I attended a literary evening in Novi Sad in 2019 where he spoke Abdullah Sidran. It was within Booktalk, and the conversation with Sidran was led by him Aleksandar Djuricic, journalist and writer, born in Podgorica. Sarajevo, Novi Sad and the city that used to be called Titograd came together in a strange, but still straight line.
Sidran spoke his lines, off the top of his head, squinting. The hall was full, many people cried because of his verses. There is no pathos, no sadness, but there are pure, refined emotions and humanity, as always, a sufficient dose of irony and intelligent and unpretentious Sidranov humor.
When Sidran is mentioned, the vast majority immediately think of the films for which he wrote the screenplay. Many compete, in the discipline of who knows more or more precisely the quotes and dialogues from the movie "Father on a business trip" or "Do you remember Dolly Bell". The author of this text often participates in these competitions.
But if you are already choosing the favorite, there is one line that refers to Slobodan Aligrudić. In the movie "Dolly Bell", he comes home drunk, takes off his shoes one against the other, and the son asks his mother (phenomenal Miro Banjac) "Is he drunk?", and the mother replies "Not at all". What a play on words, what perfection of an unfinished process, what irony and explanations of everything, from humor, our football and sports, Yugoslavia to Yugoslavs, just about everything. Not quite!
A few days ago, all newspapers and portals announced that Abdullah Sidran had died. But we can say at the top of our lungs: Not completely! His poems will be read, the phenomenal films he made in tandem with Kusturica, people will enjoy, laugh and cry alternately. Sidran was a master of that combination of emotions. Therefore, Sidran may have died, but not completely!
You should go back to Sidran's book "The Redemption of Rawhide". When the book appeared, there were literary naysayers who described his book as a mere autobiography, saying that it was not a novel, that it was confessional prose. They were always looking for something to challenge his talent, when they already don't have a fraction of his magic. But whatever, that book is a saga about one family, town, customs, one Sidran from Sidran. With how much emotion and attention he describes individual family members, it can be seen that he did not want to forget or skip over any person, that he believed that everyone had something to say and that that person should be heard. There were no big or small people for him. That's why Sidran's characters are always the ones that everyone bypasses, the outsiders, but he saw a sea of emotions in these people and managed to transfer them to paper. The purchase of the raw hide is all that Sidran demanded, to have his own destiny, to be responsible for himself.
The father is Sidran's understandably obsessive subject, and the “official road” is what it's called white lie. A seemingly harmless lie, self-deception, not agreeing to the truth that does not exist. Guilt, slander, vice and innocence. Fantastically intertwined themes. The Father is present on every page of Rawhide Redemption. He repaid him, for everything he experienced, in the justice of God. He is also present in the beautiful song Father is returning from an official trip, which on this occasion should be quoted in its entirety, completely, completely, because of Sidran and his father and all such fathers:
Dad had nothing in his hands/when suddenly, from the door, he said:/Here I am!/You didn't think I died, did you?/The house jumped so much/that the mother fell through it:/Everyone told us that you did,/ and we/always knew that you weren't!/The three of us/are climbing/up the mountain/of our father./On the way we/kiss him everywhere,/kiss, kiss/so that his hands/will never be empty again.
Bonus video:
