Nationalism's Dream, Nationalism's Laundry

My Israeli cousin fits the image of "The New Jew" as I see it - you know, the guy who ain't gonna take no shmutz from no shmuck. Six-foot-one and barrel-chested, with one of the deepest voices I've ever heard, bald but bearded, he wears dark sunglasses and a plain white T-shirt emblazoned with the words, "Tougher than I look." He loves little kids, but many of his attempts at peek-a-boo are met with terrified widened eyes and a hasty retreat deep into the torso of the nearest parent.

To much of the Jewish community, my cousin is a symbol. He represents the change that took place among the Jewish people when we took control of our own security, seeking never to let ourselves be helplessly victimized by our persecutors, never to go again as sheep to the slaughter.

A noble aspiration, surely, but not without its flaws in practice. The problem – a problem – is that I often see the educational programs in the Jewish community exert tremendous effort in instilling an unbridled love for the embodiment of that goal without appropriately discussing Israel’s shortcomings.

My Man-with-a-capital-M cousin summarized my discomfort simply and eloquently, as only a “smahht Jewish boy” could: "They sell you the Zionist dream, not the Zionist reality."

Part of that reality stood exposed under the Jerusalem sun on a recent Monday afternoon. But while it could be seen less than five minutes from the Old City, it was invisible to all the city's tourists and most of its Jewish residents.

At around 12:45pm I met up with a rabbi from the organization Rabbis for Human Rights near the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City. “I’ve been on a wild goose chase all morning,” he told me. “They (the government) are going to demolish a house in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and we’ve been trying to figure out where, to see if we can do anything about it.” You might think it would be easy to figure out where to go – I mean, how many housing units could really be up for demolition? According to this rabbi, 20-30,000. Are you kidding me?!?! I wish.

So why are all these places condemned to destruction? Technically, they were built without a permit. The problem is that it’s extremely difficult for Palestinians in East Jerusalem to get building permits, and the area closest to the Old City is completely frozen, says the rabbi. So what are growing families to do? Tough luck. Go somewhere else. Meanwhile, exclusively Jewish neighborhoods keep popping up and growing all over the city, and sometimes in the middle of previously Palestinian-only areas.

We drove into Silwan, altering our route as a local contact updated the rabbi by phone. Eventually, we reached a hillside opposite another hillside on which an orange bulldozer trudged slowly toward the main road, followed by what looked like a battalion of black-uniformed security forces and approximately one gagillion security vehicles. The grim procession stretched on for what seemed like over a kilometer. “We’re too late,” the rabbi sighed wearily, shaking his head. “Whatever they were gonna do, they’ve done it, and now they’re going home. There’s probably nothing we can do, but let’s go check it out anyway.”

We drove to the other side, where we met a pair of teenagers who guided us nonchalantly to the scene of the crime. Indeed, that lack of emotion characterized the whole thing: the crowd at the site milled around with an air of silent resignation, as if to say, “What can you do? This is how it is, and nothing can change it.” A few people came with videocameras, and a journalist or two sought interviews, but most of the action consisted of trying to get on with life. One man stood on the roof, banging away at the jagged remains of the structure (the unit destroyed was not a whole house, but an extension built on a house probably around one hundred years old – 40 meters squared out of 90 total. We heard, but were unable to confirm, that the small building houses a family of 17). A child who could not have been older than five tried to pitch in with the clean-up of his family’s gutted abode. At first, I wondered why they wouldn’t leave the debris untouched as a statement, but I soon saw that the mound of rubble blocked the entrance into the rest of the house. Another possible reason for the quick clean-up, according to the rabbi: since demolished homes are technically illegal, the residents are left to clean up the wreckage on their own and face municipal fines if they don’t remove it quickly.

What I found particularly troubling by the demolition was that even Israel's oft-professed and widely applied explanation of security concerns could justify nothing about this incident. And one of the most common justifications for Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem - that Jews need to control their holy city because previous stewards have impeded Jewish access to it - rings hollow when “Jerusalem for the Jews” becomes only for the Jews. I could find no legitimate rationalization for the demolition - this was simply a cynical implementation of a discriminatory policy aimed at "Judaizing" Jerusalem at the expense of non-Jews.

There's an expression in Brazil that says, "Roupa suja se lava em casa,” which roughly translates as, "dirty laundry should be washed inside your house." While I do hope the story above will provoke some reflection in other Jews, my intention in telling it is not to let the whole world know about the faults of the Jewish state; rather, I think we can learn a general lesson about the perils of nationalism. It seems to me that Jewish nationalism (Zionism) is different from many of the other nationalist movements I have studied. The man considered the "Father of the Zionism," Theodor Herzl, not only did NOT base his argument for a Jewish state in the self-aggrandizing "we rock, everyone else sucks" rhetoric of the so-called "Romantic nationalist" movements, but he actively sought to disassociate himself from any Jewish identity! It was not until he witnessed the pernicious anti-Jewish prejudice in "civilized" Western Europe that he decided that a Jewish state was necessary for the survival of Jews. Necessary - a last resort. One might call this ideology "desperation nationalism."

And yet if even this kind of nationalism can degenerate into an elected government condoning – or rather, encouraging - the repugnant display I witnessed in East Jerusalem, then one has to think that maybe nationalism cannot help but make its adherents into oppressors. Dirty laundry is part of the package.

In other words, everyone connected to a nation-state should check their nation's hamper – it probably overflowed a long, long time ago.

The nations of the world need to wake up from their dreams.
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Pictures: Local residents (at least that's who I assume they are) film the bulldozer and its accompanying forces as they leave the demolition site, with the Old City in the background


The demolition site, with the Temple Mount in the background

The father gives an interview holding the young child I mentioned


Resigned onlookers


Afterwards, the rabbi took me to an encampment of Bedouin in the West Bank who had been moved (some voluntarily, some by force) to a site near a garbage dump close to Jerusalem. We met with a schoolteacher and her father, with whom the rabbi is trying to plan a trip to the coast for the town's children


The Bedouin town, with an isolated Jewish settlement in the background

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So as not to end on too depressing a note, let's have a little more disturbing comic relief from the Balkans. A few days after I got back to the States, I met a waitress from Macedonia. I told her the topic of my research, and her response was swift and clear: "Akh, the Albanians," she said irritably. "They are like bugs - you can't get rid of them." And the Greeks? "Oh, they are just darker-skinned people who smoke and drink too much." I told her that while I basically sympathize with her country on the name dispute, antics like putting a map of all of ancient Macedonia on the statue of Alexander in Prilep (see May 27 pictures) make Greece legitimately nervous. "Ah, that map doesn't mean anything," she said, dismissing the thought with her hand. Gotta love that sense of perspective.

Ok, listen to this one:

A child of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel, a child of Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel, a white American Jew, an African-American Christian, and a Palestinian Muslim walk into a carpet shop – stop me if you’ve heard this one before. I know I hadn’t, but that’s basically what I witnessed the other day, and it wasn’t a joke.

To explain how I got into such a state of affairs, I need to go back to the beginning – of my interest in Jewish-Palestinian relations, that is. Four years ago, on my first trip to Israel, the group I was with participated in a seminar on the situation of Palestinians in Israel at the Givat Haviva Peace Center in Northern Israel. After speaking to a local resident about his experiences, we got in a bus for a mini-tour of the area. I was dumbfounded when I got off the bus onto a cracked sidewalk beneath an imposing mosque in the small, non-touristy Palestinian town of Barta’a (suffice it to say that until then my experience with Palestinians and their towns and their mosques was so limited that the combination of all three left me momentarily bewildered). I did not realize it at the time, but watching the interactions between the towns’ residents and our Jewish educator affected me so much that I spent much of the next year working to start a teen Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group in San Francisco. Thus began my foray into an arena that gives my life lots more meaning and my sanity lots more trouble.

It is fitting that Barta’a, rather than another town, provided my introduction into the world of interethnic relations. The physical and political layout is almost Dickensian, as the story of the town could easily be called, “A Tale of Two Mosques.” From a hill above Barta’a, the viewer can see a mosque with a dark green dome – the one that greeted me when I got off the bus – and another with a bright yellow dome. The former is in pre-1967 Israel, while the latter is in the West Bank. That is, the “Green Line” separating the widely recognized borders of Israel from the West Bank cuts between the two houses of worship, so that Bartans on the green mosque side are citizens of Israel, while those near the yellow mosque are citizens of nowhere. The barrier the Israeli government is building sweeps into the West Bank near Barta’a in order to enclose some Jewish settlements on the “Israeli” side, and in so doing it cuts behind Barta'a. As a result, the residents of Yellow Barta'a are pretty much literally stuck between a rock and a hard place – getting to the rest of the West Bank is obviously difficult because of the barrier right behind them; but it is technically illegal for them to cross the Green Line into pre-1967 Israel. Many do, and can feel reasonable safe while still in Barta’a, but if caught outside, they can be arrested. And oh yeah – almost all the residents are part of the same family.

(From the viewpoint above Barta’a one can also see the precarious circumstances that help to intensify Israeli Jews’ sense of existential threat. Just below the viewpoint is the invisible Green Line, and yet still within sight is the Mediterranean Sea – a testament to just how skinny Israel is at this point.)

And so there I was, back in Barta’a four years later, tagging along with a group of Israeli Jews of Russian and Ethiopian descent traveling Israel with a group of African-American high schoolers from Baltimore, as they learnt about the life of another minority, the Palestinians of Israel. One of the teachers at Givat Haviva told me he was concerned that attempting to deal with the diverse problems all these groups faced at the same time might be too much. The group seemed to be getting along fine, though I did notice one possible source of tension: the Americans spotted a KFC off the highway, and suddenly decided they had had more than enough falafel, thank you very much (ah, I love my country).

Come to think of it, Barta'a provides a good illustration of an important point made by a professor in Haifa who helped me out with my research. Remember our key word from last time ("$$$")? This prof distinguished between two ways in which money influences political behavior in Israel. Within the Jewish community in Israel, corruption works the way it's "supposed to." People get things they shouldn't by supporting the right people at the right times with the right promises. But with the Palestinian minority - like many minorities across the world - some voters cast ballots for Zionist parties in order to get what they should have gotten anyway, things like roads and electricity in their towns. And if a town populated by the minority doesn't vote for the right party from the ethnic majority, according to the academic, they don't get nuthin'. Maybe that explains the cracked sidewalk in Barta'a my tentative feet stepped on four years ago.

This insight helps explain the surprisingly large number of Palestinian votes for the Jewish national religious party called the "National Religious Party" (subtle name, I know) - a party whose hawkish views make even many (hopefully most) nationalist Jews uncomfortable. The NRP has often controlled the Interior Ministry - i.e. the ministry that controls budget allocations for building things like roads and electrical infrastructure.

One other interesting feature of interethnic relations in politics here is that not only do Jewish parties not invite Palestinian parties into coalitions (unlike the Macedonians with the Albanians), but many supporters and members of Palestinian parties I've talked to say they wouldn't want their party to be the coalitions, even if it was invited to join! The general consensus seems to be that of the major Palestinian parties, the one most likely to "sell out" and join a coalition with Zionist parties is the Islamic movement. "For religiosity you need money," said a professor in Jerusalem, his tone covering any cynicism like the yarmulke ironically covering his head.

So, a right-wing nationalist religious Jewish settler and a fundamentalist Islamic nationalist Palestinian walk into a government coalition - I know you haven't heard this one before...
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Pictures: One of the crazy things about a place with this much history is that just about anyone can be an archaeologist. In fact, it's hard to build anywhere because in many places, digging the foundations for a building will instead uncover an old cemetery or ancient house. At one kibbutz I stayed at, someone found a bunch of ancient mosaics that apparently no one knows what to do with yet:



The famous green mosque of Barta'a:



View from top of above-mentioned carpet shop, looking into West Bank (Yellow) Barta'a:



As I told you last time, Jerusalem drives me nuts. I thus find it more appropriate than annoying that I have a steady serenade of jackhammers outside the room where I'm staying. Instead of the usual pics, here's a nice Russian Orthodox church I don't remember noticing before:

Ah, how nice it feels to be back where I freak out

I’m in Israel. It’s my third time here. The first time, I fell in love with the place. The second time, I almost went crazy in Jerusalem. In anticipation of this third visit, I occasionally felt so bonkers that I considered not coming at all. And yet here I am, in the mixed Jewish-Palestinian city of Haifa. So in that timeless Jewish tradition of publicly discussing one’s own neuroses, I’d like to tell you a little bit about why this place so consistently escorts me to the brink of insanity, and what I’m doing back here, anyway.

Bay Area-laid back façade aside, I’m a pretty intense person – often more so than I would like, which explains why I love California and loathe New York. The intensity of Israel/Palestine strikes me as what New York would be like if you turned up the temperature and gave people a reason to hate each other.

Partly because of that ubiquitous intensity and partly because of my inability not to pay attention to the tense dynamics here, my time in Israel/Palestine has not exactly been “chill.” When I came for the first time, in 2005, I got stuck in a traffic jam on my way from the airport due to a suicide bombing that had just occurred close to where I was going to stay. A couple days before I left, an extremist AWOL Israeli soldier went to an Arab town and shot residents in a bus before an angry mob killed him. In between, I watched Israeli Jewish society engage in one of its most polarizing debates since the creation of modern Israel, over the upcoming pullout of soldiers and settlers from Gaza.

I planned to return the next summer, but the day I left for a stopover in Eastern Europe on my way to Israel, Hezbollah kidnapped and killed some Israeli soldiers and the 2006 Lebanon War began. As a result, just about everything I had planned for myself – mostly in the North and regarding Jewish-Palestinian coexistence work – was cancelled, and I didn’t go.

