Weight

     I can only write about what I know, what I feel and that is the limitation of my experience.  Yet, sometimes the parallels of others and their own journeys coincide with our own and we are deeply moved within; swayed toward understanding of the exactness of the moment we once witnessed or continue to encounter.  Perhaps, my intent is to share my own individual understanding of what has been taking place since May of 1992.  Strange, how dates weigh down on us in forms of anniversaries, birthdays, holidays but dates also appear on the timeline of progression and digression, as commemorative symbols of death, defeat, loss, casually marking the beginnings of unprecedented events on passages of time.  For me, in my 8th year of being alive, or living, a singular event that dictated the rest of my life took place violently, startling the core of my perception.  When a child experiences hardships and uncontrollable circumstances, the reality becomes the only compass to continue further.  Dreams dissipate into a type of a mental storage where a child hopes to return to one day when it all comes back to normalcy.  That child accepts the reality more than adults who have the capacity to rationalize and endure, yet a child should not know what enduring feels like, at least not that early on.  Putting away your dreams for the sake of reality is every refugee's actuality and as much as we drift away to visualize peace and to reflect on the happy days in the past, the core remains forever altered where dreams are derived from reality and not vice versa. 

    

     Recent mass migration of refugees sparked something inside, that parallel mentioned earlier where I can place myself in the shoes of those crossing the borders, fleeting with no specific or defined goal in mind when the only thing that matters is survival.  Refugees get addicted to survival from the moment they are forced to leave their homes, after going through many traumatic experiences, refugees can never truly settle no matter where their next home is.  Home becomes an evading illusion, constantly sought for but never truly defined or fulfilled.  At times, we may make ourselves believe that we have found that security we searched for so long and that they may represent our home but the reality is that we shall never reach home; perhaps the death is the only home we will ever know until then we shall continue to survive and endure.  The gloom, the nostalgia, the melancholic outlook on life becomes so engraved making our minds wander into forbidden territories of the past.  Perhaps, this is my somber Slavic soul voicing out its predispositions for grim realism but at some point in time every refugee will find a reflection of the dark side as the only dreaming he or she can withstand in comfort.  

    

     Flight becomes everything.  Fear prevails, haunting every step of the future existence.  Only temporary experiences are valued because the uncertainty of tomorrow of what is going to happen next can always include lurking dangers.  Better be prepared for the worst then hope for the best.  Yet, we manage to smile.  Refugees are the greatest example of contradictions in life.  Irony is heavily used in the days of despair; even the smiles can be spotted on those fearful, dull expressions.  Everything is gray and gloomy; sporadic and undefined.  Haze is cast over the thought process and the only important thing is to move on, to continue moving limbs because if one stops progressing, he/she dies.  The movement becomes endless even when we are standing still.  Our minds are racing without a halt because that is the only survival we know - the flight.  Twenty three years later I am still running in place, in circles, upward, downward, yet I am constantly immobile.  Around nothing changes, everything seems peaceful and running smoothly.  The circumstances I live in are stable and safe but the feeling of constant fear never leaves me.  It is always there waiting to strike me just like the war did.  Nothing is given, nothing is for sure, but the desire for it makes it so hard to accept it.  How can one possibly remain untouched after surviving and enduring evil?  How does one rid of pain caused by injustice, violence and so much wickedness? 

     

     Change is constant and at any given moment something good can happen.  Restoring the balance and sense of normalcy is crucial in any person's life, especially to those who went through traumatic experiences.  Luckily, we still know how to smile, how to run around, how to hope.  Our dreams may be confined to reality but we still know how to dream, dream realistically.  Being a refugee is ultimately grounding state because a refugee knows what pain and loss are and he/she still can smile.  What is more beautiful than the ability to simultaneously feel joy and sadness?!  Melancholy is life and a refugees get to acquaint themselves with the truthfulness of life.  Kundera sums it up perfectly in his works, where weight of life is more important that the lightness of insignificant consequence.  And refugees are directly interwoven with the depth of survival which is after all the primary purpose of human existence; we just get to experience it more fully. 

