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!