Miss Ex-Yugoslavia

by Sofija Stefanovic

I exchanged an eye roll with my sort-of friend Artur, who sat at the desk next to mine. Artur and I were both outsiders in the class, his outsider status due to his disability: a syndrome that left him with skeletal problems including underdeveloped arms, and mine because I had come from Australia. I felt that Artur, like me, saw through the classroom politics—the alliances people had, the hierarchy of popularity, how Ms. Danica was unwilling to dig a little bit deeper, to find some talent hidden among the less obvious students, who might just surprise her with the depths of their performances.

  As Artur and I continued to exchange our knowing glances, it occurred to me that Artur was probably in love with me. It made sense: we walked to the tram stop together after school and I didn’t tease him like some of the other kids did. I thought, If Artur is in love with me, I could sigh and tell the other girls, “I think he really likes me,” looking afflicted by the positive attention.

  Meanwhile, at the front of the class, the princess Nađa was being swept overboard. To demonstrate this, Nemanja and Nikola reached their hands helplessly toward Jasna, as she spun round and round, enacting the experience of being in a whirlpool, I guess. I imagined myself in Jasna’s place—not only receiving all the attention but being somehow so relaxed about it, as if she didn’t notice the loving glances of both Nikola and Nemanja.

  After the bandit saved the princess (a predictable ending, I thought), Nemanja and Jasna held hands, giggling as the class clapped. Barf, I thought, in English, using the lingo of a Baby-Sitters Club character, feeling some comfort that I still had this little thing, this knowledge of another language and another world that I could escape to, at least in my mind.

  • • •

  After school that day, Artur and I walked to the tram stop together. Our school wasn’t large enough for all the students to attend at once, so we went in shifts: mornings one week, afternoons the next. Today had been a morning school day, so we had a whole afternoon off. I’d bought a creamy Čoko-Moko ice cream, which I slurped loudly, and I was planning to spend the afternoon reading and forgetting about the class play.

  Enjoying my ice cream and the idea of a relaxing afternoon, keen to lift my mood further, I asked Artur straight up: “Do you like someone in our class?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact,” he said, and laughed.

  “Would you like to tell me who it is?” I asked, with what I thought was gentle encouragement, as we reached the tram stop, where we would part ways. He must be so nervous now, I thought, turning to Artur and tucking my hair behind my ear, just in case he hadn’t noticed my ears were pierced.

  “Jasna, of course!” he said, blushing and trotting off toward home as I stood there, dumbfounded. He turned back, and yelled, “I’m embarrassed now!”

  I wanted to yell back that I didn’t care—that my butt hurt for his embarrassment. But instead, I tossed the ice-cream stick in the trash and boarded the tram.

  I found an empty spot and stood there with my feet weirdly splayed. I wanted people to whisper to each other, “Look at that girl, she must be a ballerina.” Or “What an unusual way to stand. It must be uncomfortable for normal people, but it’s obvious, she is a dancer.” Faux-absentmindedly, I started to mutter to myself in English. “I must remember to pick up some cigarettes for Mom on the way home,” I mused out loud, hoping people would say, “Oh, she speaks English perfectly! This ballerina must be a foreigner, visiting our crappy city.” Instead of looking at me though, people continued to look ahead. Old ladies talked to each other with bags full of market vegetables by their feet, and teenagers in Guns N’ Roses T-shirts put cigarettes in their mouths, ready to light up when they got off. From the smell, it was evident that someone had brought pickled cabbage onto the tram and everyone looked around, searching for some old lady with a container of sauerkraut, so they could shake their heads disapprovingly. Less popular than some stinky cabbage, I stood there, waiting, unnoticed as always.

  • • •

  On March 9, 1991, Grandma Xenia was in charge of looking after a bunch of us neighborhood children while our parents went to a protest. Even though Milošević had won several months earlier in an election that purported to be fair, opposition leader Vuk Drašković barely received any airtime in the lead-up, thanks to Milošević’s control of the media.