Safe Distance

Banja Luka, the beautiful city of my birth invokes pleasant emotions when reflected upon from a distant land.  All the streets, familiar locations, monuments, the school of my childhood, our flat, the tree under our bedroom window, the bridges, the greenest river, known short cuts between the buildings, all of them trigger warm memories, glanced at them from a line of separation.  Longing for home, once removed from it, produces the nostalgic sensation driven by happiness and tenderness.  

    Distance tends to erase darkness and somehow dissociates as if nothing disagreeable had happened within the imaginary walls of my home town.  All that is necessary comes in a form of departure in order to revive the pleasantries left behind.  Leaving aids in a partial forgetting of the past reality.  The notion of home becomes glorified as an illusory tool to contrast anything foreign and incomprehensible.

  Return is an ubiquitous, haunting thought that constantly lingers in the subconscious mind.  At times, the return occurs and the realness of home brings about the truth and resurfaces the reasons for the abandonment.

   My first trip to Banja Luka took place in 2004, nine years after living abroad.  At twenty years of age, I built up a courage and returned to the Balkans.  Naturally, my initial stop of a three month long vacation, started in my home town.  I was afraid that I forgot everything but as soon as I approached my city, I managed to remember everything.  All around me familiar streets and building spread as if nothing was altered by the years of absence.  I found my way around without any difficulty.  The only difference was that everything seemed much smaller, as if the skies came closer to the earth.  The mosques were missing.  Those empty spaces reminded me of loud explosions in my memory.  I remember shrugging at the sights of nothingness.  Every time the blasts echoed, we knew it was another mosque blown up to pieces.  

  One night, back in the 90s, I was spending the night with my grandma.  As we were preparing to go to bed, we got startled by the shots from rifles accompanied by the cheers of the soldiers who lit the mosque on fire.  We thought we were lucky since no explosions were used this time around.  I remember feeling sad not for the mosque per say, I did not understand the symbolism, but for fear in my grandma's eyes.  I never liked when adults worried because it made me uneasy and afraid.  Those sentiments never left me.  Only years later was I able to comprehend what I went through and again I can only thank the distance in time, distance in miles, distance in perception.  Span of years allowed me to rationalize the trauma I experienced.  Everything looks better in retrospect.  

  Occasionally, I feel as if I am that same little girl observing the unfolding events.  Adults posses the ability to rationalize and sometimes still live in a denial.  They hope for better days; they believe in future. A child is nothing but a direct spectator in the midst of unexplainable events.  Childlike approach does not eliminate the reality, but on contrary, it reaffirms it without a potential alternative.  Adults speculate about escapes, ending of violence, a brand new days; children momentously participate without the beginning or the end.  They do not hope, they live through the lenses at their disposal.

   After a few days of visiting my home town, (what a strange notion, not it seems), I felt as an outsider and everywhere I went I was seen as such. 

   Before we escaped Banja Luka in 95', my parents gave away our flat in hopes that it was a temporary gesture.  My grandma did the same with her house through an exchange of property with her best friend but there are no guarantees in war.  I will always fail to understand how can someone knowingly occupy someone else's home and build their lives based on persecution and cleansing of others without a remorse.  Perhaps, I do not possess that "quality" to live on other people's misery.  I guess I am lucky to have my parents as a guide, then and now, who knew what is what.  Our city was expanded on my family's property which was given away during the collectivization after the World War II.  Perhaps, we started the process of diminishing even then but times where different and everyone wanted to contribute as much as they could to better the society.  My ancestors linger in the streets of Banja Luka, they haven't abandoned us.  The laughs and fears resonate when the city falls asleep and Vrbas, the greenest river, hums in agreement.  The graves lay all through out the city commemorating those that lived there.  At least they didn't desecrated the graves; they are a proof of our existence there because not much has left that belongs to us.  
   
