Yesterday’s scenes in front of the Novi Sad Faculty of Physical Education and Sport and those ninja gendarmerie members with drawn truncheons took me back 25 years, to that famous fifth of October and one, actually several scenes in the Belgrade streets of Kosovska and Majke Jevrosime.
Scene one: After the crowd’s assault on the Assembly, several policemen behind the Assembly building are kneeling, hands raised in surrender, with masks that some of them don’t even know how to put on their faces. I ask them where they are from. From Vranje, they say.
Tear gas stings the eyes, and they beg us not to beat them. Of course, no one beats them, pitiful as they are. Armed, yet useless. Some guy wants to settle scores with them verbally. “Let me go, fuck their mothers, they’ll beat us again tomorrow if we don’t teach them a lesson today!” I push him, calm him down.
We continue on…
Scene two: After the siege of the Keve Jeve police station, which lasted I don’t even know how long, because minutes felt like hours, and where I got a rubber bullet in the groin (Đuka, Anđelija, it could easily have happened that you wouldn’t be here 😅), some dude from Užice crashes a “Tamić” truck into the station’s front door, while down the street, burning cars are ablaze.
Čeda Jovanović is rambling something from the truck bed, calling on the police to lay down their arms. Nobody pays attention to him, neither us nor the cops, for that matter.
Zoran Živković stands next to him, his face pale. Someone from the crowd notices a long barrel in the station window. Chaos erupts again, Čeda and Zoki disappear.
When the situation calmed down a bit, the two of us, meeting for the first time in our lives that day, calm the crowd and enter the station, negotiating with the commander, I think he was a major by rank.
An agreement is reached that the police, unarmed, will leave the building, and that we will evacuate them from the city to Banjica by ambulance/emergency vehicles. We give our word that not a hair on their heads will be harmed, the major gives his word that they will not be returned to the city.
We call the ambulance service on the Motorola to come to the corner of Majke Jevrosime and Takovska streets, asking them to send two vehicles.
The major lines up the unit in the station hallway. I choose some big bald guy, about 2.03 meters tall, to go with me at the head of the column.
I ask him: “Where are you from, brother?” “From Vranje,” he replies.
“Well, for God’s sake, is there anyone left in that Vranje,” I try to joke. He doesn’t get it.
We go outside. He, so bulky, a head and a half taller than me, shrinks, tucks himself under my arm. He’s ready for the worst, I can feel his bones shaking.
And outside, the people are in delirium. Some are rejoicing. Some are cursing. I spot my fellow photographer, Sale Stanković, in that line, aiming his lens at us.
At the end of the line, a smiling Tirke (Bogdan Tirnanić) throws me a bone. I think to myself… Jeez, that’s my idol, should I tell him that I absorb his every word, that I would one day like to write like him. And that I want my wife to look like Dara Džokić…
There’s no time for journalistic sentimentality, we push on down the street.
That big-headed guy from Vranje has relaxed a bit, raised his head. I ask him if he has children. He says no, he just got married. “And you came here to die for Sloba?!”
“Damn it,” he utters.
We arrive at the corner of Takovska. The ambulance is waiting. But only one. Where’s the other one? The driver has no idea. He opens the door. These cops from the column throw themselves inside, grabbing with their hands and feet, because there isn’t enough space.
They somehow crammed in. Legs, arms, heads are sticking out, I can’t tell whose is whose. I push the door, trying to close it. I pull out that bald guy from Vranje and another one, send them to sit in the cabin with the driver.
The guy from Vranje turns around, takes off his shirt and mask and gives them to me. “As a souvenir, and maybe you’ll need it.”
(I did need it. Later, the old man used that mask to spray plums and apples in Zlatibor)
I remember thinking at that time, while I was trying to close the doors of that ambulance: What were these cops so afraid of? How much evil did they do that their hearts sank into their boots when they realized that the empire had fallen and that they were left at the mercy of fate?
But alas, there wasn’t much time for reflection on that October 5th.
I head back towards the Assembly and the Square and meet people carrying out chairs and pictures, war booty. I clutch that mask and shirt in my hands.
A little later, I’m sitting with my best man Đole by the Fountain, watching the greedy bunch looting Marko Milošević’s shop across from the Moskva Hotel. Police, of course, nowhere to be seen.
We won.
“This won’t end well,” I say to my best man and give that police shirt to some half-naked kid from the crowd so he doesn’t catch a cold. It turns out the kid is my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend. Small world.
And it didn’t end well.
Later that same day, a few hours after the described event with the evacuation of the cops, the Zemun Clan breaks into the police station in Majke Jevrosime, obviously in agreement with someone from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), and empties magazines of weapons in the basement.
And so that day, at the same cost, we disarmed the regime we hated and armed a criminal clan that would terrorize us for years to come.
I won’t even talk about the rest, you all know how it was and what happened, from the thieving privatization, the criminal transition, the assassination of Đinđić, and so on, all the way to today…
Never again.
What did I want with this story then, besides treating my future dementia by writing and trying to preserve memories…
Well, primarily to tell those masked tough guys from Novi Sad, who so easily pull out batons and shields against the heads of students, that no one’s power lasts forever and that they should be careful what they do. They were forgiven once. There won’t be a second time.
To the more literate ones, I recommend watching Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” with emphasis on the final scene. Everything is described there.
And to these children, the students, as someone who was their age on that October 5th, it’s true with much less wisdom in my head than they have now, but with experience that is not to be thrown away, I want to say the following…
The revolution of October 5th wasn’t a real revolution but a livestock market with elements of vaudeville, which is why October 6th never dawned for us. Many, too many deals were made with this and that, gray structures of the police, army, special units, domestic and foreign services, criminals, fans – who would become both associates of the Service and criminals in the same package, tycoons, media owners…
The disintegration began as soon as the bills came due, as soon as each of the aforementioned demanded their share.
The second reason, I am now absolutely sure, was the non-implementation of the announced and then forgotten lustration.
I admit, I myself was against it then, I believed in the power of people to change for the better, to repent, to learn some lessons. But, as I said, I was stupid and naive. And that is why this time lustration MUST happen. A line must be drawn, otherwise we will watch new deals and further decline for the next 25 years.
And that is why your, floral, as the patriarch actually correctly called it in Moscow (in Serbian, not the Russian translation), must remain pure to the end.
Only DEMANDS, no DEALS!
After all, you know that better than I do, because more of your heads think better than this one, my faded one.
You have learned our sad lesson. And now you know what you have to do…
Author: Antonije Kovačević Photo: Aleksandar Stanković