  In response, Drašković’s party invited the people of Belgrade to take to the streets to protest the lies of TV Belgrade, to demand press freedom and oppose Slobodan Milošević. The March 9 protests drew a crowd of about one hundred thousand. Every now and then the crowd broke into a chant of “Slobo Sadame,” likening our leader to Saddam Hussein. They also chanted “CNN” because they wanted the foreign press to document their protest, so that they wouldn’t be forgotten within a dictatorship, like the countries behind the Iron Curtain had been. The protesters wanted the West to see them, to recognize their plight for press freedom and democracy, and support the opposition movement. They could not have known that it would take more than a decade until Milošević was gone, and that the push would come from within, rather than the Western powers they’d tried to engage.

  In the middle of one of the speeches, the police threw a canister of tear gas into the crowd (which the protestors later claimed was a move designed to provoke violence). People began to run from the gas, clashing with the police, who had surrounded the perimeter. The television, which my grandmother watched as she looked after us, showed demonstrators turning cars upside down, young men throwing rocks at the police. In minutes, the peaceful protest had become a riot. Grandma Xenia watched openmouthed as water cannons blasted the protestors and we children gathered around her, trying to spot our parents in the crowd.

  Soon, a policeman and a protestor were reported killed. “Good God!” Grandma said, turning on the radio to an opposition station so she could get more coverage of the event, hoping to hear the dead protestor’s name, and praying it would be an unfamiliar one. The army was sent into the streets. The official line was they were sent to “discourage vandalism,” but my grandma said, “Milošević is showing the opposition that he’s willing to use violence.”

  Aunt Mila, who was at the protest with my parents, called our apartment for news from my cousins, who had been at the violent forefront with the other students. While my aunt was using the pay phone in the Hotel Majestic, my mother went to the hotel bathroom and vomited from the tear gas. It was there that she met Neboysha and Tamara, fellow vomiting demonstrators whose Melbourne-dwelling relatives my parents knew. How far Melbourne seemed now, with its large suburban houses and grassy backyards. Through the glass of the hotel lobby, my parents and their new friends watched the smoke and water and chaos in Belgrade’s streets.

  Back in our apartment, Grandma Xenia ordered all the children to shut up so she could concentrate on the phone and news. When our neighbor, a little girl named Mira, started crying, saying she feared for her parents, Grandma Xenia snapped: “You! You are the only child here with nothing to worry about. You’re just here because you live in the building and I told your mother she could bring you! We know your parents are Milošević sympathizers, who are sitting comfortably at home while the rest of the parents put their lives at risk for our freedom!” We went to my room and shut up, staring at Mira with new eyes, while she cried.

  That evening, as tanks rolled through the streets of Belgrade for the first time since World War II, my parents came home, full of adrenaline, repeating the chants they’d been shouting all day and cursing Milošević. I told my dad what Grandma Xenia had said about Mira’s parents being Milošević sympathizers, not sure whether to sound shocked or as if this was common knowledge. In my mind, though the intricacies of the political situation were murky, I knew that the heroes were the opposition, and we supported the opposition. The villain was Slobodan Milošević, up there with Cruella De Vil and Psycho’s Norman Bates, and by extension, his supporters were villainous. But Mira’s parents had always seemed so nice, I couldn’t believe they’d tricked me into believing th
ey were “one of us” when they were murderous jerks all along.

  “Yes, they vote for Milošević,” my dad said. “That just means they have different political views to us. Milošević supporters believe in his ideas, and we believe in the ideas of the opposition. They are still our friends.” At first, this threw me, as it upset the neat narrative I had built of good versus evil. But somehow, that explanation also took a massive weight off my shoulders. It was just another one of those things that seemed contradictory but wasn’t, I decided. Just like how people can still love each other even if they shout and use curse words, as my mother had once explained. People can have different political opinions, and still be our friends.

  Later that evening, Slobodan Milošević went on television to explain that the army had been used on the people of Belgrade to combat the “forces of chaos and madness” that had taken over the streets. The opposition in Belgrade now knew that Milošević was prepared to take military action against them, and the people of Yugoslavia were reminded of who was in charge. Those in other republics were warned as well.