     On my first visit back, I was "allowed" to enter our flat.  All I've heard are the words of welcome "into your apartment."  Rage overwhelmed me, debilitated my ability to speak, scream, yell at this woman who represented what the atrocities of the war have left behind.  She became the focus of hate as she was freely parading through our hallways, our rooms, our entrance 7c.  Most of the streets and schools were renamed but as if that wasn't enough, they changed the numbers too in order to destroy any relevance to the past.  They wanted to recreate it, wipe out all that has happened before.  

     Her son walked into the room, he must have been my age when I used to live here.  He probably goes to the same school as I did, right there across the street behind a supermarket.  Some other lady was sitting on a couch, as reenforcement in case I decide to lose it.  Ten minutes passed like an eternity and luckily my grandma cordially said that we have to leave; I am sure she sensed my anger.  At that moment, all I wanted was to run away as far as possible, run home abroad.  Right there as I was hurriedly moving toward the exit, the realization and the acceptance of burried trauma leaked to the surface.  Fuck, I survived a war, became a refugee, an immigrant.  I came to a conclusion that my life can never follow a normal or typical trajectory because what is normalcy after surviving a war?  How can one take anything at its value, how can one dream and drift away from reality when all that lays there is inescapable actuality!?

    By running down the stairs I created a needed distance between myself and my home.  The miles seemed to fix everything, or so I thought. I had to get out even if it is a different city in a proximity to my home town, I had to get out, I had to breathe without hate, without any resentment.

The accents of passer-by didn't resemble mine; the tones of voices and pronunciation of familiar words in my mother tongue seemed so foreign.  Why did they steal my life from me?  
  The collective amnesia of the Balkans allows those inhabitants that participated in violent acts, live through the day.  The nationalist and religious insignias stand as reminders to those who fought, given them indirect justification for their actions.  And those who silently observed as their neighbors disappeared one by one and silently propagated nationalistic norm do not have clean hands.  You made us look so small and insignificant.  We were your brothers, sisters, friends, comrades.  How could you do this to us?  I blame you more than the newcomers because you celebrated our birthdays, spent time socializing, celebrating our anniversaries, how many new years have we waited on together?  You sold us out in spite and out of spite.  

         I dislike going back to Banja Luka.  I prefer it more from my leased apartment in Brooklyn.  I feel closer to it, I belong there from distance.  Span of years, gap in space brings consolation.  Life may be fleeting but it is absolute after all or at least that is what I've learnt.  I'll visit again, when I forget about all the hurt only to be reminded of it again when I pass through those streets.  My home town suffocates me.  It is too small to freely breathe in and too big to take it all in.  Yeah, the distance is always a good idea! 

Limbo

Twenty years ago I passed through the train station in Budapest, Hungary.  My family and I were escaping the civil strife that left my country divided, fragmented and completely devastated.  Today, I saw the images of Syrian refugees roaming around the same space as we did so many years ago attempting to reach som foreign country.  Strange how things coincide.  Insecurity along with the fear of the unknown lingers in those tracks.  The steel tracks carry the inhibitions and hopes for what is about to unravel.  Especially, when a child enters this sphere of unpredictability, the reality becomes altered and forever layered.  Do the halls of the station show the scars of our childlish fears??

The images reminded me of crossroads of life; a space where the destination is not reached, where the limbo becomes the safest zone.  I never really put much thought into this station, it was just a distant memory, but now I want to find out where this in-between room is, what it really is, whose name it carries.  All of those people running away from broken homes in hopes of stability walk through the same halls as we did, waiting for the trains with unmarked tickets to take them somewhere else, some place safe.
A refugee - an escapee - a runner - a fleeter - in a search for "home".  Two decades later, two foreign lands away, I still linger in the same station in Budapest.  How symbolic life can be!!! 

I wonder if I will ever find my way back to the streets of Budapest. Those Hungarian winters where the thoughts freeze and remain solidified into ice cubes of immobility, will remain within me.  Yet, the train approaches the station and we aimlessly board it without glancing back on this layover that took place at the specific time, in a particular place. 

