…people are still afraid to cross the Stone Bridge, to go to Chair, to go to Topansko Pole, because they have prejudice that god knows what could happen to them there. I mean, our people, while their people must also have a wrong idea about us. And it’s repulsing to me to say “our people, their people”, I think that, I don’t know, we should invent a different language.
LIDIJA GJOKIKJ: Can you tell me about yourself?
ANA GOLEJSKA: My name is Ana Golejska, a student of general and comparative literature at the Faculty of Philology in Skopje, 21 years old, that’s all.
LGj: Have you been living here all your life?
AG: Yes.
LGj: So, you lived here before 2001.
AG: Yes.
LGj: Tell me, what can you remember from before 2001, concerning coexistence?
AG: 2001, I was – that was 8 years ago, which means I was in the 7th grade. What do I remember from before that? I remember my childhood and those moments, like, I don’t know, being a teenager and all that, hanging with people from school, doing those simple things, like hanging around, going out, throwing parties at our homes, building trenches and all that. About being in touch with people from other ethnic groups, I didn’t have that possibility to be friends with such people because the neighborhood I live in is not so diverse, there aren’t many different ethnicities living there, most are of Macedonian ethnicity. And about what I can remember about the coexistence, I remember only that we had many conflicts with kids from Nerezi, who used to come to play football on our meadow, and of course, usually some Macedonians would be around somewhere, so some fight would happen from time to time. But that’s just a memory of me being a witness to that, like some part of a children’s game, but not that it has any impact on me or something.
LGj: Did discrimination exist?
AG: In the sense of insults and all that, you know, our usual problem here, like when we say some words, like saying “shiptar” instead of Albanian, or that they’re dirty and all that, I mean, some insults were always present, like we were being taught at home at that. So, maybe there was some discrimination, maybe because, I don’t know, as kids we considered that meadow our territory, our spot, and when someone would have come, it was as if they were taking our territory.
LGj: Were you trying to stop them, chase them away?
AG: The fights were usually between boys, I mean, the boys were the ones fighting. I know there must have been some fighting with those homemade slingshots or those tubes with little black balls in them, certainly there were fights. Now, us girls were witnessing that, we were like an audience, but we were never getting involved directly in a conflict, but there sure were some provocations and I don’t know if we were in a position to respond to that, because that’s, like, an alarming moment, your defense system makes you run back home so that you wouldn’t end up beat up by 30-40 guys. So in that sense, it’s not like we had direct clashes, not like we were going to kill each other and all that.
LGj: Let’s move on to 2001. Where were you then?
AG: 2001 was the time after the bombing of Serbia. So 2001, I remember going to school one morning and I saw two friends, neighbors who were carrying backpacks with pajamas, food and medicine in them and that created such a trauma in me, that when I got back home I told my mother to go buy some flour and a bunch of food, and she said: that’s not necessary, it hasn’t come to that, we’re sensible folks, there’s no need to panic. I remember that at school – I was in primary school, 6th or 7th grade – after classes a teacher took us to the basement to show us the shelters, and I was – it wasn’t a trauma for me, but the basement and the dugout became associated to me with something bad that might happen, that I would never see my city or my home or anything again. That’s the sort of moments I had, and I also remember that the shops were being emptied out of flour, sugar, oil, because in that time everybody was shopping massively, everybody was panicking and that reflected on me in the sense that – I was reading “Anne Frank” at the time and I identified myself with it, I was depressing myself, I had a serious problem, somewhere in 6th or 7th grade, when I couldn’t sleep at night and I was waking up with the thought of what would come, that I would wake up and something would happen to me. Planes were circling around at that time and all that, so yes, there were definitely some scary moments, when I think of it.
LGj: What were you most afraid of?
