Café Europa: Life After Communism

Europe has another meaning for me. Every time I mention that word, I see the Bosnian family in front of me, living far away from whatever they call home and eating their own wonderful food because that's all that is left for them. The fact remains that after fifty years, it was possible to have another war in Europe; that it was possible to change borders; that genocide is still possible even today.

The individual citizen had no chance to voice his protest or his opinion, not even his fear. He could only leave the country - and so people did. Those who used 'I' instead of 'we' in their language had to escape. It was this fatal difference in grammar that divided them from the rest of their compatriots. As a consequence of this 'us', no civic society developed. The little there was, in the form of small, isolated, and marginalised groups, was soon swallowed up by the national homogenisation that did not permit any differences, any individualism. As under communism, individualism was punished - individuals speaking out against the war, or against nationalism, were singled out as 'traitors'. How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.

People were forced to jump from a village into a city, to make the giant leap from feudalism to communism, without the time or education to develop a civic society vandal its values and habits, from the concept of private property to huma rights, from democracy to toilet paper.

Should we not, must we not ask, then, what is Europe after Bosnia

Nobody would doubt for one moment that my husband is a rich foreigner - why in the world would I marry a poor one? My marriage also means that I have escaped the common destiny of my people: the war, poverty, insecurity, unemployment, disappointment, political confusion, low wages, and the feeling that time is running out fast and you can't be certain if the future will bring anything better.

If you asked a child riding a broomstick what it was doing, the child would answer, without hesitation: 'I am riding a horse.' For that child, a stick is a horse. It is as if by merely calling something by another name, you are able to transform it into what you want it to be. By usurping God's power, you create an illusion of an instant Paradise. And no one has yet told the infant Eastern Europe that a wooden stick is not a horse.

Faced with their confused glances and naive questions, I saw that there indeed was, between the writers and that public, however benevolent and sympathetic, a visible barrier. The audience simply did not have enough background information to comprehend what the writers sitting in front of them on the podium were saying. Confronted with such a lack of understanding, I felt that I had no other choice but to hang on to 'my' group, the writers from Eastern Europe. At least they knew what I was talking about; at least we understood each other's problems, if that was of any comfort to a single one of us. And in any case, even if I had loudly screamed that I didn't want to belong to any group at all, the audience would have put me with them. Perhaps for the first time I became aware of how tired I was of constantly being pushed back into 'my place' every time I made an attempt to break out of it.

Even at his age he knew that there are basically two categories of people in a society: those who have, and those who have not. But according to the egalitarian principles of any communist society, those 'haves' should share with the 'have nots.' And because there is not much to share anyway, in the end that egalitarianism boils down to the equal distribution of poverty.

It was hard to force people to give up their rights to apartments, and predictably, this radical Utopian ideal failed. But it does illustrate how the concept of social injustice in a communist society works: those who have are exceptions, and they should feel guilty and ashamed - the others are entitled to have, too, because it has been promised to them.