Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

8
territory, soon to be "stabilized and
associated" in the European Union,
just as we left the "soon-to-be
Schengen country." Our customs officers
are obviously more relaxed,
more tolerant. But the ritual remains
the same, a border is a border. Pitiful,
we are getting off the bus with our
same small bags, boxes and suitcases.
And again the customs officer quickly
inspects . Everyone has in front of
his feet his own "fortune or sin." The
crude Balkan mentality does not
change quickly, especially not when
we await quick salvation in Europe's
embrace.
The customs officer, who is keeping
a watchful eye on the passengers'
facial expressions, stops short in front
of a boy who has a solid, closed cardboard
box with small, almost invisible
holes by his feet. Calmly, he asks
the boy to open the box. The boy hesitates
for a moment. The order is
repeated. The boy, having no choice,
opens the box. Two Bulgarian turkeys
that have "crossed" undetected the
soon-to-be Schengen border, pop
their heads out of the box. The
turkeys, as if released, utter sharp
shrieks, which were probably suppressed
for a long time and which can
undoubtedly be heard on the other
side of the border.
The boy looks at the customs officer
with fear, but to everyone's surprise,
the officer laughs naturally and
sweetly. The rest of the passengers
laugh too. A young, black-eyed and
elegant female customs officer laughs
sweetly too. Everybody laughs. And
the turkeys are joyful.
The boy and the turkeys are the
real heroes of the moment at the border
between two countries.
We cross the soon-to-be Schengen
border into this part of the Western
Balkans. The turkeys are triumphantly
returned to the luggage compartment
of the bus.
And so on our way from the border
to Skopje, our Schengen turkeys
accompany us, the future Balkan passengers
to Europe.
(The author is a writer)
Ten years later (or a view
from both sides)
Long live
the new Yalta
Guner Ismail
In this instance, some of us at least had the privilege of
viewing history not only from up close, but also from the other
side-at the end of the 1980s and from this side, today!
When the wall was falling down in Berlin, at that time, let's
be frank, we were not even anticipating that in fact the entire
world's geopolitical map was being redefined, albeit temporarily!
We heard it, saw it and read it, thinking all the while that
this was all far away from us, happening to someone else, and
that our perfect, or so-called "good" socialism,
despite the difficulties, would survive
and would outlive all the "bad" socialisms
and even the "worse" capitalisms. If somebody
were to tell us that in less then two
years that our former motherland would be
knee deep in bloodshed, we would have
declared them a madman or a spy from the
CIA, the KGB or similar headquarters of
evil!
However, when things started progressing,
beyond our own will or fault, and when
certain catastrophic predictions of the
Western historians were fulfilled-who said
that Yugoslavia would go up in flames-it
was already late and impossible to right
ourselves onto a certain civilized course. The world, as it was
drawn up on the famous historical paper napkin in Yalta
(Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt) was collapsing. Many naive people
were anticipating the collapse of the military-political
block, whereas they (that's us) were thinking that with its collapsing,
the reasons for the other block's existence would also
cease. Well, weren't we non-aligned?
Of course, this was not an uncontrolled break-up, it was
instead buying time for civilization to pull itself together, in a
way for everyone to take a short breather and, if at all possible,
to regroup in the muddy waters for tomorrow and beyond...!?
Of course, this is just the global part, and in this global
flow, as we all witnessed more or less, the federal and fraternal
Although from my
perspective this
brief history can
be called a history
of missed chances
and opportunities,
we can say that
Macedonia is still
on this side of the
line that Churchill
drew on the
famous paper
napkin
Ten years of pluralism, December 2000