I'm trying to make sense of you. ....The war robbed you of your years of apprenticeship to life.” Shabo Ahmet replies “I learned a lot in war; too bloody much.” Ibrahim: “Not what you need for peace. War's a cruel but an honest struggle, as between animals. Life in peace is a cruel struggle, but a dishonest one, as between men. There's a great difference.” So the amoral world is summed up in 18thC Turkish Bosnia, and has anything changed? Ahmet says “I said the truth!” to which Ibrahim retorts “Speech is gunpowder: it explodes in a second!” And Pontius Pilate asked as he washed his hands of the Son of God “What is truth?” Indeed, what is truth in an amoral universe where expediency rules to protect the privileges of power? Isn't that why astonishing privilege blossoms whilst its loyal shock troops trample on the wretched?
Shabo Ahmet said “Injustice, thank God for it, had taught me that life is beautiful when it's free, even when it's hard.” And Jesus Christ says “I am the way, the truth and the life.” and “the truth will set you free.”
27 June 2008 – The ice cream parlour
My illusions of environmental harmony around our village of Stara Moravica have taken a blow. Searching for a fisherman to advise me about taking the canoe on the lake I hunted down Nikola at the “ice cream parlour” which is a collection of tables and chairs in the shade where the old boys gather to drink coffee, chat and wink at the “young” women. Alas, he told me, the lake has been sold to a “kriminalac” in Topola; here colourful village imagination tends to take over. Said well know entrepreneur won it at gambling, is now “developing” it, and the fish are poisoned. And this could all be true. It seems that, like so much other land and property, the lake (or a long lease?) has been sold, apparently without the village knowing anything about it. The pattern is already clear; a couple of riparian plots are being developed as vikendicas (causing polluting drainage), farmers are spraying herbicide on the steep slopes draining into the lake, which is forbidden, (hence fish are being poisoned), and in winter there is already an invasion of Italian hunters (well known for shooting anything and everything including protected species). I hope it is not as bad as this, but I fear the worst. There is little more damaging to communities than powerlessness. Foreigners are often frustrated by young Serbs' indifference to politics, but one tends to sympathize when you see that power rules rather than democratically upheld law. I went to the wood yard to order a couple of cubes of beech wood for the winter. I seem to have stumbled on a nest of socialists at last. Not surprising since Moravica, for long a poor village, had happily accepted Communism and its promises of a fairer world. I was gently assured that capitalism would destroy us. It is man's greed and lust for power that will destroy both us and the lake if not constrained by reasonable and just law.
The swallows are sitting on a second batch of eggs in the stable and the village storks have 4 healthy young who will soon be flying. As we move into high Summer everyone is bringing in the wheat and howing weeds, and the markets are bursting with new fruit and vegetables. The turning of the seasons reminds me that there is a greater order of things, and that frames the challenges with hope. In a week when oil hit $140/barrel changing fortunes and environmental realities may favour our cursing cart drivers and their horses. There is hope indeed!
23 June 2008 – Delicious draughts of air
I wonder if summer in the Garden of Eden was spent panting in the shade trying to escape the effects of temperatures in the high 30s. The sun here rises up above the cooling curve of the earth at around 0500 merciless in its heat. I took my bike up onto the breezy Fruška Gora before breakfast to celebrate the morning air and bird song, but now it is inescapably hot! Well, hot for those of us who, whether by choice or lack of means, do not use air conditioning. Jumpers in winter and sweating in summer are tiny sacrifices for reducing carbon footprints. Actually it makes you very aware of architecture. If you wish to increase sustainability of lifestyle you have to have shade and draughts and good insulation, and in summer give us trees. A friend sent me this, one of his new paintings, with inspiration from Psalm 104 and its hymn of praise for the creation. Here the “the crags are a refuge for the coneys” amongst all this primeval life and bursting fruitfulness. It seems that “coneys” have a sophisticated understanding of low impact architecture where their craggy home would create a chimney effect in hot weather creating delicious draughts of cooling air.