AG: I was most afraid of, I don’t know, that there would be an invasion, that they would come and start slicing people’s throats, that they would ravage us. I was very afraid that – because I had heard about, I had memories about the war in ’91, when much more horrible things took place, and I guess it reminded me of that. And because I loved to read when I was a kid, I had also read some books and some illustrated books about Sarajevo and Bosnia and all that, and that was so familiar to me, that I thought that it was going to happen to us too. Now, I wasn’t aware if it was NATO or the Americans, that whole situation was to me linked with something else, something I had heard of as a definition of war or a definition of a conflict, I was crazed out that I would be killed tomorrow by a sniper or that, I don’t know, that my mother and my father would be gone, it was an ugly pressure. It seemed scary to me because I knew some people who came from Tetovo and Kumanovo to Skopje to stay with some friends of mine and all that, and I met them personally, those kids, who talked about going to shop for bread in the daylight like on a normal day, and then at night hearing gunshots and bombs thrown, yelling and pushing in the streets, like some kind of ebb and flow – everything is okay in the morning, and then horrible things occur at night. And those who had come to Skopje must have lost their homes, must have went through all kinds of ordeals, and witnessing all that, because I’m pretty sensitive about those things – I remember a girl was here from Tetovo at that time and she was telling us that she went out with her mother and somebody, probably an Albanian stopped them, I don’t know how, he put a gun at their heads and told them: leave everything and go back. And she told us all that just like that and I couldn’t believe that something like that could happen I don’t know how many kilometers away from us and I thought that it could happen to me, at my home, no matter in which area I live. And, I don’t know, like, you have that experience and you’re just sharing it, and I’m here and I’m scared and I don’t know what could happen. So, on one hand, ugly and scary, and on the other shared in that way as if… Okay, all is past now, it stays as a memory, that’s all I remember from people who were directly involved who I have met and have heard their stories.
LGj: And was it a war, according to you?
AG: It was a war, but a war provoked by something of a different proportion, I mean, not a war in the typical sense, as in – I don’t know, two sides fighting each other, outwitting each other, but more like some sort of political games, that probably didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, so some of the participants felt offended or isolated, so they were trying to find ways to regain their rights back. Now, if those rights were really rights, I don’t know, it was a perverted game, something I couldn’t understand back then, and I still can’t. If they were seeking for some rights and were trying to achieve something, they could have done it differently, and not with weapons, with torture, with setting the monastery in Leshok on fire or any of that, literally like some primitive warfare. I don’t know, all that fear, the insecurity, the fact that you are at a tricky age of 13-14, right? Eight years ago, which means 13, so you’re in a period of adolescence, not even adolescence, but more like puberty, I don’t know. It was pretty scary for me, because there were nights when I couldn’t sleep, when I was watching films with that theme, obsessing myself with that and it lasted a while. I remember it as some mental part of my childhood, if I can call it that, and I knew I didn’t like it, I just didn’t know what to make of it and it reflected on me and stayed within me. And I remember it was the same with everybody, those from my class and my friends in general, those I was hanging out with, we all felt some kind of fear to move around, like: don’t go out after 8, watch who you’re hanging with, be careful not to bump into anyone – we were kids, but we were not that young after all. I don’t know, the memories are pretty disturbing.
LGj: Did you gain anything?
AG: I didn’t gain anything, I lost more. I don’t know. Because when it happened, I think it was somewhere near the end, when they had seized fire, my dad came back from work and said: “they raised the white flags”, and I thought he meant surrender, like something good had finally happened, only to see soon after that they had dismounted from Kondovo or something like that, that they had just moved closer to Skopje. That was the first time I felt I wasn’t safe here, and even though I was young – not young, but little – and didn’t know much about what was going on, it stayed in my mind that they had surrendered alright, they won’t do anything, but they’re still close and that made me feel like I’m not safe in my own city anymore, in my own surroundings. I figured then that my aunt lives in Volkovo, which is very close, a kilometer or two away from them and I couldn’t grasp how can they be so close.
LGj: Tell me, what is your opinion on the Ohrid Framework Agreement?
AG: I think it was a perfidious way to close a chapter in our recent history, as an effort to calm both sides, but all that with a thousand malversations beneath, lies, everybody minding their own interests, attempts to make a change in irrational ways. I think it’s a pure formality and that there’s none of it seen in practice and that it doesn’t offer any kind of protection, it doesn’t offer anything for certain, it’s just a deal. But there’s no other option.
LGj: Who do you think bear the blame?
AG: Well, both sides, I guess. I don’t know what kind of politics was being practiced and why it happened that way. It’s clear that there will always be some who are unsatisfied, who don’t like the country they live in and who want to make a change, but this is not the way. Those who bear the blame are present in both sides always, but after the deed was done, I don’t think it matters who started it.
LGj: What are your views now, do you think that coexistence is present between the communities in Macedonia?
AG: It’s peculiar that it’s different in different areas, at least so I’ve been told. And I’ve noticed, in Tetovo, for example, the situation is sensitive, people don’t trust each other yet, they’ve grown apart, while in Gostivar, where Albanians and Turks and Macedonians all live together, the situation is much better, more relaxed, because I have a friend who’d come from Gostivar to study in Skopje and she told us about the differences and that it was a whole different story in Tetovo. People there don’t trust each other, they don’t socialize, there’s no unison, no coexistence, while in Gostivar it’s completely different, and I don’t know whether that’s because of the people who live there, whether they’re natives, while those in Tetovo may be newer generations. I don’t know what to think of that. And generally, in this whole country or at least in Skopje I think that’s – not a false play, but as if people are still afraid to cross the Stone Bridge, to go to Chair, to go to Topansko Pole, because they have prejudice that god knows what could happen to them there. I mean, our people, while their people must also have a wrong idea about us. And it’s repulsing to me to say “our people, their people”, I think that, I don’t know, we should invent a different language.
