Badljevina

This project started as some sort of travel-log that instead of narrating on-road adventures, would focus on harvesting memories from people that we met along the road. Then it mutated into this semi-fictional realm for Chinese whispers, more than anything, as an attempt to emphasise the relativity of memory and truth. Fiction does not have to be fantastic or unreal. I am not going for award-winning storytelling either. I am simply recounting normal everyday stories. Sometimes I spice them up, sometimes I shorten them and make them a little more mundane. The relevance of this project has to do with evidencing the frailty, or in my personal opinion, the non-existence of truth, thereby evidencing the potential for the creation -as opposed to absorption or transmission- of memory.

With these aims in mind, it’s easy to focus the project around people, or more simply, verbally transmitted memory. But as the cliché goes, silence is golden, and that has been my experience here in Badljevina. We arrived here yesterday and set up camp in a field right next to the local cemetery. Despite how creepy it sounds, it’s a nice, tranquil spot at the edge of the village and there is nothing even remotely creepy about this churchyard. In fact, it’s a calm and peaceful bubble in what seems to be an area emptied out by war, and re-populated by ghosts.

I have never been to Croatia before, and the only images I’ve seen are the paradisiac touristy beaches. Anna had warned me that the landscape was a lot different inland. Its poorer and the closer you head towards Bosnia, the worse it was hit by the war. Yesterday’s drive was lovely, village after village of picturesque houses (when I say this, I mean beautiful in a picture, old styled and made out of that old, silver timber. But I would not like to live in one of these houses, much less spend a winter there) until we left the road that followed the river and changed direction a little. Then we started to see more and more exposed brick houses (in these houses the exposed brick is not a ‘finishing’, rather a lack of it) mixed with finished houses and buildings covered in bullet-holes.  Klaus tells me that a lot of the houses in this region are empty. Understandably, most of the people left during the war. Then, the countries of the EU deemed Croatia too corrupt to give them reconstruction money, and gave them bricks instead. Apparently what happened is that the people who left re-built the houses as investment, but with no intentions of moving back. Sometimes unfinished, others unsold and un-rented, standing next to the ruins of the old buildings, the houses lie vacant and in half-empty, half-ruined, shell-shocked villages.

Having said that, it is still a lovely countryside area. Hay fields, cherry trees, and even an apple orchard right next to us. Simply not too many people, and certainly no chatty Ivans around. When we woke up this morning, a poppy field had bloomed overnight in front of our campsite. Layer upon layer of remembrance keep on being added to the napoleon cake of memory that has become Badlejvina. The poppies remind me that the recent civil war was not the only conflict fought on these lands. The area was badly hurt during the Second World War, and we have seen several Partisan monuments along the way, reminding us of the communist past.

When the afternoon comes, I decide to venture into the village for a reckie and also to see if there are any people around to talk to. I only see a couple of people working on their gardens or in the fields. A few nod back at me. A policeman standing in front of his patrol car simply scowls. I make it to the Church, beautiful and empty. At it’s side sits the school. It is closed as well. The walls are showered with gunshots. Another cliché saying says that all is fair in love and war. Some things should be sacred. Children should be sacred. I can’t help but wonder what must go on inside you when you decide to fire your weapon at a school. The school is freshly painted, and it has new double-glazed windows, but the bullet and shell holes are still very visible. This is the case for many of the houses here in Badljevina. Manicured lawns, perfect fields, perfect roses, maybe they are afraid of forgetting too fast. Maybe the gun-holes are a way of keeping the memory alive.

I start heading back and walk in front of a ruined building along the way. It seems laid out as a row of shops. Most of the outside walls are gone. So is the roof. I peer inside and see that one of the shop spaces is in use. It is a makeshift barber’s salon. I am about to go in and see if I can take a closer look and talk to the barber, when he starts arguing with someone in the courtyard at the back. Maybe not the best moment for a chat. I carry on, cross the churchyard. The chapel is old, but the graves are new. Most of them are from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s or after 2002. I wonder what happened in between. I know what happened. I just wonder how come no one lost to the war seems to be buried here.

I make it back to our little bubble facing the poppy field. Tina is busy making yet another delicious cake. All is normal, relaxed and cheerful. Except it’s not. One last cliché says that an image is worth more than a thousand words. I have talked to no locals today, but have seen many things. Silence in the context of this blog is like silence in a piece of music. It is not here just because there was no one to talk to. It is here because that silence means something, because it is a different kind of story, but a story nonetheless. All these layers of memory converging here in Badljvina, and not one spoken story. I wonder if I should have done this post with photos instead. It would certainly make more sense, but somehow walking around, camera on hand taking photos of the gun-holes seems disrespectful, in a voyeuristic and morbid sort of way. It makes me feel like a tourist feeding off some sort of post-war nostalgia, almost treating the place like a theme park. But it is not. It is very real, and very present. I know that I should take the photos, that it’s my work, but it simply doesn’t feel right. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe not.