Dubrovnik is absolutely enthralling. It is made of ancient stone and marble and stands on limestone cliffs above the sea. It promises beauty, extraordinary beauty and disturbing history. Here, I think of little else but disturbing history that lives.
I'm writing this from my bedroom on Budvanska 4, a house at the top of Dubrovnik in a quiet residential area that belongs to an adorable, three-generation Croatian family that hardly speaks any English. The streets were not made for cars, but they're good for motorbikes, sometimes. More often, a "street" (ulica in Slavic languages) refers to a large set of stairs built into the stone hill. To get to the old city, we walk down the stairs. To get home, we walk up the stairs. To eat, we walk down the stairs to get groceries, and then back up the stairs to cook them. To have any sort of interesting day, we must walk down to groceries, up to eat, down to the old city, up to shower, down to the bars, up to sleep. Et cetera. It's really hot in Dubrovnik.
Last night, a Croatian policeman bought us drinks. He did so far far away, by telling the bartender to simply bring them to us. When he arrived, the bartender pointed to a pale, lanky guy with a black rock-n-roll t-shirt sitting at the bar and said, "These are from him." Well, that was a first.
The Croatian policeman was interesting to me because he was obviously bored. He came over to us about 20 minutes later just to talk, to tell us that he would love to go to America and not go to New York but rather go to Alaska, or rent a car and drive Route 66, or both, but New York was definitely not for him. He said that he had not been drunk for an entire year, but tonight he was drunk. "I am so drunk, you probably think me crazy," he said. We did, of course, but his sweet nature made up for it. Also, he clued us into the fact that the Croats hate Montenegrins. "Because of the war." Naturally. If I understood the Yugoslav wars, maybe the hate would make more sense. It's beginning to make sense mostly due to characters like this Croatian policeman, who is an ethnic Croat. Here is what I know:
Bosniaks -- Muslim -- screwed (less so now)
Croats -- Catholic -- independent
Serbs -- Orthodox (majority) -- greedy
Albanians -- Muslim-ish -- screwed (especially in Kosovo)
Slovenes -- Catholic-ish -- independent
All of my knowledge is subject to change, seeing as I know nothing about Macedonia, except is strange tendency to operate under the acronym F.Y.R.O.M. Nevertheless, everybody here appears to hate each other still. It is fascinating to me that this scale of violence happened during my childhood. Fascinating, but also shocking that these wars, which should be a part of my living memory, seem to have almost never happened according to my high school education. If I could re-design my college career, I might create a major in the Nineties. And I would refocus all the attention given to Arab states and center it on the Balkans. Guys, it's THIS kind of hate we need to MOVE out of the world. This religious/ethnic strife is still so heated, it feels medieval. It boggles my mind how nations that have such advanced infrastructure in place (or more advanced than one might expect) can continue to feel deathly hateful of their neighbors. What kind of politics is this? I'm going to need help with this curiosity.
So this is Dubrovnik: the birthplace of wild curiosity. Wild curiosity about the wild Balkans and the wild failed notion of Yugoslavia. (I mean, the forced unification of all of those ethnicities under one--communist--federation would've never worked.) More and more questions arising about everything. Why being a traveller, living in a million temporary spaces, seems to offer the most clarity. And of all temporary spaces, these temporary political experiments in the Balkans have somehow drawn out my curiosity about the kind of relationships that society dictates ought to be the most permanent.
It's funny watching the people I meet react when I tell them I am moving to Jerusalem next month. Nobody really knows Jerusalem. It's an exotic spot with lots of political and religious strife. And it's really cool and weird that I will live there, of all the places to live in the world. But no one has asked, "Why Jerusalem?" It's like a fact they can't change, or I can't change, or just something they wouldn't expect me to change, like the color of my eyes. I am the girl who is moving to Jerusalem to teach youth at risk. I don't know if it's too cool, too different or too dangerous for the travellers to question. This is also a power I have, and to some extent, I am afraid of this power, too.
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