The beginning of the seventies. Ciro was the fastest among us. At Gaja's tobacconist, he would take off his clogs and say - who wants to race to the intersection of five banks? Those who thought they were faster would be without five banks. Ćiro would crush his legs at the start and leave his opponent ten meters behind him. As strong as the earth. He didn't like school. Once, his mother forced him into the school yard through a small gate that was reserved only for teachers. He resisted with his hands and feet.
In the fifth grade, we went to the same class. Our class teacher was Russian, a huge Herzegovinian with an unmoving expression on his face. Ciro was once late for Russian class. He was chewing something and tried to explain the delay through the mouthful. The teacher took the diary and hit Ćir on the head with it. The girls from the first benches screamed in horror as a dark liquid spewed from Ćiri's mouth. It wasn't blood, it was chocolate. Ciro did not want to sit down. His way through the desks to the door was blocked by a teacher. It was the beginning of summer. Classroom on the ground floor, open window. The famous lightning movement of the legs. And Ćiro was already on the windowsill, and then he disappeared behind it, as if the main character in a framed picture had escaped from the frame. The teacher was left staring into that void.
Farmer, guardian, lion
I also met Harry at school. In fact, his name was Harris, and one of the meanings of his name was - lion. And he was my generation. Unlike Ćira, who lived in a house where the macadam road from Tuzla turned into several hundred meters of asphalt, in the area we called the Center, Hari was from a nearby village that slowly merged with the town, wavering between the village and the city . I used to live in that suburb before I moved to a new municipal apartment above the local surveyor's office.
Harry had always been a joker. His older brother Hero even more so. Once I was coming back from school, Hero was walking behind me. He took the eggs out of his pocket and whirled them towards my black rubber boots. Yolks slid down the tire to paint a puddle on the dirt road. It was funny to Harry, but his younger brother Harry addressed him pleadingly and angrily at the same time: "Don't, Hero, you mother. That's my friend!". Hero didn't touch me anymore.
Plates, lots of plates
When I went to Tuzla high school, I lost sight of them a little bit. I would sometimes find Ćira with Krušac, who had a crate next to the clinic, and his parents worked in Germany. We would listen to records there until we were exhausted. Some of them were brought by Ćiro, borrowing them from the collection of his older brother, a student from Osijek. Krušac procured some in Germany. And some I bought in a record store on Tuzla Boulevard.
We listened to things like This Flight Tonight of the Nazareth band, or Stairway to Heaven Led Zeppelin, energy bombs like that Smoke on the Weather, or Paranoid. We let go more often than others Lady In Black.
Around this mysterious Ladies in black the rock legends were sold out. In the English town of Cheltenham, one hundred years ago, she allegedly appeared to twenty men, and to each of them individually, and they all described her in the same way! Truckers in Texas still sometimes see it as it rumbles by at night Highway 281, a pale beauty with a rope in her hand, the sad bride of a Spanish landowner. That impotent man jealously accused her of cheating on him, so he hanged her on a tree near the town of Alis, which still leaves black leaves.
Bend
Once, on the outskirts, we found ourselves in a barn that Ilija, another schoolmate from Slobodan Bajić - Pajo Elementary School, had converted into a discotheque. The band was founded there. He had two names. Dollar or Zivi zid. Ćiro took the position of drummer. All that's left is to get the instruments and learn to play.
That summer we went to the Danube plantations near Belgrade. Farms paid workers well in the summer. We blacked out and put money in the pile. After two months, we decided that we had enough of them. We went to a musical instrument store in Belgrade and showed the worker a red set of drums in the window. We carried them in boxes to the bus that took us back across the Pančevački bridge to the agricultural property where we were working. In the dormitory, in front of the seasoned players, we took the drums out of the boxes. Ciro sat down for them. Since he was left-handed, he had to change the arrangement of the drums as if in a mirror. His first hit on the cymbal, somewhere between Ovča, Borča and Kovilov, marked the beginning of the rock era in the Bosnian town of Kalesija. It could have been 1979.
