A picture from the honorable and nostalgic side of memory
All fairy tales in the world begin the same way: “Once upon a time there was one…” only the Transcaucasian ones are honest and say: “Once upon a time there was one… and maybe it wasn’t”. When the years press, a person is no longer sure what was and what was not. Especially when they erase old ones, write new histories and, what is the saddest and most shameful thing, forcefully change personal memories as well. They declare invalid. And when everything is destroyed, even the memories are torn, where the man arrived. Here, in addition to family birthdays, they changed, recolored or rushed out of my calendar all the dear dates that I lived by for a lifetime. If it weren’t for friends scattered around the world with whom I exchange memories and check memories, I wouldn’t even notice that May Day was approaching. Yesterday, for example, it was the first breaking news on BBC1, and the other TV Channels showed solidarity, that PM, Boris J. and his fiancee had a Baby Boy. And the second, therefore of lesser importance, that some 6 thousand Britons stopped breathing due to Corona. In which case, in Vranje, they say: “His spoon fell out”. And I count how many sons, daughters, grandchildren, relatives cried. Enough grief for him, I seek refuge from exile, in memory. So I fasten my seatbelt in the time machine for a nice holiday, I’m taking off…
Intoxicatingly, like the smell of jasmine from the May gardens of Mostar, Cesarec’s dear verses washed over me: ” Oh, all you ancient First Mays”… I didn’t read much of Cesarec, he didn’t have time to write much. He left his last short written work, a note with the note “August Cesarec, writer” on the way to Dotrščina, in Zagreb in 1941. They shot him there. He is most often remembered as a commie, and he was a great writer. Not because he sang about May Day. I sang myself, and I’m not even a writer. Although I remember with pride the verses on the same, ruddy subject. I was asked by Radio Sarajevo “Prvomajska” for the group “Iver”. I started like this:
May is tender on the feast of the rose ,
The play of sun and heart in the grass,
May is a friend who lends a hand
To show who is a real friend…”
I remember that first stanza, everything else was covered by the storm and oblivion. Except for the blue-green eyes of Erna from “Iver”. The girl had two Blidinje lakes under her eyelids, under the moonlight. Those eyes still shine and warm me like youth and there is no darkness that can dim them, extinguish them. Not even those distant Mostar May Day vigils of the Brass Orchestra at dawn. All my friends: Muamer, Kona, Vasko, Maha, Stevo, Edo, Aladar… Symphonically amplified by “Abrašević”. Except for the talented musician, maestro and friend Vuk Vrdoljak. Vuk played the double bass in the Symphony Orchestra, and he was nothing in the Brass Orchestra. Because you can’t rely on a trumpet, Ico would say… Drunkards of all countries – unite!… Such a divinely hungover orchestra has never played music in any city of the proletarian, let alone non-proletarian world… And that dreamy and festive neighborhood of mine that stuffs barbecues, charcoal, hand-held refrigerators, lambs skinned from the grass called zanovijet, crates from Sarajevo, Nikšić, Karlovac, and more crates into trunks and trailers, finally stuffs in the cheerful children and married wives, sets fire to the fleet of vehicles and turns everything south towards Jasenica, Buna, Mala Polje, Blagaj. And even further to Tihi Do and Počitelj… I didn’t go to the mornings. My friends would come to me. Šiba Krvavac with Ešref in a white Golf and a white shirt. He changed his shirts three times a day, and his cars when their tires went flat. So Kemica Monteno came first with Branko, later with Adrian and Đani or with Davor. The singer had an unprecedented talent to turn every day into May Day, a holiday… And Mika Antić and Pero Zubac would arrive on early trains, even from Novi Sad. When he was with his wives, Ljilja and Dragana, he was always full of happiness because of the meeting with Mostar, and when he was alone he was full of grandson “Rubin” vinjak with which they soaked themselves on the night trains through Bosnia. Well, they slept through the holiday, until the evening. Then the citizens of Mostar would return tanned, hoarse and noisy. They left with a red carnation, and returned with a gnawed spinak in their lapel…
Oh, all you long-ago May Day…
I still have a memory of the first May Day coffee from the 1970s. At Rondo, the gathering place of love, as Kiko Sarajlić would say, I’m waiting for Zubac and Antic. It’s early, and it’s already warm, so he’s grabbed some shade. When Đema comes from Drapšinova, in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He buys “Oslobođenje” at the kiosk at Vilim on the corner, asks around. They call out to him from the car: “Let’s go to Buna, Đemale”… Đema is from last night, he’s getting ready. So we get ready. Little by little someone will come up to say hello. More about the custom in Mostar… “By God, this getting ready is so thin,” he says. “You see what a time it has come to be that you can’t even drink coffee on Rondo comfortably.” The taste and smell of that coffee on Rondo with Đemal Bijedić in shorts, whom I saw a few days later on TV twiddling his thumbs in a conversation with the president of US Ford, giving him Maestro’s Stari Most in the original version, here I am and now I am collected and softened… And I am contacting you with a congratulatory message.
Oh, all you ancient and wonderful First Mayans!
Prepared according to a passage from the book Diary of a Stateless Person
Tačno.net
Photo: fitz.cam.ac.uk
