380
PARTISAN REVIEW
feed the animals. In spite of the danger, one Monday morning a keeper
brought an apple and a piece of bread to the dying bear, but the animal
was already too weakened to survive. At first glance, one would think
that the keeper's act was totally absurd and that he was acting against
his
own self-preservation. If there was any food around at all (and there are
reports that people in Sarajevo are eating dandelions, leaves, and
grass).
shouldn't he have eaten that precious apple and bread himself, or at least
given it to his family? No, he continued to take his duties as a keeper se–
riously, even under the impossible living conditions in Sarajevo's hell, and
he stuck to the idea of "normality." Thus, while it appeared he was acting
against himself, the keeper was actually doing something for himself,
creating "order," a parallel reality, out of chaos.
Croatia is not to be compared with Bosnia and Herzegovina, nor
Zagreb with Sarajevo, but it is still a twilight zone where anything might
happen, and one survives only by developing a specific kind of ambivalent
attitude to the atmosphere, not wholly reflective of war but not reflective
of peace either. In spite of the nice European face of this city, people have
disappeared during the night. On the outskirts of Osijek and Split, houses
and cars have been blown up. If you leave your apartment empty for a
couple of weeks, you might find refugees there upon your return.
Drunken war veterans are killing each other with bombs and automatic
weapons in bars every night. All kinds of black market activities flourish,
as well as arms- and drug-smuggling. There are refugee camps
all
over.
People are getting poorer and poorer, but still red, yellow, and green
traf–
fic lights change regularly at the crossroads. The Dior and Benetton shops
are open, street cars are running, and there is fresh bread to buy every
morning. Perhaps all this sounds a bit like life in New York, except that
here one cannot choose to live on an Upper East Side, ignoring the war.
There is no Upper East Side, and the war is happening to everyone
in
one way or another, changing everyone's view of life, values, morale,
emotions . .. breaking them in two.
The war is not the only thing that has happened in this country since
1989.
It
has experienced a change of political power, too. In the spring of
1990, a new government was elected in the first free multiparty elections
organized by a transformed Communist party.
It
means that the citizens of
Croatia not only live in a new state but also in a politically different sys–
tem, a democracy. At least, this is what citizens have been told by the
HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) party leaders, who just about equal
the government. The problem is that democracy is not fruit on a tree
waiting to be picked by any government. This is especially true when
talking about the government of an ex-Communist country where even
the leadership doesn't have much of an idea about what democracy is or
