‘Once upon a time I lived in a big, joined-up country where you never had to be, strictly speaking, anyone at all. Borders didn’t count. We all spoke Serbo-Croat. My sister married a Slovene, my aunt was Macedonian, my grandfather came from Montenegro and married his Bosnian wife in Kosovo. Wherever in the Federation you were born, from Dubrovnik to Nis, Pristina to Skopje, you were a Yugoslav. Until it blew up.’
‘Who blew it up?’ Jimfish asked.
‘We did. It started when the Slovenes wanted to leave Yugoslavia, and I was sent to fight them. It wasn’t much of a war and they won — or, maybe, we just let them go. We didn’t see what was coming. Overnight they ditched the old Yugoslav dinar for the German Deutschmark, threw out the Serbo-Croat dictionary and told everyone that Slovenia was the new Switzerland. It was hard to keep a straight face. Their border crossing was a bit of rope stretched across the motorway, manned by goons with guns who called themselves customs officials, lolling in deckchairs under umbrellas advertising Malboro cigarettes, and a banner that said “Welcome to the Republic of Slovenia”.
‘Then came the next war; this time in Croatia. I was based in Karlovac and we rode to the front along the motorway, like commuters, ready to take the next exit to the battlefield. Sometimes we blew apart cities; other times we fought in quiet meadows, where a sniper hid in the belfry of the pretty little church across the fields. Our side shelled patients in hospitals, and their side blew up schoolkids. This was more like a real Balkan war and the Croats had form. They slaughtered Serbs in the Second World War; and they seemed keen to do it all over again. Our answer was to slaughter Croats. And when that sort of thing begins, no one is safe, because it’s catchy, that old slaughter music. In no time all — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia — slaughter was Top of the Pops. Those things Serbs know about. Over the centuries, Belgrade has been wiped out more than a dozen times. And we also know about world war — we virtually started the First and died in droves in the Second. But this war we did not understand.’
‘What brought you all the way to Africa?’ Jimfish wondered.
The answer surprised him.
‘I came to be enlightened. I said to myself, “If race is all the rage, if ethnic cleansing is coming soon to a ministatelet near me, then it’s time to brush up on ethnic hatred and to take a look at the way others do things.” But where to start? Kashmir and the Pakistani — Indian partition? Or the Israeli — Palestine split? Belgium, where the tribes detest each other? Northern Ireland, where the sects prefer suicide? Then it came to me: who has done Balkanization better than the Balkans? South Africans! They’re the champs. For decades they’ve been splitting their country into ethnic islands and locking up people in the prisons of race and tribe, colour and culture. Each piece of their crazy jigsaw has its own parliament, flag, president, army, borders. Everyone lives in a little hate-state where you’re free to loathe the clan or the crowd down the road or across town or over the next hill.’
Jimfish did not want to say where he was from, but an unexpected surge of patriotisim made him defend his country.
‘Maybe that was so in the old South Africa,’ he said. ‘But Nelson Mandela’s out of jail now and he’ll be the next President. Apartheid is dead and buried. There will be free elections, a free health service, jobs for all and a chicken in every pot every Sunday.’
Zoran the Serb shook his good head of hair in his gloomy way and waved a cautionary finger.
‘If ex-Yugoslavia is anything to go by, elections just put new hats on the same old heads. In Belgrade cradle Communists turned into noisy fascists overnight. Same thing in Croatia.’
With a sinking heart, Jimfish remembered the men in hats on the roof of the Central Committee Building in Bucharest. But he felt he must defend the achievements of his country.
‘In South Africa I’m sure the change will be blindingly clear.’
‘Blinding, perhaps,’ said Zoran, ‘but clear? In ex-Yugoslavia socialists wore red and fascists went for brown. But then came the war — and we couldn’t tell the difference any more. Scratch a red and he bleeds brown. And vice versa. So I decided on South Africa. Because that’s where we’re heading in ex-Yugoslavia.’
‘You’re too late.’ Jimfish tried to get his cellmate to see sense. ‘Those ideas are dead and gone. And so is the apostle of apartheid who invented them — Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd.’
‘Maybe dead down your way, but he’s alive and laughing where I come from,’ said Zoran the Serb. ‘My first taste of Africa was in Zaire. The Great Leopard rented a batch of us Serb and Croat sharpshooters. We lived in separate barracks, ate off separate plates with separate knives and forks, and used separate toilets. But at night, after a day in the field, we relaxed over slivovitz and spoke Serbo-Croat. We hated each other at home and fell in love in Zaire. But one day Mobutu figured out that if he wanted to modernize Zaire ballots beat bullets. Just like our man Milošević in Belgrade, he saw that elections, carefully run, are the up-to-date way to emasculate the electorate.
‘Sharpshooters were suddenly surplus to requirements in Zaire. Luckily, demand for skills like mine never slackens. Siad Barre in Somalia was recruiting snipers. I’d barely signed on when the Victorious Leader climbed into a tank and headed south, taking the national bank deposits with him. No one wanted snipers any more. No money to pay them. And it’s slow work, taking out one man at a time. Somali clan leaders were looking to mow down their enemies in numbers. Luckily, the Americans stepped in with RPGs and heavy automatic stuff, which the warlords love. They mount them on pickups and blow away scores of people in no time at all.’
Jimfish felt a surge of familiar confusion. ‘But why should Somalis hate each other? If they’re one people with one language and religion.’
Zoran the Serb smiled his sad Serbian smile. ‘Ethnic hatred is a help if you’re hoping for civil war. But you don’t need distinct tribes worshipping different gods to whip up a good massacre of the neighbours. A happy family can be at each other’s throats quicker than you can say “ex-Yugoslavia”. In Somalia it’s your clan that counts. Yours against theirs. And their family feud has killed hundreds of thousands. Even more are starving. Outsiders try to help, but aid trucks get ambushed, cargo planes shot down, ships can’t dock. Anyone who isn’t dead is dead broke. The latest idea is to sell hostages. That’s why they locked me up here. I told them: “I’m a Serb — no one wants to buy a used Yugoslav. Hell, we’re worth even less than South Africans!”’
Jimfish decided it was time to tell his cellmate the truth. ‘I happen to be from South Africa.’
For the first time Zoran looked quite cheered. ‘Good heavens! A Serb and a South African — twin polecats of the western world and we end up in the same cell!’
Suddenly, helicopters were clattering overhead and they heard the sound of shooting. Zoran walked to the door of the cell and, to his astonishment, it opened.
‘Our jailers — they’ve gone! What is going on? I’m getting a bad feeling.’
Jimfish was happy to reassure Zoran. ‘It’s very good news. They’ve gone to the beach. It means the Americans have landed.’
‘Americans invading Somalia?’ Zoran was incredulous. ‘I’m getting a very bad feeling.’
‘Not invading,’ said Jimfish. ‘Intervening. This is a humanitarian operation. The Somalis will greet them with open arms.’
‘They’ll open fire, more likely,’ Zoran said. ‘The soldiers who kidnapped us have gone hunting for high-end hostages. They don’t need us bottom feeders any more.’
Jimfish was shocked at Zoran’s Serbian cynicism. ‘The Americans plan a short, surgical intervention. They’ll feed the starving, treat the sick, shoot the warlords and leave.’