A Story about Love

Croats being expelled by Serb forces after fall of Vukovar, 1991

The times we live in are such ungrateful times that it makes you wish you had never been born, or better still, born in a different time and for a second time, and only because in this day and age there is not enough love to go round. In vain, all the big houses, expensive cars, winters spent in the High Tartars, Garmisch-Partenkirchen ski resorts, in vain, all the perfumes, all the briefings, all the misty haze of substitutes for a real life. Man relaxes in narcotic-like deceits, skilfully concocted secret paths in life, and then, once it is too late, when he matures and reaches a certain age, all the while blind to all his failures, suddenly he realises that it is too late for new beginnings. The end is near; possibly peering out from around the first corner. There is no way for you to steal back the years, steal back the happiness — if there is no love. It may seem that everything is full of sunshine and joy, you may think that the medals you have received in the shadow of those greater than yourself make your success complete, but I have seen many who walk the streets of the city with empty pockets and heads held high. Their joy in not having possessions is far greater. As they have the city. They have friends. They have a soul. They did not have the money for Zagreb, Vienna, Prague. Their money went to paying for drams of friendship drunk with friends with whom they then waited for the dawn to arrive on Croatian barricades. For some the waiting was too long, so we were left without them. But we know full well where they are. If our lives allow love to permeate our being, just as their love sustained them, at some point, at the end of the road, perhaps even we can expect to die happy.

                                                                                                                                                                             Siniša Glavašević