Arnon Grunberg
Words Without Borders

We Have To Remain Honest

Last week I spent a couple of days in Montenegro, the last republic of the former Yugoslavia to gain independence. This trip was a follow-up to my visit to Kosovo earlier in September. In Kosovo I had spoken mainly to Albanians, although I did meet a few Serbs in the divided city of Mitrovica in the northern part of Kosovo. For a more balanced view, I decided to travel to Montenegro. It is one of the few countries where people from Kosovo can go to without a visa, and most of the people I met in Kosovo described Montenegro as their beach resort. It is, at least, for the lucky ones who have a little money.
I traveled to Montenegro with two men, a guide and a translator. The translator was born in Bosnia, and the guide was from Montenegro.
As it very soon turned out, the guide was a man with a mission. His mission was the Serbian cause. He was saddened by the break-up of Yugoslavia and he felt that the Serbian people had been wronged.
For reasons that never became completely clear to me, wherever we went the man introduced me and the translator as “the Muslim and the Jew.” My translator had a Muslim father and was not at all observant, and I’m also not exactly what you would call observant.
After two days, I asked the guide if it was really necessary to introduce us in this peculiar way. His answer was clear. “Well, we have to remain honest, don’t we?” It was not easy to fight with his logic, and since I was dependent on his knowledge of the place and the people, I decided to accept his explanation.
So whom did I meet in Montenegro? The head of the Serbian-Orthodox church in Montenegro and Kosovo, a man who deemed it necessary to crack “Jewish jokes” every two minutes.
The brother of Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 90’s and now considered a war criminal by many. The United States decided to offer an award for his arrest. But in Montenegro, and maybe also elsewhere, he is still very popular. In his brother’s café, the large drawing of Radovan Karadzic above the entrance to the men’s room gives the visitor the impression that Mr. Karadzic is something between a saint and a warrior.
Furthermore, I spent an evening with a guy who had done hold-ups at gas stations in Germany. After spending five years in prison, he decided to become a bricklayer.
The money from his hold-ups was spent on food, wine and prostitutes. But he had also sent 5,000 Deutsche Marks to his mother in Montenegro.


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