Jasmina Tesanovic
NORMALITY: A MORAL OPERA BY A POLITICAL IDIOT

"GRANTA", London summer 99
CLEIS PUBLISHER, San Francisco , USA, 2000

I March 17th, 1998

I tremble, my feet tremble while I am asleep. I feel like the heroine victim in the “White Hotel”: why do my legs tremble as if an energy is passing through them in circles? Will I need my legs to run away, and fail to run away? I fear death and killing. I fear being unable to imagine any future, not even a lunch which I could enjoy. I watch my child with a sense of guilt: I, with this destiny of trembling legs, was in no position to have children. To make them victims. Being here in Serbia, being here in the eighties, nineties. I should have been sensible enough to realize that I shouldn’t have children. No future, no peace. When I was pregnant, in the eighties, we didn’t have electricity for days. It was winter, and Tito had just died. Tito had always been telling us we had a lot of electricity, we were a rich country, we were the best in the world, between East and West. I believed him, I liked his face, I remember him ever since I was born. I thought he was my grandfather. Once I was supposed to give him flowers as a little girl but then they made me give flowers to President Nasser of Egypt, because I was taller, and Tito was smaller, and Nasser was taller and the other girl was smaller.

Since then I always thought being small is a question of privilege and beauty

I grew up abroad, my mother is a pediatrician who stopped working to follow my father’s career, an engineer who become a businessman. At first she was depressed but then she got used to it, she had me, but when I started going to an English boarding school she got asthma. And she got used to it too: her solitude and her asthma. We lived in Egypt and we lived in Italy: I went to a British school, spoke Serbian at home and the world around me spoke first Arab and then Italian. It was more than a schizophrenia, every day I switched from and into three languages, three cultures...and as my mother I got used to it. Only many years later I managed to turn this painful Babylon in my head into a privilege. As my father claimed I should.

My legs tremble as if I were an old woman. When I was a kid, my legs used to tremble, but then, I knew nothing about life, wars. I was just a sad kid in pain.

March 27th, 1998

Moral opera is the title of my rambling, even though it is the 21st century. Is Leopardi postmodern, even though he wrote his moral opera in the 19th century? And anyway what do I care for postmodernity? It doesn’t care for my moral dilemmas, and that is why I have to be more moral than the Pope. I don’t have a soul anymore, it is shattered in thousand pieces. In its place is a diamond with sharp cutting edges: its edges make my stomach bleed, nearly all the time, as I move, as I think. But the diamond shines, sometimes only for me, sometimes for everybody through me. It depends on the light and visibility. The war is going on and we are politically correct, we are not moral, nobody is, especially the peace makers. I have seen it in Bosnia, in Croatia and now in Serbia, which is supposedly my country. Americans are being Americans and politically correct, which is painful for everybody else who is not American and is politically correct in a different way. Americans don’t get it, we have a different idea of everyday life, of food, of emotions, of help, we victims, we aggressors. And intruding American help is something we perceive as really helping the self identity for the big American politically correct nation. And we, victims and aggressors know that the Americans in many ways are right. We would all like to be Americans, but it is impossible. The Americans don’t want us to be Americans, they want us to be the Other, a territory where new things can be implemented. I don’t like myself speaking this way. Here in Serbia, today and for the past few years I had the high morals of a ‘traitor'. I defend foreigners, Americans, foreign intervention against national barbarians. But I don’t like to be the Other to anybody, least of all to the biggest power in the world, being a member of the smallest power in the world. Isn’t that unfair?

Now, my moral issue is to survive, and to tell the truth about my death. I thought of writing a theoretical book, a philosophical book, or a simple fiction book like Carver. But I am too anxious, my world of words is made of everyday anxieties, tragedies, news, lack of money, food and love among people. The other night my neighbors wrecked my prewar luxury car because they are envious. They did it openly saying that they lost their cars, why should I have mine. I am aware I will have to fight back, to stand up in their face and scream, you are vandals, you are not justice makers. You are lost. No law, no police, no force can protect me, they don’t exist anymore, and besides, they wouldn’t protect me because I am a woman with a luxury car. Women should only have men with cars and luxury cars are protected with guns, today in center of Belgrade. My neighbor is a poor alcoholic who didn’t adapt to the new ways of making money through crime. He lost his money, his mind and he is drinking beer all day on the pavement. He is not a good man, he is not a bad man, he is not a hobo or an ex citizen, he is one of the thousand pavement people, or dustbin people who live in the postmodern society of Serbia, based on moral and physical decay. And he is not alienated, he is in touch emotionally and rationally. He understands the New Order and he is following it. We are both part of the New Poor Class. The only thing that divided us was my car parked on the pavement where he drinks his beer. And he tried to do away with that symbol that divides us. I understand that and I won’t try to explain to him that cars shouldn’t be scratched, knifed and spat upon. He has suffered even worse, why shouldn’t my car? And the criminal on the other side of the street, with the big red racing car is watching us sternly: it goes without saying, we know, he knows, everybody knows, his car is not going to be touched in this city. His car carries a gun.