The next summer, I did return, intending to volunteer for any do-gooder organization I could find. I inadvertently found myself staying at a hostel/volunteer organization staffed and occupied by people with some of the most despicable beliefs I have ever encountered. I heard Arabs called “animals,” and Rabbi Meir Kahane – who advocated expelling all Arabs from the land Israel controls and whose political movement has been branded a terrorist organization by Israel – called “righteous.”

And what’s the situation like now? If you’ve opened a newspaper in the last two years, and especially the last 6 months, you’ll unfortunately have an idea.

For all of you who actually live here, I don’t know how you do it!

And then there’s the other conflict that has chained itself to my mind. When I was last in Jerusalem, I was going through the beginning of what I would call a spiritual…not a “crisis,” that sounds too dramatic – I’d call it more of a case of “acute spiritual questioning.” As I told people after I returned to the US, never had I felt so alienated as a Jew interested in the Jewish religion as I did when I was in Jerusalem. I suppose I’ve made some “progress” since then, but it’s gone about as slowly as the decentralization process in Macedonia – that is to say, slower than an aging turtle in lethargy-inducing hot weather.

Luckily, I’m not here to deal with either of those two issues! (yeah, right.) I’m here to research the Palestinian Arab population that too many people forget about – the one that makes up about 20% of Israeli citizenry. Their situation has some similarities to the Albanians, but also some important differences. One of those disparities is that while an Albanian party is always in the Macedonian government coalition, no Palestinian party ever receives an invitation to the Israeli coalition. Perhaps partly as a result of that reality, many Arabs in Israel – unlike Albanians in Macedonia – vote for the majority ethnic group’s parties. I want to try to understand how Palestinian citizens of Israel decide whether or not to vote, and if they do vote, whether to vote for a Palestinian party or a Zionist party, and how they choose which party within each category. Similarly, I want to know how the parties – especially the Zionist parties – try to recruit voters from the Palestinian community. So far, the key word seems to be “$$$.”

But while “$$$” can buy the Labor party votes, it can’t buy inter-ethnic love (at least, not in the context of everything else going on). Even in one of the few areas where Palestinians and Jews still co-mingle relatively amicably, a small incident can reveal the state of inter-ethnic relations:

The other day, I spent a few hours with an Israeli teacher-turned-good friend of mine, who is my go-to guy when I’m confused or conflicted about something Israel/Palestine-related (i.e. always). We decided to have lunch in a predominantly Palestinian area of town called “Wadi Nisnas” because he had heard the hummus there is supposed to be THE BEST. We asked a group of people at a café where the stairs to Wadi Nisnas are located. One man responded, in Hebrew and sarcastically, “If you want to see the Arabushim (derogatory term for Arabs), we are sitting right here!” “Well, actually we just wanted to get some good hummus,” my friend responded. “Oh, well, yeah, then you should go to Wadi Nisnas. Yeah. The stairs are right over there.”

We stumbled down the stairs and into a restaurant where an elderly woman sans teeth served us hummus that was, in fact, quite delicious (but the best…??). I told my friend that I didn’t think I had enough interview subjects yet, so he called over a young waiter (apparently with a better dentist, given the state of his teeth) and we began talking about “the situation,” as they call the inter-ethnic conflict here. In an unintentional move that demonstrated just how complex things are here, the man directly contradicted himself in less than a minute. First, he told us that the following should be done: a strong leader should say this (he grabs a saltshaker) is ours, this (now an ashtray) is yours, and this will be the border, he concluded, running a plastic cup in a straight line between the ancient table accessory adversaries. “And if any of you step on to our side, we’ll kill you.” But then, just seconds later, as if he hadn’t just said what he just said, as if he was arguing with something I had said rather than something he had said, he exclaimed, “How can you draw a border when I live here (in Saltistan), and my brother lives over here (in Beit Ashtrei)?”

My friend later pointed out that across the political spectrum, one always hears people speak of the need for “a strong leader.” It’s enlightening to dissect that phrase. The first and third words are singular. And why is the second word so often “strong,” rather than “courageous,” “visionary,” or “bold?” One strongman, gettin’ it done. Sounds vaguely dictatorial, no?

As I got up to leave the restaurant, feeling confused and a little depressed at hearing yet another pessimistic evaluation of the situation, a friend of the waiter’s offered one of the best political suggestions I’ve heard in a while: “Drink a lot of water. It helps.” Can’t argue with that.

Ugh, this place exhausts me (and dehydrates me). You know, another friend of mine recently pointed out that my updates from Macedonia read more like stories from The Onion than an account of actual experiences. If one accepts the idea that “everything is relative,” then I think Macedonia may be on to something, because on some level it is my most sincere realistic wish for Israel/Palestine that the news here would resemble The Onion instead of being what it is now.
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In other news, last week in Zagreb I randomly saw the Croatian Prime Minister walk out of a meeting. The next day, he shocked the country by suddenly resigning. Was it something I said?
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Pictures:

Bahai gardens with Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, world headquarters of the Bahai faith:


Haifa, older and newer:


House on top of the steep hill that is the entire city of Haifa:


I thought I'd left Macedonia, but Alexander keeps following me wherever I go, including to a Haifa archaeological museum:

Macedonia: “Washin’ shit with piss”

I don’t know if it’s the lack of thrice-daily coffee meetings, but I’m feeling a bit of Skopje withdrawal (symptoms include: thinking clearly. Or maybe not). Seeing as how I spent many weeks laughing at Macedonia’s expense, I thought I should probably write down a few summarizing thoughts. Here are four, which is approximately equal to the number of times I had something strange happen to me in Skopje, I went back to my apartment, sat down in a chair, stared straight ahead, and said out loud to no one in particular, “Where am I?”

In no particular order, and with no claim to expertise:

1. Solve. The. Damn. NAME ISSUE! This isn’t even the thing I came here to research, but I couldn’t avoid it because it’s messing up EVERYTHING!! EU and NATO integration, relations between Macedonians and Albanians, the economy (in ways such as lack of foreign investment), and the list goes on. The name issue permeates political discourse, and doesn’t fail to leave a nice trail of frustration and mutual animosity in its wake.

Let me take this opportunity, though, to urge Greece to lighten up a little bit. Greece: you are in the EU. You are in NATO. You are the “Cradle of Democracy.” You are a regional powerhouse. You even won the Eurocup soccer tournament when not even Alexander could have seen that coming. SO CHILL OUT! Or at least recognize the power dynamic at work here. Right now you can afford to be as stubborn as you want, while Macedonia (the other one) is left to wallow in the murky waters of its 30m tall singing fountain statues.

In other words, Greece has nothing to lose because nothing is at risk. Macedonia has nothing to lose because it has nothing. It might be hard to make any real progress until both these circumstances change.

