Chapter from My Life Without Me
October 5th, 2000, a historical day for Serbia. Where was I? The invisible? I was on BBC, CNN, local TV etc... All day, every hour, with the title, "citizens looting the Serbian parliament."
Yes, that was my life with me in it, alive and kicking. That day, when the Serbian people in the streets of Belgrade toppled Milosevic, I was in those streets together with a million people. The streets and squares in Belgrade were not big enough to support a popular revolution of that size. Knowing that too well, the people had to cling together in dense crowds, just as they clung when three Belgrade generations lived in a single small flat. Like people jammed into a rusty Belgrade tram. Like people huddled in a queue for oil, for pensions, for everything the war had denied us.I stood glued to other people in front of the Serbian parliament, October 5th 2000, daring not to move or speak, because if I jostle or yell, the others will, and the vast million headed beast may get angry, and explode, or implode.
We all feared the beast we had become part of, the beast we had made after years of silence and suffering. This King Kong organism was slowly moving towards the center of government, and my position was slowly getting closer to the bolted doors of the politically gated clique that had looted our lives.
The first row of people approached the steps of the parliament, as in the Eisenstein film Battleship Potemkin. Individuals peeled from the million headed beast. As a bold and dashing political adventuress, I was safe in the second line
Then I realized that the first line no longer existed. There I stood, holding hands with my best friend, so as not to split and be shoved apart. We are meandering in front of the evil building, which falling under the attack of protesters turned rioters. Glass is shattered, furniture flung out out the windows, flags torn down and new flags hoisted, screams and tear gas... but the Bastille is falling...
Suddenly, flames and smoke... the police become firemen, revolutionaries become looters, journalists become historians... As we pick our way through the burned overturned cars and smoldering furniture, world media is filming us. Jasmina appears on the screen that night as a Belgrade scavenger and looter.
My father sees me on the TV: He is happy I am there. He does not care if I am the good guy or the bad guy, he cares for the winning side. I am winning there alright, he'd better stick to me, he thinks.
His nation is still burning, and I am saving what can be saved out of the flames. Forty years ago, his generation did the same thing to the predecessors of the communists. He was one of them; he always claims he never looted or killed anybody, and that he earned everything through civil service to the new government. I believed him. But I know that there were no borders between civil servants and the revolutionary Communists. Their system was set up to assure the total power of a party vanguard. And he was one of them, the rebels turned the privileged, who did their best to nail the casino wheel of history into place.
Of course I was not a looter, the CNN camera makes all rebels into looters by definition. But my historical battle was that of yet another Balkan looting raid, against one's own parents and history. Not one Balkan war was ever won with clean hands. We all had to scavenge to clear the dirty backyards of our parents; every Balkan woman is a rubble woman. Today the revolutionaries, tomorrow the derelicts. A turbulent graveyard of other people's empires and religions, where every firm foundation is a polyglot and multiethnic mass of rubble.
My mother died in time to preserve her illusions. She died 11 months before my revolution, and did not want any of my rhetoric. Her firm allegiance to her ideals, to her big utopian realm of social freedom, was never lost to her, and was warm in her heart until her last days. On her deathbed she offered us speeches of justice instead of departing kisses. She died with a light and free heart, asking for lemon cake. My mother was a looted soul.
Crossing through the gates, the invisible borderlines; Pier Pasolini wrote about prostitutes, going through the frontlines of war safe and happy, because as women, they were considered loot, trade-goods, by both sides. The camp-followers never bothered with causes or allegiances; for them it was just Rosa and Maria versus the armies of anonymous clients.
Whenever you trespass and you escape apprehension and punishment, there, you are invisible. Better sometimes to become visible, and face the punishment.
My daughter as a small child used to plead for attention:
"Please, Mom. Tell me it is all my fault and that I am guilty!"
"It is all your fault, honey, and you are indeed guilty. But before you, it was me. And before me there was your grandma, and then before her mom, great-grandma Zivana, and then her sick mom with asthma in a wheelchair... and then I don't remember those women anymore, but that is how it works."
Women, always doing something they should not have done. Grandma Zivka for example, dressed as a true lady, telling her husband she was meeting a lady friend for coffee, then sneaking to a military parade where she hoped to catch one glance of the awesome Tito -- the nowhere man, the self-made leader, the self-named rebel who fooled his enemies with his parallel lives. Rumors flew that there were many Titos, all living and ruling under that name.
Well, my grandma Zivana didn't read much -- but oh, those big shining tanks that seemed never to have fired a shell. Those fine young men dressed so neatly in ironed uniforms. We women love uniforms, men say, but I think women like men in uniforms, as opposed to men in the raw. Just as women love women in cosmetics and gowns, as opposed to raw women, like themselves.
So dear, old Zivana would stand well behind in the front row, jumping to peek over the shoulders of the taller guys and girls before her, with her handbag banging them. Until they lost patience, and so did she, and she elbow her way to the front of the crowd and once...
Just once she even crossed the great parade to the center of the road, where she could see the vehicles better, by crouching on her knees and her forearms, under the tires and treads. She emerged scratched and dirty, but with her dainty handkerchief and a little perfume, she restored herself. Zivana's transgressions were those of a woman who never fought for political rights. Instead, she just performed them.