April 7th 1998

In the way our violent dictator put the upcoming referendum, do we want foreigners to rule us or not, the abuse he is inflicting on all of us is exposed. I am a doubting person: I don’t know dictators, I don’t know Serbs, I don’t know what daily politics is. I know that I always wonder about good intentions which are not clear from the start. His destructiveness I feel as my self destructiveness. The fact that I cannot stand up to him, nor me nor my fellowmen. But then, they tell me, it is money, it is power, it is the good life that it is all about. And simply, that is exactly what we all lost, besides the criterion of “normality,” and exactly what he gained that he couldn’t gain in “normal” life and conditions, that is, through work and fair competition. So my normality is in his hands, he is using it as only his normality. In order to feel normal and good he needs all of us to suffer. I know the script, I have seen it in everyday life on a small scale. Is it as simple as this? We have an immature, spoiled, savage person who keeps us in this cage, burning fire all around us, hiding us from the mirror like Cinderella in ashes, convincing us that we are the Wild Serbs we are not, falsifying our thoughts, roles, wishes, history. Is he a simple-minded wicked stepmother and we angels, or are we part of his essence, responsible for his power and resistance? We are drafted into a war we don’t understand and don’t want by cowards who are afraid to negotiate because they cannot speak or be rational. Is one gun, one armed man enough to guide one thousand people to death? I remember a picture from World War II, a single soldier guiding to the gas chamber hundreds of people sticking together, afraid to unglue themselves from one another. If one runs, he will die, but if only everybody ran at the same time, nobody would die. If only somebody snatched the gun from his hand! Our dictator is brandishing a wooden spoon. He is too much of a coward to carry a gun. He is an actor for himself, and we are spectators in a cage. I consider myself to be a political idiot. Idiot was the word in ancient Greece which denoted common people without access to knowledge and information: all women by definition and most men. I consider myself unable to judge, to choose, I see no options I can identify with. Is that normal? Is it because I am a woman? Is it a state of normality for a woman not to be able to identify or judge political options? All the political options of my fellowman sound aggressive, strange, stupid or farfetched to my language of concrete needs: I need to move, I need to communicate, I need to have children, I need to talk, to play, to have fun. They don’t talk about that, they speak of history, of historical needs and rights. That is not my history. If it was, it wasn’t me who made that history. They talk of blood, of breed, of pride, of rights, of visions. But I am in need, I am terribly in need. I am losing my mind because of a lack of love and understanding, because of a lack of fun and laughter and lightness. I cannot think 24 hours a day about fear and imminent death. Thinking about death is enough death. Real death is just a physical sensation that my mind may miss. For we here today, it is a culture of death, based on instincts of dying or surviving. I don’t want to listen to my instincts every moment. I want to control and command my basic instinct in order to feel free and well. Is that normality? I lost it a long time ago and so gradually that I can hardly remember when and how. It was an invisible loss of an invisible category. I miss it, I know it existed even though I cannot prove it anymore to anybody here.

____________________March 26th, 1999, 5 p.m.

I hope we all survive this war and the bombs: the Serbs, the Albanians, the bad and the good guys, those who took up the arms, those who deserted, the Kosovo refugees traveling through the woods and the Belgrade refugees traveling through the streets with their children in their arms looking for non-existing shelters when the alarms go off. I hope that NATO pilots don’t leave behind the wives and children whom I saw crying on CNN as their husbands were taking off for military targets in Serbia. I hope we all survive, but that the world as it is does not. I hope we manage to break it down: call it democracy, call it dictatorship. When NATO estimates 20,000 civilian deaths as a low price for peace in Kosovo, or President Clinton says he wants a Europe safe for American schoolgirls, or Serbian president Milutinovic says that we will fight to the very last drop of our blood, I always have a feeling they are talking about my blood, not theirs.

And they all become not only my enemies, but beasts, werewolves, switching from economic policy and democratic human rights to amounts of blood necessary for it ( as fuel).

Today is the second aftermath day. I went to the green and black markets in my neighborhood. They have livened up again, adapted to new conditions, new necessities: no bread from the state, but a lot of grain on the market, no information from the official TV, but small talk among frightened population of who is winning. Teenagers are betting on the corners: whose planes have been shot down, ours or theirs, who lies best, who hides the best victims, who exposes the best victories, or again victims. As if it were a football game of equals.

The city is silent and paralyzed, but still working, rubbish is taken away, we have water, we have electricity... But where are the people? In houses, in beds, in shelters... I hear several personal stories of nervous breakdowns among my friends, male and female. Those who were in a nervous breakdown for the past year, since the war in Kosovo started, who were very few, now feel better: real danger is less frightening than fantasies of danger. I couldn’t cope with the invisible war as I can cope with concrete needs: bread, water, medicine... And also, very important: I can see an end. Finally we in Belgrade got what all rest of Yugoslavia has had: war on our territory. I receive 10-20 emails per day from friends or people whom I only met once: they think of us, me and my family and want to give me moral support. I feel like giving them moral support, I need only material support at this moment, my moral is made out of my needs.

People are gathering at homes, to wait for the bombs together: people who hardly know each other, who pretended not to know or who truly didn’t know what was going on in Kosovo or that NATO was serious all along. We sit together and share things we have. Solidarity and tenderness brings the best out of Serbian people. There it is: I knew I liked something about my people...

My German friend living in Belgrade phones me, she says, I didn’t leave the country, I didn’t take out my children, even my newborn grandchildren. I am fed up with everything, I want to lead my personal life. My feminist friend asks me to have a workshop with our group of consciousness raising, my other friend wants us to go to Pancevo, the bombed city at outskirts of Belgrade, to give a reading of my novel. But there is no petrol, we must buy bicycles.

We phone each other all the time, seeking and giving information: I realized children are best at it, they prefer to be active rather than passive in emergency situations. We grownups harass them with our fears and they are too young to lie or construct as grownups do: they deal with facts and news. Mostly we are well informed, with children networks, some foreign satellite programs and local TV stations.

I think of the Albanians in Kosovo, of my friends and their fears, I think they must be worse off than us; fear springs up at that thought, it means that it is not the end yet.

I have no dreams, I sleep heavily afraid to wake up, but happy that there is no true tragedy yet, we are all still alive, looking every second at each other for proof.

And yes, the weather, it is beautiful, we all enjoy and fear it: the better the weather, the heavier the bombings, but the better the weather, probably more precise bombings. I wish I only knew do we need good or bad weather to stay alive?

And finally, I saw Benigni’s film “La vita e’ bella,” the night before the first bombs fell. The next day, it started happening to us too. Maybe I shouldn’t have seen it, but now it is too late: and I realize in every war game led by Big Men the safest place is that of a victim.

PS. At this moment the alarm is interrupting my writing...the alarm is my censor and my timing. I switch on CNN to see why the alarm is in Belgrade, they say they do not know. Local TV will say it after it all is over.

May 26th, 1999

Our tedious daily life is becoming important, day by day as we film it. It is the life of everybody I realize, not only mine, and each person who enters in some way or other makes the general picture more convincing, cuttingly clear, and individually we all sharpen our perceptions through speaking out about lack of water, electricity, nightmares, daydreams, no future only a tedious past... Today while we shot we entered a very dangerous zone near Belgrade, a quarter which is hit on a regular basis. The alarm was on and a military car pulled up next to us. Before we managed to show them our permits they pointed their guns: I literally wanted to faint. I must be crazy to be doing this. But then they were very polite and my colleagues explained to me that they were just doing their duty. Finally they warned us to go away: and again I said, why on earth am I doing this. But then, why is all this happening, this madness: how can we stay rational if everybody has gone crazy? It is the politics of high risk, as my husband put it, which has deteriorated into politics of absolute risk.

Then we went to a restaurant on a boat on the Danube: a beautiful place where we used to spend all our money for a few hours of eternity...The food is still good but without sea elements: yes we lost the sea. There is hardly anybody in the restaurant, and it closes at 7 p.m. The fact that we are not permitted to have those few hours of oblivion makes us unable to regenerate, to be good people... Going back home across the bridge, we saw a very few people gathering in the action DEFENDING BRIDGES WITH OUR BODIES. The conceptual artist Marina Abramovic did this in her performances but it was her body she offered, not somebody else's...

I met my Italian friend today: she came back to Belgrade for some time, she has spent many years here. She was telling me how Italy has been awakening since the fishermen in Venice have been wounded. I said Italy is my country too, la mia Italia, and what I cannot support about it at this moment is that one Italian life is worth 1000 Albanian lives and maybe 100 Serb ones: that is the price of awakening. I heard that doctors are advising pregnant women in early months to have abortions. I don't know why, is it radiation, or politico-economical advice? One doctor said: it is just what I would say to my daughter. I also heard on BBC that 1000 babies were born in refugee camps in Macedonia. Life goes on, thank God for that.

June 2nd, 1999

More than a month ago when we were betting on the date of the end of the war, I said, June the second, without any particular reason. Today is the day. Last night we got light after 24 hours, after midnight: eagerly we were listening to Radio Free Europe, in the dark, by the light of candles. When the light came, we didn't turn to CNN, because foreign broadcasts don't speak anymore about us.

But, I had a feeling that maybe this is the day. Anyway, for the first time since the war began, I turned from a political idiot into a reasoning person, if not a witch, and I saw a reason for its ending.

Some people on the radio were expressing the same feeling: the feelings of political idiots but finally put together in political and theoretical language, as all these months everybody from abroad wanted me to speak. I was proud of them, but suddenly I felt also frightened: they will come back, the winners, whoever they may be, those who were away during the horrors in Belgrade and they will take over with their smart language we admire. And again, we will be fooled by them, same guys or new guys, good guys or bad guys. It is all the same, the language is the problem, the language we political idiots cannot control but only submit to. Yes, I am longing for peace but afraid of it: tenderly, as in a big love affair interrupted by separation. I don't know if I will be able to manage it, all that peace, I am worn out with war and happy with it, in order to survive. My Italian friend said, you don't have bread, light, water, but you sound in good shape. I am, I said, and I cannot remember myself some weeks ago when I was unhappy about it. Most people definitely turn their backs on people in trouble, but some don't: this horror is worth only meeting those few and seeing what humanity is made of. I lost most of my friends and relatives but met a few I will never doubt of. We are getting so bored that we can hardly tolerate each other: nothing to do. Children are fighting us, for not letting them go out under bombs, for having nothing to do when the dark falls. I say let's talk, we have forgotten how to tell tales to each other, amuse each other as in past centuries. But for them, siting in the dark with their parents sounds like complete defeat. And they cry or sulk, depending on their age. My father went to the bank to pay his regular bills of electricity and water which nobody is paying nowadays. He said, we must help the state in this catastrophe. The bank clerk was angry with him. She said: you foolish old man, keeping me here under alarm so you can spend your last dime. Can't you change? See what your stupid obedience brought to us all. My father was strongly offended, as he is past the years when he was treated without due respect being an old retired general manager once in power. But he said to me: I understand her even though she is not right, a state is a state, my father served the Austro-Hungarian state...

June 12th, 1999

War is slowly dropping out of our daily lives: last night the bars and restaurants in my neighborhood reopened and streets were full of people doing all sorts of things so different as during the air raids when they also were on the streets. The tension has gone, more lights on and shops again sell Coca Cola, 24 hours a day.

Today troops are entering my country: people don’t feel occupied, but are uneasy, as during the first days of bombings. Nobody really knows what it means for our future, if any we can cope with, or influence. big powers fighting over our mined wasteland, holy land. Big crimes, big words, devastation...The only way to stay calm is to take it as it is, without veils, but all strength and knowledge which comes from history.

Russians coming from North, British from South, soldiers of different Colors, as coming out of a Hollywood film. personally I feel fine, I feel less isolated: let them all come, mix histories and stories...

As long as they don’t build a wall.

mailto:webmaster@alexandria-press.com