Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

I remember another thought which
is applicable to what is happening to us.
With all the dogs of war, the butchers,
the satraps and all the evil, there is still
a little light at the end of the tunnel. I
still don't see the critical substance of
evil in inter-ethnic relations, and I think
that living together is still realistic. Life
is the ultimate witness to this.
To be honest, before Tanushevci, I
used to believe in the stability of our
interethnic relations. Even more so
after the forged coalition. I believed
that all those years of Communism had
spoiled the good relations between
Macedonians and Albanians and that
the coalition would help to build the
much needed trust and to tear down the
false theatrical scrim of the interethnic
make-believe of the communist past.
The coalition had the potential for a
true, original perspective, a fresh
unBalkanlike step forward in the
Balkans. But the very foundation of
that perspective was eaten away by the
Tower of Babel syndrome. Some say
that this crisis used the principle of
joint vessels to spread to Macedonia
from Kosovo. There are analysts
whose scientific apparatus breaks down
the anatomy of events until their last
details. But I aim at the good side of
human beliefs, and I hope, despite
everything that has happened, that our
chances for inter-ethnic coexistence are
not spoiled. We haven't hit rock bottom
yet. Isn't this loud scream, while pointing
at the iceberg under the water and
calling it an open Pandora's box,
enough? And can it help the avalanche
of local inconsistencies and everchanging
political views?
I want to believe that this text has
some symbolic or inspirational purpose.
It's certain that one's personal life
is the utmost testament, and in it there
always resides an active and unchanging
schedule of dates, people, events
and happenings. Here I would like to
tell the story of how my parents got
married, just in brief. It will help to tell
you that we're here, together, come rain
or come shine and we do it in our joint
home.
When my father, Petre Jakimoski,
was a young man, he worked in the
brick factory with Asip Demo. He fell
in love with Draganka Jankulovska
from Volino and he was determined to
marry her. Since he was poor, her parents
wouldn't even consider it. With
Draganka's consent, he decided to
elope with her. Fearing the search parties,
he decided to cover his tracks and
spent the first wedding night in the
house of his friend Asip Demo, from
Livada. This is a fact and is still spoken
about. It is something that we respect,
and we found mutual visits normal-a
real joyful occasion. Asip was even
the guest of honour at my wedding. I'm
a writer and this was written by life
itself. I refuse to add or remove anything
from this story. In it you will find
the much needed sound of human joy
and the bread and salt and the hunger
and the need for one another and the
need to be one next to each other. This
is the dialogue of the past, and it can
still be heard, because "what once happened
never ceases to happen," as I
once wrote. I was right then, and I am
right now.
In Kundera's vocabulary, remembrance
is not a negation of forgetting, it
is an eternal dialogue with our soul, our
memory, our being. But it reminds us of
what is happening or could happen. Our
worst fate is interethnic war, which the
Macedonians should not and must not
loose. The Macedonians are simply
deemed to win. When I say
Macedonians, I do it with pride in the
civilization. At the same time, I have
in mind the previously analyzed reality
in which Macedonians are those born in
Macedonia, who consider themselves
such. There are no exceptions here,
whether they calls themselves
Macedonian, Albanian, Turk, Serb,
Armenian or Roma.
I loudly proclaim, "Welcome my
dearest, to the meadows of individual
patriotism-it is a splendid pointer to the
blissful sunrise over my Fatherland. I
would rather not name the opposite.
The opposite is full of consternation,
terror and human misery, in which the
humanity in humans, the Macedonia in
Macedonians, hits rock bottom."
Of course, all of these thresholds
must not be crossed, because of the
world's remembrance and the world's
civilization.
I have tried with words and deeds
to open the bridges of mutual trust and
closeness, to open the door for everybody,
no matter what their names and
religions are. This hospitality is the
ticket for our mutual home, and the
civility in our mutual relations. This
should be our true and shared perspective.
Perspective is not an empty vessel
in which we put spices over and over
again, do endless research on the idea
of rebuilding, subject to new cartographic
and ideological aims, which we
will incorporate into collective needs.
The perspective is improvement on the
past, in which the structure and the contents
of the personal are modified by
new and brave testimony.
So just to be clear, there is no need
to destroy the old well. Its water has
satisfied the thirst of the thirsty, and it is
a metaphor for the quenching of the
thirst of all the Macedonians.
(The author is a writer)
33
What now, June 2001