Novi Sad is at its best. By day the post-school flocks of young lounge and play under the poplars by the river. The evening squares and promenades fill up with the beautiful. But just above the roof tops from very first hint of dawn to the ocean of the night there are flocks of screaming swifts, every bit as beautiful and quite unknown, even unnoticed. The young are on the wing now and these breathtaking acrobats, that can even sleep on the wing, hurtle above us all the long day and even into the night. Family flocks race down the urban canyons, their wild screams filling the air. High up they dive, tumble and turn until your eyes hurt trying to see them. They have probably nested in Novi Sad's towers and roofs since man first built his artificial crags on the banks of the Danube. Yet strangely, unlike in Britain's villages, swifts are not normally found outside the large cities. Really their family histories are longer and stranger than ours. For all their magic and summer screaming they are little known. But like man and the coneys they love their craggy refuge and Summer's delicious draughts of air.
21 June 2008 – Love and other crimes
If I were cynical, which usually requires a bit of an effort on my part, I would place the new film Ljubav i drugi zločini (Love and other crimes) into the over prolific genre of depressing Balkan urban jungle. But here is yet another film that is without the cynicism of producer and director because it tells how it was and is for a whole generation that grew up in a dysfunctional criminalized Serbia. The urban young recognize it all. They feel it. They have to tell their stories. Thank God for honest people who want to tell the stories that are on their hearts. That way we share ourselves and help each other. And I wish I had thought of that title; brilliant!
Quick aside. The journalist Misha Glenny, who wrote the definitive modern history of the Balkans, has just published McMafia which explores what several journalists observed during the break up of the former Yugoslavia. He says “the real engine behind the wars was very little to do with nationalist conflict and all to do with organized crime”, from “shoot n' loot” to a whole criminal para-state of sanction busting and kleptomania. This really is depressing. The fall of Communism provided a rampant outbreak of unregulated market forces. A criminalised society is hard to reform.
Back to the local world of films, love and other crimes. Set amongst Belgrade's concrete towers of graffiti, greyness and making ends meet, a small time criminal feels pretty depressed with his lot. A turf war has broken out; the protection racket is threatened by a new hyperstore. His teenage daughter is suicidal, his girl friend is at the end of her tether, his dog is poisoned, and he knows he is dying. So far so depressing. But scattered like roses in the snow there are little outbreaks of redemption. The gangster tells his daughter how much he loves her. Stanislav, his lieutenant, declares his love for Anica the mistress. Anica appears to change her mind about emptying the safe and running away for ever; she throws most of the money back in, plus a photo. Stanislav decides not to run away with her at the last moment, and gets shot of course. But....instead of dying in a pool of blood he appears to survive to live and love another day.
Milutin, the dying gangster, regarding these pointless turf wars says “It can't go on”. Anica the mistress says “I've messed up; I've got to start again”. It seems that no matter how hard you try to live by the sword, you are actually built to love, which is a one way transaction, a free gift. Love is redemption. Stanislav jumps up onto the parapet of the tower block and just stands beside the teenager thinking of jumping. He put himself, at horrible risk, where she was; that spoke more than imploring words and left her free to see for herself that there was something in the world worth living for. Yet an embittered former lover said “There is no forgiveness”, which is to say, I think, that it can't be purchased, but it can be given. Love indeed is a dangerous subversive crime against the lore of those who would live by their power.
be critiques of the new Communist order. Thank God for novels where truth can be told! And the issue is power versus truth, expediency versus integrity. Tvrdjava is set in Sarajevo and concerns the attempts of a young veteran of the Ottoman wars in distant Ukraine to settle back into his native Bosnia. Ahmet Shabo was one of the very few of his unit to survive and though traumatised by the horror of a pointless war he finds healing in the love of a young Christian girl. But the wisdom and the integrity of the man quickly bring him into conflict with the established social and political order. No crime is more deserving of punishment than to threaten the jealously well defended edifices of privilege and power.
