zbwrites

[zbwrites]

Don’t mess with memories.

I’ve been away from home for too long.

Wait.

Home — what is that?

If it’s the most familiar place, the place where I grew up, the place where I lived my formative years, that place is gone. It doesn’t exist anywhere outside my memories any longer. The city and country in its exact geographical location — Zagreb, Croatia — doesn’t resemble in the slightest the home I keep inside me.

Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe it’s a feeling you get when you’re somewhere safe with someone dear and you are content. In that case, I never left home. But this isn’t about home, it’s about memories and why it’s better when things and people from the past live in your memories and not your life. Let me explain.

I watched a TV show a few weeks ago, some kind of entertainment show. They announced Sting, who just released a new album and was going to perform a song from it. I waited excitedly. I always liked Sting; his music was the background for many of my travels, long drives, and lazy evenings. I liked his songs, his voice, and looks. I saw him at a couple of concerts, loved his style and stage moves just as I loved his songs. Then he came on screen, and I sat in shock. There was this old dude in a sleeveless shirt, his wrinkly arms showing what must have been intended as muscles, but turned out to be sagging flesh. His face was still his face, just more wrinkled, and his hair was his hair, just much less of it. All that I could digest, except — he was moving, with a guitar hanging from his shoulders. Those movements were so disjointed, out of rhythm, uncoordinated. I was watching an old man trying to be cool and dance in the rhythm, but failing on tired, old legs and lagging behind the beat. Then he opened his mouth, and the Sting voice I know from all my playlists turned into something from those old vinyl records, scratchy and gravelly.

Okay, the man is 73, and looks fantastic — for his age! But this image forever tainted my memory of Sting from his 30s and 40s, who sang the songs I liked. Now when I hear them, this image of the old guy with a guitar, moving disjointedly, immediately comes to mind. Just like that, it screwed up a bunch of lovely memories.

When my wife and I moved to Croatia, where I grew up, after spending more than two decades in Canada, I had many moments like the one with Sting. I tried to reconnect with people from my past. And I tried to re-visit places where some precious memories played out when I was young. And, in doing so, I forever screwed up those memories.

For instance, I wrote about my judo days earlier. Judo was a huge and crucial period in my life. Even though it lasted only 12 years, it formed some habits and discipline which stay with me to this day. In those 12 years, I was a part of the judo team. Actually, it was more than a team — we were best of friends, especially Neno and me. We trained together, studied together, and partied together. I was there to lend a listening ear and give bad advice when he wooed a woman who became his wife. We knew each other better than our coaches and our parents did, and we trusted each other more than them. We created many happy memories. Even after I quit judo to become a photographer, we’d bump into each other and pick up where we left off.

When I left to Canada for good, as I thought then, I lost touch with Neno. Then I came back, aged and changed, and although I settled in a different city, he called and wanted to see me. He was going on summer vacation with family — with his wife and son whom I never met, and some friends. They had half an hour to spare while waiting for a ferry. I went to meet them and introduce him to my wife.

The guy I met was Neno, alright, but not my Neno. Just like I was and wasn’t Zoran he knew. Look, it is natural; he was a product of the times we shared, but also a much bigger portion of the time after that, which shaped him into a complete stranger. Actually, that’s not right. The reason why it’s all so shocking is because it’s so disorienting. There were parts of old Neno in this guy too, some old jokes, old slang, mannerisms... But there was also so much unfamiliar in him that after I asked about people we both knew from my judo days, and told him why we came back — early retirement — we had nothing else to talk about. We sat looking at each other with smiles slowly freezing on our faces while the conversation died an uncomfortable death. Even half an hour became too long, sitting beside each other, realizing we know nothing about each other and not knowing what to ask. I think it’s much easier to have a conversation with a complete stranger than with an old estranged friend. Later on, when I was in Zagreb and tried to reconnect for another drink, he wasn’t available. We were both probably relieved for that.

I can’t blame Neno for changing, and I hope he doesn’t blame me for becoming who I am today, a much different person than I was back then. The circumstances of life took us in opposite directions and we both are having difficulties reconciling who we were with who we are. And if we’re absolutely honest to ourselves, it doesn’t seem that there’s enough curiosity about the other left to bridge the awkwardness.

What I am angry about — at myself, and absolutely no one else! — is that I allowed this to taint the happy memories. I should have found an excuse not to go. I mean, I knew better! I knew we changed, I knew it would affect not only any possible future contact, but also the memories. And still I went!

This unfortunate realization was repeated on a few more occasions. I met with friends who knew me back then, and I didn’t fit into the mold they kept me, or, rather, the memory of me, in. They ended up avoiding me, and I too did my best to be as unavailable as possible. A similar thing happened with the places I kept in the fondest of memories. Favourite restaurants of old closed, vanished like they never existed. The whole neighbourhoods changed into something unrecognizable. Borongaj, the neighbourhood where I grew up, used to have a wood lot we called “šumica” (“little forest”) where we played as kids. It was separated from the apartment buildings by a little creek called Bliznec. It was a sorry rivulet littered with all kinds of waste, large and small, but it was there, the water trickling over discarded refrigerators and car tires, under several wooden bridges that took us across to explore the “forest”. Today, the creek is probably clean, but I can’t be sure because it’s paved over to create an asphalt boardwalk. Gone are the trees as well, sacrificed for more precious parking spaces and buildings. Having seen that, having walked over the undergrounded Bliznec, I’m now having a hard time recalling the scenes when our group of 8-year-olds, armed with branches and sticks, barricaded ourselves on the bank of Bliznec, knights of Borongaj ready to defend the neighbourhood from the “monsters” from the “forest”. Because, now that memory lands on a strip of asphalt looking into a parking lot.

It took me almost 8 years to learn this, but you can take it from me as a lesson well learned — DON’T MESS WITH MEMORIES! Don’t revisit people and places from the past. Think of them fondly and keep them inside you, but once you pull them out to the light of today, they won’t fit back inside your heart where you kept them.

[zbwrites]

A car that almost cost me… me!

Let me tell you about the day I almost didn’t make it, because of a car.

Now you’re thinking he must have had a close shave while crossing a busy road. That’s not what happened! I almost didn’t make it because someone liked the car I was driving! And didn’t like me. And he had a gun. A REAL gun, an assault rifle — an AK-47! A Kalashnikov! If you don’t know what kind of a rifle that is, Google it, I’ll wait right here.

The guy with the rifle also had a group of soldiers at his command, each with his own AK-47, while all I had was Javier and his letter. At the end, that proved to be enough. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Okay, let me start from the beginning. Not the “once upon a time” beginning, just the beginning of that day.

I was staying in Kiseljak, a small town at the other side of the mountains from which the siege of Sarajevo was laid. From Kiseljak, we covered news stories our team from Sarajevo couldn’t reach, because, well — they couldn’t get in and out of the city. We rented a house near the centre of the town as our base. On this occasion, two Spanish photographers stayed with me at the house, Santi and Javier.

Here I must take you on a detour to tell you about Javier. He’s important for this story. Quite likely, if it weren’t for Javier, there’d probably be no one to tell the story. He was a tall, lanky fellow whose long limbs were in perpetual motion, whether for the purpose of propelling him around, or for adding gesticulating flavour to whatever he was talking about. Because he was in constant movement, my memories of him are like those pictures of old when a person is in motion blur: you can tell he’s moving, but you can’t see his features clearly. Here are some in-focus facts (sorry about the photographers’ puns): Javier was a young man in his mid-twenties, with a shock of curly, light-brown hair and a Quixotish goatee. He was a freelance photographer on contract with Spanish print media. He arrived at the Associated Press office in Zagreb tagging along his best friend Santiago, an equally tall and lanky photographer, albeit with much more controlled moves. Santiago — Santi — was an AP staff photographer on his way to join the crew in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The duo ended up in Kiseljak hoping to catch a ride with a UN convoy, or another media crew going to Sarajevo.

The two of them arrived in a Suzuki Vitara with an Austrian licence. If you’re not a car person, please bear with me — introducing this car is important for what transpired later. So, about the Vitara: it was a souped-up metallic-grey mini SUV. By “souped up” I don’t mean any of the things that could come in handy, like mud or winter tires, a winch to help extricate the car if the wheels get stuck in mud, a roof rack where one could put extra fuel canisters, or anything that could help a person driving through Bosnia, where to avoid being blown to pieces meant driving the backcountry mountain roads. This “all-terrain” vehicle had none of the useful stuff. Instead, it had fancy low-profile, wide sport tires for asphalt and lots of buttons: power windows, power locks, fog lights, and other confusing flashing buttons whose purpose I didn’t have the time nor the patience to explore. The car was so tiny that the two tall photographers could fit in only if their seats were practically jammed against the back seat, making the Vitara effectively a car for two.

It’s unclear who rented the car, but it soon became the butt of endless jokes, as the SUV which can’t handle neither the rain nor rugged terrain. Rhyme intended.

At that time in Bosnia, one can categorize vehicles on the road in four categories: UN vehicles, painted white, usually large all-terrain vehicles such as Landrover Defender, Nissan Pathfinder, or similar; media vehicles, also painted white, also of the same large all-terrain kind, with “press” signs or the logo of the media outlet clearly displayed; military vehicles belonging to any of the armies or militias involved in the conflict, older and painted camouflage green; and a variety of beat-up vehicles driven by those few local civilians who could still scrounge for gas, in a variety of colours and degrees of rust. So, yes — the little Vitara stood out!

