Text published in Greek in amagi.gr site in January 2017
Serb Zeljko Joksimovic did not just fill up the Lisinski concert hall, here in downtown Zagreb, last December, but also made a second, extra appearance. The pop singer's success in the Istanbul Eurovision contest in 2004, above Sakis and below winner Ruslana, is due to the twelve-point scores obtained from most ex-Yugoslav countries - among which the bitterly neighboring Croatia. The Serbian minority, now counting some two hundred thousand inhabitants, probably didn't determine the outcome of televoting. Just six years after the last border arrangement between the two countries -the return of troubled Vukovar to Croatia, in 1998- Zeljko in his way helped bridge some gaps - and continues along the same path, also doing duets, as with Bosniak Haris Djinovic and, recently, Croat Toni Cetinski.
Their common works are sung in a language which, to avoid hassle, you'd better call BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian). The limits of rapprochement are felt when you realize how old-fashioned, even unpopular, the formerly familiar term "SerboCroat" has become. Linguist Claude Hagege («On the death of life and languages») writes that the desire for differentiation may justify the identification of languages as separate, even if mutual comprehension still remains. In national divorces, as in human split-ups, there is usually the one who remains and the one who leaves; in the case of former Yugoslavia, those who left - the Croats - made the relatively more intense effort to hammer the identity of their new society using language (too) as a tool. How fresh these efforts are is something I can see in the difficulty of some people to get used to the Croatian month names, which replaced the known Roman ones and are associated with agricultural economy, nature and weather conditions (grass in April/travanj, scythe in July/srpanj, chill in November/studeni).
Those who remained after 1991 in the country formally called Yugoslavia, now that the scorched earth of the Dinaric Alps and southern Pannonian plain is cooling down, speak of the onetime brothers with a barely perceptible sense of superiority. They remind me somewhat of the references by Turks to the old times when "we all lived together" (Muslims and infidels) in the Empire, harmonically but still under the undisputed ruler. The anger of the Croat that left is mirrored in the complaint of the Serb that remained - or stuck, one may sometimes think - in the past. Although the leader of the Partisan and post-war Yugoslavia was a Croat (with a Slovene mother), his birthplace of Kumrovec is one of Croatia's few places where one will see his memorabilia on sale, in the small part of the village that has been converted to a folk monument. On the contrary, in Serbia nostalgia for the Tito era - as well as anything old and glorious - is much more evident: from the peddlers in the Knez Mihajlova pedestrian street of Belgrade, where the marshal is on display next to Putin, to the very flag of the Serbs, showing a crown that has not been officially worn by a head of their new nation-state.
We Greeks are now the "brother people" — the expression used by the taxi driver in my first visit to the Serbian capital, before he demonstrated to me his deep knowledge of my country's northern half and its shores. If the Serbs left from something, this was the Dalmatian coast, in which a Belgrade licence plate (or the use of the Serbian word for bread, hleb instead of kruh) can become a red rag. The Adriatic may be closer to Belgrade than the Aegean is, however the masses of Serbia (and FYR Macedonia) systematically visit our seas for years now. Croats, on the other hand, do not. Their Greece is that of the Westerner: the cradle of civilization, which first left its mark on the coastal area long before the Slavs' ancestors descended to the Balkans. Their islands may not boast the sandy beaches of Greek ones nor their size (each of the two biggest is approximately as large as Zakynthos), however they are next to them so they will hardly think of neglecting them so that they can explore ours.
Self-sufficient and brotherless, that's how they tend to feel as long as their independence is, still, fresh. However, the peoples of former Yugoslavia have ties that are not completely severed; some old links remain or are even revived, not just thanks to ear-friendly tunes and good-looking artists. Joint enterprises among Serbs and Croats are no longer a rare occurrence, nor are mutual invitations to scientific conferences; even the Serbian minority party has declared its support to the current Croatian government, a development signaling hope in a region where people my age are war veterans. Maybe it will be a while before we see again basketball brothers like those of the great "plavi academy", the legendary Yugoslav national team up to 1991 - as immortalized in the excellent film "Once Brothers" by Michael Tolajian on the friendship between Vlade Divac and the late Drazen Petrovic. However - and despite reaction in the beginning - basketball's Adriatic League is a living reality: this supranational championship features the best teams from the countries of the onetime common homeland: those who remained, those who left - and those who somehow found each other again.
Serb Zeljko Joksimovic did not just fill up the Lisinski concert hall, here in downtown Zagreb, last December, but also made a second, extra appearance. The pop singer's success in the Istanbul Eurovision contest in 2004, above Sakis and below winner Ruslana, is due to the twelve-point scores obtained from most ex-Yugoslav countries - among which the bitterly neighboring Croatia. The Serbian minority, now counting some two hundred thousand inhabitants, probably didn't determine the outcome of televoting. Just six years after the last border arrangement between the two countries -the return of troubled Vukovar to Croatia, in 1998- Zeljko in his way helped bridge some gaps - and continues along the same path, also doing duets, as with Bosniak Haris Djinovic and, recently, Croat Toni Cetinski.
Their common works are sung in a language which, to avoid hassle, you'd better call BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian). The limits of rapprochement are felt when you realize how old-fashioned, even unpopular, the formerly familiar term "SerboCroat" has become. Linguist Claude Hagege («On the death of life and languages») writes that the desire for differentiation may justify the identification of languages as separate, even if mutual comprehension still remains. In national divorces, as in human split-ups, there is usually the one who remains and the one who leaves; in the case of former Yugoslavia, those who left - the Croats - made the relatively more intense effort to hammer the identity of their new society using language (too) as a tool. How fresh these efforts are is something I can see in the difficulty of some people to get used to the Croatian month names, which replaced the known Roman ones and are associated with agricultural economy, nature and weather conditions (grass in April/travanj, scythe in July/srpanj, chill in November/studeni).
Those who remained after 1991 in the country formally called Yugoslavia, now that the scorched earth of the Dinaric Alps and southern Pannonian plain is cooling down, speak of the onetime brothers with a barely perceptible sense of superiority. They remind me somewhat of the references by Turks to the old times when "we all lived together" (Muslims and infidels) in the Empire, harmonically but still under the undisputed ruler. The anger of the Croat that left is mirrored in the complaint of the Serb that remained - or stuck, one may sometimes think - in the past. Although the leader of the Partisan and post-war Yugoslavia was a Croat (with a Slovene mother), his birthplace of Kumrovec is one of Croatia's few places where one will see his memorabilia on sale, in the small part of the village that has been converted to a folk monument. On the contrary, in Serbia nostalgia for the Tito era - as well as anything old and glorious - is much more evident: from the peddlers in the Knez Mihajlova pedestrian street of Belgrade, where the marshal is on display next to Putin, to the very flag of the Serbs, showing a crown that has not been officially worn by a head of their new nation-state.
We Greeks are now the "brother people" — the expression used by the taxi driver in my first visit to the Serbian capital, before he demonstrated to me his deep knowledge of my country's northern half and its shores. If the Serbs left from something, this was the Dalmatian coast, in which a Belgrade licence plate (or the use of the Serbian word for bread, hleb instead of kruh) can become a red rag. The Adriatic may be closer to Belgrade than the Aegean is, however the masses of Serbia (and FYR Macedonia) systematically visit our seas for years now. Croats, on the other hand, do not. Their Greece is that of the Westerner: the cradle of civilization, which first left its mark on the coastal area long before the Slavs' ancestors descended to the Balkans. Their islands may not boast the sandy beaches of Greek ones nor their size (each of the two biggest is approximately as large as Zakynthos), however they are next to them so they will hardly think of neglecting them so that they can explore ours.
Self-sufficient and brotherless, that's how they tend to feel as long as their independence is, still, fresh. However, the peoples of former Yugoslavia have ties that are not completely severed; some old links remain or are even revived, not just thanks to ear-friendly tunes and good-looking artists. Joint enterprises among Serbs and Croats are no longer a rare occurrence, nor are mutual invitations to scientific conferences; even the Serbian minority party has declared its support to the current Croatian government, a development signaling hope in a region where people my age are war veterans. Maybe it will be a while before we see again basketball brothers like those of the great "plavi academy", the legendary Yugoslav national team up to 1991 - as immortalized in the excellent film "Once Brothers" by Michael Tolajian on the friendship between Vlade Divac and the late Drazen Petrovic. However - and despite reaction in the beginning - basketball's Adriatic League is a living reality: this supranational championship features the best teams from the countries of the onetime common homeland: those who remained, those who left - and those who somehow found each other again.
