A Time of Birds

by Helen Moat

  Hungary now lay at our backs, with the future stretching out in front of us in Croatia. As we cycled on, more signs echoed the sun-splashed greeting at the border crossing: Dobrodošli! Welcome! Willkommen! Űdvőzoljűk! I felt a burst of happiness, heightened by the fields of sunflowers lining the roadside, the rows of large yellow faces turned towards us as if in bright adoration. Then, in among the flowers, I caught a glimpse of metal and barbed wire, and a watchtower came into view, reminding me that this country had been at war less than twenty-five years earlier; its scars still visible under the sun.

  The watchtower and barbed wire brought back memories of the protected police stations in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I hadn’t questioned my life back then. It was simply how it was. Most of the time I remained unaffected, roaming through fields and climbing into abandoned, tumbledown farmhouses full of broken furniture and spiders – where once we’d found an ancient grocery invoice made out by my grandfather. But the fortified police stations manned by grim-faced officers wearing heavy bulletproof jackets and loaded guns did make me nervous.

  As I braced myself for the hills in front of us, Jamie swung left onto a minor road that led through flat fields of dusty crops and into the village of Duboševica. At a crossroads with a sun-coloured church, Jamie missed our right turn and continued straight on.

  We passed a trio of capped men sitting over their game of backgammon at an old garden table on the grass verge, their arms shooting up in a friendly wave as we passed. The friendliness of the villagers here reminded me of my old homeland, too, and I wondered how the warmth and friendliness of a nation’s people could so quickly descend into violence, murder and war.

  In the Brethren, it was generally agreed that believers shouldn’t get involved with politics, and some of them didn’t vote on principle. But for the Free Presbyterians (founded by Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party), church and politics were fundamentally connected. My mother’s brother and family were deeply involved in DUP politics, and my aunt’s bitter recriminations against Catholics, that would spill out from her kitchen and drift down the hallway to where we cousins played, puzzled the child in me, accepting of everyone.

  Now, lost in the village of Duboševica, Jamie took a road that led us through a corridor of conifers and grass dotted with neatly stacked logs. At the end of the avenue, he swung right again to find the road we’d missed. As we came around a blind corner, I was surprised to see a row of abandoned single-storey houses, their roofs collapsing, gables disintegrating and windows pane-less. Inside, I could see smashed furniture scattering rooms. These were the first of many war-ravaged homes we’d see on our journey through Croatia.

  Riding on through the villages of Topolje, Gajić and Draž, it was the same narrative – abandoned house upon abandoned house. Then I saw that some of the dilapidated houses were actually occupied despite their cracked and broken windows, with plastic sheeting sometimes covering the roofs.

  There was a terrible beauty in these half-ruined villages that was both sobering and uplifting. On the one hand, there was a sense of hopelessness in the damaged homes. I saw one house where the bullet holes had been partially filled in. It was as if the owner had tried to patch up the wounds of the past but had given up: there were simply too many. On the other hand, there was also a visible resilience, for despite the pock-marked shutters, the bullet-riddled brickwork and damaged roofs, many of these homes were splashed with the colours of flowers and surrounded by neatly tended kitchen gardens of fruit and vegetables. Although it was clear that the region of Slavonia had still not recovered from one of the most devastating European wars since World War Two, people smiled cheerfully and waved and shouted greetings as we cycled by.

  From Draž, we headed up through orchards and vineyards, climbing steadily until we reached the crest of the hills and Batina. The climb was a shock after long days cycling through the ‘bread basket’ plains of Hungary, and I looked forward to the long freewheel down to the Danube again. But the road, dropping steeply down, was covered in rough cobble, and I had to apply the brakes hard, rattling over stone with every bone in my body jolting.

  Heading towards Osijek, there was still no sign of the Danube, but I knew it lay somewhere beyond the marshlands on our left, just out of sight. Along the straight road that lead from town to town and village to village, I could hear the sound of laughter wafting from gardens behind crumbling walls and rusty, wrought-iron rails, the smell of grilling meat filling our nostrils. Life went on among the bullet holes and half-destroyed houses.

  As with Hungary, the older cottages sat gable-ended to the road, with tiny windows in the slant of the roof and decorative detail in the masonry despite their modest structure. Often, there was a little walled courtyard to one side. They had a pleasing simplicity, and I wondered why so many of these lovely old buildings were shuttered and left to crumble beside the newer houses of smooth, freshly painted render and more generous proportions.

  As we approached Osijek, we passed by woodland dotted with signs depicting skulls and crossbones in danger red – a warning that the landmines from the civil war had still not been cleared. I needed the toilet, but going in the woods was not an option. We stopped on the cycle path to take a drink from our water bottles.

  ‘There’s something irritating my eyes,’ Jamie said.

  ‘Me too,’ I said, rubbing them ferociously.

  Within minutes my eyes had swollen to an angry red. Crossing the bridge into the city, the citadel of Tvrđa, with its cluster of baroque buildings laid around a large courtyard, was just a blur.

  ‘I can’t see. I can’t cycle on,’ I said to Jamie in panic.

  ‘Right,’ Jamie said, taking charge. ‘Let’s find somewhere with internet and I’ll look for a place to stay.’

  Having found a room that met our budget, Jamie led us deeper into the city. My eyes were so swollen now that they were almost completely closed. I was riding half-blind. Every few seconds, I prised them open to check I was not about to hit something – and it was terrifying. Finally, we came to an office-like building. Jamie rang the doorbell and an older man answered it, leading us down a long corridor with our bikes to a functional bedroom, where I took painkillers and crashed out. When I awoke several hours later, my eyes were back to normal and my brain fuzzy.

  The owner’s son told me that my mishap was down to the mosquitoes in the woods. ‘They’re vicious!’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps, they should have signs warning against the mosquitoes then, as well as the landmines!’ I laughed.

  But I was grateful I could function again, and that we could continue on our journey. It was our first – though not last – serious challenge of our two-day cycle through Croatia.

  *

  6. A Place Broken

  In 1969, my youngest sister was born, a bundle of baby sweetness and a late gift to our family. My father slipped us into the hospital where the fierce matron had banned children, and I pressed my nose to the soft skin of my new sister with delight. I was eight years old. That same year, the Troubles in Northern Ireland began – a Gift only in the German sense – a poison that created fear and anger, violence and murder.

  While I lived my life on the periphery of the Troubles, other children lived in among the stone-throwing, petrol-bombing and raiding of mafia-style ghettos and terrorist strong-holds. I continued to roam the fields at the end of my road, damming streams, picking crab apples and climbing trees, or dreamily peeling reeds to reveal the sponge pith beneath. Now and again, an explosion from the other end of town reached our street with a boom and a vibration. It was usually the railway station – the most bombed station in Northern Ireland – or one of the businesses in the centre of town. In the main street, I would be patted down and frisked at every shop entrance – but that was all I’d ever known, or at least remembered. Some of the shops I visited would be there one day and gone the next, reduced to rubble and char. Other than that, our main brush with the Troubles was at fla
sh road-checks.

  Transferring to secondary school, the Troubles became more visible, as I had to walk through the town centre to reach my college. Soldiers manned the streets in pairs. The first soldier guarded the other with cocked gun as the second walked a section of pavement before they swapped over again. As I passed the crouched soldier, the barrel of the gun inches from my leg, I felt uneasy: What if the gun accidently went off ?

  By 1991, my baby sister and I were both engaged to be married and the guerrilla war in Northern Ireland was rumbling to an end. The political parties and terrorist organisations were in secret talks with the British government. The endless rounds of bombings and violence with no forward movement had been exhausting and the stagnant waters of a crippled economy disheartening. The Peace Process was under way.

  As Northern Ireland was yearning for peace in 1991, the Croatian region of Slavonia was about to erupt into bloody conflict. While Northern Irish Republicans were fighting for Irish independence from the United Kingdom, with resistance from Protestant Unionists, Croats were demanding independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People’s Army – and an independent Croatian state. The Serbs, in turn, wanted their own Serbian state under the banner of the Yugoslav Federation, taking in parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina with sizeable Serb minorities.

  Vukovar, the town we were cycling towards, had been a handsome baroque city before the war, with a mixed Serbian and Croat population living peacefully side by side. All that changed in the winter of 1991 with the Battle of Vukovar.

  I’d watched the television footage back then at home, barely comprehending the events that were unfolding. There were pictures of snipers in fields of stubble, shooting at broken-down farm dwellings. There were bloodied bodies lying in woodlands, and pictures of solemn Serbian and Croatian women and children with suitcases, filing out of towns and villages. There were tanks rumbling through the settlements we were now cycling through, brutally crushing everything in their wake.

  Our Troubles in Northern Ireland paled into insignificance.

  *

  This was our second day of cycling through Croatia and the story was still the same: the bullet-holed render, the smashed plaster revealing crumbling brick below, the shuttered windows, the cracked panes and the damaged roofs between the new villas. And I wondered how this could still be, so long after the war. In Vukovar, we found a guesthouse smelling of fresh plaster and new furniture – another new building that had risen from the spoils of the war. I asked the Croat owner about the damaged houses we had seen.

  ‘How come it’s still like this so long after the war?’

  ‘Pah, our government doesn’t care about us – all the money goes straight to Zagreb.’

  ‘But surely there was some kind of compensation after the war – funding set aside for all the war damage?’

  ‘Well, yes, we were given so many metres in compensation, calculated against the destroyed property – but it was grossly underestimated. This property is only a fraction of the place we lost. But, you know, you just get on with it. I moved to the Dalmatian coast, made money in business, then came back and built this place.’

  ‘But the damaged houses in every town and village: why are people still living like this so long after the war?’

  ‘Those houses are mostly owned by Serbs. A lot of them didn’t come back; some of them are occupied, but haven’t been repaired. The Serbs are lazy. They don’t get on with fixing their properties.’

  ‘I suppose if you are old though, say a widow, you might not have the health or the money to fix your property?’ I mused.

  He didn’t respond, so I asked about the relationship between the Serbs and Croats in Vukovar now that the war was over.

  He shrugged. ‘We have to work together, do business together, but there’s no trust. How could there be? Small children were murdered by the Serbs in the war. I have a son. How do I know they wouldn’t do something like this again?’

  I nodded, recognising his anger. I’d heard it before. I knew how bombs and bullets and personal loss fed hatred and bitterness.

  ‘What about schools. Are they mixed?’ I asked.

  ‘No, outside of everyday business, Croats and Serbs don’t mix. Serb and Croatian children go to separate schools, even at secondary level – only at university is education shared.’

  It was a story I knew so well from Northern Ireland, but the pain and suffering caused by the war in Slavonia was on a completely different level, although the emotions were just the same. The outward scars of the buildings echoed the inward scars of the Croats and Serbs. It would take a long time for them to heal.

  That evening, Jamie and I ate in a fast-food joint opposite a bombed-out building – roofless and pane-less and reduced to bare brick. It was a building like many others in Vukovar – except each window on the top floor was spilling curtains of fresh pink geraniums, clearly tended with care. And in them I recognised a symbol of hope and optimism.

  As I paid for our meal, I asked the man behind the counter about the building. He scowled and pretended not to understand my question. I suspected he was a Serb. I would have liked to hear his story – but the expression on his face didn’t invite any more questions.

  Cycling out of Vukovar the next morning, we stopped at the War Memorial Cemetery on the outskirts of the city. I walked a path that separated rows of white crosses marking 938 graves, which brought home the senselessness of war – row upon row of headstones with pictures of fresh-faced boys and men who had all died within weeks of each other in the autumn and winter of 1991. A little further up the hill, we passed the road that led to Ovčara, a lonely farmstead, where 200 patients and staff had been taken from Vukovar hospital. Many of them had been beaten and shot, then thrown into a mass grave. They were later exhumed by UN forces and reburied at the cemetery we’d just visited.

  We continued on to the border past more broken and derelict houses, my heart heavy and yet hopeful at the same time. Jamie had broken a spoke just outside of Vukovar. At the bike shop below the war-damaged water tower, left as a memorial, two youths, too young to remember the war, set to work and fixed the spoke, laughing and joking as they worked, their lives under the bombed-out water tower rooted in the present.

  The future lay with them.

  *

  7. Into Serbia – Cheers in Bačka Palanka

  From Vukovar the road rises to a plateau high above the Danube and winds through woodland, orchard, vineyard and deep-cut valleys that slice the land all the way to Ilok on the Serbian border. At the base of each valley, houses huddle together as if caught at the bottom of a chute. Our bikes flew down the six to eight per cent gradients to these villages, the speed exhilarating – until we hit the incline on the other side. All morning, I struggled up the hills on the Tank. Still, I was determined to cycle them all, knowing the inclines were short and the pain manageable. At the top of each summit I congratulated myself, while Jamie waited patiently for me at the side of the road.

  Outside Ilok, there was one last climb – this one much longer than the short, sharp rises that had gone before. But since I’d cycled the other five, I was damned if I wasn’t going to cycle the sixth. Hot and thirsty from the exertion, we stopped at the supermarket in Ilok to buy drinks. I gave away the last of our kuna to the shop assistant and she filled our water bottles in exchange, asking about our Journey.

  ‘You cycled from Rotterdam? You are going to Istanbul! I cannot walk the length of Ilok!’

  We said goodbye and shot down to the bridge that crossed into Serbia, the shop assistant’s laughter still ringing in my head. I’d seen the best and worst of mankind in this bittersweet region of Croatia. I felt its pain and recognised its wounds. But I’d also seen how humans possess an innate resilience and humour that enables them to pick themselves up and move on from the past. And so, with a sense of sadness and privilege, I crossed the bridge with Jamie and headed for the Serbian border town of Bačka Pa
lanka to look for Sashka, another CouchSurfing host.

  *

  ‘Would you like a bottle of water? No? What about a juice?’

  I’d only stopped off at the tourist office to find out whether I needed to report our stay in town to the authorities. I’d read conflicting stories on cycling forums. Some cyclists claimed they had been turned back at the border on leaving for not having the correct paperwork. The friendly assistant was not sure either. It was clearly not a common question, so she phoned the police and reported back her findings.

  ‘Yes, you need to report each place you’re staying in. It doesn’t cost anything, but you will need to buy a stamp book to record your destinations.’

  I thanked her and turned to walk out the door.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do to help you?’ she asked.

  ‘No, that’s it. Thanks.’

  ‘Well, have this leaflet about the Danube charda – our famous fish restaurants. And please take these postcards. Oh, and here’s a couple of bookmarks. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a juice?’

  I’d not experienced a welcome quite like this in a tourist information office before. If this was our introduction to Serbia, it looked promising.

  Our next stop was Sashka’s home. Her mother had prepared a feast with little European flags planted in each of the dishes: a welcome for Jamie and me and a celebration of Danube Day. Sashka had given up her room for us and we had the whole upper floor to ourselves. Once again, we were overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers. Stuffed to the gills, Sashka drove us to her local hangout, a cave-like bar that was dark and rickety, yet cosy – and packed with Sashka’s friends.

  ‘It’s a bit like a Bačka Palanka version of the American sitcom Cheers,’ I laughed.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Sashka’s friend, Doc, who wasn’t really a doctor, but a sports and tourism student.