Pricey Arnon, My Europeanness is constructed on love, rejecting cynicism, and embracing variations

Pricey Arnon,

I used to be going to write down a very totally different letter however then life occurred. Or loss of life. Similar factor. 

I used to be in a bookshop in Berlin consuming a cinnamon roll (as a result of you are able to do that in bookshops now) and studying bell hooks after I heard that Dubravka Ugrešić had died. I came upon within the worst doable approach – by social media  – though I’m undecided if there’s a proper method to discover out your good friend has handed away. I transfer round an excessive amount of to have any individual near me present up, take a look at me gravely, maintain my hand and say, “I’ve bought some unhealthy information.” There’s no one on this metropolis I’ve identified lengthy sufficient to allow them to maintain my hand. So I simply sat there with my silly cinnamon roll, holding in my hand a guide about love, and feeling outright rage.

I remembered that my sister, who’s a psychologist, had not too long ago made me obtain an app which helps you discover the best expression for every emotion when you’re feeling it. She had instructed me that I would discover it useful to pin down my emotions with exact phrases. And so I opened the app and scrolled across the “high-energy disagreeable” class. Phrases floated throughout my display screen in crimson and orange bubbles. Shocked. Terrified. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Frightened. Livid. None of them labored. I wanted a single phrase for: my favorite Yugoslav creator is useless and he or she additionally occurs to be my shut good friend and the one girl function mannequin I ever had on this occupation, and I’m pissed at her as a result of we have been supposed to satisfy in two months. However language failed me. Once more.

Then I seemed on the bell hooks guide I used to be nonetheless holding in my hand. The phrase love in lowercase. Dubravka wrote about love, about writing to be liked. When my abdomen ached, she made me mint tea. When Europe ached, she wrote. And since she was so many issues directly and, on the similar time, none of them (Yugoslav, Croatian, Dutch, post-this and post-that, “witch”, girl, author), I assumed that she was the closest I’ve ever come to defining what European actually meant.

Pure Croatian air

I’ve all the time had a troublesome relationship with id tags based mostly on geography. My first passport was Yugoslav and my mom nonetheless retains it in an previous shoebox along with a typed checklist of post-Chernobyl directions for fogeys. In Croatia we have been Serbs and so we needed to depart due to what Dubravka herself described in her essays as “pure Croatian air”. Proper across the time that she was being excommunicated by her fellow College professors and journalists for talking out in opposition to nationalism, we have been settling in Bosnia for a lot the identical causes. I used to be “the Croat woman” in Banja Luka due to my Zagreb accent. 

My father corrected my vocabulary on the desk as if our holy Serbhood trusted me utilizing the best phrase for the spoon. Years later, after I moved to Belgrade, I used to be abruptly “the Bosnian woman”, my previous Zagreb accent lengthy gone and changed by clipped Krajina vowels, which my college professors and plenty of colleagues seemed down on. Wherever I went, I used to be another person and the language I spoke betrayed my foreignness. Lastly, after I moved to Barcelona in my mid-twenties, I merely went for “Yugoslav” when any individual requested me the place I used to be from. It wasn’t out of nostalgia, I simply didn’t really feel like giving a 30-minute lecture on Balkan historical past to anybody. However I by no means as soon as stated “European”. 

 I used to be by no means a European, as a result of it wasn’t Europe they needed. They needed “the Bosnian woman”

Whereas in Spain I shortly got here to a realisation that I used to be something however European. My mates have been stuffed with fascinating Erasmus tales and adjusted the topic after I admitted that the programme by no means existed for Bosnian college students. This Europeanness of theirs was stuffed with loaded phrases which I couldn’t relate to, however as an alternative discovered my very own definitions whereas unpacking them. “Backpacking” meant having a practical passport. “Millennial” meant there was electrical energy in your family. “Interrail” meant Hogwarts specific. In some unspecified time in the future I turned down an invite to a celebration titled “I miss the nineties!” and determined guilty a headache as an alternative of lecturing a bunch of backpacking millennials on a bloodshed which occurred in my nation in that period. 