2. Shmoliticians – I met a woman in Ohrid last week, a friend of a professor at Yale, who is a complete exception to the Kunu mentality I described last time (in fact, she helped make me aware of that way of thinking). She has a plan for the country: take all these “useless” politicians, buy them a one-way ticket to anywhere in the world they want, tell them, “Macedonia doesn’t need you, don’t come back,” and start over with people who intend to stay in Macedonia and are dedicated to the country’s people.

It’s hard to miss the disconnect between the hyper-proud nationalist narrative VMRO is trying to weave and the 18-year-old Skopjian cab driver who tells me his country sucks and that there’s no work here. I get frustrated when I hear things like that because this country doesn’t suck, or at least it doesn’t have to – it’s a beautiful country in a strategically important area full of awesome people who want to see their country “join Europe.”

I guess the people must share some responsibility since after all, they keep voting for these loser politicians, but it’s not like there’s a whole bunch of great possibilities waiting in the wings. Indeed, voting abstention rates are high and growing. One Albanian man offered a telling opinion: “What do you think about the new Albanian parties that are forming?” I asked him. He shrugged, raised his eyebrows, and rolled his eyes. “They are washing shit with piss,” he said.

There are a few possible exceptions (and I emphasize my uncertainty). One is the new mayor of Tetovo. I’ve heard good things about him from locals and internationals, Macedonians and Albanians. And I’ve only heard two accusations of corruption against him (it’s all relative!). Seriously, though, from what I hear, the mayor is the first to substantially employ people of all ethnicities, and he’s really accomplishing stuff – even some things that are outside his jurisdiction.

I do find it a little mind boggling that there are so few others who people admire. I mean, it’s not like the bar is set high. As one expat working in Macedonia explained how people judge politicians: “Your party didn’t shoot anyone during the last election? Wow, you guys are a real class act!”

As that statement shows, many politicians and political activists also currently lack the capacity to deal civilly with one another. I asked a municipal officer from an Albanian party about the other major Albanian party. He spoke for a few seconds before he stopped, sighed, lowered his head, and said in a manner both dismissive and weary, “I don’t want to speak about them anymore. They are terrible people.” Real mature, buddy.

3. Speaking of Maturity… - I hope this next thought doesn’t come off as condescending, but I heard it from a Macedonian, so hopefully that will clear me of any potential wrongdoing.

Macedonia achieved independence in 1991, which means that it is turning 18 this year. Perhaps, then, it will soon shake off some of its “childhood diseases,” to use a Macedonian’s term for the problems currently facing the country. Some of the parties are inching towards constructing a platform, or at least hiring political scientists (maybe they’ll have a job for me – quick, can anyone get me a doctorate?). Moreover, while decentralization is proceeding at an absurdly slow pace, it is proceeding. More decision-making power on appointments, for example, has recently been transferred to municipal governments.

But a few expats to whom I talked think it’s still a while before Macedonia can be left to manage its own affairs, let alone buy itself a drink. The last parliamentary elections, in July 2008, were a violence-plagued disaster (though the presidential and municipal elections earlier this year went more smoothly). One western diplomat described the ’08 election as “horrible. I mean, just awful. I feared for my life.” Another western diplomat put it more bluntly and colorfully: “the 2008 election tells you all you need to know about how to fuck up an election.” He said he witnessed incidents in which women in headscarves and coats were taken to vote at one polling station, then bussed by a party to another poll, where they took off there headscarves and coats, were given new IDs, and voted again (the poll station monitors were from the same party, and thus were a little, well, lackluster in enforcing the rules).

And it’s not only the internationals who want to keep their day jobs in Skopje. One Albanian man in Tetovo told me that he wants Macedonia to become an international protectorate. And an ethnic Macedonian man in Skopje said he wants Macedonia to join the US as the 51st state for a while so we can “fix it” – I’m sure that’s not the majority opinion among Macedonians, but its existence at all says something. I responded that Macedonia is his country, so he has to fix it; as depressing as the current situation is, I still have hope Macedonians will work to do just that.

4. Stuck in the Group Rights Muck - It’s easy to condemn nationalism when its incarnation is Adolf Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic. But the Wilsonian ideal that “all nations deserve the right to self-determination” seems a little more difficult to challenge. And targeting rights to disadvantaged groups – who could argue with that?

But Macedonia has demonstrated once again that the latter two ideas are, in fact, very problematic. It’s not hard to show why: Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians all claim the right to a state for their respective nations, and if the international community grants them that right, it cannot be denied to the Macedonian nation. But privileging the status of ethnic Macedonians disadvantages citizens from other ethnic groups, most notably the Albanians, who faced particularly long-lasting and severe oppression at the hands of Slavic majorities in the former Yugoslavia and who make up by far the largest minority community in Macedonia. But granting special rights to the Albanians to make up for their unequal position leaves the Roma in a disadvantageous position. Granting them special rights would neglect the Turks. Granting the Turks specific group rights would ignore the Bosniaks. Granting…I think you get the idea. And even if you managed to find and assist all the ethnic groups in Macedonia, you still couldn’t guarantee equality for all citizens. What if five, I don’t know, Zimbabweans decided to move to Macedonia and become citizens – are they not entitled to the same treatment as all other citizens?

That was a very long-winded way of stating a simple idea: societies based on group rights cannot guarantee equality for all citizens. In fact, they guarantee that equality cannot be achieved. The only way for all citizens to be equal is to make all blood-based groupings politically and legally irrelevant.

Of course, this transformation is WAY easier said than done. Breaking the chain – or more accurately, stopping the domino effect – described above is not something that can be accomplished on paper alone. Simply changing the constitution from enshrining national and group rights to civic individual rights will not change reality – on the contrary, doing so would probably serve only to reinforce the majority ethnic group’s dominance. But there is still a major change in the way that many of us politically correct peaceniks think that needs to occur: too often we see developments like targeted rights for disadvantaged groups such as Macedonian Albanians as a good idea. But I argue that these group rights are at best the least bad idea, the most practical idea, and a temporary semi-solution to a much deeper problem. They are like putting a band aid on a wound that needs stitches when there’s no hospital nearby.

That deeper problem is a society in which group identity dictates legal-political standing and affiliation and social status. Undoing this situation will not occur overnight (sorry, all you revolutionaries and social engineers), and I have no idea how to spark this change. But perhaps a first step is recognizing that actions like supporting the right to a Macedonian nation-state and special rights for its Albanian community are not going to turn Macedonia into a country where all citizens are equal. Not even close.

And lastly, to all my new vrski in the Mack: thanks so much for everything! I can’t get you a civil service job through a political party, but I’d love to show you around the States if you visit!

Keep on keepin’ on, Macedonia.
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Pictures: I’m tourist-ing briefly through Slovenia and Croatia. Check it out:

Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia (correct pronunciation gets you automatic citizenship)


Lake Bled


Castle above Lake Bled


Zagreb, capital of Croatia


Rovinj, Croatia


Hvar island, Croatia


In conclusion: you can’t spell “Slovenia” without L-O-V-E, baby.

HAWAIIAN SURFER-DUDES ARE RUINING MACEDONIA!!!!

If you’ve seen the cinematic masterpiece Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you may remember a scene in which a Hawaiian surfing instructor named “Kunu” tries to teach the protagonist how to get up on a surfboard. “Just do less,” Kunu advises his student over and over again. “Just do less, man.” After listening to a few repetitions of this time-tested suggestion, the protagonist just lies down on the board, immobile. “Well, now you’re not doing anything,” says Kunu. “You gotta do more than that!” Kunu eventually decides that they’ll just figure it out when they get in the water, and indeed the first-timer does ride a wave semi-successfully.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if Kunu spent a few years as some sort of consultant or adviser in Macedonia. It seems that this country is excelling in doing just a little bit more than nothing. I know that sounds harsh, but listen to this, for example: I had coffee the other day with a Peace Corps volunteer working for an NGO in Skopje (placement in Skopje is known as “Posh Corps” by other Peace Corps people, including her friend who is living in a mud hut in Niger 6 hours away from internet access). This woman has a four hour work-day – as do most of the other working people she knows. On top of that, the conservative religious nationalist party in power has been adding a boatload of new holidays to the calendar. I’m barely exaggerating when I say that almost every weekend is three days long thanks to a commemoration of some saint that many people I talk to didn’t know existed. On top of that, Macedonians, like all good Europeans, take off the month of August.

Macedonia, it seems, has all but perfected the art of doing less.

That is a heinous over-generalization, of course, as tons of Macedonians work extremely hard while much of the political elite camps out in main square cafes. Many waiters in said cafes, for example, work 10-12 hour days, seven days a week, and make around 5 Euros a day. While they do more, their employers pay less – almost nothing at all – and they’ve gotta pay more than that!

Another area of less-doing in which I don’t have to worry about offending good hardworking people is in the arena of political ideology, or lack thereof. I have asked so many people about the difference in ideology and platform between the two major Albanian parties, and no one can seem to tell me – not even party members! All I get is “DPA is a center-right party.” Ok, and what does that mean in practice?... crickets. I think a veteran member of DPA summed the situation up well when he said to me, "The main goal of a political party is to win elections.” And that whole thing about governing with a plan and underlying platform? Ohhh yeeaahhhh – I’m sure he just momentarily forgot about that part.

But don’t think it’s just the Albanian parties that haven’t realized governing is about…governing. I met an (ethnic Macedonian) academic who worked for the ethnic Macedonian mayor of Skopje for a year and a half. He said to me, “I’d ask people in the office, ‘so, what’s your policy for this?’ or ‘how will this policy lead to whatever outcome?’ ” A typical response: “What the fuck do you want? Get off my back!” Visionary.

But the 2009 Kunu Award has to go to…drumroll, please…: the Minister of Local Self-Governance! Decentralization of power to municipalities is one of the single most important political processes in Macedonia, both for interethnic relations and for European integration. Yet according to an interpreter I met who works with all sorts of officials, if you need this minister’s signature, don’t call in the morning – he doesn’t show up before noon.

Last April, internationals working on a World Bank and USAID project on decentralization asked the interpreter to come to a meeting they had scheduled with this minister. “Can you come to a meeting at 9am?” they asked the interpreter.
“9am?” he responded.
“Yeah.”
“You won’t have a meeting at 9am. Call the ministry again to make sure.” A half hour later, they called him back. “OK, the meeting’s been changed to 1 pm – how did you know they would change the time?”
He didn’t want to say anything bad about the minister, so he made something up. “He is meeting with the prime minister to discuss some things in the morning, I think.”
“I think you’re bullshitting me.”
“You’re right, I am. But let me ask, what did the ministry tell you?” asked the interpreter.
“They said he was busy with a meeting in the morning.”
“Haha, what did I tell you?”

At five minutes to one, the minister arrived at the ministry. The delegation rode the elevator up to his office’s floor. He sat the visitors down in a conference room and popped into his office – and didn’t return for 27 minutes!

Once the meeting finally commenced, the internationals began to discuss the project at hand. But the minister clearly had no idea about the project. His responses were so nonsensical that a man from USAID gave a look to the interpreter as if to say, “Are you translating everything wrongly?” But an Albanian woman who works for USAID was present and vouched for the interpreter, telling the others that he was translating everything perfectly.

Congratulations, Mr. Minister! Like nobody else, you embody the ineffectiveness that defines the Kunu spirit we have come to know so well.

If only building a successful country was just like riding the Hawaiian surf...

On another note, the Peace Corps volunteer also recounted the complaints her Albanian co-workers have regarding the political situation. Nothing new – just the usual complaints of “that stupid statue of Alexander is making everything worse” and “what do they think they’re doing trying to build a church on the site of Mother Teresa’s house?” (yeah, I know she was Christian, but she was also Albanian, and Albanians are mostly Muslim. More to the point, many Albanians see the church as a further expropriation of her legacy by Macedonian nationalists – not to mention a clear violation of church-state separation.) I got to thinking, though: it seems like everyone - Greeks, Macedonians of all sorts, Albanians, and most other ethnic groups in conflict – complain about the other’s nationalism while responding by becoming more nationalist themselves. I guess that’s not too surprising, but the hypocrisy is still something to think about, especially for all of us with a stake in an ethnic conflict.

Nationalism appears to be the one area many of us are hyperactive. Luckily, I once got a great piece of advice from this guy I know: dude, just do less.

Word.
--
Pictures: Lake Ohrid is the reason I came to Macedonia. I mean, oh, yeah, that whole research project thing. Right. But to be a really good Macedonian Kunu, the best thing to do is to go to Ohrid and do absolutely nothing. That’s what I did last weekend, and in the course of my minimal doing, my breath was taken – not by my real estate agent, but by scenery like this:


And this:


Peacocks on an ancient church (!):


And a bit farther to the north, my personal favorite, Lake Debar (Dibra):


Macedonia is famous for its monasteries and lakes. And sometimes, monasteries on lakes. And occasionally, monasteries in lakes:


Mr. Do-Less himself – the one and only Kunu:

On premed power politics, and other tragicomic phenomena

Before going to Greece, I met the brother of a Yalie from Skopje who graduated a couple years ago. The bro, a medical student at the main university - Saints Cyril and Methodius University - took me on a whirlwind tour of Skopje. First, the old city. "Have you eaten yet?" he asked as we passed his favorite kebapci place. "Yeah." "OK, sit down," he said, apparently not listening. Then after we finished, "you know what bosa is?" "No." "Ok, we'll get some" - we went to what he said was the oldest sweets shop in Skopje to drink the sickly sweet liquid and to attempt to consume more plus-sized pastries than Homer Simpson himself could face alone.

We were deciding between grabbing a drink by the river or at a traditional Macedonian restaurant when he got a call from the president of the university student body. "Change of plans," he told me. "No drink. I must go meet the president."

Backstory: my friend is running for president of the medical school student body. But student elections here ain't no Yale College Council "who the hell even knows who's running" walk in the park. The major national political parties endorse candidates, and a successful campaign often means employment with the party (which, as we have seen, seems to be what the parties are primarily useful for). My friend thus was quite the freewheeler when he decided to run as an independent (I guess he'll have to employ himself). His opponent is from VRMO.

But last summer, while the entire country was on vacation, the current med school student president - also VMRO - somehow sketchily enacted changes to the student body constitution extending his term for one year. My friend, naturally, just about went Balkan-crazy on him, while the prez soothed the other candidate's unease by hinting (according to my friend), "Don't worry - you're VMRO, I'm VMRO: you'll be a president one day, too." Now the Medical School Dictator (or, “The Meditator,” as I’ve taken to calling this elusive foe) is getting sued in the national court system. It's Third World-style power usurpation at the undergraduate level! START 'EM YOUNG, that's what I always say!!

Now we headed to the president of the overall student body's office to discuss some next steps. Entering the office, I felt like I was in an important government ministry or the office of a mafia boss (according to many Macedonians, there's not a whole lot of difference). The Don greeted me and my friend, while his two assistants sat playing games on their iphones, waiting for orders. Above my head on the wall were posted seals of the Great State of Macedonia, including, of course, Aleksandar. (If Alexander the Great's last name was Waldo, this part of the world would be the easiest game of Where's Waldo ever.)

I'll let you know if the situation progresses. Reporting live from Skopje on the Macedonian Medical Succession Crisis, this is Xheremi. Now back to the studio for more on the Greece-Macedonia name dispute:

In recent conversation with an academic known for being unbiased and level-headed, I received the following piece of sarcastic wisdom: "Alexander slaughtered thousands of Greek civilians. If the Greeks want to claim the identity of a man who massacred their ancestors, I guess that's fine with me - just don't tell me what to call myself." Touché, assuming that's historically accurate. But just one question, which I wish I had asked him: if Alexander was such a serial killer, why exactly do you want to claim him as your ancestor or national hero? Jeremy - 1. All sides of nationalist disputes in the Balkans combined - 0.

Not to be outdone in praise for mass murderers, a Greek neo-Nazi organization harassed some "Slavophones" a few days ago during a ceremony in Athens celebrating the publication of the first Greek-Macedonian dictionary. (remember: since non-Greek Macedonians don't exist, their language doesn't exist either. duh.) I was just trying to relax and soak some rays on a Greek island, when I got an excited text message (think: :~))))) from my jolly TV anchor friend in Skopje telling me that something had happened. You can read about it here and watch a video here - there's no subtitles on the video, but luckily fascist yell-grunting sounds the same in any language.

Now, I know that many people in the Balkans are crazy, but I also know that most of them aren’t that crazy. I assume, for example, that the meatchunks in the video don’t represent the Greek consensus. Nonetheless, it takes some serious diplomatic fortitude to completely avoid associating those guys at least somewhat with the Greek stance on the name dispute. That reaction leads to an idea that is worth some mental marinating, especially for those of us who are members of communities in conflict (cough, all us Jews and Palestinians, cough): conflicts rarely exist in a vacuum. And since peaceful resolution necessitates a compromise that is often brokered by a third party, winning the image battle is a crucial aspect of strengthening one’s position at the bargaining table. When VMRO makes plans to build a 30m-tall singing fountain statue of Alexander the Great in the main square of Macedonia’s capital, that lends credence to Greece’s complaints and undermines Macedonia’s claims; similarly, when angry off-duty linebackers barge in on an esoteric intellectual gathering to verbally assault a bespectacled renowned American linguist, that makes the Greek side look a little, ahem, overzealous. As a result, it may well be that a group in conflict’s worst enemies are not the members of the other side, but the extremists in one’s own camp.
--
Pictures: Would you believe me if I told you that my real estate agent stole my camera again? Neither would I. Luckily, that didn’t happen. Honestly, though, I don’t have a whole lot of new interesting pictures. But for good measure, here’s a photo of my apartment building, just to prove I’m doing the post-communist thing furrealz:


I bet the architect studied at this place(I hear the dorm food really sucks):

Greece is cool

Here's a series of 1,000-words's to prove it:

Sunset at the Athens port













View at Delphi













Change of the guard - members of the 27th Goofball Brigade













Insightful sign in Athens













A horde of riot police at Parliament - waiting for demonstrations regarding EU Parliament elections













The glory that was Greece













The glory that is Greece













Pigeons, the main feature at the Athens zoo

Just kidding. I'm JUST kidding

The real glory that is Greece: Santorini













Santorini - the town of Oia (inaccurately pronounced "oh yeah!")













Santorini - Firostefani













Volcano by Santorini













Church in Oia













Thessaloniki - center of "the real"/"that other" Macedonia - with its rendition of Alexander the Great of Macedon.













White Tower- symbol of Thessaloniki - guarded by a statue of King Philip...of Macedon













I arrived in Thessaloniki at 1 am, and couldn't get my phone to call the owner of the hostel, who had told me, "You won't be able to find us on your own." Luckily, she found me, and as soon as she checked me in, she went on three days' vacation. The other guests left in the morning. So I had the hostel all to myself - no guests, no owner.

That's all for now. Back in Skopje now, interviewing more wackos (and some sane people, too!). I'll try to post again in a few days.

I'M WITH STUPID ...and other insights from Macedonia

First, and most importantly: if I wrote my name in Albanian, I would spell it “Xheremi.” How cool is that?

I thought that for this week, instead of (or, more accurately, in addition to) just making fun of the places to which I’m traveling, I would provide a more substantive update on the situation here, the research I’m doing, and some of the more sensational things to come out of the mouths of my interviewees.

To set the context: the current governing coalition in Macedonia consists of 2 parties, the ethnic Macedonian “Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party of Macedonian National Unity” – which should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest party name, and which will henceforth be referred to by the Macedonian abbreviation of its abbreviation, VMRO – and the ethnic Albanian “Democratic Union for Integration” (DUI). VMRO was the closest thing Macedonia had to a Communist dissident movement. Today, it is a conservative nationalist party with close ties to the church. One American professor I talked to here called VMRO “crude and stupid,” and said it is made up of a bunch of “fascists” who are “turning this place into a police state.” DUI is an outgrowth of the National Liberation Army, which took up arms against the Macedonian state in 2001 on behalf of the country’s Albanians. It itself is in large part an outgrowth of the Kosovo Liberation Army (they have the same acronym in Albanian), though everyone here seems to have their own story on the real origin of the insurgency. Seems like a governmental odd couple? Well, yeah, it is – but then again, is anything normal here?

