Srgjan Ivanovik’s failed attempt at a novel helped expose the Macedonian jokes of Democracy and Economy.
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His eyes were scrolling around the same neighbourhood, where he lived for the past twelve years. Sixteen floor buildings stood there right in front of him. A mixture of blue, red, and white colours designed at the very end of the communist era to prepare people for the upcoming turmoil called democratization. On the opposite side, he found the shape of central station. A colossal building started when communism was still on its feet and fighting with a forthcoming wind from the west to raise the word of liberty. Or, it only seemed that way.
I accidentally stumbled on this text hidden in forgotten parts of my computer.
The words were written by me almost a decade ago. To be more precise, I wrote these words in 2007 when I made my first “serious” attempt to become a novel writer. The gesture was bold, but eventually it was proven to be a stupid one.
He tried to find a good description for this architecture. The never ending station looked like a ruin from the past. He only wished that was a ruin. Ancient history was his passion, and he found no pleasure in this view. Tons of cement raised above the houses that belonged to a poor neighbourhood, which was settled with emigrants from other parts of the country. The neighbor rose up during industrial expansion. In those times, factory workers where needed. So, the government motivated migration into the cities and collapsed the traditional structure of agricultural community.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeHe looked around one more time, trying to capture as much as possible from the site. The contradiction of modern and old but without beauty.
I don’t think writing a novel back than was a stupid decision, on the contrary, I still think it was a very good idea today, but it was also stupid. The unlucky character above, who was waiting for a taxi to pick him up and drive him to the airport, was making some remarks about the surrounding sites of his neighborhood. He doesn’t like the train station, he is making some disputable assumptions of democracy and pointing out that ancient history is in his blood. Oh how wrong he is!
Why? I will tell you why.
I’m from the Republic of Macedonia. A small, and for many people, insignificant country placed on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeastern Europe. Macedonia is merely a country in many measures. It has only two million citizens, of which the majority consists of ethnic Macedonians, followed by Albanians who are a minority.
Tensions between these ethnic groups were at high in the 2001, when Albanians went with armed rebellion. Luckily, this conflict didn’t develop into open war. Now, we are still far from building a society of trust, peace, and mutual prosperity.
This country is a joke of democracy. Even though elections are held on a regular basis, in 25 years of independence after breaking the chains of Communism, we have never lived in a truly liberated society. The government is becoming alarmingly corrupt. The leaders represent themselves in a most brutal fashion by imprisoning political opponents, threatening free press, and oppressing every sign of opposition.
The economy of Macedonia is even better joke. It is true that in the past people from villages were motivated to come into cities to work, which ended with a collapse of traditional agricultural communities. Back then, people took employment in very large, and for those times, technologically advanced factories that produced commodities in quantity with a quality unimaginable today. For many years those factories have been closed for business, and the descendants of the villagers who became factory workers are now mostly unemployed. The exact rate of unemployment in this forsaken country is impossible to know. but it is believed to be around 35%. The few available jobs are almost exclusively reserved for members of political parties.
Maybe you still don’t understand my grudge toward the unlucky hero from the novel that will never be finished.
Well there are two things I hated the most about him.
- First, he was so grumpy about the architecture. It is true that buildings from the end of communist era, including the central train station in Skopje, wasn’t one of the most creative ones, but what if I tell you that our “dear leaders” have decided to build dozens of buildings in Baroque style lately? Yes in the 21st century, we are building in 18th century style which means Modern style will come in the 24th century, or never?!
- The second thing that occurs to me was his passion for ancient history. We can say that Macedonian, as a state, is only 25 years old, but it is also true that the historical line of this piece of land dates back to times of myths and legends. That is the worst tragedy of all. Just few months after I tried to write my first novel, our government abandoned a decade’s long dream of joining the European Union by proclaiming the EU so called “anti-civilization”. This basically means the present day Macedonians are descendants of antique Macedonians, which literally pissed of the neighboring Greeks.
Without even the slightest attempt to get into a historical debate, I will just say that this“anti-civilization” culminated with placing “god knows” how many statues around Macedonia. Many were mainly inspired by heroes from antique eras. Alexander the Great, with his father Philippe, and his mother Olympia have been placed all over the country. Their names are used for airports, highways, football stadiums, and parking lots.
Without any honor, I decided to share with the world the opening lines of my failed novel. Not as masochistic way of punishing myself, but as an utmost precedence and message to future generations. Don’t to put every piece of bullshit on paper, or in power.
Now I’m going to delete it.
Photo: Pero Kvrzica/Flickr
Srgjan, How interesting to encounter passages you wrote nearly a decade ago and to examine them with new eyes and feelings. Keep writing. Your words create imagery.