Entangled in Yugoslavia: an Outsider's Memoir

Entangled in Yugoslavia

an Outsider’s Memoir

Stephanie Allen-Early

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition - Copyright © Stephanie Allen-Early, 2009

Published by Stephanie Allen-Early

allenearlystephanie@yahoo.co.uk

First published Y.B.S., Belgrade

ISBN: 978-86-913053-0-7

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Map of Former Yugoslavia

Part 1

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Three

Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Five

Chapter Thirty Six

Part 2

Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Eight

Chapter Thirty Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty One

Chapter Forty Two

Chapter Forty Three

Chapter Forty Four

Chapter Forty Five

Chapter Forty Six

Chapter Forty Seven

Epilogue

Afterword

FOREWORD

A famous Polish publicist Adam Michnik once said, that at the time of the 'Solidarity' revolt, he was struck by the American journalists who would fly into Warsaw on Friday mornings to find out something about 'Solidarity' and its leader Lech Valesa, and return to the States on Monday as experts on Poland.

Many a book has been written about the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the last two decades. Some of these books are the testimonies of foreigners who had been in Yugoslavia long enough to compound the confusion and reinforce existing stereotypes. They recorded facts as the so-called objective chroniclers, not judging or blaming the warring factions, drawing a black and white picture which blurred the distinction between the guilty and the just. Frankly, in most of these accounts, one could even detect the hand of those who had commissioned them. In the media war that had preceded, and later on further instigated, the real war in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the experts that Michnik refers to in his statement, are the only ones that will never be held accountable by international justice. However this is a well-known story about the irresponsibility of those whose task is to report objectively.

Stephanie Allen-Early's book 'Entangled in Yugoslavia – ‘Memoari autsajdera' is the first hand account of a person who was not only an outside witness, but throughout the years spent in Belgrade travelled extensively and stayed in all the republics of the former Yugoslavia and was present at many neuralgic spots (by her participation in) humanitarian missions. Significantly, many of the people she talked to did not have a clear picture in advance of what was happening, but were just trying, amid the chaos of a disintegrating country, to make sense of the strange metamorphoses which people and ideas were undergoing and to understand their causes. As background to these events, there lay the pluperfect domain – the past which lies behind the past difficult for foreigners/outsiders to grasp. For most outsiders, the notion of Yugoslavia meant an idyllic concept of a country with five nations and three religions living together for almost half a century in harmony and understanding. It was puzzling for them later to find that five was not a definite number in the case of nations, and to make sense of the fact that religious adherence had all of a sudden become so significant in a country in which the majority of citizens never much cared for God's doings.

Stephanie Allen-Early’s book Entangled in Yugoslavia - An Outsider's Memoir is a memoir of a country that no longer exists, and it also addresses those generations who have no idea about what the country of Yugoslavia was like. What I consider most valuable in this book is the role of an objective chronicler recording strictly what she sees,( and she sees a lot) as well as what others did not want to see – she does not close her eyes to what might spoil the picture or ruin any preconceived ideas. Stephanie Allen-Early did not undertake to write this book to illustrate a given thesis nor is she addressing any potential public whose demands require to be satisfied by a repetition of the stereotypes current in the world’s media. Whatever she writes about is presented with its shadow, with a suggestion of what lies behind current events, a sense of what is happening back-stage. Because, as Jung said, it is not reason that creates history, but the currents of the irrational. Pandora's box once opened is very difficult to close before the persistent offenders of the past take their toll, and all that has been repressed begins its familiar danse macabre.

What makes this book objective are above all the testimonies of the people she speaks to. And they are varied, coming from almost all segments of former Yugoslavia, from different national and class groups. Most of these are 'mixed' for Yugoslavia used to be a country in which the 'bastard' felt at home. This was not a political achievement - all this ethnic diversity was the main value of the Yugoslav cultural model. And if Yugoslavia was in need of anything it was for another generation to forget the past. I am aware that the nationalistic chorus from all the former Yugoslav regions would now be opposed to this, as for them the primary motive is remembering anything that can act as a spur to hatred and ancient animosities that can only be settled by war. However it is worth remembering that the present European Community is based on Germany and France having taken the decision to forget centuries of hatred. Stephanie Allen-Early’s book offers readers a long Yugoslav menu of all that which could not or would not be forgotten. This book is a document by an observer who is anything but detached, a writer who lived long enough in the former Yugoslavia to understand the reasons for its failure and as in Kurosawa's Rashomon, listened sensitively to such different truths of what the people had to say.