On that morning, Javier, Santi, and I were making plans for the day. Javier had a letter from someone in the Spanish defence ministry for a Spanish UN commander based in Jablanica, another small town an hour or so drive from Kiseljak. We decided that Javier and I would take the Vitara, drive to Jablanica, get some feature pictures[1] along the way, and try to deliver the letter, while Santi drove my Russian-made Lada Niva for the day. The reason being, we didn’t need a rugged car since the road between Kiseljak and Jablanica was paved and still undamaged by fighting. I admit, there was a moment when the thought of driving a comfortable vehicle was appealing. A friend once observantly pointed out that driving a Lada Niva was good for kidney health, sure to break your kidney stones into fine sand. Its suspension was rock hard, and seats only marginally softer than wooden benches, with a real danger of leaving one with serious bruising on the sitting parts. After weeks of driving the Lada, I could be forgiven for jumping at the opportunity for a ride with working suspension. So, Javier and I folded ourselves into the Vitara and drove off.

[1]: Feature picture is a term we used for stand-alone images which are not necessarily going with any particular news story, but illustrate the situation on the field. A generic, if you will, picture that can go with any story coming from Bosnia. For example, a shepherd in a sheepskin vest with a rifle over his shoulder was one such picture.

It was a pleasant drive. We made a few stops to take pictures and crossed a tall, curved bridge connecting two picturesque cliffs, slowly rolling into town. Now, you need to know that photographers see a picture everywhere, and photojournalists often imagine a whole scene that could play out in that picture. Crossing the bridge and looking at the cliffs around, Javier mused about a shot of a UN convoy — a SPANISH UN convoy — crossing it, taken from a high vantage point, a picture he could send to a magazine he freelanced for. Since the Spanish UN troops were based in the town, there was a pretty good chance he could get his shot if he’s willing to wait. As for the high angle — we saw an apartment building with a parking lot on a hill above the bridge and pulled over to take a look.

A couple of HVO soldiers[2] smoked in front of the entrance to the building. They leaned against the wall, their AK-47s slung casually on their shoulders. We got out of the car and I chatted with the soldiers, while Javier walked to the edge of the parking lot to check the picture angle. The soldiers welcomed a distraction, bored on their guard duty. They asked the usual questions — where we’re from, which news outlet we’re working for (since, with our cameras dangling around our necks, it was obvious we were journalists) and, of course, what were we doing there. One of them saw Javier disappearing behind the bush surrounding the parking lot and said between two puffs on the cigarette, “Tell your friend no pictures of the bridge. Strategic position[3].”

[2]: HVO stands for Hrvatsko Vijece Obrane = Croatian Defence Council, which was the de facto army of Bosnian Croats.

[3]: We all knew that was bullshit. The Bosnian war was all about neighbors fighting neighbors. The forces they were “protecting” the bridge from were the guys who lived beside them in the area and knew the bridge and its position as well as the yokels guarding it.

In covering the war, one of the crucial skills for a reporter is learning not to roll his eyes in front of a guy with the gun. I nodded, called Javier back and told him no pictures were allowed. He just shrugged.

“Too many trees anyway, can’t get a clear shot,” he said.

We thanked the soldiers, wished them good luck and got back into Vitara. As I reversed it out of the lot, a third person appeared through the door and exchanged a few words with the soldiers. He was bareheaded and wore no jacket, only a military sweater. I turned to back out the car and didn’t see them waving at us to stop until Javier put his hand on my knee.

“Zoran, stop!” — he hissed — “They are going to shoot us!”

Sure enough, the bareheaded guy held the AK-47 he must have grabbed from one of the guards, pointed at us and was ready to shoot, his fingers already on the trigger. I slammed the brake and we both put our hands in the air.

“Out!” — the bareheaded soldier yelled, motioning sideways with the tip of the rifle. We obliged and stood to the side he indicated, then were promptly dragged inside the building into a room near the entrance. The room was dark, small, and less than spartan. It had only a narrow horizontal window facing the parking lot, a dark and stained wooden floor baring marks and dirt of many boots. At one side was a single desk with a chair. Two classroom chairs were dragged into the room, and we were ordered to sit facing the desk. For a while, the commotion continued as more soldiers appeared, bringing our gear into the room and dumping it on the floor. The bareheaded man, who turned out to be the commander of the unit, finally entered and sat behind the desk, scowling at us. He was of an average height, sturdy built with receding hair and a weathered face which was all lines and sharp angles as if made of rock his town was built on. His eyes were black ice. He leaned in his chair and measured us silently. It was a schoolbook intimidation technique at its most basic. We sat quietly, waiting to see what happened next. Whether the barehead decided we were intimidated enough or just got impatient, he finally addressed us, asking who we were, what we were doing there, and demanding to see our IDs. We started lining up our documents on his desk. When we were finished, in front of him were Javier’s Spanish and my Croatian passports; both of our UN-issued IDs, confirming us as journalists; Javier’s Spanish Press ID; my HVO permit, and my Croatian-government-issued Press ID identifying me as a journalist sanctioned by the Croatian Ministry of Information.

Minutes dragged on while the barehead checked all this. Then he did the shorter version of the silent scowl again. Finally, he leaned his elbows on the desk and said: “You’re spies.”

Now, that in the war — ANY war — is a serious accusation, an almost death sentence. I translated it to Javier and we both started talking over each other, asking him to check our identities with any of the organizations whose IDs we carried. As if a guy from Jablanica could (or would) ring the UN office in Sarajevo, Zagreb, or Geneva. Or call the Ministry of Information. As if he even intended to prove his accusation. The more we pleaded, the more satisfied his smirk became. He repeated “you are spies” a few more times, calmly, obviously enjoying himself.

We grew quiet, staring at him, bewildered. Then Javier turned to me.

“Zoran, please translate what I’m going to say, word by word.”

Seeing my questioning look, he shook his head slightly and said “Trust me.” So I did.

Javier told him he’d been sent by the Spanish Defence Minister to do a story on Spanish troops serving under the UN, which were based in Jablanica. He was tasked with delivering a letter to the Spanish commander in town. He produced the letter from an inner pocket of his photo vest. It was in a sealed envelope which bore the sigil of the Defence Ministry of Spain. It was just the right dose of bullshit mixed in truth that it could work.

At the sight of the letter, uncertainty froze the smirk on the barehead’s face. To spice it all up, Javier added that we were expected at the Spanish base. He didn’t say it out loud, but he implied that the UN may be looking for us if we don’t show up. Ingenious! And how I wished any of that was true!

The barehead took the letter, turned it over, weighed it in his hands. I thought he might sniff it next. It was a conundrum he didn’t foresee. Finally, he said “I don’t believe you.”

But then, after a beat, he told two soldiers to gear up and escort us to the Spanish UN camp.

“Don’t let them go in. Make them hand over the letter and bring them back!” — he ordered.

To this day, I’m not quite sure how he thought the guards would be able to do this, detain us — well, detain Javier, a Spanish citizen — in clear view of Spanish armed forces. Maybe he was just gambling with the losing hand of cards he held.

While we walked down the road bookended by the two unenthusiastic guards, I asked Javier how he knew the barehead wouldn’t open the letter.

“I didn’t,” he shrugged, “but it was safe to presume he didn’t know Spanish and the letter is in Spanish. Even if he opened it, it wouldn’t matter!”

Another gamble happened as we approached the gate. I already told Javier how the guards were instructed to bring us back as soon as he handed over the letter. So, as we approached, he shouted in Spanish, identifying himself as a Spanish journalist detained by these soldiers and asked for protection. He may have — probably had — mentioned he had the letter for their commanding officer. In any case, Spanish soldiers at the gate pointed their rifles our way. On the watchtower next to the gate, padded with white sandbags, a heavy machine gun turned slowly towards our little quartet. We were ordered to stop while two blue-helmeted soldiers took our UN IDs — Javier also gave him his passport, bless him! — and seconds later, an officer appeared. He greeted us in Spanish, shook our hands, and cheerfully chatted with Javier in rapid Spanish I could not understand. The commander waved over a young, tall soldier, who turned out to be an interpreter. After a short exchange with the commander, he turned to our HVO escorts and told them that we’ll stay at the base.

“But, we have orders to bring them back,” stammered one of the guards.

“The commander will contact your superiors and explain the misunderstanding,” said the translator, and the Spanish officer motioned us to enter.

It was refreshing letting Javier do all the talking in the commander’s office. We were offered sandwiches and drinks, phone calls were made, soldiers and interpreters rushed in and out of the office, and finally we were bundled in a UN vehicle alongside the Spanish commander and another officer, followed by a large white APC[4] which took us back to the building where it all started.

[4]: Armoured Personnel Carrier, an oversized bulletproof six-wheeler vehicle with a machine gun on top. I guess in the safety protocol an APC must follow the commander, but also served as a show of force to local warlords.

The Croatian side also didn’t sit idle while we were away. A long table was prepared, local dignitaries arrived, šljivovica (plum brandy) was offered. The barehead commander shook hands with the Spanish commander, smiled at us, and wagged his index finger in mock reprimand, as if we were notty kids pulling a mischief that he finds reproachfully entertaining. Silently I wished him to choke on his brandy.

A man in charge of the town[5] tried to make a political speech and was politely interrupted by the Spanish commander, who explained that everything is obviously a misunderstanding and demanded to have all our gear and possessions returned so that we can get on the way. This was translated, but the mayor figure and the barehead dragged on the small talk until the Spanish stood up. They led us to the office where we were first interrogated, where our cameras and gear still lay on the floor. We were asked to empty the films from the cameras, a face-saving request from the locals which the Spanish commander granted for the sake of avoiding tension and speeding up our departure. Then we waited for the car. It wasn’t at the parking lot nor behind the building. It vanished. We were told it was moved to make space for army vehicles. While we waited, the night descended. We could tell something was amiss but couldn’t quite figure out what.

[5]: I’m not certain Jablanica had a position of mayor, but if it did, this person was the mayor, or the equivalent.

Finally, the Vitara drove in and stopped in front of us. For a minute, we gaped open-mouthed at it; when they dragged us from it, the Vitara was so covered in mud that it was impossible to see its real colour. The car we now stared at unbelievingly was sparkling clean inside and out! Someone had taken a lot of pain to wash it in such detail!

“Well, at least we got a good car wash from all this!” I told Javier. We laughed about it all the way back to Kiseljak.

—————

A few months later, a photographer friend of mine met me for drinks in a café in Zagreb.

“You’re buying,” he said. Then he told me why.

He had just returned from a stint in Bosnia. On his assignment, he drove through Jablanica, where he picked up a couple of HVO soldiers hitchhiking a ride to their base. They chatted, he offered them cigarettes, and in a friendly, joking atmosphere, they told him a story about two Spanish journalists they had detained recently.

The Spaniards showed up in a small, really fancy Japanese Jeep, or some such. They stopped right in front of the HVO headquarters for the town, and the HVO officer in charge saw the car from the window. He wanted it immediately. He wanted it so much that he was ready to make the journalists disappear. The easiest thing to do that in the war was to accuse them of spying and send them to a concentration camp. So, that’s what he did. The poor SOBs were going to disappear either on the way to the camp or in it. Everything was going according to plan until one of the journalists turned out to work for the Spanish Defence Ministry and was on the way to a meeting at the UN base in town.

Laughing, the soldiers described to my friend the officer’s face and rage when he realized he couldn’t get away with it and had to return the car.

“And he already had it washed and parked in front of his house!” — the soldiers said, tearing with laughter.

[zbwrites]

For the love of Peppi

Who is the most important being in your life? Okay, after your children or parents and your significant other? Who, for you, is that someone who makes the day seem sunny even when it’s hailstorm outside? Someone who makes you smile even in your darkest moment?

For me, beside the love of my life, that someone is Peppi.

Now, I said I’d post here stories from my past, but right now my present seems more urgent. So, bear with me, we’ll get back to the past soon, I promise.

Peppi and I found each other on a moody, grey afternoon on November 17, 2015. It was love and infatuation at the first sight. I responded to an ad in online classifieds, knocked at the door and, when it opened, out she came. She walked straight at me, stopped and tilted her head up to look at my face. And, just like that, I was on my knees. Literally and figuratively. I reached for her and she put her chin in my hand as if it belonged there. I melted. From that moment on we are inseparable.

Okay, I’ll stop with the suspense. By now you must have figured out Peppi is a dog. If you don’t have or never had a pet, you may want to click away and find some other, pet-free post. Because, chances are, you won’t be able to understand the depth of the feelings, fear and sorrow I’m going to describe.

Look, don’t feel bad, it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person, or incapable of non-humanly love. With pets it’s a very personal thing. My neighbors have a dog, Alba, a gorgeous white large female Canadian Shepherd, whom my wife and I love. Whenever we see her, we pet her, play with her, talk to her. When she was very seriously ill, we sympathized with the owners. We were sad, but we were not devastated like they were. With Alba we don’t have that special bond that only dog-parents share with their dog. Our furry baby is Peppi, who is 2.5 kg ball of fur and joy, whose every ache we feel like a wound right on the heart.

Peppi is a morkie.

A what? — I hear you asking. Once I was asked what breed is Peppi by a British woman tourist from the table next to ours on a hot day in Split. She was sipping a cocktail on a charming downtown square inside Diocletian’s palace, sitting next to a glassy-eyed gentleman who looked either hungover or slightly inebriated, it was hard to tell which, considering the mid-morning hour. She was sharpening her Brit-sized wit (BritWit?) by disparaging everything and everyone around them. Her pasty-white skin was as yet untouched by the scorching Dalmatian sun, against which she wore thick glistening layer of sunscreen and wide brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. When a couple of elderly women at the table on the other side started cooing over Peppi, the straw-hat woman focused her attention on us. Then she popped the question. The “what breed” question. I tried to explain to her the breeding nuances that resulted in such a unique specimen as Peppi. You see, what is often regarded as a mix, in Peppi’s case was deliberate. It wasn’t like her Yorkie dad jumped her Malteser momma in a dark alley for a one-night (or a one-thrust) stand. No, it was premeditated breeding in order to get a Peppi-like pup. In my explanation I may have gotten carried away a little and used terms like “designer breed”. To my elaborate elucidation the straw hat lady sniffed — “So, it’s a mutt!”

Forgive me, Peppi, for not defending your family tree more vigorously against the British, but at the moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. Okay, despite this uncalled-for minor rudeness so typical of the Brits, she was in essence correct: deliberate or not, Peppi is a mix. She is one of the smallest breeds, what some correctly—but unkindly—call toy-breed. How could I explain to someone with straw-hat and no heart that Peppi is so much more than a mutt? That she sleeps between me and wife in our bed (and, yes, if you must know, sometimes interferes with our tenderness)? That Peppi is the peace maker who walks bravely between us when we have a loud disagreement? That she scratches my knee (that’s as high as she can reach) to pick her up so she can lick my face and make me smile? Because, when we smile, we can’t keep fighting. That, on more than one occasion Peppi gave us comfort by licking the tears off our faces in times of sorrow. That Peppi curls into a shivering ball on my lap during thunders or fireworks outside, looking so vulnerable that all I want to do is curl around her to create a shelter and protect her with my own body. That Peppi’s favourite evening pastime is in front of TV, because that’s when she can sprawl across my legs and sleep peacefully. And that Peppi’s sheer purpose in life is to love and be loved.

If these lines made you roll your eyes, I am not apologizing. It only means that you have never had a pet who chose you as its human and put its life and all its love into your hands. And I feel sorry for you, for you are missing a dimension of love not accessible to petless people. But, don’t worry, there’s still hope that one day a pet will enter and transform your life.

All this time I’ve been talking about Peppi, you still have no idea what she looks like, isn’t that right? She’s a tiny cutie with pointy, (some ill-mannered people may describe them as oversized) ears, large (for her size) brown eyes, white head, legs and belly and light-grey back. Or, if you read Asterix comic book, she’s the spitting image of Dogmatix (in the English-language version of the comics), the dog of the fatso Obelix, Asterix’s best friend. And if you never read Asterix (or watched cartoons or movies), I really feel for you — you childhood must have been boringly empty! Although, that doesn’t excuse you from not googling it!

Peppi is Canadian. She was born in Quebec where they speak French and her first barks were therefore in French. She spent her childhood — puppyhood — with us in Ontario and became fluent in English-language, Canadian variety growl and bark. Then, when we moved overseas, she expanded her linguistic skills to Croatian, as well as Italian and German, when we travel abroad. As I already mentioned, she’s been inseparable from us since the day we got her. She goes everywhere we go, on her own power or safely and comfortably tucked in her doggy-backpack on my back. She’s always so close to me, sometimes it feels like she’s my extra limb. And everybody who’s ever met her was smitten by her, whether because of her size, demeanour or those puppy eyes. She gets in people’s hearts easily.

But — the reason I am writing this post — she is a very sick puppy. Normally, Peppi is a very energetic dog, although lately she started slowing down. She’s 9, so a nice middle age for a dog. Not old, mind you, as the small breeds have life expectancy of 14-16 years. Where else she’d be constantly running around our legs, barking at everything and everyone and tirelessly sprint laps on every grassy surface she came across, in the last few years she started incorporating more and more sun-tanning into her daily activities. Then, recently, sun-tanning was all she was doing. She started vomiting, not on a daily basis, but quite frequently. The vet said it was nothing to worry about, probably just acid reflux (I know, who’d have thought dogs can suffer from the same ailments as humans, right?) and to just break her meals into smaller, more-frequent daily doses. That helped, for a while. Then the puking came back. Soon she stopped eating, lost a third of her weight and became listless. Yes, if you’re wondering, we took her to the vets. Multiple times, to multiple vets. We’ve probably been to all the vets we could find in our little town. They said there’s a stomach flu going around. They shot her with antibiotics, anti-vomiting meds, told us to try lighter food. We did! She wasn’t improving. Finally, we took her to the only place in town that offered ultrasound. My wife, who’s of Asian ethnicity, came with me. The vet took one look at her, decided she must be a tourist and promptly charged us 6 times the price they usually charge locals. I know, because the neighbors went there and we compared the bills afterwards, when I complained how expensive it turned out to be. That’s the sad reality of foreigners living in coastal Croatia — we’re walking targets for local scammers. But I digress.

The ultra-expensive ultrasound showed ultra-terrible result: Peppi had a stomach tumour. The growth was on the lower parts of the abdomen, almost blocking the exit into small intestine. And, the vet said, when the exit is completely blocked, that’s the end. To make things more “interesting” (as if they were not dire enough), the ultrasound didn’t show if the tumour already encroached on pancreas. Because, that, too, spells the end. The vet didn’t know how quickly the tumour will continue to grow, which meant they couldn’t tell if Peppi had days or weeks left. They were only certain it can’t be measured in months. And the only thing to be done was surgery. Which was a very high risk in the best of cases, and immeasurably more so with the patient so small. They likened it to a micro-surgery with uncertain results.

I’ll spare you the description of the conversation and long haggling with the vet. In short, they wanted us to leave Peppi with them that night to prep her for surgery. They also told us they can’t guarantee she’d wake up from it, gave us the “difficult micro-surgery” spiel and said at least she won’t suffer if they open her up and see they can’t fix it, in which case they just won’t wake her up. Well, when somebody presents you with your options in such “emphatic” and “understanding” way, how can you not readily tear your heart and give them a part of it to bury?

Ah, here I go, after promising to spare you the details. Sorry about that. I was shaking my head while they were still presenting the dire and the direer prognosis. I wanted a second opinion and the best surgeon we can find. So we took Peppi home “to think it over”.

I know almost everyone had been touched — affected, if you will — by cancer in some way. Either they are survivors themselves, or they know someone in their family, or circle of friends, who’d had cancer. And, I know Peppi is “just” a pet, but I dragged you through this lengthy description of her and our lives with her so that we could lose that “just” from this sentence. To me — to us — Peppi is FAMILY. Note that I didn’t say “like a family”. There’s nothing “like” in the way we feel about her. We love her with the exact same fierceness parents love their children. And no, dear parents, you get no apologies from me for that comparison. I don’t know how you can quantify love, how you can measure it, I only know how it feels. How we feel. So, that’s that — we love her. Period. (Endlessly. Period.)

That’s why the diagnosis crushed us. When we brought Peppi home that night, after yet another round of antibiotics, some anti-ulcer meds (to help repair her stomach lining) and painkillers, wife and I closed ourselves in the bedroom, fell in each other’s arms and cried our eyes out. Then we wiped the tears and went to work.

We found a new 24/7 animal clinic in Zagreb, some 250 kms away. It’s probably the best equipped animal clinic in the country, with full diagnostics equipment just for pets, everything from CT, MRI, even dental X-Ray, ultrasound and specialized veterinarians who know how to use them. If you’re reading this from a first-world country, you probably don’t get what’s the big deal about all this. Let me try to explain — about six years ago Peppi had a spinal injury which rendered her temporarily paralyzed in hind legs. In order to ascertain whether a surgery was needed, she needed an MRI. The only MRI for animals in the country was at the Veterinarian University in Zagreb, and that one was out of service, broken. We ended up with a creative veterinarian who had a deal with a human MRI clinic where, after hours when humans are gone, she brings her pet-patients in for a scan. And that’s how we found out that no surgery was needed at the time. So, you see, having diagnostic tools for pets and not needing to sneak after hours into human clinics is a quantum leap forward for Croatia’s pet owners.

At the time I’m typing this, it’s been a month since extremely nice staff of Buba animal clinic took Peppi in. A rising star in animal surgery, dr. Stella did stellar job in removing the tumour without damaging any of the surrounding organs. Peppi is fully healed from the surgery and regained her spunk. Even her scar is darkening and fading, although it will remain a permanent remainder of her ordeal.

The first tumour surgery is doubly filled with anxiety, for the patient as well as the family — first for the success of the surgery itself and removal of the invading mass, then about a week later for the lab results on the tissue. As I already told you, the surgery was a glowing success. I wish I could tell you it’s an overall fairytale ending, I wish I can change the story to make it so. But, we came this far together, so no reason to start bullshitting you now. The lab results confirmed a cancer. Sarcoma, to be exact. Her one is the kind that grows in soft tissue. Yes, there was a second round of tears after we found out.

Where are we with Peppi now? Well, we will be making a trip to Zagreb every 2 months for an ultrasound. We will monitor if the cancer is coming back. We will pray it doesn’t. And if it does? We’ll do everything humanly and animanly (is that a word? If it isn’t, it should be!) possible to keep Peppi with us and pain-free as long as possible.

This lament of a worried pet-parent made me reflect on mortality, not only Peppi’s, but my own, too. Every day in the news there are a few obituaries of people more or less famous, who passed away. Some are gone in their 90s — and I’d love to join their ranks and push three more decades — but more, much more, die in their 70s and 80s. And, if you missed it earlier in this post, I just turned 60. So you see, my train is heading to the end-station quickly. And I realize I have stories to tell. Maybe not because they are great stories, but because I like telling them. And, because they are MY stories.

So, if you lasted this long and came to the end of this story, know that I am very grateful for your attention. If you decide to come back, I can promise to post frequently, because time is short and stories are plentiful. And I can promise to do my best to make them readable. Or entertaining. Preferably both!

— The photo is of Peppi two days after the surgery. The neck scarf is a bandage to fix the feeding tube, the body suit protects the stitches from scratching and there’s an IV in her right paw. And still, she looks like a movie star!

[zbwrites]

Blogging into void

I deleted all my social media accounts at the start of the year. After some reflection it dawned on me two things: first, no one really cared about things I posted; second, time spent doom-scrolling always left me more anxious and stressed than if I never logged on. At the end, the decision was easy. For my peace of mind they had to go. And, I’m telling you, after getting rid of Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, (X I axed as soon as Musk bought it) life felt significantly lighter.

Since then I felt a tinge of desire to post something only once - yesterday!

It was during the Women’s Ice Hockey World Championship finals. Canada played USA. I watched these two countries play each other many times and always cheered for our Canadian women’s team. This time, however, was the first time I felt more than sporty competitiveness. Since Trump’s re-election and all his shenanigans against Canada (and the rest of the world) I found inside me deep antagonism against the Yanks. And, for a brief moment, I felt the urge to voice it out, turn it against this US hockey team and their dandy coach. Then I paused to reflect: the only time I want to post something is to rant against the athletes who, frankly, have nothing to do with their president and my resentment of him. And that felt so wrong on so many levels! I don’t want to have a voice for ranting. Only for talking to no one in particular, just out to the Universe. And for that, a blog is enough. This one, that likely no one will ever read. That, too, is fine by me. Because, sometimes all I need is to see my words, my thoughts, out in the open. It helps me to see much clearer the very thing that made me write it in the first place. Besides, there’s always the chance, no matter how insignificant, that someone may read it and sympathize.

See, blogging - that’s me talking to the Universe. It’s not a conversation. Who has ever heard the Universe talking back? No, it’s a monologue. I spew words into void. Most will be lost forever. But, some may land somewhere near a sympathetic heart. And a brief spark of understanding may result from it. Maybe.

But mostly I see blogging like doing a sound test on an empty stage inside the empty concert venue in the desert; a lone voice no one will ever hear, after everyone is long gone, tapping the mic: TAP-TAP, one-two…one-two…test, test…

I had a birthday the other day. Big six-oh. It made me realize my time is not slowly passing. It has already passed. Mostly. There isn’t much of it left for things I really want to do. So I must choose carefully how I allocate the remaining time.

I always wanted to write. To BE a writer. Now, write I know I can do, and likely always will do. Becoming a writer, on the other hand, that’s put clearly into realm of dreams. Or fantasies. A thing that’ll never be.

This blog, probably, is the closest I’ll get to being a writer. So, please, indulge me. Whether you read or skip it, do so gently.

[zbwrites]

Light in the darkroom

Life is like a black and white photograph - you can’t show the light without shadows. While I was discovering the art of painting with light, I lived in that space between the light and shadows. At the time, shooting black and white was cheaper and more common than shooting colour. Also, it was much easier to print one's own black and white photographs. Colour demanded more expensive equipment and was much less forgiving to mistakes in the processing. Besides, newspapers were still printed in black and white with the only splash of colour for the masthead.

Taking pictures was great, but what really separated hobbyists from enthusiasts and professionals was what came after: processing your own shots and making prints. In Yugoslavia, country which wasn't on any list of the countries rich in anything, having one's own darkroom was something only the kids of the communist party officials could afford. As the only child of a single mother who was't a party member, I was relegated to the bathroom. Literally! It was the only place with running water where I could reasonably easily block the outside light by taping the black cloth over the narrow window above the door. I used it mostly when mom was at work, but on a few occasions I got carried away making prints and she'd return home to find the bathroom - and the toilet - inaccessible. That also highlighted a serious problem! But, let me first explain something to those who encountered photography only in its digital form.

