Living in Solitary Confinement

Theatre, Nationalism, and Disintegration of the Former Yugoslavia

There are many who spit in my face saying that I am a Serbophile. But . . . I am neither a Serbophile, nor a Croatophile, nor a Bosnophile, nor any other kind of “phile.” I have not set myself along nationalistic or ethnic lines. I have, in fact, removed that expression, “nationality,” from my vocabulary long time ago. I belong, I assume, to some kind of a race which is a part of nature—a sublime and exclusive nature. We are all part of nature, and we all originate from simple, single cell organisms. I don’t like to declare myself as someone or anyone, because I was born what I am: Rac. Yes, I am Slovenian. I do not deny that fact. My language is Slovenian. But there is no one who is going to force me to be first and above all Slovenian and then Rac. First of all, I am a part of a race which will be terminated from the face of this planet some day. I would rather say I am from Hong Kong than to agree to be some kind of nationalistic stereotype. Someone who was born in some war zone, for example in Bosnia, should not be blamed for the fact that a group of idiots, fools, and jerks have caused such a disaster. And that person is not to be condemned because the Serbs have a mad creature for a president. . . .

Hundreds of thousands of people have left Serbia. They have gone into exile because they do not like to kill and to be murderers. I will never take a gun to defend myself or to defend any national flag. I will rather let them kill me . . . I am just poor Rac, scared to death; let me be what I am. No one is going to force me into a war where I have to defend some nationalistic cause. Simply, I am not interested in nationalistic causes. I still carry a heartbreaking image of that little kid who was killed in Sarajevo before his mother’s eyes. Watching television at home I am grieving and crying, while Europe closes its eyes and pretends that nothing happens. . . . I respect differences, others ideas, and I am not going to kill for some stupid lines on the map called borders. . . .

If the former Yugoslavia was a prison, as some would like to convince us, and if I was living in a prison during that time, then I am living in solitary confinement now. Before, I was able to walk in the prison’s yard at least. Now I am not able to do even that. . . .

There is no war that can be won. People do not win wars; they lose them. And that is again true today. What is left behind are corpses and ruins, and out of that destruction new hatreds and demons are born. They seek revenge and history repeats itself in the worst way. When the end of the war comes some day, we will have to cooperate and live together again, not to build new great walls of China. . . .

(Excerpted from an interview in the Slovenian newspaper Delo)