Dragan Velikic

Map of former Yugoslavia

Entangled in Yugoslavia 1 - An Outsider’s Memoir

PART ONE

Chapter One

The room was dark with a low ceiling. Tree branches knocked against the windowpanes so I couldn’t see out into the garden. I didn’t like the room but I supposed I would get used to it. I would have to, I thought, as I dressed carefully for the cocktail party to welcome us to Belgrade.

I checked the guest list made up of the usual cross section of British Council contacts: academics from Belgrade University, teachers of English, attaches from other embassies and a sprinkling of politicians, whose job it was to liaise with foreigners. I recognised a few names, people I remembered from our previous posting.

At six o’clock, my husband Patrick and I were standing in place ready for the guests. The waiters had set up the card tables in the garden with their bottles of spirits, red and white wines, juices and trays of fresh canapés. I felt slightly embarrassed – a common emotion for me on these occasions - imagining that old friends would be surprised to see us back, dressed up in our finery. Why on earth have you come back here? I imagined them thinking and they would be right to wonder.

When I woke up this morning I couldn’t believe we had chosen to return to Yugoslavia. Yet I was responsible for the decision. I thought it would be better than making a completely new start, in Russia, which was the other posting offered. I persuaded Patrick to accept the job of British Council director in Yugoslavia on an impulse to recover the ground we once trod. I believed we would have a better time in a place we knew, where we were known and where we had once spoken the language.

But now I could not help feeling that it was a mistake. My desire to see this place again was incomprehensible. Nothing was as I had imagined. I had expected the garden - from now on our garden, which I knew from visits in the old days - to be leafy and beautiful, a place of calm and peace, but it was nothing of the sort. It was small and the house where we had to live was poky.

I downed several glasses of wine for courage and as the alcohol coursed through my bloodstream I felt more relaxed. Maybe it won’t be too bad after all, I thought. After all this is Belgrade, a place to which I owe a great deal. I am on firm ground here. I know my way around. I am not a novice in Balkan affairs.

I went to greet the old friends I recognised amongst the guests. Stalwart figures from the past, Dubravka, from the Yugoslav British Society language school, Ela, the daughter of a partisan doctor in Tito’s Yugoslav army, married to an artist, and many other old friends pleased to see us. The break-up of Yugoslavia was the topic of conversation. Slovenia had already defected. What would happen in Croatia? How could there be conflict with Croatia when the two republics were so closely linked? For those present at this gathering any separation was unthinkable. As we spoke there was a clattering in the sky. A giant helicopter flying low overhead sprayed the guests with some substance, leaving us spluttering. Drinks and trays of party food were poisoned. The military had come to kill us all, I imagined. The aircraft was so low it skimmed the tops of the trees and I could see the pilot. We were in his hands, absolutely vulnerable with our guests at our first cocktail party of the posting.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Dubravka after she stopped coughing. ‘It’s only the municipality helicopter dumping the weekly dose of insecticide. The mosquitoes are so troublesome at this time of the year.’

The pilot must have seen the party clearly, but he sprayed us anyway. Why? I wondered, the evening was spoiled. The party broke up abruptly and people gathered their belongings together and rushed away.

Chapter Two

Patrick and I had taken our time driving from London to Belgrade, stopping everyday to picnic at picturesque spots along the route. Once, in Hungary, we picked hot, ripe, June cherries from under the trees where we reminisced, remembering the first time we lived in Belgrade. That was in the seventies of the Tito years when Yugoslavia was considered to be a hardship posting, especially in winter when there was bad weather. Sometimes there were seasonal scarcities of food. We survived the lean months on bacon and cabbage. When summer came we made up for the deprivation and ate wonderful salads and vegetables. In autumn there were all types of sweet paprika and tomatoes. The state butcher in Banovo Brdo often had fresh meat. He would invite me to enter the walk-in fridge where he would reward me with choice cuts of veal for my fearlessness at breaking the rules. It was a childish thing to do, for it was amusing to buck the system at that time, when there were restrictions on relationships with Yugoslavs and a foreigner could not be seen to consort with the locals. Yugoslavs could get into trouble if they were over familiar. Despite the restrictions, we managed to make friends over the four years of that posting. Second time round we expected to find a more relaxed society, as Yugoslavia was in the process of modernisation. We were also older and wiser. I anticipated an easy posting cruising on the back of years of overseas experience. Having recently been evacuated from the Sudan, I was sure we could manage Yugoslavia.