This is the process to go from snapping a picture to holding a print: to make my own prints I had to first process the film. The film could not be exposed to any kind of light before it's processed, it would permanently and irrevocably destroy any pictures I may have taken. So, having no real darkroom, I would sit in the wardrobe, tape its doors from the inside with the black tape and in this complete darkness I'd feel my way to open the metal casing holding the film (the beer-bottle opener worked nicely) and spool it onto a spool which went into a black container. The container closed, I could come out to the light again. (Later, I acquired the "black bag", a light-proof bag made of several layers of thick, black material two long "sleeves" with elastic ends that would close around my forearm and wrist, so I could spool the film in total darkness of the bag while the rest of me was in the world of light. We considered the black bag a huge advancement in photo-processing.)

After the film was developed and fixed with chemicals it could come out to dry with the hairdryer. That was the first exciting moment, seeing your pictures for the first time, albeit in negative. The second phase was photo printing, done in a dark room with only a red light, as b&w photo paper wasn't sensitive to red light. You placed the negative into an enlarger, a machine with a lens not unlike the one on the camera, which shone light through your negative and onto the photo paper underneath. Then the photo paper would go into the developing bath. Like magic, on an empty blank paper contours would appear, faint at first, then they'd solidify into objects and people with all their details. That was the second thrilling moment, seeing the photograph appearing under the clear chemical bath of developer. All of it under the red light.

The day my mom first came home while I was still in the darkroom/bathroom/toilet, she called out and I yelled from the inside that I'm wrapping up and asked her to wait. Then the phone rang. The phone sat on a small cabinet in the foyer, just outside the bathroom door. It was placed right underneath the bathroom's light switch. Mom had a habit of turning the bathroom light on, for the light coming through the narrow window near the ceiling above her was bright enough even if she needed to jot down notes while talking on the phone. So, the phone rang. Inside the bathroom I could see in my mind's eye mother reaching for the light switch. I screamed: "Nooooooo!" as she simultaneously pressed the switch. Blinking in the all-too-bright light I watched the prints I just made getting silvery-grey layer which slowly ate everything that was until that moment my photographs. From then on, I made sure all the light bulbs were unscrewed, save for my single red one.

This anecdote is the most common photographers' story. There was no photographer of my generation who didn't have his work destroyed by light at least once. In fact, I was lucky to lose only the prints and only the ones I was processing for private purpose. Sasha, my friend photojournalist, in the early days of the war in Croatia embedded himself with a commando military unit. They spent a couple of nights crawling through the water ditches and behind the enemy lines. When he came back, he walked into the newsroom of the local newspaper and they offered him the use of their darkroom in exchange for the first look at his pictures. The place, so close to the front line, was without power, and only essential machines were connected to a generator. That was all fine with Sasha. He went in, closed the door on pitch dark room and started spooling his films. At that moment the power came back on and the bright neon lights across the darkroom's ceiling flickered to life. Sasha looked stupefied at films he still clutched in hands for a few moments, the films he was supposed only to feel, not to see! Then he remembered to cover them with something. It was too late.

I can't tell you how many times I heard the story of all the amazing shots he had lost that day. And, yes, I ribbed him mercilessly. I told him I don't believe he was even with that unit behind the enemy lines. He had no shots to prove it! Yeah, photographers were - and still are - a rough bunch.

[zbwrites]

Judo 🥋

In the mid-1970s “Little Dragon” conquered the world. Bruce Lee shot up to global fame by beating up the bad guys on the big screens worldwide. My dad, always a fan of martial arts and fighting sports, took me to see a Bruce Lee movie. For days after, we both walked around the flat in the way we imagined kung fu masters must have done, softly on the balls of our feet. Without warning, dad would jump into half-crouch facing me, take up a kung-fu pose and let out a howl of a cat in heat. Of course, I’d answer the challenge, doing the same. Then we’d thrust karate chops in the air around each other, adding Hollywood’s martial arts sounds: “pow!” “wack!” “smash!”.

If you’d never seen one of his movies (but, seriously, where did you live?), Bruce Lee had a trademark guard, just before he’d beat up the bigger, badder guys - he’d get into wide legged half-crouch (sort of like warrior-2 if you’re into yoga), though admittedly his looked a trifle more elegant than mine or dad’s. Looking calmly his opponent in the eyes, Bruce would lightly touch his thumb the side of the nose. Then the hell would break loose, and he’d be in the midst of a melee, delivering punches and kicks all around and uttering another trade-mark of his, a meowing-like kiai, or battle cry.

Legions of pre-teens and teenagers did the same in the alleys and playgrounds everywhere - maybe not beating up anyone, mind you, but we were contorting ourselves into various poses that we thought resembled Bruce Lee’s, kept brushing our thumbs against our noses (I had a thumbprint-shaped bruise on the right nostril from overdoing it) and we meowed just like him to the consternation and terror of the stray cats from the ‘hood. If there was a “Beatlemania” a decade earlier, this definitely qualified as “Bruceleemania”.

Another, somewhat painful memory of this time: Bruce Lee was a master with nunchaku. For the uninitiated, nunchaku is a weapon of Japanese origin, made of two wooden sticks joined by a cord or a chain. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Just Google it, for chrissake! Anyway, Bruce was swinging nunchaku beautifully. His moves were a hybrid between dance, juggling and fight. All of us Bruceleemaniacs wanted it! In the days soon after we saw the movie, I raided the broom closet and, silent like a ninja, removed a broom with the straightest handle stick. I sawn off two equal-length pieces and joined them with a couple of u-shaped nails and a chain. And, voila — I had my own nunchaku!

There are no words to explain how painful it is being wacked by a broom-handle with a chain! In my practice to become more BruceLee-like I suffered numerous self-inflicted injuries. I was bruised everywhere! The worst were the armpits, where nunchaku is supposed to come to rest, to sort of “cock” it before releasing it on an enemy. The bruises covered not only armpits, but also the whole side from the hip up and the whole inner side of arm. I couldn’t even put a book under arms, it hurt too much. As I persistently and stubbornly kept going, the vast expanse of my skin was turning purple — elbows, forearms, ribs, shoulders, thighs, shins and some places I’d rather not mention. Once I was “practicing” in my room when mom entered. Immediately, she pulled back, rolling her eyes and uttering “oh”. Then she stopped at the door and turned back, her eyes narrowing. She didn’t need to crouch or do the Bruce Lee’s meow — I froze in fear anyway.

“Is that my missing broom?” — she asked.

What followed is not for general audience. Her kiai was a roar! As result, I raided my piggybank and ran to buy a new broom.

Father, who was outwardly supporting my initiative, nevertheless had laughing fits every time he saw me with nunchaku. Shortly after growing superficial damage to the furniture and a broken vase, dad came home with a big news — him and Braco, his friend and a father of my best friend at the time, Puti, decided to take us to martial arts training. I suspect, although I could never confirm this, that mom and dad had a conversation regarding my kung fu infatuation and the damage it inflicted on the household and must have decided to help me channel it outside the house. So, Puti and I each got a new white kimono and belt. On Tuesdays and Thursdays our dads drove us across the town to the sports park Mladost, deposited us at the judo club and waited for us at the restaurant in the building next door.

I saw you going “huh? judo?”. Let me unpack that for you. At the time there was no kung fu school in Zagreb (although that changed soon). More importantly, my dad didn’t know the difference between the two. He only knew that both sports required kimono. In his mind, therefore, they must be similar. Judo training for kids at Mladost was well organized, but I think the deciding factor for our dads was that the club was next to a restaurant/bar. The dads could escape wives two nights a week and spend an evening legitimately drinking in peace while the kids sweated. And if judo was more like wrestling than kung fu, what did it matter? We got kimonos and were learning to fight.

Puti and I were 8. For us it was all fun. We learned how to fall and roll judo-style, without breaking limbs, a reflex that stays with me to this day. Best of all, we had fun chasing each other and other kids around tatami — judo mat. That fun lasted almost a year, until my parents had another big fight and mom and I ran away from home. Most I remember from that year of judo was giggles shared with Puti. If I learned any good move, I can’t recall it.

The life went on for another four years. My and Puti’s dad fell out of touch, and that meant Puti and I did too. I made new friends. One of them, Vito, a skinny boy with a constant twinkle in his eye and mischief on his mind, became a close friend. In one of many idle chats we had between pulling pranks, it came up that Vito recently started doing judo. At Mladost, none the less! When he learned that I did some judo as a kid, he started convincing me to pick it up again, to join him.

Vito was the popular guy in school, always egging others to do something they shouldn’t, and often leading by example. When he laid on me to join him at judo training, he was very convincing. He applied a combination of pleading (“please come with me, we’ll have fun and you’ll see, you’ll remember all your moves from before, it’s like riding a bicycle, once you learn it, you know it forever…”), shaming (“I promise to tell the girls at the club to go easy on you”) and bribe (“I’ll buy you ice cream for a month after each training!”). He wore me down. After a couple of weeks of constant pestering, I showed up at the dojo with my old kimono. The sleeves of the kimono bought for the 8-year-old me barely reached the elbows of the 12-year-old me. As for remembering the moves, Vito was right, sort of. I knew how to fall and my body remembered how to twist and pull when someone clutched at my kimono.

