OUT OF MY HOUSE WITH YOUR RACISM!

INTRODUCTION

My whole life I have been frustrated by the unjust decisions people make under the preasure of political leaders or by powerful and misleading ideologies and concepts. For a long time I was displeased about the fact that things do not change as fast as I always hoped: Therefore I’ve staretd with my own thiny initiatives. Famous anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s who ever did.” This quotation became my key though.

Ever since I was a little girl I participated in workshops concerning with nationality, identity, religion rights, human rights, prevention of violence and all sorts of social fenomena I wanted to learn about. It became my “way of living” – to talk to people about this issues. I want to believe that I reach out to a few people at least.

Today I still do my old task. I talk and write about all the things I am still frustrated about. I dedicate this esaay of just writing that is aiming to reach out to as many people as possible. I will tell, In my own manner, you why I think that some concepts are interpreted wrongly and are still causing poor relations among people in The Balkan region in particular, and in the World in general. This is one poetic text which is inspired by past and present political situation and by the art of other people who find their way to contribute to the long process of reconciliation as well.

Listen carefully, even though I will say this more than once.

OUT OF MY HOUSE WITH YOUR RACISM!

Momo. What kind of name is that? I mean, it really matters to me. Is that Momo guy a Muslim, Christian, Jew? You see, Momo can stand as a nickname for Moses, for example. Or for Muhamed (Mohammed- as it is pronounced in some languages). Mo- ha- mmed, Mo- ses.

• Being a Jew is hereditary, like a disease.

• How do you inherit it?

• Well, easy. You get it from your parents.

• And the fact that you are a Muslim? – Just the same!¹

The following text is not intended to disparage anyone’s religion. Quite the contrary, my goal is to remind you that theatre art opens more perspectives, and I’ll do that by interpreting personal impressions of an excellent performance that I saw in the National Drama Theatre in Belgrade.

Movies are just as effective means. “Movies that move your ass”, as was the last year’s motive for the BELDOCS. BELDOCS 2014 movies were great. I was a witness that one movie moved every viewer’s ass in the theatre. Its title is Umetnost i nasilje (Art and Violence). It is about a hired theater in Palestine. As it usually happens, the darkness of the theatre was shared only by few people. I don’t get it, the admission was free! Be it as it may, we continue our story this way or that. For one more moved ass, a free ticket is ticket for ‘heaven’.

“Nationalism is a collective paranoia”

(Danilo Kiš, in ‘About Nationalism’)

Your entire life is before you. It is? What kind of life. Life of those with colored skin and the white Aryan is never the same. Life of a Jew and a Muslim is labeled even before they are born. Race does not exist. Yes, it does. It exists in the heads of those people who constructed it for purposes of subordination category. When we define the skin tone, it becomes easier to determine who is inferior, less pretty, more intelligent, genetically dumb, savage, invariably backward, and so on. Race is a perfect category for enslavement, for taking away someone’s dignity. An ideal category for permanent labeling. At the requirement of concentration camps, a variety of labels can be used, ranging from strips above the elbows, to branding and tattooing a serial number on the hands, so it is known that you are a number and not a man, and – a ‘haircut’- both literal and figurative.

The name matters, the color matters. Tradition is important. The origin is important. What does origin even mean? It looks as if a person roots itself on some land. He inundates it with blood, sweat and tears. They tell him it’s ‘his’ country now. Inside its boundaries lives a proud nation, the people of such and such country.

The country is holly. It must be defended. During the war you must to die for it. You must. This is how the foolish head is lost; the head that was told it would become a national hero. Thank you, but no thank you. Just like Momo in the show, every child would like to have a father who is alive, and not a national hero. Do not invoke that hero of yours, for if he could hear you, he would tell you the same thing. Stop inundating the land with blood. Home is where the peace is. Home is where a true friend and safety reside; home is where love and freedom are.

“The Damned Yard”

And what about those half-breeds, mongrels, those so- called national minorities? Thank you very much on all those rights you gave us, but we are still a minority. Did you give us those rights just so you can justify yours? Thank you for giving , allowing , granting us and partially making us equal to you. And of what are we a minority anyways? A man is a man. Labeling him a minority, among the proud people of a single nation, will not ease his stepping through the world of your extremely nationalistic country. That one will go with his back bent “out into the world”, far, far away from your constitutionally and democratically regulated country. He goes in order to find a loop in nationalism. And those loops are hard to find. Sooner or later some fool will “ambush” you. He’ll trip you over your Judaism, Catholicism, Muslimness, and so on… And then you change your name, form Moses to Mohammed, or some modern, international name. Momo, for example.

Carefully choose and paint your identity, erase, lie, camouflage it, order as needed. All this for the sake of your mythical country, nation and race. And to be sure, that is not the only reason. However, on these subjects scientific works have been done, novels and poems written, paintings and graffiti painted, and nowdays songs are sung and theatricals played. So read, watch, ask, realize. Out of my house with your racism!! This is what Anita Mančić furiously says in the show called Ceo život je pred tobom  ( Entire life is before you) to Mohammed’s father, who does not want to accept him as a son, after killing his mother and leaving him to a prostitute of Jewish origin for twenty years. Since the child is no longer named Mohammed, but Moses, as madam Roza portrays it, Jusuf, the murderer of his own wife, does not want a Jewish child. He must be named like an Arab. Amman! But the fact that he is a Muslim exists only as long as that poor Jew does as well.

And as Danilo Kiš said, Jill becomes a person thanks to the English tea… One of the elements in determining the identity is that something other must exist, this other, so different from us, something that we relate to when we identify ourselves. We always now better what we are not than what we are. Or to put it differently, we do know what we are because we hate those that aren’t like “Us”, i.e. We will never be like “He” is. He is a Jew, a Muslim. She is a woman. He is black, we will call him Banania. And so it continues, the fabrication of identity, the building of Babylonian towers all the way up to the sky…

Home is where love surpasses these misused social structures and phenomena. Home is where a person looks in another person’s eyes not knowing what race and nation are, what being a minority is, or an Asylee in someone else’s blood inundated country.

Well, this is a part of my contribution to reconciliation: to be loud, be ironic, to learn constantly, to transmit knowledge, to criticize, to realize and to write, to talk to each one of you and not to be tired or afraid that you would call me a lunatic.