My illusions of environmental harmony around our village of Stara Moravica have taken a blow. Searching for a fisherman to advise me about taking the canoe on the lake I hunted down Nikola at the “ice cream parlour” which is a collection of tables and chairs in the shade where the old boys gather to drink coffee, chat and wink at the “young” women. Alas, he told me, the lake has been sold to a “kriminalac” in Topola; here colourful village imagination tends to take over. Said well know entrepreneur won it at gambling, is now “developing” it, and the fish are poisoned. And this could all be true. It seems that, like so much other land and property, the lake (or a long lease?) has been sold, apparently without the village knowing anything about it. The pattern is already clear; a couple of riparian plots are being developed as vikendicas (causing polluting drainage), farmers are spraying herbicide on the steep slopes draining into the lake, which is forbidden, (hence fish are being poisoned), and in winter there is already an invasion of Italian hunters (well known for shooting anything and everything including protected species). I hope it is not as bad as this, but I fear the worst. There is little more damaging to communities than powerlessness. Foreigners are often frustrated by young Serbs' indifference to politics, but one tends to sympathize when you see that power rules rather than democratically upheld law. I went to the wood yard to order a couple of cubes of beech wood for the winter. I seem to have stumbled on a nest of socialists at last. Not surprising since Moravica, for long a poor village, had happily accepted Communism and its promises of a fairer world. I was gently assured that capitalism would destroy us. It is man's greed and lust for power that will destroy both us and the lake if not constrained by reasonable and just law.
I wonder if summer in the Garden of Eden was spent panting in the shade trying to escape the effects of temperatures in the high 30s. The sun here rises up above the cooling curve of the earth at around 0500 merciless in its heat. I took my bike up onto the breezy Fruška Gora before breakfast to celebrate the morning air and bird song, but now it is inescapably hot! Well, hot for those of us who, whether by choice or lack of means, do not use air conditioning. Jumpers in winter and sweating in summer are tiny sacrifices for reducing carbon footprints. Actually it makes you very aware of architecture. If you wish to increase sustainability of lifestyle you have to have shade and draughts and good insulation, and in summer give us trees. A friend sent me this, one of his new paintings, with inspiration from Psalm 104 and its hymn of praise for the creation. Here the “the crags are a refuge for the coneys” amongst all this primeval life and bursting fruitfulness. It seems that “coneys” have a sophisticated understanding of low impact architecture where their craggy home would create a chimney effect in hot weather creating delicious draughts of cooling air.
If I were cynical, which usually requires a bit of an effort on my part, I would place the new film Ljubav i drugi zločini (Love and other crimes) into the over prolific genre of depressing Balkan urban jungle. But here is yet another film that is without the cynicism of producer and director because it tells how it was and is for a whole generation that grew up in a dysfunctional criminalized Serbia. The urban young recognize it all. They feel it. They have to tell their stories. Thank God for honest people who want to tell the stories that are on their hearts. That way we share ourselves and help each other. And I wish I had thought of that title; brilliant!
Back to the local world of films, love and other crimes. Set amongst Belgrade's concrete towers of graffiti, greyness and making ends meet, a small time criminal feels pretty depressed with his lot. A turf war has broken out; the protection racket is threatened by a new hyperstore. His teenage daughter is suicidal, his girl friend is at the end of her tether, his dog is poisoned, and he knows he is dying. So far so depressing. But scattered like roses in the snow there are little outbreaks of redemption. The gangster tells his daughter how much he loves her. Stanislav, his lieutenant, declares his love for Anica the mistress. Anica appears to change her mind about emptying the safe and running away for ever; she throws most of the money back in, plus a photo. Stanislav decides not to run away with her at the last moment, and gets shot of course. But....instead of dying in a pool of blood he appears to survive to live and love another day.