A girl from Tuzla
I used to see Harry at the bar of an independent restaurant in the eighties A girl from Tuzla. The constantly packed shop was a successful mix of aščinica, cafe and beer hall. Bartender Harry was forever smiling. In those years, we somehow became colleagues, because he was the frontman of the second Kalesian band - Stone head. Unlike my band, they have a few recordings left behind. I vaguely remember one of their things. I'm working on youtube and I remind myself. With Harry's crackling live voice it sounded much more shrill.
I remember that Ćiro sang in a cultural center in one of the surrounding towns lady in black accompanied by local rockers. That evening, he was quickly reassigned to the role of singer. He didn't speak English, but he knew the words by heart. He had sunglasses and a leather jacket - I like to remember him like that.
The death of rock and roll
The war at the beginning of the nineties will abolish all kinds of civilian dreams, including the one about rock and roll. Ćiro was a Serb, but he stayed in the predominantly Muslim Kalesija. He was one of the few non-Muslims in the Sprečan Valley who wore the insignia of the BiH Army on his uniform. After the war, my mother returned from Tuzla to Kalesija, and I started visiting her. On that occasion, I met many people whose characters and names were written somewhere on my inner map of childhood.
First I met Cira. He told me that in his post-war life he became a husband and a father. That he earned several falls from his ČZ motorcycle, two heart attacks and a few bypasses.
I saw Harry once in the supermarket. I asked him if he recognized me. He looked at me for a long time, he hesitated. Two decades have passed. Then we embraced as if waking from a long, ugly dream.
A temporary resurrection
Harry is in Streets of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide had a cafe that didn't even have a sign yet. He invited me to come there the next day. And I came. In the afternoon, when the guests thinned out, Ćiro, Hari, Cicko and I found ourselves at the table. Cicko is also a character from our era - he had an acting talent, he was short and had a nose. Harry locked the door behind the last guest. First, Cicko dipped his fingers in the ashtray and drew Hitler's mustache on himself. He imitated Hitler's hysteria, and instead of a mass of deluded Germans, his audience was the three of us, laughing to the point of tears.
We toasted by raising a bottle of Tuzla beer. Then Harry said - shall we? Ciro took the tray and used it as a def. Harry swayed to the beat. And then he sang in a voice incredibly similar to that of Alen Islamović:
Somewhere in your address book under the letter B is my name, cross it tonight and put a cross of ashes and a cross of silence...
We all accepted. It was the moment when the dead Kalesian rock and roll was resurrected for a moment. We hit palm on palm, the bottom of beer bottles on the table...
I dreamed, how do you enter my song / you enter just like in your garden, swallows fly under your arm / I sing, my white wings grow
This lasted for several minutes. Harry then sang everything once more. And one more time. We didn't want it to stop. It was as if we knew that this handy band, made up of veterans, would never perform in the same lineup again after this lazy, warm afternoon. It's as if Bregović's song is the last thing we were given from our shared joy.
Rockalesia
After that came a few more years, the pandemic, we didn't contact each other. A few days ago, I was first stung by the announcement on social networks that Harry had died. Just a few days after that, I also received the news that Ćiro had left forever to keep the rhythm of the heavenly choirs. Both are now somewhere, where rock and roll is alive. She took them there forever Lady in Black.
I hope they are starting a heavenly band already Rockalesia. And let them not receive angels or angels to play with them. Sooner or later, all of us will join in, with white guitars the likes of which we have never had in our lives.
Ciro, I'm sure, hangs out with John Bonham. Both have a gorgeous silver drum kit Ludwig. They don't talk, they just make fun of each other. Ćiro also has the best fishing equipment - because I didn't know a single person who would rather say the sentence: "I'm going fishing". Nebeska Spreča is more beautiful than Neretva. And Harry walks up to the gilded microphone Shure 55S , just the way Elvis Presley breathed, and the lion utters his voice, as never before:
I sing, my white wings grow And it doesn't hurt anymore
And indeed, my friends, I see your good souls growing wings. Rock never dies. I will stay here for a while longer, to record how long, long ago, we were all mortal parts of an immortal story.
Bonus video:
