Der Andere

i started to read a collection of short stories, all coming from the region of former Yugoslavia. “Der Andere Nebenan”, the book is called: “The Other in the Next Place”. the one who started the book sent out 1 question to 20 authors. the question was: “Is the Other in the Country Next to You rather Friend or Foe?”. some answered in short stories, some in essays.

one essay, it is so moving – about the human concept of “us” and “them”. i wished it was in english. it made me think of Elle, and her interest and will to dig for the roots of human and social concepts and conflicts.

there also is an essay by Aleksandar Hemon, and in one of its passages, he tells the story of a Canadian professor of politics whose parents had emigrated to Canada when he was a child. in the ending phase of the war, he came to former Yugoslavia as part of an UN study, with a group of UN-soldiers. (Blauhelme – Bluecaps, they are called here).

he had all the papers he required, and his Canadian pass. at most checkpoints, he didn't have problems. but one day, he was stopped at a checkpoint, as the soldiers there got suspicious, seeing his name was Eastern European, but his passport Canadian. they checked his papers twice, trying to figure out how he fitted in the ethnic picture. and finally, asked him: “What are you?”. the professor, irritated, gave the answer most reasonable to him: “a professor of politics.” the answer must have seemed somewhere between philosophic and naïve to the soldiers, who started to laugh, struck by a world where life, and with it, the question “what are you” is reduced to ethnic belonging.

another painful point this book makes: that the wars in which the lines between us and them are tainted often belong to the cruellest and worst wars: civil wars.