Zindelfingen

Oktober. Die Welt, im Schatten der Finanzkrise, die wie ein Beben wirkt, besonders hier, in der für sicher gehaltenen Welt Mitteleuropas. Vielleicht zieht es mich auch dadurch zu Büchern und Geschichten aus Osteuropa - aus einer Region, die aus der Krise kommt.

Aleksander Hemon, ihn kannte ich schon aus der Sammlung "Der Andere Nebenan", die ich im März gelesen habe. Jetzt kam eine Kurzgeschichte von ihm im New Yorker. "The Noble Truth of Suffering." Die Geschichte spielt in Bosnien. Und dreht sich um das Leben. Und das Schreiben.

When he was young, like me, he sid, he had though that all the great writers knew someting he didn't. He'd thought that if he read their books he would learn something, get beter: He'd thought that he would acquire what those writers had: the wisdom, the truth, the wholeness, the real shit. He had been burning to write, hungry for that knowledge. But now he knew that that hunger was vainglorious; now he knew that writers knew nothing, really - most of them were just faking it. He knew nothing. There was nothing to know, nothing on the other side. There was no walker, no path, just walking. This was it, whoever you were, wherever you were, whatever it was, and you had to make peace with that fact.

Marina Lewycka kannte ich vorher nicht. Es war das Cover, das mich am Buch hängenbleiben ließ. Und der kleine Pinguin. Und dann, der Titel: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. So heißt der Roman, und so heißt auch ein Buch im Roman selbst, der von der Generation danach erzählt. Von zwei Schwestern, deren Eltern aus der Ukraine kamen. Am Ende des Buches, eine Karte.

"This is our journey. Ukraina to England." He traces the line backwards. "Same journey, other direction." His voise is laboured, croaky. "Look, here in south near Stuttgart is Zindelfingen. Ludmilla was working in Daimler-Benz assembly. Nineteen forty-three."

Und dann, eine Seite weiter, eine Passage, die fast wie eine Reflektion der Hemon-Passage wirkt.

When I was young, I wanted my father to be a hero. I was ashamed of his graveyard desertion, his flight to Germany. I wanted my mother to be a romantic heroine. I wanted their story to be one of bravery and love. Now as an adult I see that they were not heroic. They've survived, that's all.

Die noble Wahrheit des Leidens.

Ist Leben.

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.