It seems that the idea of poverty has finally gotten through to the average citizen of the former Yugoslavia. Stupefied by the country’s disintegration (The Communists robbed us blind!), patriotism, war (the war impoverished us), and hatred for Serbs, or Croats, or Slovenes (they economically destroyed us!), until now the average citizen has rejected any confrontation with his own social status. He has survived thanks to the consolation provided by last resources (We’ll sell the village land dad left us; We’ve got a good garden, big enough to feed us; If it comes to the crunch, we’ll sell the summer house; My uncle’s a big-time Charlie, he’ll always be able to sort me out; Grandma will leave us the house in her will; My brother’s doing well in Germany, there’s no way he’ll leave us to starve; We’ll rent the house on the coast to foreigners; If nothing else, we’ll always be able to sell the family grave). These resources, however, are now fully depleted, the options exhausted, aces up the sleeve thrown. Grandma’s house is gone with the wind, the family land sold, society has stratified into a tiny minority of wealthy and a massive majority of poor—“fuckers” and “suckers.” Much hastily-acquired wealth is slowly slipping away, businesses are shutting up shop, people are losing their jobs en masse, that big-timer uncle Charlie is in jail, the money from the family grave long spent. Many go to work, not having been paid in months. The lucky receive half their monthly salaries in cash and the other half in coupons. Naturally the coupons can only be redeemed at the workers’ own companies. They trade them for sausages that are past their expiration date, and Eurokrem, which doesn’t have an expiration date. Many work Saturdays, although no one sees the point, except, of course, the owner of the firm who’s doing all he can to engineer voluntary resignations.
A married couple by the name of Pevec own what was until very recently a successful chain of stores in Croatia. Today the Pevecs are bankrupt. They left behind hundreds of ragged employees who, having been unpaid for months, were then made redundant. At a recent party at a local hotel, the Pevecs had a great time dancing into the wee hours. Employees at the hotel — also in receivership, and who themselves hadn’t been paid in months — watched the obscene shimmy of the failed Croatian tycoons, barely able to draw breath.
Only these kinds of “entertaining” details find their way into the Croatian media. The bitter everyday is left to gurgle away in anonymity. Headlines — such as those informing us that the American actress Jennifer Love Hewitt not only has her, um, you-know-what, regularly shaved and trimmed, but that she recently had it “vajazzled” with a Swarovski crystal, so now her “vajayay” shines like a disco ball—stupefy the impoverished masses like a non-stop water sprinkler. They see their own lives of servitude shimmer like a disco ball.
Are they really lives of servitude? As a new slave trade snakes its way along subterranean European pathways, the united European idyll is slowly revealing its dark underbelly. An “innocent” asparagus farm in the Czech Republic, growing asparagus for an “innocent” importer in the Netherlands, employed a convenient group of Romanians as pickers. Why convenient? EU passports in hand, they could cross borders unhindered, and the question of their non-existent work permits was somehow swept under the rug. As it happens, a good part of Western Europe exploits itinerant Romanians, Bulgarians, and others, and the question of work permits always magically disappears. It turns out the Romanian asparagus pickers were recruited by a Ukrainian gang. They never saw the promised wages, the food and lodgings were subhuman, and their brutal Ukrainian masters threatened them with death if they tried to escape. Thanks to the few who managed to escape and bravely complained to the Romanian Embassy in Prague, the slave-running ring was (temporarily) broken. There are scores of similar farms scattered all over Europe, scores of slave drivers, innumerable desperate wretches, and more than enough corrupt police and members of the judiciary.
The media, particularly the transitional Eastern European media, have for years done their utmost to prove that education, expertise, and competence are no guarantee of a stable and prosperous life. Big Brother, authentic entertainment for millions of viewers, proved that anyone could be a star for any reason under the sun. At the same time, it was also a harbinger of what was soon to come. The media, life experience, and often educators themselves took education down from its throne, and on the pedestal of values the body took its place. With its own market value, the body is both the first and last resource. The body can be sold, beautified, inflated with silicone, injected with Botox, shrunk, thinned, enlarged, bulked-up, tattooed, clothed, or stripped naked. Of course one can increase the body’s market value — one just needs to know how. Prostitutes, both female and male, sell their bodies directly. Some parents sell their children, and some children sell themselves, without a middleman. Some parents maim their children, banking on compassion to increase begging revenue. Many Indians sell their organs. Some people sell their blood. Even a dead body has a market value. According to Amnesty International, the six thousand Chinese prisoners executed every year supply ninety percent of black-market kidneys. Wealthy foreigners pay between ten and forty thousand dollars a kidney. The organ harvesting doesn’t, of course, end with kidneys. In Chinese prisons executions are carefully conducted: if the convict is in poor health, he’s shot in the chest; if he’s a suitable candidate for organ harvesting, he’s shot in the head.
Wanting to build himself a house, King Erysichthon of Thessalonica cut down trees in a grove that was sacred to Ceres, who punished him with an insatiable hunger. Erysichthon ended up eating himself to death. If we ignore the ecological reading, the story of Erysichthon offers another example of how, when our survival is in question, our own bodies are, indeed, the last resource.
January 2010
MY EAR THE CHAUVINIST, MY EYE THE MISANTHROPE
He moves towards me like a soldier in full combat gear. He strides along an imaginary straight line, rucksack on his back, iPod in hand, earplugs inserted in his ears. His sunglasses exclude all possibility of negotiation by eye contact. He uses his body like an invisible plough clearing the snow ahead, and I stand obediently to the side. In the urban public space, more and more people use their bodies like ploughs. I’m always the one who steps aside.
While queuing at my local Lidl, a muezzin’s call pierces my eardrums like a sudden pain. I turn around and see a young woman decked out in a hijab and long denim skirt, chintzy-decorated flip-flops on her feet. She takes a mobile phone from her handbag and has a fiddle. Perhaps a reminder to prayer, I think calmly. My ear goes back to sleep. But then it’s rattled again, this time by the sound of a young Chinese woman screeching something into her mobile. Both voices are equally piercing, I think to myself. Embarrassed, I delete the thought. I swear, this isn’t about me — it’s my ear. Where it grew up high Cs were never popular. My ear is a chauvinist!