The Bosnian woman in a Spanish bookstore

In my late twenties, Europe was only a collection of could-have-beens which made me really feel bitter and cynical. I may have had a greater school diploma. I may have seen the world. I may have grown as much as miss the nineties. And even when I did care about it in a kind of unstated sour-grapes sort of approach, it appeared to me that this Europe – white, Christian, rich –  didn’t care a lot for me. It knew nothing of my grandma who survived a lightning strike at 4 years of age, adored Maria Callas and Mexican telenovelas, and needed to carry a written permission to be able to go to the market as a result of her title was Muslim. A few of the males who requested for her paperwork was once her college students at a neighborhood main college. 

This Europe was the one that might quickly begin paying me to speak in regards to the battle. It appeared to be all that it needed to listen to: grotesque tales. I used to be “the Bosnian woman” in a elaborate theatre in Belgium speaking about “the aftermath of battle” to the individuals who wanted 150 years to take away the statue of King Leopold II. I used to be “the Bosnian woman” in a Spanish bookstore speaking about “the aftermath of battle” to the folks whose dictator had died peacefully in his mattress after restoring the monarchy and nonetheless had stunning flowers on his grave. I used to be “the Bosnian woman” sitting in a bohemian salon of a Tuscan baroness speaking about “the aftermath of battle” to the individuals who would quickly let Giorgia Meloni take over their nation. I used to be by no means a European, as a result of it wasn’t Europe they needed. They needed “the Bosnian woman”. 

One other factor that I quickly realised was that Bosnian tales have been finest instructed in both German or English. Bosnian authors writing unhappy battle tales have been beloved so long as they wrote in a “massive language”. Ideally, they grew up overseas. Ideally, that they had no accent. I watched these authors win awards, get grants, and journey the world. And despite the fact that a few of them are actually distinctive writers and for my part deserve all their fame and glory, my could-have-been Europes quickly got here again to hang-out me. What if we had left Croatia for the UK? For Germany? For France? What if I had been a backpacking millennial writing unhappy battle tales on an interrail between Berlin and Prague? Bitterness is a tough wall to tear down when it sprouts from an absence of privilege. 

And but Dubravka taught me that bitterness, whereas all the time current to some extent for us post-Yugoslavs in Europe, can win battles however by no means the battle. Writing is speaking. Communication is Love, with a capital L. There isn’t a place for bitterness there. No place for cynicism. She taught me that Europe can imply what I would like it to imply, and thru my very own private technique of defining it, it might maybe develop, and stretch out to obtain its “others”. Language, in different phrases, can un-other you. 

And but Dubravka taught me that bitterness, whereas all the time current to some extent for us post-Yugoslavs in Europe, can win battles however by no means the battle. Writing is speaking. Communication is Love, with a capital L

I’ve constructed my very own sense of Europeanness very late. I’ve constructed it on a European thought of affection as the final word weapon in opposition to cynicism, and of a radical embracing of distinction, as Alain Badiou put it. It’s a want to talk, to attach, even for those who don’t have the privilege of getting an Interrail ticket in your twenties. Write, Dubravka instructed me. As an alternative of whining about your could-have-beens, sit down and write. 

Towards all of the celebratory self-help market-driven obsession with me, myself and I – fuelled by highly effective algorithms designed to information us on to tailored merchandise – I consider there’s nonetheless room left in Europe for getting outdoors of our bubble. There’s nonetheless room for sitting on a pavement early within the night and speaking in unhealthy German to the Turkish girl who’s simply closing her store for the day and desires to get house to observe a actuality present. And I believe her title appears like my grandma’s. And I additionally assume that Dubravka would love her. 

Lana Bastašić

This letter is without doubt one of the “Letters on Democracy”, a undertaking of the 4th Discussion board on European Tradition going down in June 2023 in Amsterdam. Organised by De Balie, the Discussion board focuses on the that means and way forward for democracy in Europe, bringing collectively artists, activists and intellectuals to discover democracy as a cultural relatively than a political expression.

For the “Letters on Democracy”, 5 writers envision the way forward for Europe in a series of 5 letters initiated by Arnon Grunberg. The writers – Arnon Grunberg, Drago Jančar, Lana Bastašić, Oksana Zabuzhko and Kamel Daoud – come collectively in the course of the Discussion board, in a dialog in regards to the Europe that lies forward of us and the function of the author in it.