European Values And Bosnian Grandparents
By Milan Djurasovic
18 May, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Grandma talks at grandma’s house. Grandma talks a lot at grandma’s house. Grandma talks at grandma’s house until tingling and crawling along the spine appears which then quickly spreads and numbs each cell in the brain of an unfortunate soul who,for some unfathomable reason, decided to accept the invitation to drink a cup of coffee in our always stuffy living room.For the members of the immediate family who over the years have developed various defense mechanisms against grandma’s vocalized memories and endless diatribes, the consequences of the mentioned self-regulating biological process in which the nervous system shuts itself down as a precautionary measure are blurry vision and periodic sighing, but they are a trifle compared to the grumbling of the bowls and fleeting blind spots and pounding pain in whichever temple happens to be closer to grandma’s fluttering lips, symptoms which, thank God, are now only experienced by the ill-fated guests of our modest home on the left bank of the bluest river of a town which, according to its every fifth resident, isthe most beautiful place in the world. The town I am talking about, of course, isMostar.
Grandpa’s ears, unless they are ambushed by grandma’s wailing during moments of inattention when he forgets to take out his hearing aid,unlock their musky pathways for only thirty minutes every evening so that Bosko, the son of our neighbor Miladin, who recently becamea news anchor on the main national TV channel, could remind him of the farce his country has become and in that way alleviate some of the self-reproach and guilt he feels for a numberof foolish decisions that have been made in his personal matters.
Grandpa also reads three different daily newspapers which he gets every morning from the same kiosk where Milica, a bosomy single mother of three,while stacking boxes and rearranging her merchandise, is burdened with an additional task of shooing away a gang of hoary early risers,who because of their age and slow reflexes are terrible at averting their gazes whenever their painfully stretched eyes and puckered eyebrowsare caught glued tothe poor woman’s cleavage.
If you had a chance to observe my grandfather, as I have on many occasions, as he slyly steals a glimpse of Milica’s breasts, it would be instantly clear to you that, to him,Milica’s bosom means much more than a dozen seconds of ambiguous pleasure. Yes, if one is to be completely truthful, carnal impulse is a part of the reason why grandpa goes to Milica for newspapers instead of buying them in one of the kiosks located just underneath our balcony. There is also the reliable rush of delightful nervousness born out of a possibility of getting caught doing something inappropriate, which reminds grandpa of his childhood and makes him giggle out loud. But most importantly, for grandpa, Milica’s bosom is a simple but invaluable daily reminder to cheer up and stop being so fearful because not everything under the sky is ugly and gloomy.
Grandfather really reads those newspapers he buys from Milica. He reads everything he gets his hands on, from grandma’s prayer books to uncle’s car magazines; he reads each page carefully and he reports on them even more thoroughly.
Four grades of school was all grandfather was allowed to finish before he was pulled out by his father who needed help feeding their enormous family, and recollections of the lessons he was taught by his gentle and all-knowing headmaster Aleksandar Trisic considerably outnumber the stories of numerous Second World War adventures and tragedies which had cut the number of grandpa’s family members in half. After the occupiers were kicked out, there were fewer mouths to feed and grandpa returned to school for another semester. This time, two months of lessons was all grandfather was able to endure before he left, never to return to school again. The headmaster Trisic had disappeared just before Germans arrived and along with him he took grandpa’s curiosity, which was returned intact to its owner many years later along with an omnipresent fear that he would never be able to make up for the lost time. This is the reason why every day grandpa buys three newspapers instead of one.
On the morning of May first of the year two thousand and fourteen, while digesting every word of an article about how the International Monetary Fund had ruthlessly and relentlessly stabbed the infirm but still breathing and conscious corpse of Yugoslavia until it tore it to dysfunctional shreds, our three middle-aged cousins, who escaped to and have been living in Germany since 1992, knocked on our gate, interrupted grandpa’s reading binge, and asked us to feed them (indirectly, of course, because European values frown upon unconcealed rudeness).
“We just love that mushroom soup you make,” was how they greeted grandma.
“Do you still make that delicious cheese?” was what they said as they shook grandpa’s hand.
“You are fatter than before!” they shouted at me in unison. Since I had nothing edible to offer them, they alternated between treating me like dirt and completely dismissing my presence.
Grandma took Igor, Marko, and Filip into our living room and warmed up their deliberately starved stomachs with a shot of rakija before serving them a pot of buttery mushroom soup and a plate of thickly sliced goat cheese.