After only a couple of trainings we had a competition. It was a small tournament of only the pre-teen kids from the city. In a spare kimono I borrowed from Vito, somehow I won the three matches for the title in my weight category. Just like that, I was hooked! By then my father was out of the picture for good, which meant I went to training by myself on a streetcar. The upside was that I didn’t need to wait after training for anyone to finish the drink (or a few) before driving me home. Vito and I usually rode the streetcar back together. After that first week I had to convince mom to buy me a proper kimono. She did, surprisingly without conditions or caveats. Neither of us could even guess just how much it will change my life.

[zbwrites]

Celluloid

Celluloid tape used to capture memories, either as moving pictures or the still ones. Nowadays, the frozen moments are preserved in pixels. But, that’s today, and I’m more a man of yesterday, of celluloid. My first contact with the celluloid pictures was when I was 7.

It was the eve before my 7th birthday. We moved to the neighbourhood about a year earlier. Long enough to make friends with kids from the buildings in our street. Long enough to start elementary school and make more friends from the class. Many of them were going to come to my birthday party the next day. And my dad thought of the way to make it memorable, and to make me shine.

On the small dining table in our small kitchen sat a large and heavy red-and-black metal box. Explaining every move with patience, dad slowly removed the black cover. It exposed the inner parts of a projector. It looked awfully complicated — a thick tube of the lens staring blindly forward set in front of a maze of cogs, wheels, spinners and screws stretching along the whole side of the machine all the way to the edge, like a face that was burned raw only on one side.

“On the top you pull up these two reel holders,” — dad was saying, pulling two long bars from their slots and clicking them upright. Next, he produced a roll of 8mm film, a Charlie Chaplin silent comedy, and showed me, step by step and cog by cog, how to feed the celluloid through the projector and into an empty reel sitting on the other holder. When everything was inserted and attached as it should be, he flipped a switch and Charlie ran and danced over the wallpapers in the kitchen. Then he rewound the film and made me do it by myself. And again. And again. On the third go, I had it all memorized and, with my small and nimble fingers, inserted the film faster than dad’s thick digits could.

“Look at him,’ — he stage-whispered to mom — “I don’t know if any of my eight-graders got it right at the first class, and our own first-grader is already better than them!”

I blushed from pleasure. Of course, he was exaggerating, but it was true that from the early age I showed curiosity and affinity for tech gadgets. I still like to tinker with anything that clicks, or has a screen, or, preferably, both.

The birthday party was a hit. We played dodgeball outside for a while, then came in and stuffed ourselves with sandwiches, sweets and the cake mom made. Too full to move, we idly played with toys I got as presents. Behind us, dad discretely dropped the red-and-black box to my room and disappeared. It was supposed to be my big moment. I approached the projector followed by every pair of eyes in the room, including Arlena’s — I’ll explain it momentarily — and unclipped the black cover. There was an awed hush when the cogs-and-wheels part was exposed and I felt the prickle of self-importance while feeding the celluloid through the machine. As soon as I flipped the switch on and Charlie appeared at the white surface of my room’s door, my mastery was promptly forgotten. At least now, partly hidden behind the projector I could steal glances at Arlena’s profile with impunity, while she was, along with everyone else, engrossed in the movie.

I owe you an explanation about Arlena. She was a girl from my class with the sea-blue eyes and blonde bangs, whom I was too shy to invite to my birthday party, so my mom had to call her mom and do it for me. For most of that first school year I watched her from the safe distance. She had infectious laughter reinforced by a couple of positively irresistible dimples. I don’t know if anyone else noticed how her eyes changed colour when she laughed, from deep-sea blue to turquoise-greenish-blue of a shallow sea. I only remember drowning in those eyes, no matter the depth their colour conveyed. Even from the distance too great to hear what she was laughing about, I found myself laughing with her. And often suffering near-lethal blushing whenever she caught me laughing. We were kids, too shy to even speak to each other. Besides, I convinced myself that she never noticed me. If she did, she never showed it.

And then at that birthday party I could feel her eyes on me, on my hands, while they were busy with the celluloid tape. I dared not to look at her from fear I’d forget the next step. Despite it all, I do think I left an impression on her, and for that alone the birthday was a success. Then I flipped the switch and the movie started.

I wish I could tell you that was the day I fell madly in love with the celluloid. It could have been, but life had other plans. The very next day dad returned the projector to school where he worked and where he borrowed it from. He never brought it home again. Mom and dad’s truce which allowed me to have a “normal” birthday didn’t hold. The shouting and beatings resumed soon after and the opportunities for another peaceful birthday party never came again. Arlena’s family moved to Germany by the end of that school year. I never heard of or from her again. Celluloid all but forgotten, I returned to things all other boys my age did — riding a bicycle and playing football.

It wasn’t until almost a decade later — by then the parents were divorced and judo was the most important thing in my life — that I came across dad’s old photo camera. Or, rather, it came across me. In our hallway, right inside the entrance to our flat, was a narrow, floor-to-ceiling closet, about a meter deep. Our winter jackets and coats hung in there permanently. The upper shelf, too high to reach without climbing on a chair, was our mini version of an attic. It was filled with cardboard boxes full of stuff we didn’t need, but didn’t have a heart to get rid of. I don’t remember what I was looking for on that upper shelf where things are more likely to be hidden from sight than stored, when a hard and heavy leather case hit me on the forehead and fell on my toes. It hurt! The case turned out to be “fed-3”, a Soviet-made photo camera, a cheap and badly done knockoff of a Leica 35mm. Dad bought it in one of those rare periods after he and mom made up for yet another “new beginning” to photograph the memories of our happy family together. None of which happened — neither memories, nor happy family and certainly not together. Camera laid among the things he never came to pick up, then was moved out of sight until it painfully reemerged and made contact with my head and toes. After the pain subsided, and with it my impulse to trash the damn thing, I opened the leather case and found the camera with quite a few dials and buttons that clicked. Now, remember what I said about my passion for the things that click? Yeah, it literally hit me on the head and I started fiddling with it.

Two things contributed to my rising interest for the camera. I’ve been crazy about judo in those days, and, if I may say so myself, was pretty good at it. I won some tournaments and collected an impressive assortment of medals — mom actually made me choose which ones to display, because we didn’t have enough space on the shelves or the wall for all. I travelled all around Yugoslavia with the judo team, but barely had any picture to show. Our coach, Marijan, was the guy with a camera. He had a Yashica, a Japanese-made photo camera which he brought straight from Japan, where he went to study judo, right at the source. He was our highest authority on everything judo and everything to do with Japan. He was the Sensei, the teacher, his word was the law, undisputed and taken almost as a commandment. Therefore, Yashica became the type of camera everyone on the team craved. (A few years later a Yashica will become my first “serious” camera.) Coach Marijan took pictures, during the medal ceremonies and of the team all together. He kept those for himself. We occasionally got a print or two from some important tournaments, but almost nothing from the places we visited. I wanted more pictures. We all did. And now I had a camera! True, it wasn’t a Yashica, but it took pictures. They may have been fuzzier, but we weren’t picky.

The second contributing thing was Fotokemika. That was the name of the factory that produced foto materials: films, chemicals and photo-lab equipment. It was located a 5-minute walk from my home. The factory store made prints cheaper than anywhere in town. It also sold cheaply photo-films by meter, which later made it possible for a not-so-well-to-do student to pursue his hobby of photography without going broke.

I started carrying the good old fed with me, first to trips with the judo team, then to personal trips and vacations too. Despite being an eternal butt of jokes, from a perfect replacement for a hammer (“can I borrow your fed, I need to hammer a nail in the doorframe”), to being a blunt weapon (“fed can crack the thickest skull”), my teammates readily straightened for a picture whenever I pointed it at them. Slowly, I learned to catch them when they weren’t posing and those pictures became much more sought after. I always made prints for them too. At the beginning I gave them away for free, but friends kept insisting on paying. Besides, giving them away put a heavy strain on my generally thin pocket-budget. Once I let them convince me to take their money, I realized for the first time that an income can be made from taking pictures. Without knowing it yet, my life started shifting toward a completely unexpected, different direction from the one I planned.

[zbwrites]

The Beginning

“All of life is a dream walking, All of death is a going home.” — from Warrior, a TV show

Couldn’t resist dropping in this quote I recently heard on an otherwise pretty basic TV kung-fu historical fictitious drama show. It kind of hits the spot, don’t you think? Explains all the stumbles we make through life as what they really are, a dream-walking towards the final home at the end. But, I’m turning philosophical here, forgive me. I was, actually, going to tell you how it all begun for me. Or, rather, how did I begin.

In the mid-1960s my parents were both teachers in a school in Karlovac, a small town an hour south by train from Zagreb. It was a quintessential big-city vs. small town story; people from Zagreb looked down on Karlovcans, and people from Karlovac strove to move to the big city and leave the provincial life behind. Mom taught math and physics, dad was a tech-ed. Mom never really wanted to be a teacher. The story she told, she was studying in Zagreb to be an architect, but failed an important course after a string of long nights studying. In one of those all-nighters, she said, she fell asleep over an year-end architectural plan she had to submit the very next morning, drooled all over it in her exhaustion and completely ruined it. The professor failed her because she couldn’t present him the final plan. Her father — my grandpa — was so furious with her that he told her to pack her things and come back home. She managed somehow to convince him to let her finish the teacher’s college. Grandpa agreed under the condition that she stays home in Karlovac, studies at home and only travels to Zagreb to pass the exams. It also helped that the teacher’s college lasted only two years, as opposed to four years of the architectural studies at university.

Grandma — mom’s mother — was my all time favourite person. Since I was a boy, I loved spending my summer holidays in Karlovac. Grandma, a short woman of compact rotund constitution, would grab my hand, and we’d walk hand in hand to the river Korana for the afternoon of swimming. We must have been quite a pair to behold, me tall and skinny, towering over her sturdy and round form. She’d joke she had to hold me down so the wind wouldn’t blow me away. By the age of ten I was a full head taller than her, but it didn’t stop us walking holding hands. Later, as a teenager and onwards, summers were spent with friends and girlfriends, but I’d visit on the weekends for grandma’s home-cooking and conversations about everything. Mom’s wasn’t always the most sympathetic ear when I was growing up, but grandma substituted it with quiet understanding, loving teasing or simply just listening without judgment. In short, everything my mother didn’t do.

On one afternoon, grandma and I chatted after lunch. It must have been around the time I decided to quit my own schooling and dedicate myself fully to photography. Needless to say, mother gave me hell for it. I must have complained to grandma about mom, when she said “Well, she’s the one to talk!”

That’s how I found out the other version of my mother’s schooling story. Apparently, she always believed herself above her peers. Even as a girl, she saw herself as a lady of stature in Zagreb. After the high school, she pleaded her case with her parents, who worked as husband-and-wife maintenance crew at a gym which served many schools in Karlovac (at the time most schools didn’t have gyms for physical education, so the classes and trainings were held in Partizan gym, where my grandparents lived and made sure everything is in working order). Wanting for their oldest daughter better life than they had, the grandparents agreed to let her move to study in Zagreb. She spent her weeks studying and came home on the weekends. Soon, she was “too busy with the studies” to come home every weekend. She visited when she could. Three years passed. On those ever-more-seldom weekends she came home, mom talked about all the courses she finished, told funny anecdotes about living in Zagreb, and of course about architecture. No one was the wiser. Until, one day, grandpa ran into an old friend who happened to be one of mom’s professors.

“What is going on with Vira?” — the professor friend asked — “I haven’t seen her for over a year! You know, she is running out of time to clear the year.”

“That must be a misunderstanding,” — grandpa said — “she’s cleared the second year months ago.”

The professor looked perplexed. “Wait, are we talking about the same Vira? Your Vira? You know she never cleared the first year?”

And the penny dropped. Mom had been lying about her studies for three years. She lived high life in Zagreb, partied a lot and studied not at all. Grandpa went to Zagreb, because she was again “too busy” to come home for the weekend. He asked to see the marks of the courses she “passed”. She had nothing to show. So, he made her pack her things and escorted her home. She was to find work immediately and stop wasting their hard-earned money on non-existing studies.

Grandma paused her story here, took a long breath and shook her head — “I don’t know why she never told you this. The truth is, I wanted her to start working immediately, but grandpa was a softy. Vira managed to convince him to let her finish the school. I didn’t want to hear about it, had to put a foot down until we all agreed to give her another year, if she stays in Karlovac. No more parties, high life and pretence. She had to change the course, pick something shorter. She’ll travel to Zagreb only for exams. And she did. Always was huffy about it, but did as she was told. Finished as a math teacher and found a temporary placement in a school for adults in Karlovac.”

And that’s where she met my dad, under murky circumstances at work. By the time I was old enough to ask the right questions, dad was out of the picture and mom was much too skilled in avoiding truth. I don’t know much about how they met, or their courtship, or romance, if there were any. But, she sometimes let slip how she liked to dance and how dad had “two left feet” for dancing, but was otherwise charming. I surmised they must have fallen in love, hopefully outside the school. They married in October and I was born in April. Do your math!

Mom always said how she didn’t even know dad was four years younger than her, until she saw his ID at the wedding, and then it was too late to back out. Too late, for sure! But, not because they were standing in front of the marriage officiant, but because I was already cooking in the owen for about 4 months. Sorry, mom, I never really liked math, despite your efforts, but I was good at it nevertheless. It’s not exactly a high science to figure it out, either.

Hodošan

I was born in April 1965. That year both of my parents got a job offer to teach in Hodošan, a village near the border with Hungary. Apparently, the border was so close that villagers often went on their bicycles to do grocery shopping in Hungary. My parents’ temp jobs in Karlovac were over and for a young couple without much of a previous work experience it wasn’t easy to find a job at home. Besides, now they had another mouth to feed. Knowing what I now know about mom, the fact that the teachers from Karlovac were treated like minor celebrities in the tiny village at the end of the world must have also played a role in her taking the job. That, and moving away from mother-in-law with whom they lived since the wedding.

Of course, save from a few fading black and white pictures, I have no recollection of our time in Hodošan. What I do know comes from stories told by mom and the rest of the family. That winter snow came early. One evening, while dad was either at work, or perhaps in a local pub, mom realized we were short on a few ingredients for the dinner. Usually she would send one of the kids from the neighbourhood to the store — “everybody would be happy to do it for the teacher” — but, she says, the fresh snow made everything look so nice and peaceful that she decided to go by herself. She bundled me into warm clothes and a double blanket for good measure, put me on a sled and slowly pulled on along the road. There were no sidewalks back then, but the path was flat and cushioned with the snow.

“You were mesmerized with the falling snow,” — she told me later. “Your eyes were wide open, staring straight up, and you were smiling. No fussing whatsoever. Usually you were very chatty. Talking before even learning to talk. Making sounds as if deep in conversation with yourself. But, not that night. That night you were staring in the snowflakes fluttering on and around you and smiling as they touched your cheeks. There wasn’t much traffic — I don’t think a single car passed, or a person. And thank God for that. Because, when I stopped in front of the store, the sled was empty! I looked the way I came, but you were not in sight. I run in mad panic, following my own footprints back and straining to hear the baby’s cry. But, there were no cries! When I found you in deep snow, just next to the sled tracks, you were laying on your back still smiling. You even giggled when I bent over to pick you up. I couldn’t tell what happened to anyone, from shame.”

I guess I was an adventurer from very early on.

Our life in Hodošan came to abrupt end about a year later. Grandma liked to tell the story how she and mother’s younger sister — my aunt Mima — came by train to see me. I was grandma’s first grandchild and, she was never shy to say this to chagrin of all the other grandchildren, her favourite. They walked into our flat in a building where most of the teachers lived and surprised my mom. She would have otherwise probably tidied up everything, projecting an appearance of a perfect life we were supposed to live. But, as she didn’t know they were coming, there was no time to clean up neither the flat, nor the bruise on her cheek. See, mom always had big mouth, but dad’s fists were bigger.

What was supposed to be a happy visit, turned into a somber revelation. Through sobs and tears, mom confessed that life wasn’t the fairy tale she led grandparents to believe. Dad was drinking, often out in the pub until early morning hours. When she complained, they argued and he’d hit her. If she pretended to be asleep when he comes, he’d shake her and blame her for not caring about him. If she waited up, he’d accuse her of snooping on him.

“That’s it!” — grandma said — “Pack your things, we’re taking you back home!”

Mom packed, and they waited to confront dad when he came home. That didn’t happen until long after midnight. There was some kind of racket outside. Musicians rode on a horse-pulled open cart playing loudly. In the cart, semiconscious, my dad laid sprawled on his back, conducting the musicians with a finger in the air. The cart stopped in the courtyard in front of the building. After several tries, dad somehow disembarked and came face to face with a stout figure waiting at the building’s entrance. I picture grandma like in a western, feet apart and hands on her hips. Dad stared at her for a long while with bloodshot eyes, trying to focus, and most likely figure out if she’s real or he’s having hallucinations. To put him out of his misery, grandma greeted him: “Good morning, zete (son-in-law)!”

Dad’s gaze dropped to his feet and he mumbled “good-morning mama”.

“I was really bracing to confront him,” — grandma told me years later — “but he was in such a state that talking would be wasting breath. We just chased away the musicians and took the same horse carriage to the train station, with you and your mom.”

A few days later, back in grandparents’ home in Karlovac, dad appeared all cleaned up, chastened, apologetic and miserable. Mom wouldn’t see him, nor talk to him. He kept coming, day after day, bringing flowers, toys for me, gifts for grandparents. Finally, mom gave in and saw him. There was shouting. Hers. And mumbled apologies. His. And promises. Never again. No more drinking, and never to rise a hand on her again. He swore.

We went back to be a family.

“Why didn’t you divorce him then?” — I once asked mom.

“I was ashamed at what would people say,” — she said.

Instead, she traded my childhood for a masquerade of a family life.

[zbwrites]

Village Life

Before I go into explaining our village life, let me just tell you that, by the look of it, this is going to be one fairly disjointed tale. I have tried before to arrange everything in chronological timeline, and it didn’t work. I’d spend days trying to find, for example, if trying to get a photo of recently destroyed Mostar bridge, a UNESCO heritage monument, was before or after that day when we were trapped for the afternoon between two downtown buildings by a sniper. I’d obsess over getting everything in the right chronological order. I’d waste time, lose the thread and finally give up. I never asked myself did it really matter what happened first, as long as I told both stories to the best of my recollection?

These days I’m reading Did I Ever Tell You This?, a memoir by Sam Neill, the actor of Jurassic Park fame (and many other famous movies), and it’s a charming melee of anecdotes and memories captured as they popped into his head, in no particular order. It’s a fun read and such a liberating concept. Of course, I thought, why didn’t I think of this?, and decided that’s the exact kind of a mess that will work for my story. I’m no Frank McCourt, after all. Nor am I under any illusion this will ever be published anywhere other than this blog. So, I’m afraid, you’re up for a wild ride down my memory lane, which is more like a memory-roller-coaster than the lane.

Now, you may wonder why I chose this title for the blog. Well, because it’s true. My whole life I lived in cities. I grew up in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia and at the time the second biggest city in Yugoslavia. In the late 1990s I moved to Canada, to Calgary, the city of approximately the same size as Zagreb, but with definitely more laid back, prairies feel to it. Soon after I ended up in Toronto, which with surrounding area has population larger than the whole of Croatia, and stayed there until we decided to cross the Pond again, back to Croatia. And now, I’m in a place with official population of 990 — make that 992 now, with the two of us. Even here, we are in a subdivision of a subdivision, on the slope of a hill at the very edge of a nature park. In winter months I don’t think there’s more than a hundred people living on our side of the hill. So, yeah, I think living in a village is an accurate title.

Most of the year the area is peaceful and quiet. I’m more likely to run into a deer, or a hare, even a wild boar and a jackal, then another human. But, in the summer, it quickly becomes overcrowded with beachgoers, thrill-seekers, hikers, cyclists, wild campers and visitors of all kind. At the time I’m writing this, mid August, the place is teeming with tourists. You can’t throw a stick, as they say, without poking a foreigner in the butt. Our village, Volme, sits on a tongue of land between two bays on the upper Adriatic Sea. Plenty of beaches. Plenty of people who like beaches. I’m not crazy about the crowds, but I’m learning to tolerate them. Especially since we’re renting holiday apartments to those same tourists. Friends often tell us how much they envy our life by the sea, but frankly, summers are so busy with our guests, cleaning the apartments, welcoming ones and saying goodbye to the others, that we barely have time to go near the sea shore. Come September, though, everything changes. With the start of the new school year, everyone vanishes from here and again it’s only us, the boars, deer, rabbits… The sea is usually still warm enough for long, leisurely swims, and the beaches are empty. We endure high heat and high crowds of the summer months thinking of September.

As you can guess, our village isn’t of the rural kind, although there are vegetable fields and olive orchards around. The houses, even with the richest imagination, can’t be called farmhouses. They are villas, built for those couple of summer months when they can be let out to tourists. Most have pools and yards where olive and fruit trees are grown for the shade and decor rather than harvest. Our house sits on a large-ish yard, but we decided against building a pool. With the closest beach only 5 minutes away, it seems like a waste. Besides, even though we also take advantage of the tourism, we primarily want to have a calm, relaxing and happy space for ourselves. Happy home is the foundation for happy life.

How we ended up here

Only a few years ago this way of living would be an idea so foreign, it might as well have been fiction. Meg, my wife, and I both had steady jobs in Toronto and spent our workdays either at work or commuting to and from it through always unyielding and chaotic Toronto traffic. I was a multimedia producer in a Canadian national newspaper, and Meg was a graphic designer for a large law firm. Nice, cushy jobs with decent paychecks. One day the media corporation which owned the newspaper I worked at, as well as dozens of other newspapers across Canada, decided to cut costs by creating a single editing centre for all its newspapers. Person by person, my former department was dissolved. I was among the early layoffs. Meg kept her job while I went back to freelancing, producing online video for clients. It worked so well, we didn’t really feel financial hit from my loss of a full-time job.

We lived in a house we bought brand new ten years earlier. It was our first house and as such will always have a special place in our hearts. Our mortgage was half paid off and the plan was to keep going until the retirement, when we’ll sell it, downsize to a smaller house, or a flat, and use the leftover money to travel and do things we like. The only chink in that plan was time — I needed about 16 years to retirement, Meg quite a few more. One day during lunch we daydreamed about buying a house somewhere by the sea. Originally, we really wanted to move to Italy, but neither of us spoke the language, and their tax laws for foreigners seemed a bit draconian, or at least unclear. Then I said why not Croatia? I still held the citizenship, spoke the language and had family there. Also, Croatian coast is far prettier than Italian. You don’t believe me? Come over in August, and you won’t be able to move around from all the Italians crowding the coast. If their coast was superior, why would they all spend their vacations on our shores?

Over the said lunch I went through the calculations how much money we’d need to buy something in Croatia. It would be impossible without selling the house in Canada. Then Meg looked at me and said “Why wait 16 more years? Why not do it now?”

I must have looked like a swallowed a golf ball, because she had to repeat it a few times until it finally sunk in. That simple sentence is how we got here, my friend.

In the ten years since we bought it, our house tripled in value. We sold it and the car and almost everything else. We had enough money to buy a place in Croatia for us, with apartments to rent. Since we’re still too young to draw the pension from Canada, our savings and tourism are our means for survival.

When everything was finalized, we hosted a series of dinners with close friends, to tell them we’re moving. All of them, every single one, were very supportive, but also very envious. Sunil, our next-door neighbor and very dear friend, summed it up like this: “You guys are living everyone’s dream. You dared to break the shackles of working 9-5 jobs, paying mortgages, plowing through life and waiting for retirement. You have enough courage to take control of your own lives. We all wish we could do the same, but everyone is stuck in their lives for one reason or another (he and wife want to put their son through college). So, now you have an obligation to make it good and have a happy life, so we can all live it through you!”

Well, Sunil, and other friends, we are living a happy life, and all of you are welcome to visit.

One quick post-note to all this, a parting “wisdom”, if you will, is this: everyone can do what we did! Everyone can break out of the mold the society put us in and shape their own story. Both, Meg and I strongly believe this. The hardest part is making the definite decision, uttering that first sentence Meg said over that fateful lunch. Once the decision is made, you will find the way to make it happen. Because, there always is a way! Especially if you have someone like Meg, to work as a team, to lift you up when you’re feeling down and to give you a reason to keep going. Good things happen to those who try!

[zbwrites]

Introduction

After the Balkans wars faded, although they never completely ended, not really, I moved to Canada. I worked in journalism and even though I tried not to bore people with my stories, occasionally I would drop an anecdote from the war here and there. People found them fascinating, but then, for those who never experienced something similar, war is like a movie, an entertainment they can watch then go home to sleep peacefully and forget it until the next morning. Knowing someone (me) who’d been through the war was what made it fascinating.

Very early on, colleagues and friends tried to talk me into writing about it. I felt that there are way too many people more deserving to have their stories told than me. I was happy entertaining friends on occasion, but writing a book, that sounded pretentious. I dismissed it. Then I got married, over twenty years ago. My wife, who got to know only my Canadian side, listened to my stories. She admits readily, she didn’t believe most of what I told. Until, one day, Teddie, an American journalist, a dear friend and former colleague, came to visit. The three of us sat at a bar and Teddie and I reminisced about our times in the Balkans. There were laughs and an occasional tear. Back home, for the first time, my wife told me: “You know, all this time I thought you were exaggerating. I know you like to tell stories, but I didn’t quite believe them.”

“So, what changed?” - I asked.

“Watching you and Teddie finishing each other’s sentences, adding details to the story, made me realize it must be real.”

Then she asked me the same thing the friends did - to write it all down. But, she went even further. Before the war started and the country I was born imploded and shattered, before I discovered photography and journalism, I was an athlete. I was a passable judoka, with some national titles to my name, and later also a fairly successful, if I may say so myself, judo coach. That part of my youth also generated entertaining anecdotes. I guess everything different was a source of fascination for my Canadian friends. Especially knowing that I grew up in communism, but remained more-or-less normal, it added a sense of exotic to my stories. And, while the friends were onto me to write down the war memories, my wife insisted I write about my whole life.

“Who’d read that stuff?” — I argued — “It’s boring! I’m nobody!”

To which she’d inevitably reply: “I would read it! Write it for me. There’s a whole half of your life I don’t know, and I want to know you! I want to know you better!”

For her I tried. Many times. And failed as many times. I guess I was more into living my life than writing about it. And, I always thought I’d have more time later. When I’m older. When I retire.

Well, that time has come. I’ve been retired for eight years now. I have time. I still don’t think this is as story worth telling. But, I read some really boring memoirs, some terrible yawners, and started thinking after each — well, if that someone found worth printing, maybe there is a space for me? All I need is one set of ears to listen, or, rather, one set of eyes to read it. And that I have secured long before I started.

There’s one more thing I want to touch on, before we move into the real story: the format. This blog! See, I still find the notion of having my life printed in a book presumptuous and pretentious. (Lots of big “p” words, I know!) Besides, I find the process of writing a book daunting! It takes too long to write and rewrite, to produce several drafts during which time I would face the increasing danger of losing my nerves and abandoning the whole thing. Blogging is immediate. And raw. The first draft is the only draft. Sure, I can come back and edit, and re-edit, but I won’t do it. Because there’s a lot of a story to tell. And because I don’t want to give myself a chance or an excuse to abandon it.