In 2006, VMRO formed a coalition with the other major Albanian party, the Democratic Party of the Albanians, despite DUI winning more seats than DPA. DUI threw a tantrum, saying that whichever Albanian party wins the most seats should be in the coalition, regardless of the biggest party’s preferences. This complaint reveals a prominent strain of thought in the Albanian community here: it is as if there are two political systems – one Macedonian, one Albanian. Each chooses their leader, and then the two must work together, even if they despise each other.

And VMRO and DUI pretty much despise each other. I met with an MP from DUI last week, who complained about VMRO’s growing uber-nationalist moves. If VMRO doesn’t start being more conciliatory, the MP said, DUI will need a new platform. The MP stopped there. “You mean, a more nationalist platform?” I enquired. “Well, I don’t know,” was the response. “But if VMRO continues to be inflexible, then it will be unacceptable for us to continue being flexible.” Read: things are tense, and about to get more so.

To be fair to DUI, VMRO has been partaking in its fair share of absurdity and provocation. For example, an architectural hodge-podge built in honor of Mother Teresa (see pic below) displays a Macedonian flag prominently, emphasizing her citizenship; a big cross, emphasizing her religion; and many mentions of her origins in Skopje, emphasizing where she is from, geographically. And yet there is no mention of her being Albanian. As one political analyst pointed out to me, the government lost a great chance to do something powerful – the Albanian community cares a lot about symbols, and VMRO threw out a chance for a big symbolic gesture of inclusion to the Albanian community.

Overall, it seems as if the leaders of the two communities, in an effort to prevent their being out-maneuvered by the other, have also made sure that the other does not out-stupid them either. Every provocative move by one is taken as a cue to return the “favor” in kind.

Not that ideology really matters. In a country with around 35% unemployment and in which the state controls many resources, political activism is job-seeking. Multiple people to whom I’ve talked, completely independently of one another, have described people’s view of political parties using the same two words: “employment bureaus.” The economic crisis has hit – though as one Albanian said to me, “We’ve had so many crises here over the last 20 years, what’s one more?” – and parties are often considered the best possibility for finding a job. Yet the Law on Civil Servants makes firing past parties’ employees difficult, so basically the bureaucracy keeps expanding, while the EU demands the opposite.

Speaking of the EU, it seems to me that just about everyone I meet here either works in or has worked in EU integration. Joining the EU, and perhaps NATO, is seen as the best – perhaps last – hope for this country. As one employee of a prominent NGO told me, “The only time I was optimistic was when I was working in EU integration.” So when Greece vetoed Macedonia’s entry into NATO at the infamous Bucharest Summit, people here really started to lose hope. “What have we gotten from democracy?” that NGO worker asked rhetorically. “With a Yugoslav passport, we could go anywhere without a visa” – everyone here talks about the visa issue – “but now we are a landlocked country that no one cares about, and we’re even more locked in because we need a visa to go almost anywhere.” The reaction, naturally and unfortunately, is nationalist defensiveness. Hence VMRO’s success. People see how destructive the party is, but in their indignation I guess they don’t care. “A bent head cannot be cut by a sword,” goes a Macedonian proverb I heard, referring to many Macedonians’ acquiescent attitude towards the authorities. So VMRO goes on planning a multimillion dollar 30 meter-tall statue of Alexander the Great that will achieve only the laudable aims of wasting money and pissing off Greece.

Probably the most colorful character I’ve met is a self-described “insane” foreign independent economic consultant named Sam who has lived in the region for decades. Though his completely freelance operation makes him a bit sketchy to me, his credibility was established about 20 minutes into our conversation, when the Minister of Health called his cell phone. Sam got irritated with the minister for trying to schedule a meeting at 9 am on a Saturday.

During his 1 hour, 45 minute giganto-lecture/tirade, in which he interrupted his talking at me to sip multiple huge cups of decaf, he criticized just about everybody. He thrashed the West’s (mis-)understanding of the Balkans, the commanders of the 2001 Albanian insurgents (“troglodytes”), Albanians in general (“they are intolerant of sharing space with others”), ethnic Macedonians (“self-destructive”), all of the country’s elites (“they can teach you nothing”), Macedonia as a whole (“it’s going backwards”), and by extension VMRO, as the party most responsible for sending Macedonia backwards.

His views can perhaps be summarized as follows: the Balkans is (or was) “the least nationalistic region” in the world. It was made up of multicultural societies, and the idea of “narod,” usually translated as “nation,” was not exclusivist. Then, a combination of Great Power imposition and misguided local intellectualism falsified history to create the idea of exclusivist, genetically borne nations. Albanians are the one exception to the multicultural rule, having lived in mostly homogeneous communities throughout history. Thus, when the wave of nationalism swept over the Balkans in the 1980s, Albanians were best equipped to ride it. At Macedonia’s independence in 1991, Albanians showed their unwillingness to participate in the state’s society by boycotting the referendum on statehood. Macedonians, “as usual, ten years behind,” were just getting going on the process of constructing their own pseudo-historical national narrative when the Albanians were most keen on self-exclusion – hence, discrimination against and exclusion of Albanians from the state’s institutions. By taking the Albanians’ bait, the Macedonians looked like the bad guys in 2001 and had to pay the price in the peace treaty. Now the two communities are entrenched in their suspicion of one another, and there are portents of another conflict, which he doubts Macedonia can survive.

On the potentially hopeful side, a new generation of Albanian politicians is arising that is exposed to the West and abhors violence. Yet this is only good news if Macedonians don’t “continue as they are now.” If they do, Albanians may decide they don’t want to be a part of the state, and they have the perfect crop of politicians to secede – nationalist moderates who can “explain their position to the West in the West’s terms.”

Sam’s financial independence allows him to maintain his political and ideological independence, which he does by operating under what he calls the “fuck-off principle.” He consults for free, but as soon as he finds out someone is corrupt, “I tell them to fuck off.”

Yet his outspokenness has its consequences. His apartment was burned two years ago. “It’s not a game,” he said. “It’s a minefield.”

I must add a word about what I’ve been hearing regarding the Greece-Macedonia name dispute. One jolly TV news anchor told me he’d be OK with calling this country “Northern Macedonia” as long as Greece calls its portion of the region “Southern Macedonia.” He added, “I don’t know whether I’m joking or not – it’s a stupid issue!”

“Stupid” seems to be the running theme around here. It is, unfortunately, an apt word to describe the way things have been handled by the region’s people, their elected and unelected leaders, and the international community.

I’ll conclude with a more nuanced metaphor. A man from the Skopje branch of the National Democratic Institute, one of the most influential NGOs here, asked me, “Do you like soccer?” Well, duh. “It’s like an ‘own goal,’ when you score on your own team. In Macedonia we are getting attacked from all sides, but on top of that, everything we do is committing an own goal against ourselves.”

