Momčilo Momo Kapor

Momčilo Momo Kapor (1937–2010) was a writer and visual artist whose literary output includes 40 books of short stories, novels, travelogues, screenplays, and radio and television scripts. Kapor’s writings, typically focused on everyday life and its events, were translated into 20 languages. His broad national and international audience was especially receptive to his comparisons of Western and Eastern peoples, their temperament and style. Kapor achieved significant recognition both as painter and illustrator. His work was exhibited in major cities in Europe and the United States.

Spirit

Beograd does not like to be photographed. Hates to pose. Moves. Does not appear good on photos, and always looks like some other place. It is not Paris, which likes to flirt with painters. Or London that knows how to cajole the photographers. Or Rome, bejeweled with souvenirs. Or Vienna, suitable for engraving on ashtrays. Or Moscow that looks good put into a glass ball with snowflakes. Or Berlin—a bear, on a key chain. Or Budapest, that photographed likes to lie lazily on colorful dishes under a hot fish paprikash. Or Istanbul, with golden teeth. Or Athens, a rock used for a paper-weight on manuscripts…’

There are a few things in Beograd that I have not seen elsewhere. Perhaps only three: its rivers, skies, and people. Out of those three ancient elements the unique spirit of Beograd is born.

Beograd is the World

Beograd is not entirely in Beograd.

A much larger part of Beograd is in the longing for Beograd, which makes it more beautiful than it actually is.

Beograd is in its cafes all around the world, in which gather “our” people.

Skadarlija in Richwood (New York). Balkan in Sidney. Four Birches in Bruxelles. La cosa in Caracas. Beograd in Muenchen. King Peter in Washington…

Beograd is in the cherry at the bottom of the cocktail Manhattan, which, at this moment, a woman from Beograd is sipping, summarizing her life in the Roman Café Greco—is it really worth so much effort: would she have lived better if she married her Mickey and stayed at Vozhdovats?

Beograd was also in the restaurant Old Serbia, in Brussels, by the Grand Place, when the owner Dobrila, ex-“dark lady of the Serbian poetry” asked what was going on with the poet Branko Miljkovich, and we told her that he turned into a monument on Kalemegdan! She was flabbergasted! What do you mean—a monument, she had darned socks and cooked bean soup for that monument, back then when he was absolutely unknown?

Beograd is also in Hamilton (Canada), where an aged cavalry officer of the Royal army asked whether koshava still blows three, seven, or twenty one days, but koshava is non-existent anymore, one cannot find it even as a medicine. It got sick and tired of not being able to blow us away from this hill, now it is moaning and howling somewhere in the Russian steppes.

Beograd is in the homes of those who were forced to leave, taking with them just a tiny little bit of it, a pressed dry flower from Kalemegdan, in the herbarium, a book, or a recipe for the eggplant moussaka. It is in the nicknames of the disappeared beauties (male and female), the photo of the graduating students from the Third Boys’ Gymnasia (academic year 1956/57), in Beograd’s charming accent, which even English could not ruin. Even the old Knez Mihailova Street with peeled off facades and broken sidewalks with puddles is not in Knez Mihailova anymore! It is on the soles of those aged walkers, who could not adjust their step to any of the world’s boulevards like to that old native strafta (promenade).

Beograd is in the photos of the deceased mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, who during their lives did not travel further than Zemun, but now from the pictures tenderly observe our New York living room filled with people talking in seven world languages.

Beograd is there where we make just one head of sour kraut in the sink to cook sarma...