Relics

The Sava River cuts Belgrade in half.

Probably the most Serbian of rivers, his waters flow lazily and merge with the mighty Danube -probably the most European of rivers.

Downtown Belgrade offers many views onto the Sava. As an example, take Kalemegdan, a large park which is to Serbia's capital what Central Park is to New York, or Les Plaines d'Abraham to Québec City. On a clear day of Summer you can relax, sit on a bench and watch as the river traffic unfolds. A cargo here, a small passenger vessel there, probably a ferry...

A number of boat-restaurants still operate along the Sava. Apparently, there was a time in the nineties where it was fancy (or it still is) to dine in this establishments. Local, national, foreign personalities and their cohorts would have lavish diners, probably consume rivers of slivovitz to the sound of the latest turbo-folk. The next day photos of these diners may or may not appear in diaries and tabloids. Patrons of these restaurants were of many sorts: politicians, football (or music) stars, gangsters, war leaders... Belgrade of the nineties was such a chaotic (and surreal) place.

The Sava has witnessed the fate of Belgraders through the centuries. The river was there in the fifteenth century when the city was on countless occasions razed down by the Turks (by the Germans in 1944) and later by the United States and its European allies as part of a NATO coordinated offensive.

Planes roared the skies, exploding bombs illuminated otherwise dark alleys, streets and run-down buildings. On the other side of the Sava, the trendy Novi Beograd wasn't spared as buildings and office complexes of the Socialist Party were fatally hit. Entire neighborhoods suddenly became ghost towns, the former glory of imposing party buildings was reduced to rubble.

I visited Novi Beograd a few years after the bombings: The Dayton accords had been signed, Bosnia had been carved up by Croatia and Serbia and the NATO planes had already abandoned their bases in Hungary and Turkey. Milosevic was still president of Yugoslavia. The memory of hyper-inflation was fresh.

I walked around one of the damaged sites. I don't remember how I got there, probably a taxi drove me. From 'Old' Belgrade we went into Novi Beograd (we crossed the Sava). On the ground I found some sort of photo ID, it belonged probably to a party member. I kept the ID as a 'souvenir' of my trip and I still have it somewhere among other things I keep from previous travels: postcards, foreign currency, magazines and papers in exotic alphabets, maps, CDs of folk music from various lands, museum entrances, leaflets, diptychs, tourist brochures... and then this party member ID.

Sometimes I wonder, who was this man? What was he doing on the day of the bombing? Is he still alive? How did his ID ever ended up in my room? A decade ago when Mr. Milosevic dictated the day-to-day affairs of Yugoslavia keeping this card might have been a felony. Today it's just a worthless relic valuable only to academics.

A relic is something material: you can touch it, feel it. On the other hand, a memory is intangible, exists only in the memory of those who have lived it.