A New Serbian Bride

The sensational interview with a Belgrade youth, published recently in one of the local dailies, certainly cannot have slipped by unnoticed by careful readers.  The youth graduated from the University of Belgrade and then — like thousands of those who shouted slogans like “I only want to graduate, and then I’ll emigrate” during the 1992 and 1993 protests — he really decided to carry out this collective generational threat.  He decided to go to Australia and came up with a scheme for getting his hands on an entry visa to that country, a scheme that is, to say the least, original.

Namely, in Australia his best friend is waiting for him, a youth who had left far enough back that he already has an Australian passport.  The University of Belgrade graduate will marry his best friend in Australia and as his bride or groom (the future couple have still not decided) will get permission to stay in that country unhindered — legally! because Australian law recognizes marriage between two men.  “Of course,” stated the resourceful Belgrade youth for local newspapers, “neither he nor I are homosexuals, so we’ll get divorced later.  The main thing is that I leave this place, and that I get my hands on the necessary papers.”

From the released initials of this youth it is, of course, hard to tell whether the bride/groom-to-be is or is not Serb.  Nor would it be possible, on the basis of this unusual case and the even more uncertain initials, to conclude that in a country in which it used to be said “how willingly a Serb becomes a soldier”, that now it is possible to say “how willingly a Serb becomes a ‘fairy’” — just to be able to leave this place.  That simply is not true, because there are still many Serbs here (especially those who are Serbs by profession) who are quite content to be where they are.  Of course, not even in their right mind would this latter kind change their passport or their sexual orientation just to be able to fulfill their dreams.  And the fact that they do have dreams is evidenced by their sleeping at home soundly, unmolested by conscription officers.

During that, now already distant year of 1992, when war was raging on all sides and the regime was tightening the noose around every democratic initiative, the student slogan “I only want to graduate, and then I’ll emigrate” appears to have inspired the poet Ljubomir Simovic to pose a fundamental question: “Are we incapable of showing Serbian youth any other path except for the one that leads to army barracks, trenches, hospitals, cemeteries, martial courts.  And is there no other alternative on this path besides emigration, distancing and the denial of one’s homeland.”

Several years later, when those who had exclusively ensured such a future path for Serbian youth and the youth of neighboring nationalities suddenly became peacemakers, students went out into the streets demanding democratic changes in society.  Their new slogan “Hey ho, on the attack we go” appeared far more optimistic, and for a moment it looked like University of Belgrade graduates would no longer form such depressing crowds in front of foreign embassies, or will spend their creative energy and know-how on expressing their love to their best friend of the same sex.  Since recently, guns are again being loaded here and trenches are once more being dug, the occupancy of army barracks is on the rise, crowds in front of embassies are growing, and students are once again protesting.  It seems like we are going back to square one.  Several days ago, at a students’ meeting at the architecture faculty, a graduating student urged her colleagues with resignation to give up on the protest due to the stifling of the university’s autonomy, concluding her address with the slogan: “Hey ho, to the West we all must go!”

Those who, at difficult moments for our country, always look further, who find reasons for optimism and think that one should not leave for the West at any cost, especially not with one’s eyes closed, will certainly not agree with the slogan of this resigned student.  There were such people around in the days of the war as well.  Many who crowded in front of foreign embassies in those days were being urged to stay with the following arguments: why leave now when Milosevic discovered oil in Stig; why leave now when we are making a Silicone Valley in Zvezdara, high-speed trains, the first Serbian submarine, and the all-purpose helicopter dubbed “Moma”...  Similar arguments can also be heard today — why leave now when the biggest disco in the Balkans, called “Madona”, just opened; why leave now when we just got an all-purpose Federal Premier who is really called Moma, when Milutinovic, the President of Serbia, is claiming that we have three times as much food as we need, when one of our managers claims that southeastern Serbia is floating on water, which it seems we are going to sell to the Americans.

All those who are not aware of this, and are merely paying attention to the police who are once again wielding truncheons in the streets, to swarming undercover men, to primitivism in parliament and threats of martial law because of Djukanovic, and on top of all that have a child who is nearing graduation from university — all such people have cause for concern.  To begin with, they should check who their child is contacting across the Internet, who their best friend is and where they live.  Of course, also whether the best friend comes from a good family, as the saying goes, and whether or not s/he is married.