  • • •

  After the violence of March 9, the various opposition movements continued to build, though often they disagreed with one another, dissolving and re-forming. My parents and their friends had pins made with “Forces of Chaos and Madness” written on them, and wore them to their jobs at universities and other schools.

  Meanwhile, in troubled Croatia, which wanted independence from Yugoslavia, the city of Vukovar was boiling over, and people were dying. There were six hundred thousand Serbs living in Croatia, and Vukovar itself had a large Serbian population. The local Serbs, with the aid of paramilitary forces from Serbia, were laying siege to the city. Their reasoning was that if Croatia wanted independence, then Serbs would take villages with a Serbian majority, link them up and attach them to a new Yugoslavia. So, as far as Milošević was concerned, Croatia could have its independence, it just had to leave a chunk of land behind. After he had sent tanks into the streets of Belgrade, it was becoming obvious that Milošević was willing to use force.

  • • •

  In the fall, I went to nightly protests with my dad while my mother stayed home to care for Natalija. They were small vigils, and it was explained to me that the aim of the protest was a call for peace and solidarity: the candles we lit were for the people dying in Vukovar. As my father stood in his Driza-Bone coat, I walked Leo, an Irish setter belonging to another protestor, pretending I was there on my own, that I’d come to this protest not as a child following her father, but as someone who knew about politics, and who, importantly, had her own dog. I’d recently read Serbo-Croatian translations of White Fang and Call of the Wild from my dad’s library and I quietly talked to Leo as we walked, imagining that he could understand me in a way humans could not.

  On the way to a protest one evening, Dad and I encountered a woman walking a tiger cub on a leash. The woman explained that the cub had been born in Belgrade Zoo, but had recently been purchased by none other than the dreaded Arkan—a paramilitary leader my parents talked about in whispers. Arkan was one of the leaders of the nationalist Serbs in Vukovar; his volunteer soldiers, the “Tigers,” were apparently criminals and psychopaths. The zoo had entrusted this woman with looking after the tiger cub while he was too young to fulfill his paramilitary mascot duties. She told us the cub woke in the night crying like a baby, and enjoyed baths, trying to grab the stream of water coming out of the faucet with his large paws. I was allowed to pet him, as he moved his giant, babyish head from side to side. This cub would grow up to live in the unsettlingly Disney-looking castle Arkan had erected right near my grandma Beba’s house. Years later, I’d hear rumors of a full-sized tiger living in the compound that was guarded by Arkan’s armed guards, and imagine an adult beast stalking back and forth.

  The nightly vigils I attended with Dad were allowed to last for up to an hour, and the moment the hour was up, the police stamped out the candles we had planted in the ground. My dad and the other protestors laughed in their faces, calling them morons, but still we walked away, threatened with arrest if we stayed longer. We rode the tram home in our coats, Dad wearing his old beanie instead of the Akubra and with cotton balls stuffed into his ears now the weather was getting colder. We sang the unofficial anthem of the protest movement “Don’t cry, celebrate, with the people!” to the disapproving looks of older Milošević supporters, and, more often in urban Belgrade, to the nods of approval of those on “our” side.

  Even though I was only in third grade, I felt deeply involved in the political sphere, which made me feel closer to my parents and part of the adult world I longed to join. At my dad’s request, I had written a call for peace in English. It said: “I AM A CHILD OF 8 AND A HALF YEARS OLD. I WOLD NOT LIKE MY COUNTRY TO HAVE A WAR. WHY SHOULD WE FIGHT BETWEN OURSELVS? BETWEN OUR FREINDS? I WAS BORN HEAR IN SERBIA AND I DON’T WANT ENY WAR TO START! AND I WILL DO MY BEST TO MAKE PEOPLE ‘GIVE PEACE A CHANS!” To my great pride, my dad photocopied it, along with a somber photo of me, and added an English caption: “Seeing her parents active in anti-war and opposition movements in Belgrade 1991, a young girl decided to make her own contribution. She wrote this note in August 1991 and asked her father to send it to the world via computer (email).” He was proud of the email bit, as we were still another three years from the World Wide Web, and it made us seem technologically advanced. He sent it to media outlets in Yugoslavia and beyond.

  At one of the protests I accompanied my parents to, I stood at the front, looking up at the podium where Vuk Drašković was making a passionate speech, spittle flying from his mouth. My parents were impressed by him, and their enthusiasm was enough to make me excited, too. I watched the fervor in the speech of this man whose name meant “wolf,” and though the content of what he was saying was too complex for me, still I grinned, taken with the atmosphere of dissent, the passion of the crowd. I must have been one of his youngest, most visibly excited fans, because when he finished speaking, Vuk stepped off the podium, grabbed me, and kissed my forehead firmly, wetly, and everyone cheered.

  • • •

  In June 1991, Croatia declared its independence and asked the rest of the world for recognition. On the same day, Slovenia declared independence as well. The Yugoslav army was sent to Slovenia, and a ten-day war resulted, with Slovenia ultimately gaining independence from Yugoslavia. The small-scale conflict in Slovenia marked the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, and it was only a taste of the longer, bloodier wars that came. The real fighting would happen in areas that were more ethnically mixed, like Croatia, which would not gain its independence as readily.

  As fighting in Croatia raged, my parents and their friends started to speculate that Bosnia would be next. Because Bosnia was the most ethnically diverse of the republics, there was always a fear that, if nationalism were to arise, Bosnia would erupt into war. We have a saying similar to the English “Don’t stir the pot,” except it’s basically “Don’t stir Bosnia.” Bosnia was always seen as the bear of our country, asleep in a cave, and if you poked it, stirring up the nationalism that lay sleeping, there would be hell to pay. The people of Bosnia were now watching the rest of Yugoslavia start to implode, and the bear was stirring.

  • • •

  My favorite outfit when I was eight was a headband with tiny diamantés Grandma Beba had gotten from the market, a large color-blocked sweater, jeans, and loafers that made me look like a busy mom from the eighties. I’d been making regular trips to the video store, where I had been told that they didn’t have Grease—a film that came recommended by Aunt Mila—but they might get it eventually, which made me feel justified in going and asking for it every few days. But one day I was banned from going there because the mafia had attacked the café next door and put hand grenades in people’s mouths to terrify them while they robbed the place. To my parents it was a further sign of the country falling apart—organized crime taking over—but the incident had seemed strange to me, like something ou
t of fiction, and I found myself struggling to believe that violence was something real.

  That all changed when I went to school one day and Nikola, aka “Dicksie,” wasn’t in the classroom, harassing girls as usual. He wasn’t at school, we soon learned, because his father was dead. As Ms. Danica made the announcement, several of us gasped. Nikola’s dad had died on the front line in Vukovar. Ms. Danica said she would take our class to the funeral the next day.

  And with that, the war in Croatia became real to me. Thinking about Nikola’s dad, it suddenly occurred to me that my dad could die as well. My dad, who was so involved in the protests, who stood in front of the police holding up three fingers, the anti-Milošević salute of the opposition movement. My cousins Andy and Jovan had left college and moved by themselves to London, so they wouldn’t have to do army service and, God forbid, be sent to the front lines. It was only now dawning on me that if they’d stayed, my eighteen- and nineteen-year-old cousins could have been shot, as Nikola’s dad had been. I thought of Nikola, foolish Nikola, so eager to fake-hump girls and make stupid jokes, who was now at home crying because his dad was never coming back.

  Back at home, in a shaky voice, I told my parents the news, and then just sat in my room, not sure what to do.

  I heard them in the living room making calls to other parents of kids in my class.

  I wrote in my diary in large full-caps Cyrillic: “I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A FUNERAL.”

  I imagined what it might be like. Would we dress in black? Would Nikola be there, and were we supposed to talk to him, or hug him? Would his status as classroom sex pest be forgotten?

  I wouldn’t get to find out, since my parents decided that I wasn’t allowed to go.

  “But we light candles for people who died in Croatia . . .” I said, confused.

  My dad explained that Nikola’s father was a “Tiger,” one of the volunteer members of Arkan’s small and ruthless paramilitary force. The candles we lit were for the civilians who were murdered by people like Nikola’s dad, he told me.