I hope that they will find a spot where they can root into the soil and rediscover the meaning of safety.  I sincerely wish for their well being for I know what they feel.  Particularly, the children whose childhoods came to an abrupt end.  They will become in-betweeners, just like I did.  Soon enough they will discover the meaning of nostalgia where melancholy resides ubiquitously every day of their lives.  They will be exposed to new ways of existing; they will supersede their parents' thinking; their mentalities will be molded as they learn that every new day requires adaptability - an assimilation just to get through the day, to get ahead.  Yet, all of us will always remain stuck at that station for the rest of our days.  We will wonder what would have happened if we mounted a different train.  Sometimes we will perplex about the possibilities of heading back to the place that breathes our names, the place where our footsteps are imprinted on the streets as scars.  Still, we will always stay in Budapest while trying to find a corner to call our own.  My dear in-betweeners, we are thrusted onto the tracks of forced choices that were never truly ours. 

One day, I will find out the name of the train station in Budapest.

Yugo-Nostalgia

"Maybe unhappiness is the continuum through which a human life moves, and joy just a series of blips, of islands in the stream.  Or if not unhappiness, at least melancholy."

                

                                                  Salaman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses                                                                            

Dynamics of my family life encompasses melancholic nature that touches all of our familial members.  Music, poetry, social expressions, simply art, tie us in a unique way where we feel yugo-nostalgic.  The basic definition of yugo-nostalgia is a longing for things left in past, for human connection that lingers decades after it disappeared.  On one particular evening, not that long ago, my mother and I were spending some time together drinking wine and watching videos online.  As I was enjoying the night filled with music and poetry from back home, my mom glanced over at me and with genuine, loving tone in her voice said while pointing at the screen: "This is why, you and your brother cannot find someone to share life with because it is rare to find a person who can grasp all of this."

By all of this she meant deeply rooted nostalgia that triggers stream of emotions that make sense only in the Balkan terms.  We can theorize of general connections around the world, but this authentic feeling seems reserved to our homeland and unfortunately even those back home have a hard time detecting it.  Every little sensation within produces emotional tingles when we sense love, the pain, regret and melancholy felt for the vision of the future that will never occur.  Our problem resides in that particular universality that many confuse with choices made rather than inheritance.  My personal experiences grow and I expose myself quite often to a distinct sets of thinking, however, I somehow always draw magnetically to my universal code of Balkanism.  Sometimes, I feel as if I am multiplied in different shapes or versions of me.  I wonder if I am the same person when I speak English, or do I seem disingenuous?    Are those really different renditions of myself or I am I acting out dealt roles?  I am constantly drifting and searching for the similar drifters but somehow I fail to find a way to completely comprehend myself.

As I was visiting my parents, I realized that I go home to Yugoslavia every time I see them.  They are my sanctuary, my true home, my foundation.  When I look at them, I see the support and love simply glitters through them while giving me that institution filled with soul, diversity and acceptance.  They really did well in their dealt roles.  All of this brings me to melancholy, a term overly described in every artistic form.  It borders with sadness and happiness, concurrently.  Melancholy represents an eluding state of reality experienced through the deepest emotions and it is omnipresent never failing to linger in the background.  Melancholy also attributes vastly to the in-between state where no one is truly sad, and no one is truly happy; there is simply life without unnecessary kitsch decorated by vane illusions and fantasies.  

