Duša, sudbina i tuga
Part I
I´m entrapped into the magical world of eastern european music. Lately I started to listen insanely to sevdalinke, gange (not so often) and what western europeans would label as balkanpop. No TurboFolk. The first thing in the morning , I turn on my internet radio.
It´s so ironic, as a child I used to hate all the songs my parents played or sang, I hated them so much – the underlying melancholy, the sadness or the vibrant happiness – I only heard the words “duša”, “sudbina” and “tuga” in any song, it made me cringe. To this day my mother loves to tell the story, how, as a four year old I once shouted completely irritated at my grandmother pointing to a song blasting from the radio: “who is that sudbina they are all singing about?”
Sudbina means fate, good or bad luck, destiny – the inevitable fortune that befalls a person or thing.
As a person, I can´t say that I have anything like a national identity. I get very suspicious when people plaster themselves in national or patriotic terms. If someone says he is proud to be “” whatever country or nationality he/she is, I am out of it. How can I be proud of something, I have no influence upon? It is purely accidental in what country and culture I am born into. Yet the impact of that culture, it´s language , the family, the social & political structure I´m born into – the whole package can determine my outlook on life, my personality.
I was born in the seventies, when Yugoslavia still existed. The first six years I was raised by my grandmother in Rijeka while my parents where working in Germany. My first language was croatian. When my parents realized that their stay in Germany was for longer, they brought me to live with them. Children learn quickly, and soon I spoke german. But the feeling of not belonging here never really went away.
Our home was always full with family, friends and friends of friends. My father is from Bosnia, my mother lived in Rijeka, but her family is from a small village close to Sarajevo. In our home, there was always laughter, drama, quarrel and joy. Soon my german was better than my mother tongue. I spoke “croatian” at home, but there were barely books available to me -in croatian (or serbo-croatian, whatever).
My father is a little bit prone to some strange forms of nationalism, but you can make fun ot that in his presence and it´s okay. He calls himself croatian, but that is only because he is catholic.
My mother really doesn´t care. She hates any form of “isms”. She is catholic, but the only time she went to church was: for my christening, when her mother died and the cristening of my brothers. That was it.
While growing up in Germany there were numerous occassion when I had to explain my “stay in Germay”. very soon I became really tired of that. Teachers asking me what I was doing in Germany. Where my funny name came from and of course – the never ending deja vu of “what was your name again?”
Still, somehow I also didn´t care. As a kid and later as a teenager I always shyed from looking for other kids with the same background. My father sometimes tried to connect me with croatian-bosnian children.
But I simply hated the idea of looking for mates just based on what country they came from. As a teenager I never went to local cafes known strictly as “yugoslavian”.
Every summer was spent in Bosnia. And it was so wonderful. Whenever I came back to Germany, the school started, my german was so broken. Unbelievable. That was where my heart is.
Now, today, I have an croatian passport, I live and work in Germany and whenever I´m in Croatia people ask me ” where from bosnia are you from?”. It´s because my dialect is really bosnian. In Germany only my name hints at me being not german.
