As the novel opens, the author sets the stage for the days leading up to the siege, as she and her brother are packing to go to an island off the coast with other Vukovar children. She makes a number of references, particularly in the opening paragraph, to the ominous political situation. To Croatian readers, particularly those of this generation, these references are far more accessible than they are likely to be to an American or English reader. The narrator, of course, is a nine-year-old child and she also doesn’t understand everything she’s hearing, but the fact that the details catch her attention suggests she has noticed their bite and weight, even if she doesn’t understand them. Her father scolds her, for instance, for singing a song she’s learned from her friends Bora (Bora is a Serbian boy’s name) and Danijel. The song she’s humming is a Serbian ditty boasting of territorial aspirations for a greater Serbia. The word ćale is Serbian slang for “dad” or “papa.” Her father’s irritation with her use of the word and her singing of the song, and his reference to him in “Damn him to hell” (meaning Slobodan Milošević, Serbia’s president) is symptomatic of the tensions of the moment.
The mention of Meso the monkey (p. 8) is a reference to Stipe Mesić, the last president of Yugoslavia (Jun 30, 1991, to December 6, 1991). Later, he also served as president of Croatia from 2000 to 2010.
Tajči (p. 9) was a Croatian pop singer in the late 1980s. She represented Yugoslavia at the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest when Zagreb was the host, and her song “Let’s Go Crazy” came in seventh. Her signature hairdo was a cross between Olivia Newton- John’s (as “bad” Sandy) in Grease and Marilyn Monroe’s.
The song “Moja Ružo” (p. 13) by the Zagreb band Prljavo Kazalište became the anthem of loss during the first year of the war, hence the symbolism of playing it over the radio on the day the Vukovar siege was broken and the city occupied by Serbian forces and the Yugoslav People’s Army. The lyrics describe the death of the songwriter’s mother, Ruža (Rose); the refrain refers to her as “the last Rose of Croatia.”
Elementary schools and high schools in Croatia run on two shifts (p. 26) one in the morning, running from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and the other in the afternoon, from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. One week a child attends school in the morning shift, the next week in the afternoon shift, alternating weeks throughout the school year.
When the narrator doesn’t understand everything during her conversation with her Italian father about the city of Zadar (p. 53), what she doesn’t know is that before the Second World War, Zadar was an Italian city. Her Italian father’s father, Giuseppe, was presumably an Italian fascist soldier who fought there during the war.
Kulen (p. 59) is a coveted traditional spicy smoked sausage, often homemade, typical for the cuisine of the region of Slavonia and the city of Vukovar.
Croatia’s first president, Franjo Tudjman, replaced the Yugoslav word for “passport,” pasoš, with the Croatian term putovnica (p. 62) as part of a sweeping language reform following the Croatian secession from Yugoslavia in 1991; the introduction of the word putovnica has come to symbolize the political and cultural transition from Communism.
The late-night TV show Slikom na sliku (p. 71) ran from 1991 to 1996 on Zagreb television, and offered a digest of war-related news. Because it often showed footage taken at the various fronts, people searching for missing loved ones watched it just in case they might spot a familiar face in the footage.
The Intercontinental (p. 94) was the most luxurious hotel in Zagreb when it first opened in the 1970s. During the war, displaced persons were housed in hotels all over Croatia, including the Intercontinental, now a part of the Westin hotel chain.
“Bolje biti pijan nego star” (p. 95) (Better to be drunk than old) is a line from a song by the Bosnian band Plavi Orkestar.
Djordje Balašević (p. 103) is a singer known for his folk-rock ballads. He enjoys a widespread following throughout Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The narrator’s brother mutters about Chetnik music because Balašević is a Serb. The Chetniks were a military group that backed the ousted Serbian king during the Second World War. The term continues to be used as a derogatory epithet for Serbs, particularly Serbian combatants.
The Ustasha were a fighting force constituted by the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state, during the Second World War. The term continues to be used as a derogatory epithet for Croats, particularly Croatian combatants.
The Serbo-Croatian Dictionary of Differences (p. 105). The prize the narrator received was a volume published in 1991 describing the differences in vocabulary between the Serbian and Croatian languages.
The quibbles over the Croatian flag (p. 134) refer to a controversy from the summer of 1991, just a few months before the Vukovar siege began. The flag’s design included a shield containing a red-and-white checkerboard symbol long used in Croatian insignia. During the Second World War, the checkerboard on the shield started first with a white square, followed by a red square. While some insisted on starting the checkerboard on the new flag with a red square, in order to distance the 1990s flag from that of 1940s fascism, others championed the “white square first.” The checkerboard shield on Croatia’s flag today begins with a red square.
“A šta da radim kad odu prijatelji moji” (p. 141) (And what will I do when my friends go away) is a line from a song by the band Azra.
Haustor (p. 155) was a popular Zagreb band in the 1970s and ’80s. The word refers to the street entrance to an apartment building. The closest we have to it in United States cities is a back alley, the realm of trash cans and feral cats.
The identifications (p. 163) were the process of identifying the remains of bodies exhumed from various sites in and around Vukovar, including the site of the Ovčara massacre.
A note on the Vukovar atrocities: Three trials were held to address the Vukovar atrocities at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (where I worked for six years) but none of these has satisfactorily plumbed what happened there. During the first Vukovar trial, the town’s mayor—who makes a brief appearance in the novel (p. 135)—committed suicide while in the Hague prison before his verdict was read. The second was the trial of three Yugoslav People’s Army officers who organized the Ovčara massacre described in the novel, but many feel justice was not served: the trial was poorly run. The defendant in the third trial died of cancer before his trial could reach completion.
Ellen Elias-Bursać
Boston, January 2017