Stay here! The sun of a foreign sky
Will never warm you like this sun of ours;
Bitter are the morsels of bread there
Where there is no kin, and no brother is near...
Aleksa Šantić, 1896.
Although today I read several great topics in the #weekend-experiences weekly edition, and already started thinking about the greed of the human race and the desire for power, as well as about the cruelest punishment for the monster guilty of causing the most pain to the most loved being or about the time spent here with you, online, still one story turned me in a totally different direction.
I didn't even think of a topic related to the country I live in as a choice for this week at first, but when I read a great post by my Hive friend about plans to leave the homeland, my thoughts turned to this topic:
Do you ever hate the country and location in which you live and if so why?
Seen from a distance, the country he wrote about, the Czech Republic, is a beautiful country, Prague, his hometown that he is thinking of leaving, is a magical city (I visited it twice), so the question crossed my mind, why did he decide to leave it and go outside the country where he was born?
But I didn't ask, because I started thinking about my country and the topic of my choice for this week's #weekend-engagement.
Born half a century ago in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, survived in my teenage years (without feeling the effects of war and suffering) a civil war that created several smaller countries from a beautiful, large state, and continued living in one of them, I thought several times about leaving it.
A few friends did leave. They moved to Germany, Canada, Cyprus, Norway, Australia, Scotland, America, looking for a better life.
It might seem to some that I am a local patriot who cannot leave his homeland, but I am not. I had similar thoughts.
It's just that in some critical moments of my life, when I was on the verge of deciding to leave: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the name of the country in which I lived after the breakup of Yugoslavia, or Serbia and Montenegro (the next name of the country) and finally the Republic of Serbia (as it is still called today), some situations happened that prevented me from leaving...
During my studies, I participated in student protests and had the will to change the government, which has been leading our country to ruin for years.
The invitation to go abroad happened at the moment after the change of government (a year after the bombing of the country by the NATO pact). Carried by the euphoria of the victory and the change of government, I decided not to accept the invitation of my friends and not to go to Cyprus.
The second government came, showed all its bad and negative sides, took some bad steps and shook my faith in a better life in Serbia.
The friend's invitation to live and work in Germany happened at the moment of permanent employment and acquaintance with today's partner, and that call remained without my consent.
A few years later, a friend found a twoapartmant house in Norway, where the two of us could move into one, but we moved into our own apartment in Belgrade.
After that, years of hard work, travel and enjoyment followed, and we slowly crossed the age limit when going outside of Serbia would make sense for us.
However, a new government came on the scene, took the wrong steps for years, divided the people into suitable and unsuitable, into ours and theirs, obtained great wealth for themselves through corruption and mafia deals, impoverished us and sold off the state little by little.
For the last year, there have been large protests in the country (again by students, as well as those from 1996/97 in which I participated), once again a part of the people, rebelling against the bad policies of the party in power, is fighting for its removal, and another part of the people, who benefited from that government, is fighting to keep her...
Even now, at the age of 50, I am trapped, like in a bubble, with a desire for change and no desire to leave the sinking ship. And I have the possibility of leaving, but I lack the vision - why should I?
Do I hate my country?
I never have, nor will I ever.
It is a beautiful place, it has beautiful cities, towns and villages. There are rivers, lakes, mountains, old temples and monasteries, monuments at every step, good, hardworking and honest people (OK, there are also Ćacad, but I won't waste words about them except these - Who the fuck).
Maybe it lacks the sea, but that's why it has beautiful expanses of green sea: quality arable land, hundred-year-old forests, meadows and pastures.
Everything that can make it perfect for life, if only our society was more united, more cultured, more educated and that the ruling party was better for us, that it put the interests of the state and the people before the interests of its members, president, prime minister and ministers...
With this kind of politics, where statesmen insult and compromise the state and the entire people, wherever they appear in the world, presenting us as we are not, some hatred is born in me.
But not hatred towards the state, towards those mountains, rivers, lakes, meadows or people, but towards those politicians and our society.
But also some form of self-hatred, which I didn't have in some earlier years, when I could already understand what my life would look like if I stayed in my homeland, decide to go somewhere else like my Hive friend.
Maybe the sun of the sky wouldn't warm me there like above our Serbian (as in the lyrics of the song from the beginning), but maybe I wouldn't feel bad that I didn't try to look for a more orderly, cultured and educated society in a new homeland, which would suit me...
Wisdom says, it's never too late...
I don't know, maybe at some point I'll try my hand at expat life, but even then I'll call Serbia my homeland, and I'll always fondly remember and return to it (even if only on annual vacations).