Nachricht Nummer : 317 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 28 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.comlink.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 29 November, 1993 Kopienempfänger : /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN Erstellungsdatum : 06.12.1993 16:50:00 W+1 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 29 November, 1993 Dobar dan, It was around 5 o'clock in the morning when Simo and I returned from the bar into his house, the last 2 hours we had some problems with a Bosnian fighter, with a long knife, who put some Bosnian Serbian Dinars in my hand and wanted back two other banknotes, since I only had Croatian money and Dutch money I had to think a bit. I figured out that the Croatian Dinars probably made him angry and so I gave he 10 guilders, which was about 100 more than he gave me, but he was not satisfied, I gave you two, you should give me also two, he said. After a while I have him the only other foreign note I had, which was 100 guilders (almost 90 DEM's) but he wanted real money and nearly burned the note right in front of my face, I promised him that next time I would come I would bring real money, dollars or DEM's, but I am sure that next time he wouldn't have his guilders anymore. All that time Simo was sitting there quiet afraid of what was happening, especially when the knife was in front of my face, but I told him not to be worried, I had all kind of riffles in my mouth already and I am a cat, so I have nine lives. Still he said next time I will call UNCIVPOL, when you try to do it again. In the main time he forget that the whole thing started when I went to sit between two drunken soldiers who were starting a fight and that I some how managed to take away their attention from each other. When we arrived at his house Simo called his mother out of bed, before I released it, and ten minute later the poor women was preparing a complete second diner for us and a bed for me. The room was cold, since the wood stove has used up all it fuel, so I was grateful for the half a meter of blankets she put on my bed. Clear was that I had some problems to get up at 9 the next morning, but when Simo's father came into the room, starting to told in something what could be a mixture of Serbian and German and more or less served me my breakfast, cookies and some brandy I was fast back into the world. Different from his son, he told me that he never ever in his live will trust the Ustase again, when he heard that I was Jewish (or at least have Jewish blood) he told me that Jews and Serbs should stick together, in the last war they kill hundred thousand of Serbs and Jews by cutting there heads of or smashing their brain with a hammer just 10 kilometer from here. I notice that I wasn't up for a real discussion about those things, so I kept silence and listen. In the last winter I heard the same story but just the other way round when I was down in Hercegovina. Simo has grown a lot in his mind in the time that he was in prison, before he was together with Martin from Ireland the hippie wing of the UN, but more hippie than anything else, now he has real ideas about what we can do to break the thoughts as his father has. He loves to come back to Pakrac to our side and see everybody again. For the time being however..... The Peace Circus played that morning in all the local schools, they explained about their tour through Europe and that they played for the children in refugee camps and in Pakrac on the Croatian side and that they now are here. When Kristof did his act on the primary school in a small village near Okucani I thought that some kids would never stopped laughing and I noticed that Kristof noticed it as well, specially a girl in the first row was totally into the story. Some of them literally wet their pants from laughing and their performance is not really that special. But also they love the music of Teet and Asa, they watch carefully how Asa explained everything about her friend the violin and they gave some of the kids some flutes to play along, also some of them knew them from two nights before and they were probably the most enthusiastic, they scream and jumped on the chairs, the teachers had probably a hard time to cool them down again, but it surely showed how far this kids are from the real world. I wonder if kids in the west or under more normal conditions also would have react as those groups. After we played for an hour with the smallest children in town (the circus has done 6 performances today) we decided not to eat in Okucani and hit the road immediately. It started to snow a bit and the world looked suddenly a lot colder than this morning. Some farmers passed by with their wagon and horse and look more like snow men than like human beings. On the corner of the street to drunken soldiers put up there hands and we stop, the question is if we go to Banja Luka, since they have to go back to the front-line at Brcko (half way Banja Luka and Beograd), there Bosnia Serbs only control a corridor from a few kilometer and the fights are heavy. "Autoput (highway)" is my answer and they look sad, they look if they have been standing here for hours. A few minute later we decided that the white strip between two football field is the highway and when we pass under a bridge a few kilometres further we know that our guess was right, slowly the snow starts to come down ........... Bok I Mir from Zagreb, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3, 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. ## CrossPoint v2.92 ##