I watched that unfortunate match between Serbia and Albania. Not because of the football (to be frank, my expectations of the two national teams were slight in terms of football, and this is a stage in the qualifications where I don’t even care who will win; as opposed to the World Cup, for instance, where I heartily cheered for the BiH national team, because it was the underdog among giants), but because of everything surrounding the match that has nothing to do with the 22 men chasing a ball across a field.
And I saw, like everyone else watching the live broadcast, how a flying rag descended onto the stadium. I apologise to those who see more to the rag, I do not mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but honestly, what I saw were some symbols from the Albanian flag, a contour of something, and some faces that mean nothing to me. I tried to look it up and soon found out via social networks that what had been airborne was no less than the symbol of Greater Albania – that the contours were that of an imagined country, and the faces those of people who wanted it to come true.
The tug-of-war that ensued between footballers in the stadium: one catching it, the others trying to pull it away – I’m still in the dark about that. I’m also still confused about who was apparently defending ideas – of Greater Serbia or Greater Albania – and not their nets.
Just as I don’t understand all the small symbols that fly into my cognitive space, and I don’t understand how I don’t understand them.
During the World Cup this summer, a good friend of mine, a Serb and Christian Orthodox (I know this for a fact, I was at his christening, meaning we are close enough for me to know his identities) who doesn’t live in “this region” posted a picture of himself watching a match with Croatia wearing the emblematic red-and-white chequered jersey. I painstakingly examined the upper left corner of the flag to see if it started with a white or a red field: I was afraid, as I would have been for myself, that someone may have passed off an Ustasha version of the flag on him, instead of the official flag of Croatia. The difference is minute and easily missed but could lead to big problems. I exhaled in relief, it was the official coat of arms. But what if it hadn’t been? Where is the thin line that separates the acceptable from the unacceptable? How do I see his photo, and how does someone from Croatia see it? What does that flag mean to me, and what does it mean to a Serb refugee from Operation Storm? An why would you, ultimately, enshroud yourself in all these symbols you have to be so careful about?
I get the same feeling when I see those lovely romantic photos: a girl and boy embracing, each with their flag across their shoulders. They marked themselves, pointed out what was most important to them, and then sent the message that they could still embrace each other. It’s not the flags that are hugging, it’s a bunch of kids, just like millions of people are hugging at this very moment, all over the world. Only where there is war, where people don’t live together, where such flags mean dying, this is news, a noteworthy event sentimentally letting us know that togetherness is possible, despite everything. Or actually, that it isn’t possible. They’re so cute, they’re lovely – what’s lovely about the fact that impose symbols on babies before they’re even born – symbols that were a matter of life or death for some people? Here in this region, call it what you will – every name will have its detractors – do we swaddle babies in flags instead of nappies and feed them with hatred instead of milk? And then we wonder, when those babies grow up and torch someone’s bakery, because that someone isn’t wrapped up in the same sort of flag, or the same kind of hatred, where did this come from, they weren’t even born when the wars were raging?
When at the stadium, I hear the crowds singing, “Kill, slaughter, make (insert derogatory term for nation of choice) disappear,” I feel afraid as if they were shouting out my own name and surname. I get goosebumps and I shudder, then I get a rush of adrenalin and I want to hit someone, that’s what scares me, this need to defend myself, to become deaf and blind, to black out.
When overcome with such panicked fear, I see a flying rag, I can’t tell whose rag it is, I see it as something threatening, something making me aggressive.
And I experienced all this in less than 40 minutes of a football match. Which is by definition a game. What if it weren’t a game?
What’s behind all those flags? Official, unofficial? What makes people put a flag before their face, their name? Who is the message for? What does the message mean? Look at me, I’m a flag, I’m the symbol of my country? It’s more important than me, that flag. There’s a theory that in every American film or TV show, there has to be a shot of the US flag: when you take a closer look, you really see the flag everywhere. As you have it on various items of common use: from coffee mugs to bathing suits. A flag industry, so to speak. For some that flag means liberty, for others slavery and death. Depending from what part of the world you’re looking at it. For some, actually, it has no meaning: just a logo, the flag industry logo.
And the worst of the matter is that all these flags, whatever they may be, are embracing each other. One supporting the other, without flying one, there would be no point flying the other. That’s how they defend each other, even when they are attacking each other, rushing at each other across a battleground. When they cover faces (oh, and I’ve seen plenty of that), flags are no longer flying rags: we make them human, we give them ourselves, we are at their disposal. We paint our cheeks, our mouths into the colours of a country, or a desired country, or with a message to the other about who we are, and we lose everything that makes us unique.
We lose ourselves, we become the flag. It is only our eyes that betray sorrow, joy, anger, pride or tears. Our eyes still make us equal. When we look deep inside them until, soon, the flag industry produces lenses with emblems. Until it takes away that last morsel of humanity we have left. The last part of us not wrapped up in a symbol that means life for some, death for others.
Katarina Milićević
