Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ivan Brkljač
29 November is quite a shitty holiday, not because of what it used to be, but what it reminds of today. It’s easy to slip into the nostalgia or the illusion that Yugoslavia was the magical land where Tito laid golden eggs, while you could wave your red passport and walk over the 38th parallel … But here we are now, 29 November 2017 has passed, and where are we? Where are we, “the Yugoslavs” in this Bermudian triangle of ours, where future, prospects and smiles disappear? Where are we in this era of prosperity of our ‘brand new’ seven countries?
And just another question that my generation wants to ask the one that came before us. What did you do to us!? Why are we buried us in the mud and slit that you’ve left as your legacy, this mud that you allowed?!?
You’ve betrayed your parents’ victims, and you threw the future of your children upstream the Danube, somewhere to the surroundings of Schwarzwald – via Vienna and Bratislava – so they could wash old assess in geriatric homes of Bavaria and Switzerland.
We were counting on you – NOT to tailor our lives and deliver everything on a plate, but to GIVE US A CHANCE. We counted on you to give us the opportunity to be equal with the world, to dream our own dreams, to fight our own battles, adorned with the falcon feather. We hoped you would leave us at least as much as your parents left to you – just a handful of hope hardened with blood and sweat.
You defeated yourself, and you conquered us. And no, we do not even care about all the verdicts of The Hague Tribunal, all the poison gulped in the courtrooms, we don’t care about your plans for prosperity and an annual growth of 2%. We want to live beyond you and your legacy. We want to stride carelessly down Stradun, and with hangover down Baščaršija. Primož, Ante and Fatmir are not my enemies. That place is reserved for those from whom you ran away.
We are ashamed of Srebrenicas and borders, of wars and crimes, of our fleeing to the distant lands. We are ashamed of YOU.
As a staunch atheist, I would pray to the Saint Domnius, I would bow to Allah and would cross myself before the icon of St. Sava, if only a part of this illusion would become a distant goal – because I’m afraid of having to bow my head and hide my face in front of my children when and if we leave this to them as their future. I’m afraid that I will be the guilty one tomorrow.
So on behalf of all of us from 90’s-something, I left to come back – not to fix what is broken, but to create new with people like me. Each day making one step forward, and from you we only need one thing – to move aside once again, and to let us pass.
To you my “old man”, thank you for everything, but Yugoslavia is no longer, and will never be again. Long live Yugoslavia.
Signed by: The son of a Serb and a Pannonian Dalmatian, the brother of a Croat, the godfather of a Macedonian, the grandson of a Bosnian… A boy with a Slovenian passport writes from a village in Vojvodina. A guy from Novi Sad, Vojvodina, a Serb… A Yugoslav!