But my sense of security was shattered the day we turned on the radio and tuned in to the BBC World Service. It was bad news. ‘Some areas of Yugoslavia are threatened by unrest’, said a newsreader, ‘the Foreign Office advises British tourists to leave. It isn’t a good idea for them to stay in the present climate’. That was the moment when we started to be realistic and realised we were not just returning to a familiar place to catch up with old friends.

Over the next few days we became aware of what lay ahead. The deadpan voice of the overseas service stated that Slovene ADRIA planes had been hit on the runway at Ljubliana airport by Yugoslav army missiles. The president of Slovenia could see ‘no democratic way through which Slovenia could remain part of Yugoslavia’. A statement from the Yugoslav federal government in Belgrade insisted that all resistance would be crushed and threatened war on those republics seceding from the federation.

International organisations condemned the brutal attempt by the federal authority to crush Slovene resistance. After two days of intense fighting, a cease-fire came into effect, just as we reached the Hungarian/Yugoslav border on a very hot afternoon and joined a long tailback of cars inching forward.

I felt faint with panic. When would we live in an ordinary domestic situation? After the Sudan we needed a break, not another war zone. How would we manage? Should we turn back before it was too late? What about our three children in London? How would they cope at a crucial juncture in their lives - newly settled at university – if their parents were caught up in another crisis? But we took no action to turn back and reached the point of no return: past the Hungarian barrier and into No Man’s Land, No Turning Back Land, where heavily armed Serbs in blue-grey camouflage uniforms assisted border guards in maintaining an intimidating presence. We watched the lengthy procedures as the guards barely spoke to travellers. Now and again one of them would amble off to an adjacent building carrying identity documents, which they did not stamp. Some passports were discarded on the counter of the kiosk.

Occasionally one car was allowed through the barrier while another was directed to join a different queue to wait an even longer time for clearance. I pitied the clearly identifiable Turkish workers - their cars laden with goods - on their way back from jobs in Germany and backed up in their vehicles for as far as the eye could see. They were being made to pay for the misdeeds of their fathers, whose empire once extended to encompass Serbian soil.

The guard that checked our passports avoided eye contact as he smoked, chewed gum and exchanged jokes with the uniformed men before finally giving us leave to cross the border and enter the Yugoslav autonomous province of Voj Vodina. We drove on past the familiar, single-storied, Hungarian farmhouses with their gables giving on to the road and the front door at the side of the house - a practical architectural arrangement I had always liked, making it safer for children to play. Outside the provincial capital of Novi Sad we stopped on the banks of the Danube and found the places where we used to have family barbecues. Then we continued on the last short leg of our journey to the city of Belgrade.

The Slavija Hotel, situated on the main trolley bus roundabout, had not changed. We knew it from former days and were not surprised to find the same receptionist at the brown-stained, wooden reception counter. She looked older and wearier as she gave us our room key from a cubbyhole behind her. She managed a polite greeting and I was somewhat reassured by the familiarity of her presence. I felt less anxious now that we had finally arrived at our destination. We ascended in the familiar slow lift to an upper storey and a dingy room, where the net curtains were impregnated with the smoke of many thousands of cigarettes. I saw grey sheets on the bed. It was impossible for linen to be white in polluted Belgrade where there was no fresh air to dry them, but why were they so small? The square eiderdown pillows also smelt of smoke. Immediately I wanted to wash my hands and entered the bathroom with the usual broken fixtures: dripping taps with a rust stain underneath and a bidet unsecured to the floor. I recognised with amazement the unique magnet soap-holder sticking out of the wall - a piece of simple Yugoslav technology, which stopped the soap from becoming slimy by keeping it suspended.

We descended to the depressingly familiar empty restaurant for dinner with the predictable rudimentary fare on offer: little meat balls with no spices called cevapcici; meat cooked on a stick - either pork or veal - called raznici; cabbage salad and fried, breaded cheese. Seeing Beluga caviar at a modest price on the menu