“I hope you get the runs you greedy hyenas,” grandma murmured a sentence audible only to those whose ears were trained to pick up scrambled sounds of such wavelengths springing from a toothless mouth and cloaked in a wet lisp.
After they devoured everything in our house, our European guests gave us unsolicited reports on the achievements of their children in the fields of music and sport, and they preached about the bright days which were bound to come to those who work hard. They told us that they are staunch supporters of democracy, that work is virtue, and that their biggest fear is the obvious scarcity of culture and work ethic in the countries surrounding the Western and Northern Europe.
“But Germany exports all kinds of weapons to Saudi Arabia,” grandpa protested. “I read it was because German tanks are equipped with a very good air conditioning system.”
“That is done so that Saudis can maintain peace and security in their country,” said Igor briskly.
“That’s right. Germany’s committed to the values of freedom and human rights,” said Marko assuredly.
“You are ignorant, old man!” barked Filip. “You make good cheese, that is true, but democracy is something you obviously don’t know anything about.”
“Germany’s weapons sales are a step toward calming tensions in that region,” said Igor.
“If we had sold some of those weapons to Ukraine,” added Marko, “there wouldn’t be any Russian soldiers in Crimea today.”
“Territorial integrity of Ukraine has been violated old man, and you complain about Germany selling weapons to Saudi Arabia,” growled Filip. “What Russians are doing in Ukraine is what we must focus on.”
“But I read that there are still forty military bases and over forty thousand American soldiers on German soil,” grandpa objected. “I also read that Germans had trained and equipped the Russian soldiers who are now in Crimea.”
“How many times do we have to tell you that weapons sales area matter of peace and strong national security?” said Igor.
“It is also about defending the values of freedom and human rights,” said Marko.
“Old man!” howled Filip. “All that reading hasn’t taught you a thing about how democracy works.”
As our guests crowed and pounced on grandpa like aggressive cocks nourished with garlic and shotgun powder and armed with rhetorical pecking reflexes conditioned to inflict mental stupor and other psychological wounds on their victims whenever a few rays of light were shed on the hypocrisy of their firmly implanted convictions, I noticed grandma sitting in an armchair behind the three tidily dressed marionettes, shaking her head and occasionally throwing her arms in the air in hope that everyone would turn around and allow her to tell a story or two about the agonies of her childhood. I sensed that she felt insulted that no one was paying attention to her and ashamed because she was unable to add a single word to the topic that was completely foreign to her.
I also thought that stories of how grandma, just after her twelfth birthday, wrestled and broke all four legs of a wolf that attacked her goats, or how she was able to chop more wood in one hour than any boy in her village could for an entire day,were far more amusing than themushroom and cheese flavored gibberish which gushed out of the mouths of our guests.
After a few more grunts and other unsuccessful attempts to draw attention to herself, grandma stood up and with bowed shoulders went to her room. I waited another ten minutes to hear a bit more about democracy, but when it became clear that all that was said went in at one ear and out at the other, and that, therefore, I wasn’t going to learn anything I would benefit from, I also got up and walked over to grandma’s room where I found her sitting at the edge of her untidy bed with red eyes full of miniature tears.
“It’s like a foreign language,” grandma said before I even had a chance to ask her what the reasons for her sadness were.
“They keep yapping, and I listen carefully, and I understand most of the words they say, but I haven’t the slightest clue what they are talking about. I watch the news every evening and before I fall asleep I repeat it to myself, only to lose it from memory the following morning. I am stupid. I don’t know anything. I was brought up badly. I can’t think as fast as they do!
After a moment of silence she looked up at me with her red, puffy eyes and asked: “Do you know what democracy is?”
“I don’t,” I answered honestly. “I don’t think anyone does anymore.”
I sat down next to her frail and slightly shivering body and said: “So what if you don’t know about democracy; you are the glue that holds our family together; and that’s enough.”
“That’s a cliché so old it already has gray hair and yellow teeth,” grandma said. She then hugged me and didn’t let go for what must have been longer than a minute. Since our cheeks were pressed together, her tears were transferred onto my face and rubbed into my skin. It was by far the most uncomfortable minute of my life, even more uncomfortable than the time I accidently farted while laughing in front of my academic advisor as he joked about the sloppiness of my dissertation.But, I decided to stay put and endure it.
This story is courtesy of Milan Djurasovic, a graduate student at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He is a regular contributor to Kosovo 2.0. and Colors magazines.
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