I am asking you to help us, give us a chance to express ourselves because we will never attack our homeland or leave it in the lurch. I am not seeking praise, just respect and help. I am asking you to help us solve our big problem, and that is our housing problem, as soon as possible because I wish to earn a university degree, and under these conditions I cannot study (my grades at the gymnasium were excellent). I don’t know how we can realize our right because Mrs. S. K. from the Defense Department housing commission said there are no criteria for granting apartments, but we submitted our petition years ago, in 1991.
In this little room in Kumrovec it’s hard, we have a table, three beds, and three hearts beating and yearning for your help, and you are, it would seem, our last hope. If we were pushed out of Vukovar, don’t let us be pushed out of Croatia, we should have our place under the Croatian sun. The worst for me would be to be forced to go abroad to earn a crust of bread for my mother and sister.
I want to thank you for having read this letter and please accept my apologies if I have taken your time. This is, I believe, the most sincere letter I have ever written.
Thank you in advance, sincerely yours,
J.B.
CROATIAN ARMY Center p.p.21
41295 Kumrovec
I knew my brother was super smart, but that he could come up with a letter like this on his own was more than I could have hoped for. I was certain, if the president read his letter, that we’d be given an apartment. I read it over and over till I’d memorized it all, I was so proud.
I saw Igor for the first time at the Oaza disco club. Not long before, Marina and I had been playing Barbies in her room every morning, and lighting candles every afternoon for the late great Kurt Cobain. On the day he killed himself, her sister, two years older than us, sobbed, hysterical and disconsolate, threw us out of the room; we had to admit we were still kids who couldn’t understand such pain, but we were also totally thrilled; she’d given us a glimpse at a whole new world we now wanted to be part of. For hours we played and rewound the cassette and yet never once did we ask what “Come as you are” meant, what mattered was to memorize every word, even if we didn’t get them right. We wrote them down the way we heard them and that was enough. It was our first step toward the world of grown-ups. We walked into Number Seven without a knock and I’d cooled off on Damir and then one afternoon around the Easter holidays he wanted to shove his tongue into my mouth when he stank of onions. And besides he adored Tony Cetinski and DJ Bob and wore clothes from WGW. At the New Year’s party the year before I’d danced a slow dance with him to “Plamen ljubavi,” and now we all despised it while we flicked our hair over our faces and hummed Azra’s “A šta da radim.” The clothes from Caritas were no longer humiliating, there were interesting pieces to salvage in various states of disrepair, exactly what we were looking for. Our mothers clutched their heads, and so did others when we walked by, and that’s what we wanted. I rummaged through Nana’s cupboard and was surprised at how much grunge was in there, I was most intrigued by a lilac-colored wool dress in a plaid pattern with a high waist. And when Mama told me I wouldn’t be going with her to Uncle Grgo’s in Zagreb to pick up my new shoes for the season dressed like that, I snapped back that I didn’t want his shoes anyway, the only shoes I’d wear were Docs. I have no idea how I spoke to her like that, and I must have really jolted her because next she was the one to surprise me: on Monday I walked into class wearing new dark-blue steeltoed Docs. The teacher looked at me in amazement and I said I’d forgotten my change of clothes. I could be forgiven because I’d never done it, at least not deliberately. As soon as I sat down a note was passed to me from Antolić that said: “My old man has boots like that for mucking out the pigsty.” I turned and saw him sneering. “Zagorje hick,” I almost said aloud, thinking there surely could be no salvation for this corner of the world. What could this miserable creature know about anything if he’d never even heard of Nirvana. Dumb Piglet. What I’d begun longing for was much farther from the time and place where I happened to be, and the closest thing to it in this mangy little backwater was Igor. His only bad side was that he was born in Zagorje, but thank heavens, his father was from Slavonia; once we found that out there was no longer anything preventing a fatal romance. Before I’d seen him, I’d heard of him from Marina’s older sister. He was difficult to bump into just anywhere, he was already going to a high school that specialized in ceramics, but on Saturdays he was always, without exception, at the local disco, the Oaza. It had turned into a kids’ club, because nobody else would be caught dead there. But for teenagers it was the only place to have fun. I knew the hardest part was yet to come, and this was to convince my mother she should let me go there one Saturday, just one, and then I’d never have to go anywhere again for the rest of my life. That was, roughly speaking, my argument. I’d need more of one, and Marina’s parents weren’t indifferent as to where she went, either, though her sister had already made the leap into the Oaza. My brother was useless because he couldn’t care less about going out with friends, smoking and drinking, and everything else a boy his age was supposed to do. So we came up with a plan. When I pleaded with my mother to allow this last thing in my life, I’d tell her Marina’s dad was letting her go, and if he heard from Marina that my mother gave me permission, he’d come at midnight to pick us up, though the disco was right around the corner from the Political School. Meanwhile Marina was batting her eyelashes at her dad while she explained to him that my mother was letting me go only if Marina could, and if he came to pick us up at midnight. He agreed almost immediately and everything would have gone smoothly if at that very moment the phone hadn’t rung. Of course my mother was on the line, she’d probably sniffed out our ploy by instinct though this was the first time I’d ever lied to her, and she wisely sensed it wouldn’t be the last. They realized we were pulling a fast one but we were still adorable and with the mitigating circumstance that until that time we’d never misbehaved, to our amazement, they let us go.
It was a spring evening and, for once, the air wasn’t rank with the pigsties across from the hotel, we could smell a pinkish cast to the sky, and we tasted a totally new flavor of excitement. Of course it was chilly and of course I’d left my jean jacket in Marina’s room because the slim cotton sweater looked way too good, and the pants were worn through on the butt and besides where would I have left it while I was dancing. Over my shoulder I carried a blue leather clutch and I was feeling practically thirteen, sometimes it felt like that, exactly like that. When we raced down the stairs and found ourselves outside on the road, Marina removed something carefully from her pocket, giggling, and tucked it into my clutch. “Hey, what’s up, what’s that?” I asked. “Oh, it’s for later and if someone should ask.” She was holding two York cigarettes she’d pocketed from her sister. I, too, laughed because it’d never occurred to me to smoke, but tonight it all made sense. The Oaza opened at 10:00 p.m. We were in front at ten till because at midnight we’d have to go. We were almost the first ones there and pretended we were out for a stroll until enough people had gathered that we could go in. We didn’t want to be lame. Through the murky colored glass we could see the outlines of heads at the bar so we decided: “Let’s go,” I said. For the first time in my life I smelled the sweetish reek of stale smoke and alcohol and it made me dizzy. From that evening on, excitement had the flavor of vodka juice and laughter through coughs over a crumpled York. It was the beginning of freedom and pain.
Two older men were sitting at the bar; one was a puny guy, patched together, maybe a little slow, you couldn’t tell his age. As soon as they noticed us they began chuckling. “Hey, girlies, wanna dance?” wheezed the little rat, narrowing beady bloodshot eyes. “Come’ere, come’ere,” the yellow teeth beckoned, we pretended not to hear. We were disappointed that aside from them, the two of us were almost the only people there, but being in this legendary place that put us on a par with grown-ups, even if it was only grown-ups like them, was a genuine thrill. We sa
t in one of the booths and ordered colas. The room filled slowly, and Marina figured this was the right moment for us to smoke. She’d already tried smoking before but didn’t like it so she held the cigarette between two fingers and tapped at the ash. She offered me one but I didn’t want it. One of my brother’s buddies might see me and tell him, and then I’d be in trouble. I thought I saw one of his friends, there were kids his age around. On the podium were little guys in rubber boots who’d come straight from the barnyard, there were babes wearing blue eye shadow and batwing sleeves, Piglets and Piggies of all shapes and sizes, but no one good-looking or a slick dresser. Either there weren’t any like that, or they’d be arriving later. Our Vukovar crowd was there, too, and I could spot them easily. The boys: collar up, sweatpants, perfectly white sneakers. The girls: tight Levi’s, dark, close-fitting T-shirts. Not to our taste. We got up to go to the restroom so we could check out whether anybody new had arrived. By then the place was crowded and as we made our way to the bathroom door, I saw him. There he stood, leaning against a wall, alone and so good-looking it hurt. Different. Long curly hair flopping across his boyish face, not because he still looked like a kid, but he was pale skinned, with big blue eyes, a little snub nose. I knew he was definitely the closest we could come to Cobain in Zagorje. “See him? Holy shit,” said Marina. “Hey, watch your language, sure I saw him. Cute,” I shot back, still looking his way. He wasn’t smoking or drinking, he stood there, leaning on the wall, his eyes half-closed, like he was pained by everything. You could see he’d figured it all out, he was misunderstood and unwilling to waste words. There was no one like him at the hotel or at school and we were ready. Marina had already perfected her hobo look, while I was still a mama’s girl so I thought he’d notice her, but still I checked him out as we walked by on our way back to the booth. She, too, looked him over, all’s fair in love and war. “Good evening, friends, and welcome to the Oaza disco club!” rang out over the speakers, we looked at the clock and it was a quarter to twelve. Time for these Cinderellas to go.
“Hey, up and at ’em, breakfast will only be served for another twenty minutes,” said Mama. Her words sounded different than usual, like she was teasing me because I couldn’t be stirred. I knew she was thinking about my night out and wanted it to be crystal clear that she wouldn’t tolerate my sleeping in. Then and never again. But it wasn’t just that I’d gone out. I’d been in bed just after midnight but couldn’t fall asleep. I shut my eyes tight for ages, but my ears were still throbbing with the blaring music and the whole new world I’d tasted. Outside the hotel, over the fence, inside me. Little darling, baby sis, far away from Mama and my brother. I got up lazily and presented Mama with a bare-bones report. “Good, glad you had a nice time,” she said in a careful voice and in her tone I could hear, unsaid, “Glad you had fun, but don’t think you’ll be doing this every Saturday.” I knew my mother fairly well, as she knew me. “Your shirt’s on inside out!” she called after me when I’d already closed the door. “Exactly.”
Instead of going down to breakfast I went to Marina’s room and knocked softly. No one answered so I cracked open the door and in the murk saw her and her sister each fast asleep. They had their own room, lucky girls. There was no one I knew eating at the restaurant, none of my crowd, only my brother, finishing his breakfast at a table with four chairs by the door to the terrace. At the hotel he had no crowd of his own, just Jelena’s brother, who was a little weird. I think that’s why others found him interesting, especially girls, though I couldn’t see why. I was his opposite, and we steered clear of each other, especially in public. When we were in our room we fought. I sat alone at the other end of the restaurant and he nodded, registering me as he left. More and more he’d been saying I was stupid, and I’d been cultivating an air of indifference; I often shot back with retorts. The worst I’d come up with was that he was Satan, but only because he’d started saying mean things to Mama: that she was incompetent and that any eighth-grade idiot would have found an apartment and a job already. One evening he even slept on the armchairs by the front desk and didn’t care when Mama pleaded with him to come back. That’s when I said it. When I was little and he pulled my hair or teased me in other ways, I’d lie in bed, seething, and imagine him at sixty, limping with a cane, tripping and falling, and me, some ten years younger, standing to the side and smirking, never offering a helping hand. Then I’d remind him of all he’d done to me, turn, and go. Now I longed for him to graduate from high school and go on to the university, to a dorm, anywhere, and free us from his outbursts. He only ever seemed to pick fights, never lending a hand except for his letters, the only good thing he did. Not long after he sent the first one he received an answer in which they addressed him as sir and the head of the Military Cabinet issued its recommendation to the Defense Ministry that our family be helped and granted an apartment. Nothing came of it. We waited because we thought it might mean something. After the first, my brother wrote a second letter, and when I read it, I thought nobody would ever write back to us again.
August 24, 1995
Ministry of Defense
Welfare Administration
Deliver to: Head, Lieutenant K. Č.
Dear Sir,
Enclosed please find a copy of the letter I received in response to a letter I sent to our president, Mr. FRANJO TUDJMAN.
I have only one question: can you as head of the WELFARE ADMINISTRATION help and do you want to help my family and me solve our basic existential question? This is about an apartment. My father was taken prisoner on November 20, 1991, at the Vukovar hospital by Major Veselin Šljivančanin and the Yugoslav People’s Army. Nothing is known about what happened to him or many others, he was a member of the Croatian Army and he never left Vukovar; he stayed there as did many others to the very last. I know we are not the only case, but I also know that many other petitions were resolved long ago.
Why didn’t you feel the need, after my letter addressed to our president, to call me or my mother, consider our problems sincerely, and try to do something to help us deal with the problem?
Mr. Head, you spoke with me and my mother when you were at the Apel center. My mother came to see you at your office after you became head of the Welfare Administration. Our names are in your diary, you promised you’d look into the files and make an effort to resolve, at last, the cases from 1991.
The president’s office referred us back to you. And you and we received the letter the copy of which I am enclosing, and I am asking you: What now?
My father is not by my side to help us, your children have you, you love them and care for them, but please remember my sister, mother, and me and the other families who have suffered as we have.
Sincerely,
J.B
CROATIAN ARMY p.p. 21
41295 K.
However only a few days after my brother sent the letter, he received an answer. It said:
August 30, 1995
Ministry of Defense Mr. J. B.
Welfare Administration CROATIAN ARMY Home p.p. 21
Zagreb 41295 K.
Dear Mr. B.
On July 7, 1995, we received your letter addressed to the president of the Republic of Croatia, Dr. Franjo Tudjman, with the petition to help you regulate your regular payments and your housing problem.
The Act on Amendments to the Rights of Croatian Defenders from the Homeland War entered into force on the day it was published in the Official Gazette, on June 1, 1995.
The Hotel Tito Page 7