serbs

Recently when I lose my good woman, I think I’m about to lose the Serbs too. I never intend to fall for a Serb, still find it remarkably unlikely. But having done so, I’ve learned much about the Balkans and the Serbs.

My good woman has circles of friends. They touch on the occasion of her birthday. Her inner sanctum, her kružok, is a group of Serbian women psychologists who meet every month to discuss weighty and not-so-weighty matters of psychology, and life. Stojanka (Koka) is the oldest and she’s the force.

There’s a bunch of Snezas, five of them, none known to the others, but my good woman knows them all. Ĉeĉa (pronounced Tsetsa) and Bata also come without links to the other friends. Ĉeĉa works for Melbourne’s only Serb newspaper. She’s smart as and has a great sense of humour. I like her a lot.

A group of eight meet regularly. The occasion last night is Rada’s fifty-second birthday. Rada is from Pristina, capital of Kosovo, dotted with Serbian Orthodox churches, regarded by Serbs as their heartland, now independent and 90 per cent populated by Albanians. It is in Pristina that Slobodan Milosevic calculatedly lights the fuse for the Third Balkans War.

Rada’s husband Stan (Stanko) is an Aussie of Slovenian descent. Like me he speaks no Serbian (Srpski) and the others all speak English on our behalf. They are courteous to a fault. Zoran is alone tonight, his wife Jasmina dancing—her passion—in Brisbane. He has a sly sense of humour, quietly wafting over you and later you get the joke.

Zeljko and Gordana (Goĉa or Goga) are Croat and Serb. They had an apartment in the Muslim section of Sarajevo. In the 90s Zeljko is in the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army, knows that Ratko Mladic plans the extermination for the Muslim section of the city. He gets word to Goĉa who escapes the siege of Sarajevo with just a pair of underpants in her pocket.

Her escape involves walking a street of snipers. She is stopped, the underpants incriminating. She tells the soldier they are for her old mother who has no underpants because of the siege and he lets her pass. Out of the city and out of her country.

All the Serbs are traumatised in their way, some more than others. They are traumatised by the world’s perception that they are the baddies of the last Balkans war. Through history they have been on the side of the good guys. They started The Great War but were on the side of the English. They sided with the Allies in World War Two, while the Catholic Croats out-Nazied the Nazis.

This time because of Milosevic, Mladic, and Karadžić the Serbs feel ashamed. The Serbs I know are intelligent, gentle people, but they are the very Serbs Milosevic drove out of Yugoslavia. They are the last generation who think of themselves as Yugoslavs first and they mourn the death of their country—the land of the Southern Slavs. I mourn with and for them, and their country.

Rock on.