An Attempt To Describe The State of In-between

The best metaphor for life of in-betweeners can be visually depicted once a year for only a few days, perhaps a week when thawing, stale snow, stained by the discoloration of natural circumstances, undergoes metamorphosis due the attacks of relenting, fierce sun rays.  Such transformation represents a type of belonging somewhere, a spot to call own even if for a couple of days. Yet, for this one week or so, I feel at home as the sun attacks the residues of snow patches spread out on the sidewalks touched by the burden of cold days, while dissipating into forgetting.  But that state of transition includes the elements of all encompassing natural elements where two opposing phenomena coexist in a constant change unified in their differences and contradictions.  From a solid, to a liquid and to a vapor state, the transformation occurs so vividly and noticeably allowing me to revive my in-betweeness.  In more theoretical terms, I exist and sway amid two worlds constantly at odds, falling through cracks of society.  I write for those who are labeled as exiles, immigrants, vagabonds, gypsies and other wandering souls who are constantly searching for their own corner in this world while trying to tackle the existence of stuck in-between. 

In today's world, the exchange of ideas and experiences, one tends to be exposed to multitude of ideologies sorting them out according to one's own lenses.  When a child is born into already formed set of beliefs and traditions, he/she is molded according to the parental principles and/or societal norms.  Subsequently, the world views are formed based on formative suggestions where a child is equipped with a well of resources with references on how to respond to the environment.  However, with the increased mobility, particularly spatial movements, people tend to uproot from their comfortable, conventional ways of processing information and explore wittingly or not, a different approach to life.  Especially, when children are moved form one culture into another, the adaptability is accelerated and becomes more natural than to a formed individual and/or an adult.  What follows is additional layer of groundwork into infantile mind that teaches a child that adjusting and acclimating is the only source of survival while in the long run it undermines the original roots.  Sometimes, the exposure to the contradictory cultures creates a void or that particular in-betweeness where one has to create an individual set of norms and values in the direct opposition with everything one holds or sees as the ultimate truth.  So, this constant change leaves a lot of confusion behind because  a contradictory behavior has negative connotation but are we not as humans at constant odds with ourselves?

Many would argue that this is a process of every individual going through a path of his/her own definitions of culture or life.  This statement carries weight however, it lacks the level of discovery and necessity to accept external influences.  As people age, they tend to stop rebelling and conform to societal norms in order to make peace with the world.  They put an end to fighting unnecessary and petty struggles and accept life for what it is.  But when one is exposed to two conflicting cultures, one always remains in between never truly belonging anywhere but within the void. Finding a place resembling that abyss between two mountains is probably the most complicated quest of uncovering something truly unique, a path never walked before.  How are we to pave the road in that hollowness?

  

The day when you came home...

The night had swallowed the day placing a dark carpet over the streets with blips of dim lights protruding through the covering. Darkness and gloom set the mood for what was about to come.  The stars seemed farther than they actually were and those glittering decorations did not bring usual joy of searching for the occasional falling stars.  Tonight was different as it could be; prescient, filled with fear predicting what was about to realize.
A door bell echoed piercing sounds as the door became ajar.  Silhouettes of three men appeared.  At first, they were unrecognizable but at a closer look I saw my father and uncle leaning on both sides of some unknown individual while on the unsupported sides the crutches erected them.  The chattering of teeth and indescribable fear struck us all.  I could not move, only the movement of my teeth prevailed, uncontrollably.  Their smiles did not seem too comforting as they stumbled into the flat, into our kitchen.  My stoic mother took it well, composed and realistic.  My grandmother on the other hand saw both of her sons wounded by the evils of war; crushed she wept for a long time.  Then the ambulance came to help them with the bleeding wounds.  Children hopped around the new sighting and jumped around the van eagerly wanting to know what had occurred.  I could not talk, I failed to produce any vocals.  The only thing I could concentrate on is the chattering of my teeth that did not seem to subside.  The moment came when I felt helpless, useless.  I saw things happening around me but I could not participate, only watch and wait.  I was struck by what I saw.  I wanted to cry or scream or hug my dad but I became motionless and immobile.  Both him and my uncle were reassuring us that they were okay, but the blood did not seem to stop dripping on our carpet.

