You remember some accidents with your body, they leave a permanent scar and a clear picture in your head of where you were when you were notified. The Cetinje massacre is one such accident, which hits a man straight in the heart and moves him to the point of looking for a way out. But there is no way out, time must pass, to turn around, see that you are at lunch, that your family is next to you. You hug them. But inside it hurts and grips with anxiety that only those who feel the world is falling apart feel.
Friday was the disintegration of the world as we know it and an encounter with a crime that changes the shape of our reality. I felt, and I believe many do, that we are in an unfamiliar territory. That's why I'm not a journalist today, this is a human call to make it easier for ourselves, to speak and communicate. I personally felt the help of Montenegrin society when I was having a hard time, and I know the extent of solidarity.
After such massacres, the old words are no longer valid. We have to look for new ways to love and see each other. Something broke in the community when a man attacked children, women, neighbors, killed ten people, wounded six and finally died as a terrible prophet of something new, sinister.
The day after the railway tragedy near Bioč, the editor sent me to wait in front of the morgue. Families picked up the bodies in sacks, in the north wind that froze the skin. Then I felt that I am not there to convey, that I will not ask anyone a question, but I will simply stand with people, wait with them, be useful with my presence and silence.
At the moment of devastating pain, there are no mediators, transmitters, such tragedies are not far from anyone, we all stand in the center, equally responsible for word and deed, and all of us, no matter who we are, bear a terrible mark and responsibility for society to overcome trauma.
That is why it is a day of mourning, not a day of despair and anger.
There will be time for stories about psychiatric treatment, about the ability of the police, about small communities and quiet neighbors who hide hell inside. All this follows and everything must be approached with new words, or we will only hurt each other, pointing a finger at the wound.
So let there be silence these days. I am not a journalist, but I am one of those affected by the tragedy and I will remember the place I was in, one of the most beautiful in the world, when this news reached me. Above Sušice Canyon, in the village of Nedajno, at 1450 meters of altitude, I was showing my daughter Niki her homeland, a daughter who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio and has regular protection exercises in the event of a school shooting. I watched with my own eyes when she practiced hiding under the desk in the first grade, in a school every parent would want, but in the middle of a sick society that produces mental chaos ready to attack children. Those children are playing hide and seek, but they are actually preparing for an attack. That country is called America, and as I was showing Niki the canyon, I said, this is Montenegro. This is Montenegro, Nika repeated, because my tone was too solemn and pathetic. We laughed over the Sušice canyon, watched the mountains collide and repeated, this is Montenegro. Five minutes later, I said to my friend Whitfield, who was working in the hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania when the Amish children were being shot, that Whitfield, a lover of Montenegro: This is not Montenegro. We got an oval of homemade food, the day turned into a ruddy beer calm, and I was holding the phone and repeating - this is not Montenegro. What happened in Cetinje, this is something else.
What is Montenegro then? A monument of nature, a canyon from which you can freely drink water, or the darkened mind of a killer?
This is Montenegro.
This is not Montenegro.
Like a puzzle that must not be left to a random end. It is before me and before you that we do not allow chance to be the master of the answer. We are irrevocably responsible for this society. We should be aware of this even outside of tragedies in which we finally feel that we are one.
If there is anything meaningful about death, it is its terrible power to unite. The feeling of attachment and warmth, of belonging to something difficult and overwhelming, I guess some other small communities with deep canyons and rapid echoes have that. Montenegro is such a place, gunshots from Cetinje will bounce off our yards for a long time and live in us as a concept of terror.
We need to help families who are in the black these days. We must be honest, brave and honest, say, this is Montenegro, and do as much as we can.
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