Myths flapping in the wind

Once upon a time in the far away kingdom called atlanta, two sisters went to see a miracle. Over the blank white face of a mountain, which peered over a gathering crowd, rode 3 confederate generals, Generals, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. Upon that rock face, lazers displayed neon green country roads, takin' me home to the place I belong, a trumpet's horn bending and stretching like a mouth singing in a raspy low louis voice, Georgia.. Georgia, the whole day through, Georgia brown she ran all over town and a fiddler sent the devil back to hell! All sorts of images appeared which glorified Georgia, the south and the United states of America. We even got to witness these stone Generals come back to life and ride once more! The whole event ended in fireworks, parachuters and a standing ovation singing the Star Spangled Banner. It was a nationalism saturation and some people were crying out of love for this beautiful country. The sisters too had tears in their eyes, only it was from laughter.. and shock. 

I suppose at the time this patriotism was mostly just that- shocking. I didn't really see the harm in it, and I felt that if this sort of thing moved people and made them happy, I didn't see reason to get upset. Sure we have a dark past, (and present) and none of that was mentioned, obviously, and perhaps ignorance was not exactly scarce in our fellow onlookers, but this didn't strike me as particularly dangerous- a field of slightly overweight T.V. addicts holding Coca-Cola cans and starry flags.. no not so scary. 

But I am living now in a place where flags scare me. Of course, it doesn't help that the flags I see are all red with a black double headed eagle screaming for freedom. That eagle has claws that intend to gorge out ever eye that looked apathetically or hungrily at its imprisonment.

But it is not just this flag that scares me, no in fact even the flag of macedonia, which reminds one of a kid beach resort, a red sky with a yell sun smiling across its expanse.. one cannot help but smile back, and yet that flag too scares me. But most of all the Serbian flag, which appears very European with its red, white and blue, indeed the same as France, England, Australia, Russia, US, one looks upon those colors and thinks- ah, there is a tame land, what people could be blood thirsty barbarians under those colors? And, well of course all could and were, and are, but the difference, the betraying characteristic, the tear in the mask, the terrifying balkan double headed eagle lurking in those European colors, instead of waging war and spilling blood far from home, as the 'sophisticated' flags do, they wage war and spill the blood of their neighbors. 

Of course, I would never accuse Serbia of being the lone guilty one, in fact, it seems Serbia has just been played time and time again by the real instigators of this whole mess- the powers. It seems such a wicked game, those that Serbia so longs to join, imitating the colors, trying to prove his sophistication by jumping through hoops the EU sets out for him, those powers are the ones that brought this war to be. I have read and heard so many different stories, that it is impossible to say in any certainty what actually happened, but I know that since long before the Ottoman empire completely collapsed, Serbia was just a tool for Austria or Russia to hold back the Turks, and harm each other. True to form they couldn't fight a neighbor, so they got Serbia to do it. They, through where they put money, which officials in the church and state they supported, where they gave guns, what rumors they set up and spread, insured that the fire of inter-balkan hatred was fanned. They tried to keep it at a manageable trash fire, throwing in more logs when needed, but not allowing it to get big enough to become dangerous to them, which of course backfired into WWI and Europe burned too. But far from learning their lesson, the powers continued this puppeteering in the balkans through WWII and into the war of the balkans in the 90s. And now the puppeteers laugh when their marionettes ask if they can please join the big boy table. We call them barbarians, that they need to do x y and z to atone for all the crimes that the they just committed, knowing full well that we ourselves were pulling the strings! 

Dance, Serbia, Dance!

It was in such anger that I first beheld all these flags. The sole reason for them in the balkan wars was Nationalism, a kind of racism that I had such hard time understanding at first. And I would get upset at their jokes making fun of their neighbor balkan countries. I didn't have any patience for their long history lectures that detailed every century from before Christ onward on what was happening with their people, and when which neighbor came in and invaded them. But completely ignorant, and happily so, of when their neighbor was invaded, how many neighbors their own country had slaughtered, and when asked some have replied, "who cares? they are evil!" The hatred is so deep that all through the Ottoman times of oppression it was said by every Nationality here: "Rather eternity under the Turks than a year under the Serbs/Bulgarians/Greeks" (depending on who was talking). It seems they feared freedom from the Turks lest their neighbor might rise up and conquer. It's like all these Balkan countries are siblings under a king of old (the Ottomans.. or now the EU) and though the king is a tyrant and beats his children, they all would rather please him and hope for a greater inheritance, rather than work together as brothers and divide land fairly. And since the king is so much mightier, and competition with him is futile, but they are all power hungry competitive brothers, dying to pick a fight, they do so against each other at every chance they get. Each trying to prove to the kings- stepping on the hair of one brother clawing at his ankles, barely restraining another under the crook of his arm, panting and red faced- that he too is a man! But the kings, we know, are far from the noble role molds the brothers attempt to impress. They too, of course, are children, but with money to dress as adults, to watch the entertaining war dramas on screens and send their battles abroad. 