LGj: Are you afraid to cross the bridge?
AG: I’m not afraid of anything, I even feel an urge to meet people who live there and see how they’re like. I even took one semester in Albanian just to learn the language a little bit and I figured out that it’s a great language, very interesting. And I go to Chair and Shutka all alone, and over the bridge as well, and nobody stares at me or anything, I’ve never encountered something like that. They whistle on me alright, but I guess that’s a normal thing, but I’ve never had any trouble nor have someone bother me or feel threatened. What is worse is the pressure from people I know, who are otherwise liberal in their opinions, but sometimes they say to me: “How can you go there alone?” Why not, it’s part of the city. Or, I don’t know, that Chair feels like you’re in a different country. So I guess that’s what the majority thinks, I personally don’t mind to go alone, I don’t mind meeting people from that ethnicity and socialize with them. It’s clear there are many prejudices, those are hard to kill, at least this generation won’t escape them, I guess one or two generations must pass, or thing should get cleared up before we can start thinking in a different manner.
LGj: What should be cleared up?
AG: Well, the fact that – I don’t know – that we think they are dirty and that their religion is dirty and that they don’t deserve to share a part of the city and that they should go back where they belong, that we want to assimilate them. That’s just not possible, they’re completely different, we’re different, those are different cultures breeding on a small space and it’s simply impossible to assimilate either of the groups, they can only exist separately but live in cohabitation, in a relation with each other. And our opinion is like that probably because we’re not informed about what’s going on with them, I don’t know what a mosque looks like, I don’t know the customs about Kurban Bajram, I don’t know how a circumcision looks like. I mean, I don’t know anything about their basic culturological traits, I don’t know their customs, but I’m trying to break some of the prejudices. I don’t know, their people also don’t know what we do on Easter, why we walk circles around the church and all that.
LGj: Do you know why we make circles around the church?
AG: Well, it’s both tragic and funny that I don’t know why we make those circles either, but since I’m, I don’t know, a proclaimed Christian and, I don’t know, because I’ve been baptized, I guess it how things go, we enjoy our conformist lives while it’s good, we don’t bother ourselves with anything, we don’t try to learn anything and then all those prejudice and stupidity follow.
LGj: Can you think of any suggestion on how to improve that?
AG: Gee, I don’t know, we must educate ourselves, that’s primary, I don’t know, we should learn about them and they should learn about us, while we’re at the point about different cultures. The basics, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind if my child would learn Albanian in school, because if the children learn both languages, they can understand each other, I mean, I will be able to speak to someone in Albanian, and he would be able to speak to me in Macedonian, I mean, that’s concerning education. Also, I think that we, as a generation, have been brought to believe that we’re under attack all the time, that we’re guilty of something all the time, to believe that – I don’t know, that we’re under attack, that we’re always at fault for something and probably that’s what creates that self-protection attitude, because we think that we must defend ourselves from something. And I think it’s all about how a people, a nation has been taught to think or how it’s been forced to think. There hasn’t been any progressive ideas in the past years about how to change that and that has always been a problem, I mean, there has always been stuff like fights, I don’t know, revenge, many things as a result to those differences and no one has yet made any kind of plan or a project, I don’t know, something to help us surpass those basic differences. At least I haven’t heard of anything like that till now. I really don’t know what I would do, probably I would focus on education, whether through learning both languages, or some cultural program or something, so that people would be aware about who they live with, they would know that some people don’t eat or drink anything all day long, except for water for such and such religious reasons, I mean, to inform ourselves. And whether that could bring a change, I don’t know, it’s up to the people.
LGj: Is there something unsaid that you’d like to say?
AG: What can I say? I think our country needs some young blood that could make a change, something radical, something revolutionary, whatever it is, even it ends up bad or even if it doesn’t have a specific goal, something simply has to happen. We’ve been made numb, I notice that my whole generation and the younger and the older don’t seem to take an interest in what’s going on in this country. We must be aware of what’s going on, we must know when a moment comes and if we don’t feel OK with how things are, we must try to change them, but nobody cares. I don’t know, I think we need some kind of upturn.
LGj: Thank you.
