When, sometime in the mid-nineties, Momir M. Marković brought me the last version of the play "Pogibija" to read and announced that it would finally be performed in the theater - I couldn't have been happier. Krsto Zrnov was my role model from the early rebel days.
My grandfather, greengrocer Andrija Bojičin, also had nice words for him.
He rarely, very rarely mentioned the war in front of his grandchildren, and if he did, he did so in a humorous way.
I asked him once, sometime in adulthood, why he left the war early. Because of the family, to prevent anything from happening, only women with children escaped to the mountain - that's how he explained it.
And it wasn't like that, he did it for the same reasons that make me continue to write, even though with each column I become more and more a traitor in the eyes of both warring parties.
I learned that only after his death, from a relative from our village. When there was a split among the insurgents, some of them joined the Chetniks, some joined the Partisans. Grandpa retreated to the mountain, after in several close encounters, risking his life, he tried to prevent brother from shooting at brother and godfather at godfather, the oldest relatives explained to me the motives of grandfather's - conditionally speaking - desertion...
I say conditionally not because of my grandfather, he defended himself with his actions both before and after the war. But because of all those who were in '91. refused to enter a different war.
The government, which was the same then and now, persecuted them as traitors for decades. Regardless of the individual motives that led them to reject weapons, they are all my heroes then and now.
* * *
Momir explained Krsto Zrnov's motives for collaborating with the Italian occupiers for a short while while he was writing the play. He knew everything, but everything about him, from the preparations for the Christmas Rising to his death after the Second World War.
He described the brigadier and his battles, political and armed, thoroughly to the smallest detail. If their baptisms were no longer separated by half a century, I could comfortably think that they were taken together...
The "death" took place despite the superhuman efforts of today's Komite brigadiers from the depees to prevent it. Lies were spread both about its hero and its author.
The Belgrade branch of the Service did everything it could to dissuade acting legend Petar Banićević from taking over the role of Krst on stage. On home soil, the Officials tried to track down the donors and the little collected money, bones...
Despite all that, the drama was played out. True, only twice, it was impossible without support. And Montenegrins - with the exception of honor - cared about Krst Zrnov then just as much as they do today.
They use it when they need it, and then they discard it and forget it, making a great mockery of its great merits. If they don't cause some kind of tragedy, they will wipe out the recent comic parades of the comitis movements...
* * *
I barely recovered from watching "Pogibia", the tragedy of the Montenegrin past is easier to bear by reading. Only when everything calmed down did I remember to ask Momir why the play focuses on the death of Krsto Zrnov, even though the written version of the play contains many important details from his wartime days.
- You don't suffer by writing how you feel it smells like war again, and you ask me such stupidity. And this is how we look at each other through the crosshairs, let me shoot the Italians and the Chetniks with rifles and slaughter each other in brotherhood - it's not exactly word for word, but that's how he answered me...
There was a war a little later, but not in Montenegro. Momir went to the best part of its history, although Montenegro forgot him during his lifetime.
It could be that I'm biased, that I was carried away by feelings... Not only because he was born on this very day, but also because of forty years together...
May it go to my soul, but I'm not the only one who believes that these bad days of ours would have been different if the students had learned about the last four centuries of Montenegrin history from his "Montenegrin War". There are not only all our battles and wars, causes and consequences, but also their rational interpretations...
And if it was possible to oblige their parents to study at least part of his essays on the Montenegrin state-church issue, they might not have fallen prey to divisions. Which is easy to warm up until both sides finally start to interpret the events in the concrete time context, and not to move them back a century or two ahead for their own benefit...
* * *
Yes... But, unfortunately, it is not... And I will never understand why Montenegro so easily gives up the best part of itself and the best of its people.
Ever since I studied ethnology until today, I have never registered that any small nation has ever put so much effort into being even smaller...
It's not all about Njegoš, there is also something about Ranko Jovović. And Momir Marković. And Miodrag Tripković. And in the best among poets, Radovan Zogović, whom she also renounced with unbearable ease...
The four of them differed not only in their motives and style, but also in the ideas they represented. What binds them most tightly is that, at least for several decades, they have been branded as traitors. And suffered the consequences, even though their only sin was freedom...
* * *
Freedom is Sead Sadiković's only sin, if he didn't grab it to make some kind of helmet before graduation. He is not a poet, nor a playwright, although there is a lot of both poetry and drama in his non-serial series Bez granica.
However, there is the most humanity there. And understanding for the little man who is caused great suffering by a blind and eyeless government. Local or national, it doesn't matter. Both fight back fiercely, not only to the little man but also to the big journalist.
He was attacked for the first time thirty years ago, on his Freedom Street in his Bijelo Polje. A little different than the other day and at the other end of the street.
- I'll punch you like a sack - the character threatened him with a pointed gun, with a burst of juicy curses.
- You're not the one for that - Sejo used the old word for the first time, freshly learned from Cetinje liberals when he was founding municipal committees in Bijelo Polje, Mojkovac and Pljevlja.
Momir M. Marković, one of the founders of LSCG, then a regular Sead reader and later a viewer, heard about it, called me and asked how he could meet him. I don't know - I said - I rarely watch it either, and what do you need...
- Let me tell him that next time someone else will be the lid, if he continues to defend himself this politely...
When he found out who the attacker was, Rasko Hadžiahmetović - as he always does when someone threatens any liberal - went into action.
He did not resort to force, Sejo explained to me the details that he also heard about only when the attacker apologized to him. In his cafe - long since turned into an informal headquarters of the sovereigntist - Rasko made that hero kneel down and sing Bosnian sevdalinka.
Now it looks like a good joke, but there could hardly have been less punishment and more humiliation for the then followers of the Ravnogorsk depees...
* * *
Sead Sadiković was a traitor at the time on several grounds. When he publicly supported the request of his compatriots that their national name be Bosniak, and Muslim remain the religious designation, he was attacked by a high-ranking supporter of the great M. Publicly calling him a frustrated liberal who is ashamed of his name.
Since January 1990, he was guilty of choosing LSCG instead of the national party, establishing its committees in the north very quickly. He never became Bosniak enough, despite being the first to write about the crimes in Šahovići, in Monitor in 1994.
Later, some compatriots publicly insulted him and threatened him because of the movie Prazna. A cottage for the voice, that's how he somehow described the humanity of the government. Explaining how she first ethnically cleansed Bukovica during the war, and then bought loyalty in peacetime, to which, fortunately, only some victims agreed.
On the majority side, the attacks did not stop, he was insulted, cursed and physically attacked. They smashed his car, came to his family's door, planted a bomb...
He responded to all that with words. And he addressed the institutions of the system. The investigation is ongoing. We heard the witnesses, we are looking for the attackers. If it is determined that there are elements and elements of a criminal offense, they will be prosecuted...
The said institutions have been repeating the same platitudes for decades. And when they did, they didn't go out of their way to find the principals...
The instigator was found and convicted only once. And that must have escaped their notice at some point because he, like all institutions, was a member of the Depees...
* * *
All those who have been spreading lies for days that the attacked person was in fact the attacker belong to Depees' mind and face:
Why do all the media emphasize that a journalist was attacked in Bijelo Polje, how could the young patriots know who was on the "zebra"?
I have no idea, I guess that's why it echoed throughout the region that night that they were cursing his pedestrian mother...
That's why I feel like shooting without warning, if some bastard dares to slap it in my face.
Because, due to such morbid constructions, other colleagues from Vijesti have also been shot for years.
That's why Sejo finally decided to retaliate by seizing the flag.
As far as I'm concerned, it would be enough - catharsis...
P.S. Calling for violence? No, but in self-defense. If the police, prosecutor's office and the judiciary will not, cannot or must not learn the mind of patriotic and other hooligans for thirty years, then no one should forbid an insulted, cursed, spat on and beaten human being to defend himself as best he knows how. Where do I get this right from? From the only institution of the system that functions at (too) full capacity. The president publicly recommended us to "return to traditional methods"...
Bonus video:
