“the bosnian way”: initial chapter
see previous blog entitled “keep an eye out for”
We go through our lives with varying awareness of comings and goings. We seek stimulation or sometimes lack the motivation or want to search. We learn, we can ignore, we can prosper or stagnate. We can grow, take risks, lust, love, yearn and wonder. We can be nihilistic, cynical or forever free. We ride a plethora of unforeseen emotions and we interpret them, each of us, in a way that is as individual as our fingerprints. We can go through suffering or never know what it truly means. Friends come and go, but the common thread that binds us all is our beliefs – which shape our desires, goals, motivations, suffering, ignorance, education, cynicism (and optimism!) and so many of these “comings and goings”. I first met Alen when I arrived for work at a new job in the heart of Brisbane’s city. I was the new face amongst what was at the time, three other men from his homeland of the former Yugoslavia. There was also another foreigner in our ranks, “Raul” (Rah-ool!). Immediately, I was surrounded by their harsh, aggressive and perplexing language. I was aware of a humour, friendliness and curiosity inherent in their personalities. This was perhaps my first encounter with any “former Yugoslavians” – Slobodan, his brother Slaven, Dejan and Alen. Though they could have been intimidating (every word they said to each other sounded as though it were a declaration of a mortal war on their family, bloodshed soon to ensue) their help and guidance was more than forthcoming. I didn’t judge. Perhaps they did, but I didn’t and it might have inadvertently put my best foot forward. Slobodan signed me off early (mid week, a quieter night) and I joined him on what I soon gathered was his throne (a stool at the side of the bar) where he sat and enjoyed the privilege of being in charge, and watched his workers work: (In hindsight) Yugoslavian to the bone. Alen joined me soon after, once he was finished. Something started a conversation (in English – I think I mentioned something about drum & bass or killing someone or another of Al’s interests) and small talk became medium talk as Slobo hopped up for his obligatory pace around the bar/aggressive words to Dejan/pick at the food in the kitchen/top up of his soda glass. The tiniest little droplets of the spawning of our relationship. Alen and I.
By the weekend’s end, I had carried a hangover (induced by Raul on Friday night after work) right through each shift until Sunday when it’s grip finally let me go. I began to learn how the Yugoslavians operated, what they had going, all their little plans, some of their little nuances, nuisances, noises and they too me, no doubt. It must have only been 2 weeks later (with plenty conversation in between) that Alen and I were hitting the town together, ready to party and willing to test each other more. Looking back now, this is what drew us together – that want to challenge everything, the intensity, passion and desire for life. Soon enough, we were partying out and about every weekend, and many of the days in between that blurred into one and spelled weekend again. Week in. Week out. Conversation upon conversation. Learning more and more. We talked and talked and talked.
Inevitably, though perhaps after some months, I began to ask (more) questions of Alen’s former life in Bosnia and the war, my curiosity constantly soaring to an unending peak. I think it was a fourteen hour conversation, rarely deviating off the topic of the war and Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, that eventually inspired me to write this book: Such a life. So many daunting experiences. So many things that I couldn’t possibly understand. So much (if not all) of what shaped his mind, the experiences he learned from, grew from and what made him the man I currently knew, and would soon know everything there was to know about. It was with this in mind, that I embarked on the journey of understanding Alen’s past and the history of his country and its neighbours.
Alen is one of the most intense, passionate, energetic, inspired, driven, loyal, unpredictable, entertaining and individual people I have ever met or ever known. His views on life, his attitudes, his ethos, his morals, aims and desires stem, I believe, from his experiences growing up during the war. And this is why I wish to tell this amazing and inspiring tale. Through reading his story, I hope that you can empathise with what it was that brought him here. I hope to give you an understanding of just how such hardship can either make us, or break us. It must be understood that these sufferings are shared by many millions of people all over the world today, and in times gone by. While the individual experience itself is unique to Alen, it is in no way unique that he has endured hardship, squalor, death, starvation and genocide – the same fate has befallen many others who used to (and still do) call the former Yugoslavia home, and certainly many more humans alike of widely varied nationalities, religions and ethnicities either through war or other atrocities.
Alen is what he is today, because of what he lived through, yesterday. Perhaps we will never truly know what it was like? - I doubt we will ever know just how he felt, while living in such times. But we can surely see what sort of man it can make. Al lives every day as though it were his last. Al does everything in order to survive, and live this beautiful life, where we can be whatever we want to be. Where there is no oppression. Where we are free to make a life via any avenue available to us, or those that we can make as such: His way, is “The Bosnian Way”.
This story has been written from a massive assortment of interviews and recollections conducted between Alen and myself. Anything appearing in quotation marks is a direct quote of something that Alen has said to me. I have tried not to dilute or misconstrue anything that I have been told by Alen, while he has trusted me to add to or correct his sometimes Bosnian English. I feel that retelling the stories exactly how Alen told me, best captures the essence of his plight and the message that I wish to convey, while intertwining his words with historical and factual evidence, with a sprinkling of his opinions and my own views and beliefs relevant to this account as such.
The viewpoints, opinions, arguments, beliefs, outlooks and attitudes written in these pages and the pages that follow are purely my own, and are not necessarily shared by Alen or anyone else mentioned within its context and especially not those who have lived the same experiences (either directly or indirectly) in the former Yugoslavia – they are purely what I have derived from the countless hours of Alen’s story telling and the endless piles of relevant books ive managed to read. I hope that in no way will I cause offense to any parties that these words, my views and this story relates to – Serb, Croat, Bosnian, Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim or any other ethnicity, race, nationality or religion alike. I write this story with the deepest respect for all of the aforementioned, and the greatest desire to empathise, sympathise and understand. I hope that you do too.
Thank you to those of you who have lent me their support, guidance and insight and shown their patience, acceptance and consideration along the way. Thank you also, to Alen.
It must also be noted that there will undoubtedly be some issues with pronounciation of the Yugoslavian words, names and place names, colloquialisms and sayings – should you have a particular need to learn of them each exactly , those of you who wish to do so will. For the purpose of this book, I think it unnecessary to explain the language as one will inevitably construct their own pseudo-Serbo-Croat through the course of the book and the essence of its story will not suffer or be lost should the words speaking in your head not mimic the ones I first heard when I started work that fateful day.
copyright, Carlos Hurworth 2008