They were lucky, they claimed.  Only few months earlier they were drafted to participate in the conflict, unwillingly.  They agreed to go because they knew sooner or later the soldiers will find them and forcefully take them to serve in the army.  The problem was we were in war; the most senseless, atrocious war that no one really wanted; or at least we thought so.  At first, they were stationed in some remote village to guard it while inhabiting some half destroyed house, hoping that the call to fight would never come.  There were others from our city, true Yugoslavs, decent human beings only wanted for it all to seize so they can return to normalcy.  But what is normalcy after surviving a war???  

On the day they were wounded, the regiment was sent to a nearby town to engage in a fight.  The full on combat over the trenches facing each other, the bombs and constant sound of guns and cannons resonated.  And then there was another sound, more closer, more resolute followed by the explosion shattering shrapnel in the trench where my father and uncle were located.  Unable to move, laying there filled with fear they were struck on the first day of the combat.  What a luck!!  They never had to use their own guns, they remained pure and clean, they remained human.  All they wanted was a normal life they led before.  

After, they were taken to a hospital were they spent a couple of days.  They were given clothes of dead soldiers in which they appeared on our door step.  Wounded and hurt they came home, but at least they came back alive.  This was a blessing in disguise.  Never again they were to bear arms, never again they were to be sent to the trenches of death.  They lived, they survived and in that moment my dad decided that it was time to leave it all behind.  We lost our country, we lost our humanity, we lost our city, we simply lost...But I will never forget that day, when my dad came home!

Fear

I have a story to tell.  A tale of my experiences and a singular event that ultimately determined the course of my country's existence and my own life.  Currently, I belong to a diaspora displaced to a far country where assimilation is still ongoing.  Once one leaves a nest, there is a never ending quest for urgent belonging that never really actualizes.  The consequences linger like an incurable virus, never really leaving and only subtly becoming dormant.  But then the periodic outbreaks occur, serving as a constant reminder of what had taken place somewhere in the past abruptly creeping to the surface in its full force.  The thunderbolt of realization strikes unpredictably and old questions surface with the same resolute power as before.  The defining events of past rise between the cracks of time producing ongoing quests of contemplation and constant reflections.  Memories become vivid and omnipresent leaving no room for present.  Such reminder shows the limitations of choices and the power of random occurrences that shape and control the existence.  This limbo determines periods of melancholic state resolutely taking over every essence of being.  That's when  I start writing; it becomes my muse.

Often I attempt to define myself not as a person, but as a product of the accumulation of events and circumstances that led me to this present moment.  The common denominator is fear which was installed in me very early on in my childhood years continuously following me indiscriminately and tenaciously without ever really subsiding.  Fear is my enemy and my friend; it is a determining authority that explains my driving and breaking force, subconsciously placed and triggered at any given instance.  Every time I attempt to find a way to overcome it and go against my nature of cautiousness, something crushes me down to the abyss of failed tries.  Hence, I stopped fighting against it and became  immobile and stagnant.  The crippling fear has won the battle and pushed me on the sidelines of my own life.  I simply exist without any real fulfillment, without any motivation, desolate in my own mind of never ending attempts at battles that result in failures.

And the root of all the problems stems out of a singular event that determined the course of my existence: the War.  Early on, I learnt how to be afraid; a feeling that has never left me, a sentiment that defines me.  I may look and act as everyone else but that is only a shell, a bunker, a trench.  Beneath it all, the chaotic explosions burst from time to time, leaving confusion and incapability behind.  After the booms the void emerges and the vast emptiness endures for long periods of time disabling any movement towards progress and change.  So, I frequently run from the world around me, from the daily routine, from conforming, from me and I look for consolations elsewhere in the world of temporary escapes that happen more than they ought to.  Those are not excuses or explanations for why am I the way I am but debilitating states of mind I find myself in driven by nothing else but fear.  And the only way to conquer it is to erase the formative years of my life; to completely change the core one needs to die and I am not willing to do that.  Learning how to live with fear and concern is far more plausible than the option of seizing to exist.  Yet, it is a more difficult path taken that will leave me on the sidelines of my own life.