Pictures: Skopje really started to get on my nerves, especially after my real estate agent – who got fired in part for finding my apartment outside the agency – stole my camera (or at least I’m like 90% sure). Luckily, that frustration coincided with my favorite holiday of the year, “Slavonic Enlighteners’ Day,” so I decided to take the opportunity to get out of the capital. I headed – new, cheaper camera in hand – for the town of Prilep near Treskavec Monastery, featured in “Before the Rain,” which is probably the most important Macedonian film. After seeing it I still have no idea what it’s about – all I got from it was “the circle is not round,” and I’m not even sure what that means – but the scenery is awesome:


Prilep


The center of Prilep, with Alexander the Great, symbol of nationalist lunacy in Greece and Macedonia – notice the map of Macedonia on the statue, which extends beyond this country’s borders. Exactly what Greece fears.


Campaign ad with successful VMRO presidential candidate George Ivanov


Town of Veles, between Skopje and Prilep


View from Sveti Panteljemon Monastery over Skopje and the Vardar Valley


The “Mother Teresa House” in Skopje

ZDRAVO from Skopje, capital of Macedonia (or FYROM, or Greece’s Northern Neighbor, or whatever)

The reason for the name confusion is – you guessed it – nationalism. Northern Greece is also known as Macedonia, and the Greek and Slav Macedonians have been bickering over whether Macedonia can call itself by that name, and some Greeks instead call it “Fyrom,” i.e. “the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” I, however, am going to call this country what the people here call it, without making a political recommendation.

This country is a little nuts. And that’s a very loose definition of a little. I thought I’d arranged an apartment with a real estate agency, but the night before I took the bus through Kosovo I found out the apartment was no longer available, so the agent found me an “under the table” set-up with her mother’s dentist’s uncle (well, duh – who else would it be?). It’s a great apartment right in the center of the city, a short walk from the big new mall that may be built on top of the site of the house where Mother Teresa (Albanian from Skopje!) grew up. The agent made a “contract” by crossing out and handwriting over a form she had. She asked Jovan, the owner, if he wanted a copy in Macedonian. His reply (in Macedonian) was approximately, “I don’t give a shit. In Macedonia, we still do things with a handshake.”

I’ve started my research – I’ve had a bunch of interesting conversations, including one with a female parliamentarian from a nationalist Albanian party in government with a nationalist Macedonian party - sounds like there's some tension. One concept that seems to be important is vrski, which basically means the network of all the personal and familial connections one has. Vrski seems to run just about everything, which means much of my research will have to be quasi unofficial, since it often involves helping others do illegal things. I’ll wait to compile some more interviews before giving detailed stories, but here’s a quick one to give you a sense of this place:

I met 3 American students here on Fulbrights the other night who welcomed me to “The Mack,” as they call this country, One is dating a Macedonian woman, known in Macedonian as a “Makedonka” (apparently Peace Corps volunteers call dating a Macedonian “Makedonkin’ it”). A couple nights ago, the trio was hanging out in one of their apartments during a storm, when all of a sudden they heard a loud crash. They went outside and saw that the entire roof of the apartment building across the street had been ripped off by the storm, and lay in a heap on the street. The Makedonka’s Fulbright boyfriend was so excited to tell his girlfriend’s family about this crazy thing he had just witnessed. But the father of the woman was nonplussed, responding matter-of-factly, “It was a new building, yes? Ok, that makes sense.” Building codes haven’t been well-enforced since independence, in case you couldn’t guess.

The stories I really wanted to tell you, though, are a couple more things from Montenegro. First, just briefly, I had a really interesting conversation with Ivana and the US Ambassador to Montenegro for about 45 minutes in his office. We talked about a lot of Balkan political stuff that I won’t get into – including his personal, unofficial views on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute – but I’ll send you my notes if you’re interested. He summed up his views on the pace of progress and European integration in the Balkans as follows: “It’s very slow – frustratingly slow,” he said. “Every day some stupid issue – like a naming issue – comes up. But I’m optimistic – if you think about how bad this area was during the 90s, and how far it has come…. I would say that for the first time in a long time – maybe ever – there is a general vision for the region.”

And now the good story: the day before that meeting, I gave a presentation for a group of primary school teachers involved in one of Ivana’s inter-ethnic dialogue programs. It was in a small town called Tuzi, which is mixed, but mostly Albanian. The town has many Albanian Catholics, and the religious division (Catholic v Muslim v Orthodox Christian) may be stronger there than the ethnic division (Albanian v ethnic Montenegrin).

The presentation had two parts. in the first section, I talked about minority rights in the US, focusing a lot on how (at least in theory) US law is organized around individual rights and doesn’t want to know your group identity, whereas in the Balkans and other nation-states group rights are crucial. There were some interesting questions, including one about racism in US immigration policy. I asked the teachers about their impression of minority in the US. “We hear a lot from our relatives,” said one teacher – there is a large diaspora from Tuzi in the Detroit area. “They say they like the constitution, but not the economy.” Sounds about right to me.

But the next responses to the question were barely relevant. “We think the kids here are smarter,” one female teacher said. “And American kids have freezers full of food,” added a mustachioed man near the door. “So they get very fat.”

In the second section, I talked about religion and inter-faith relations in the US. This section was much more interactive. When I asked how religious diversity is managed – or not – in Tuzi, there was an awkward silence filled with finger-twiddling and head-scratching. Eventually, an older female teacher said only, “It will be fine.” When I asked her to elaborate, she said, “Uh…no comment for now.”

Moreover, Ivana told me before the event that the only thing members from all religious communities in the group could agree upon was that there should be no mixed marriages. “Look at Sarajevo,” they argued. There were tons of mixed marriages there, and it turned into a disaster. It seems sadly ironic to me that the only thing members of the different communities could agree upon was to stay separate from each other.

The questions started to get a little more ridiculous as the second hour wore on. One balding man in the front asked, “I have applied for a visa to go to the US 6 times, and they have rejected me 6 times with no good reason – why is that?” I told him seriously that I was sorry and jokingly that I would step outside and call President Obama to see what I could do. Another teacher chimed in. “Listen, he’s a friend of mine,” he said with a smirk on his face, “but if I was in charge, I wouldn’t give him a visa.” And then: “but we had another question amongst ourselves earlier – are you married?” A woman from the back then added, “If you married a Montenegrin or an Albanian, it would be very interesting, wouldn’t it?” Great, I thought. I’ve got a whole room of yentas in front of me – so much for avoiding mixed marriages. A senior essay AND a wife in one trip – now that’s efficiency. On that note, please keep your calendars free for Sundays next June. Her name is – don’t worry, just kidding!

Wishing you all the best, and lots and lots of VRSKI!!

And now some pics:


Presenting in Tuzi


The audience in Tuzi


Sunset between Tuzi and Podgorica


The hills separating Montenegro and Kosovo


A soccer game in Kosovo


Skopje: of Ottomans and Communists


An awesome mosque in Tetovo, center of Macedonia's Albanian community (i.e. the community I am researching)