I have been reading about such savagery. I am reading a history on the balkans, leading into WWI, a new heroine of mine, Mary Edith Durham who travelled all over these parts one, writing about the cultural and political situation and was apparently stubbornness incarnate. She has retold stories of murder and mutilation, somehow they must go hand in hand here, of decades straight in Serbia where every person that came into power would be assassinated or exiled, none ended a term peacefully, without the opposite family taking power- Obrenovich or Karageorgevich. I tried to say, well we are barbaric in our own way, but really that's not how I am going to understand- trying to compare barbarism of this day and age will get me no where. What I have had to learn is that really societies have different moral codes. What impaling heads on pikes meant to us 100 years ago, meant something very different here. Along the same lines, going to war over one city means something totally different to them as to us now. To me it seemed utterly ridiculous when someone said the other day, full of pride, that if the Serbs tried to take Mitrovica, there would be another war and that he would be the first volunteer for the front lines.. as his father had 15 years ago, and now his father is dead. I looked at him and just wondered, how could he care so much about one boarder? Why would he rather die than see Serbia take this town? Where does that kind of irrational patriotism come from?

Well Albania, and all the balkans countries, had to struggle to keep their culture alive under the Ottomans. The religion, the language, their race was under siege, and it was only through remorseless Nationalism that it was preserved. There were attempts made by the Turks and then the Serbs to stop Albanians from reading and learning in their own language, and it is indeed a miraculous thing that this culture has survived. That they all have. I am such a geek for traditional music, dance, art, custom. I am so glad there are so many languages, so many ways to dance in a circle and techniques to transform milk. The point of travel, for me, is seeing different culture, so yes, I too would fight to preserve it! But at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? 

Tito kept peace in these lands by banning Nationalism, I've been told that language and religion was not a problem under him, people felt free, all talk dreamily of Tito and those golden years. But occasionally I will also hear of his strict (meaning bloody) hand when it came to Nationalists, and on the one hand some say he was a tyrannical dictator trying to keep power like all the rest, but on the other, he had seen what these balkan peoples do when allowed to be Nationalistic. He didn't kill nearly as many Nationalists as they killed each other.

But trying to count numbers of people killed and detailing who was oppressed by whom and what years is the last thing that will promote peace. People take those numbers and create myths about them. The power of story is so strong, so much stronger in fact than fact. Stories can be and have been passed down for so long about the hatred one should have for their neighbors, that it is a part of this culture, like a religion even. I hear stories of families burned in their homes, of hiding school in mosques, of the angels across the sea (meaning US). And people believe these stories, on every side, people have real stories, some they have witnessed and can pass down first hand, some are cherished since the 13th century, so oft repeated, that to question its legitimacy would be to question God himself. And I don't want to question God! I don't want to question my friends, and their stories, their culture, their being. I just wish that they had room in their hearts for another story. 

Many of my German friends remember a story from WWI, when sunk in trenches for months on end, Christmas came, and through the smoky grey air, carols floated over the enemy lines. The Germans started singing along, and in this yearning for peace on all sides, the line was crossed. Soldiers went back and forth bearing gifts to their enemies, singing, and loving, and none were shot. This is a story I am told, and it happened, but whether it did or not is irrelevant. The Germans want to remember a story of longing for unity, of brotherhood, of humanity. They want to remember the English and French, and later the Americans as allies, and so we all are right now. 

There are of course stories of peace in the Balkans, of people getting along, but even though people know that is what I want to hear about, few tell me those stories. And indeed, those stories are harder to remember. Firstly, gore is a much better story and sticks in one's head, and secondly, that would muddle the world view. It is much easier to declare oneself a victim of oppression, and to know that there are bad guys and good guys. As humans we see patterns and want to see patterns, and to declare that all slavs are evil, well, it's an easy sentence. It takes much longer to say, we've had some bad times with the slavs, but they were also quite humane at times, even likable. No.. that is long and complicated, and doesn't have a very satisfying rush of emotion, as hatred does. It is hard, it is complicated, it takes effort, and who knows if anyone even wants a new story, it is perhaps just an idealistic naive American dream. And I've seen what western dreams imposed on eastern ideals can do, so I will not fight for it. Nor will I ever ask them to choose love. Choosing to bear hatred or love is usually not a choice, sometimes we have lived in it so steeped, that that lens through which to see the world is the only thing keeping us alive. But the choice they do have is which stories to pass on. If the children, as almost all have before this generation, hear more stories of hatred, they too will grow up with that lens. But if they grow up hearing even just a few stories of love, despite spiteful teeth through which they are muttered, maybe love can have a chance.