Nachricht Nummer : 465 Übertragungszeit : 4 min 32 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 31 March, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 12.04.1994 09:52:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 31 March, 1994 Dobar dan, At the breakfast table they, the family, told us that I knew the man who dead, he was the guy who was the trainer of the local football team and sat next to me on the evening that we were singing. I try to remember his face, but that is hard when somebody is dead. He is 37 and his brother who is heavily wounded a year younger, both are married and have 2 kids, from whom are the oldest are sitting in the same class as the oldest daughter of our family. Our landlady also tells us that the wife of the dead man is Croat of nationality (ethnical background), her whole family lives on the "other side". The funeral will be this afternoon. The whole night I have been dreaming and thinking about the dead man, trying to picture him in my head, as well as the picture of other dead people. But it is hard, such a picture in my mind is always suddenly taken over by a frozen picture, an imagine, it is that way since my father died almost 20 years back, I only can remember the pictures in the photo book, I hardly can remember him alive. We don't talk much when we walk down the road to the main village, Lynette and I, each have it's own idea's. We great as always the children on the street, also the other people, but since everybody is related to everybody in this village all of them have something different this morning, everybody walks with his or her soul under his arms, as we say in Dutch, or maybe I am imagining it only. At nine we have a meeting with the both presidents of the towncouncil and the town assembly to tell them about the possibility that we can pay for all material which is needed to plant seeds in their village. They promise that they will do their best to act fast if I am able to bring a part of the money soon. Than they offer to make a radio programme for their local Pakrac radio about it and say that we can do what ever we want behind the school, just before we start we should inform them what we are going to do. Also they will think again about the place for the kindergarten. After that meeting I walk back to the Croatian side to collect a part of the money and to see if somebody there knows about the shooting and the dead person on "this side". Back in the town I met Jojo who tells me that Jura was very upset yesterday and still today. He told everybody that somebody had been shooting on his new pub yesterday afternoon. By the time that I finally see change to asks Nena, Jura's wife, about it I wonder what is left over of the pub, since from all the different rumours I understood that some grenade's were launched at the pub. Nena said that only some bullet's were fired and that it was unclear if the bullet's really were meant for the new pub. Jura is walking around with his pistol in the band of his trousers, so I tell another local friend that I have to go back this afternoon for a funeral, and explain that it is the coach of Hajduk, who is known in the whole city from before the war and that he was shoot trying to save his brother somewhere in the forest on the Serbian Krajina side near the road to Pozega. I don't know what will happen with this information, it seems that nobody here knows anything about it (yet). He asked me if I know what that explosions were yesterday, they heard them here also but still don't know what it is (grenade's, landmine), the only thing what most know is that nothing was fired aiming on Croatian side since than they should know by now. I realise how this leak of information about what is going on on the "other side" makes people worried and tens, when they hear that something is happening over there and they don't know what it is. Not really knowing what is going on is the best way to keep people in a kind of war feeling. Together with Jojo, I walked back to the other side to go to the funeral, when we finally come to the small graveyard build on the sloop of a hill near the house where I am sleeping, we are 45 minute late, but nothing has happened yet. Around and on the graveyard the whole villages and a few hundred more from neighbouring village's have gathered it seems. The men are sitting and standing in their cars and on the yards of the two farms near graveyard and talking and smoking (and probably drinking). On the graveyard the women are standing and sitting, most of them, also the young ones, dressed in black. The children are playing hide and see between the grave stones. It seems that dead and life are a normal patron in life, I never have seen children doing that in the Netherlands or elsewhere during a funeral. After another half an hour, the clock starts to bang and slowly the graveyard is getting fuller and fuller, some people are standing on the grave stones to be able to look over the ones in front of them. Around the grave a big number of the old ladies of the villages, dressed up in their traditional black clothes and loudly crying. Walking during the waiting around the graveyard I found a lot of socialist, orthodox, but also catholic and Muslim crosses and symbols on the grave stones, sometimes different symbols on one family grave, this area is really a mixture. Than the group of people walking from the house of the dead man to here arrives, in the front the children of the classes of the daughter and son of the man, carrying the huge rings of flowers with the bands of all different people and organisation who like to tribute their last honour. Than a group of 10 soldiers in their uniform and with knives (I don't know the real word) on their riffles, than the priest and the coffin, behind it a few hundred people more. If the people "on the other side" didn't knew it yet, they know it know Jojo whisper to me after the soldiers made their salute by shooting 3 times in the air. The priest is talking, but I can't hear him, by the wind parts of what he says reach me "Mir (Peace), Smrt (Dead), Iesus Christus, raj (Paradise), nebo (heaven), Mir", than it is over and I hear the workers putting the earth over the coffin. Jojo and I walked with the crowd, who slowly disappearing in different houses to Jasmina's place, where Dzakula is also living. He is not at home, probably he is together with the men, and we talk for some hours with Jasmina about the role of women in this culture. It started when all three from our heart said that we hoped that this would be the last one, who died of the war in this region, so that his dead was at least useful for something. And than I told her that I met women on "the other side" which had precisely the same feeling. In the 8 months that I am here know I have visit different marriages on both sides, I have seen babies Baptists, on each of the sides, I have been to different funerals on the Croatian side, this is the first funeral on "this side". Mir from somewhere in Hrvatska, 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.ztn.zer.de . 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 (postbox 33), 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. Old numbers can be found by sending a message's with as subject "FILES" to pakrac.info@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de, to order a file send a message with subject "SEND " to same address. ## CrossPoint v3.0 ##