Street lamps were burning on all sides and the decorated trees were shining bright. Petards, rockets, fireworks. The celebratory shooting made the atmosphere relaxing, almost home-like. I told her about a Dane to whom, over beer and in miserable English, I’d tried to explain why I wasn’t going home for Christmas. We pressed against each other in the cold, tiny […]
When the famous 1985 New York Times Book Review polemic between Milan Kundera and Joseph Brodsky (the latter, a poet; the former, a novelist—but I like them both more as essayists) came again into my hands after several years, I let myself be seduced by the text out of habit, enchanted by the beauty of the authors’ sentences—until I eventually […]
“Hello?” Saša answered. “Hello, it’s Adin, hello . . .” From the phone booth, I raised my voice over the clattering of a passing streetcar. “Adin, man! You’re alive? Alive, damm, you’re alive! Where are you calling from?” “From Zagreb.” “Yeah, I can hear you’re in Zagreb. How did you get out? Man, I thought you were dead. You went […]
To Milorad Pejić You who are said to have tracked the reindeer’s scent, I couldn’t follow you. Not because, where you live, images are sharp as razors, nor because entering a warm place would dim my sight through fogged up glasses. Not for lack of strength: no one knows where it comes from nor what it is that makes him […]
They taught us about the climate of Ethiopia, the sheep population of New Zealand. They taught us the area of the USSR and the countries we have borders with. When my next-door neighbor showed up wearing combat boots instead of slippers it occurred to me: the area of the USSR is subject to change as is the number of sheep […]