Zagreb, May 2009
Zagreb, May 2009
Cvjetni trg was bathed in sunlight that May afternoon in 2009.
I remember that day as remarkably calm and quiet, even though we spent the entire day in the centre of the city. There were about thirty of us. I have to admit that at first I didn’t quite understand what was happening, because I had never been part of anything like it before.
My whole life, I had done everything by the rules. Everything had to make some kind of sense, and my role had to be clearly defined in everything I did. I had been, in order: a grammar school student, a journalism student, a customer service agent, a PR assistant, a manager — I was a complete play-it-safe type and I didn’t like being the centre of attention, especially not the kind of attention that serves no apparent purpose.
If life circumstances hadn’t literally forced me to re-examine my path, I would probably still be following all those same meaningless rules today.
A group of us gathered that day on Cvjetni trg to stand in the Line for a Better Tomorrow — the symbolic opening of FAKI, the Festival of Alternative Theatrical Expression.
I had only discovered FAKI a few years earlier, when it was already celebrating its eighth or ninth birthday. I started volunteering through Nena from Zadar, whom I knew from university. She was my only connection to that world.
Although I had loved the festival for several years, until then I had been merely an observer. From the very beginning I was intrigued by the people who run and live such festivals, but I couldn’t identify with them. I could say that for several years I had admired from a distance that group of acrobats, actors, vegans, performers, rebels, cyclists, activists, clowns and jugglers who, for those few days, became one under the shared name FAKI.
At the time, I couldn’t understand what I admired so much or what drew me to those people.
Now, after many years, I know that what I was looking for was freedom, individuality and creativity. Back then, I didn’t even know I didn’t have them.
Goran was one of the organisers. He had brown, curly, shoulder-length hair and glasses, and he stood on stilts at the front of the line with a megaphone in one hand. In the other, he held a sign reading “LINE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW,” which Lana was supporting from the other side.
He was perhaps the only one who knew where he was going, and perhaps that was exactly why he was at the front — perhaps he was the only one who believed he knew where the path to a better tomorrow lay. He had to make things concrete, and he was somewhat a slave to rules, even though he chose those rules himself.
And I enjoyed being in the presence of all those people who, just like me, didn’t know who they were or where they were going — even though they knew with great certainty who they were not and where they were not going.
Most of the others were like Lana, who was responsible for selecting the theatre troupes.
You could tell from a mile away that Lana was some kind of artist and a rebel in every sense, even though she herself didn’t quite know what she was rebelling against. As for art — she saw beauty in everything. That’s what I especially liked about her.
She wasn’t a critic of art, even though her position allowed it. Lana was a worshipper of art. She saw beauty and uniqueness in everything and always found it difficult to choose between two artists or two art forms. In her punk style of dressing, she had managed to preserve a femininity, even though she never wore makeup or drew attention to herself. She radiated a certain cheerfulness and playfulness with her long blonde hair, despite being mostly dressed in black.
She was the exception in that regard — all the other women were dressed so colourfully that next to them I felt rather dull, barely managing to combine two or three not-exactly-cheerful colours. I envied them for being so uninhibited in their choice of colours and for not being enslaved by any brands or trends.
Not to mention that every woman there was without makeup. That was probably the strangest thing of all to me.
Behind Goran in the line, the rest of us stood one behind the other. Some stood with their dogs, some with bicycles, some alone. FAKI is an international festival, so our line had gathered people of various nationalities from around the world, and there were all ages too — I remember one couple had brought small children.
For a few minutes we stood as if we were actually waiting for something, and then, little by little, we all relaxed. We understood that our waiting in line had to last a while, because surely at least we activists believe in that better tomorrow — if for no other reason, then because of our worldview, our healthy diet, our volunteering, and our rejection of the materialistic-capitalist system as it currently exists.
I was surprised by how little attention anyone paid us. I don’t think I had ever seen fewer people on Cvjetni trg on a sunny day at three in the afternoon.
It was still the old and beautiful Cvjetni trg — before Horvatinčić, before the garage, the shopping centre and the concrete, before the new era.
Cvjetni trg was truly beautiful then: the flowers smelled stronger, children rode bicycles and ate ice cream, and we believed in a better tomorrow.
We stood like that for about half an hour; some even sat down. We stepped in and out of the line. I enjoyed the sight of bright colours on cheerful people, with their long hair, dreadlocks, oversized trousers, scarves and headbands. There was no shortage of smiles in our little group, and after a while it seemed to me that even the random passersby were smiling along with us.
They probably just found us funny, with our little performance and a line with no obvious purpose.
After a while I relaxed and felt very proud to be part of this group and to be doing something for a better tomorrow. A month before I started volunteering for FAKI, I had been laid off from the PR agency where I’d worked for a year. That year in PR had been a period of bullying, overtime, immeasurable stress, chasing quasi-celebrities and enduring harassment from superiors.
Getting fired was the best thing that could have happened to me, but it took me time to understand that.
Although I had volunteered to help with PR, I ended up enjoying whatever was needed. There were about ten of us volunteers. We swept and mopped the floors of the big hall at Medika, collected rubbish, put up posters around the city, drove performers around, handed out flyers — truly whatever was needed.
Many people close to me couldn’t understand why I was volunteering for some festival and what I was getting out of it. But somewhere in my heart I knew I was in the right place, and that for me this was not a waste of time — even though I myself was quite lost.
Standing in the line, at one point I noticed a camera on a bench near us.
A real, proper, professional camera — Goran’s camera, as I later found out.
Oh, I thought, our little activist attempt might actually get archived.
I walked around looking for a volunteer to take on the role of cameraman, but nobody was interested. After a while I became that volunteer myself and found my role and purpose in that moment.
People came alive thanks to the camera; I filmed everyone and everything. Suddenly we had an audience. The camera was our audience, and it was incredible how much more attention we got because of a single professional camera and how much importance it lent us. Suddenly passersby were more interested in our line too.
Crowds love publicity, and the average passerby believes a camera only films important people — so in that way, we became important too.
After about fifteen minutes, a guy finally took the rather heavy camera off my shoulder, and I took on the role of reporter. We went from person to person, asking them their reasons for standing in line. The answers were more or less the same — something about a better tomorrow, or jokes — but we all still believed in our cause, even though the whole thing had turned into a grand exercise in idleness and lounging in the spring sun.
I was happily looking around for new victims to become the focus of our camera when, on a bench not far from us, I spotted Damir Karakaš.
He was sitting alone in the sun, staring into space as if meditating or gazing at some imaginary canvas in front of him. He had been my favourite Croatian writer for years, and I couldn’t help but approach him. After all, I was finally myself — I was free, and I was here with this peculiar group that had surely caught his attention at least a little.
I had often seen Karakaš around the city but had never approached him. He always wore his straw hat, beneath which he hid his bald head.
I wouldn’t want to diminish his literary significance — I consider him irreplaceable as a contemporary Croatian writer — but I must admit that what had always fascinated me, even more than his writing, was his life. The life of a rebel and a life that defies rules. I don’t mean the rules of law. I mean the rules that are instilled in us as children about what we are, who we are, and where we’re going.
I respect every attempt by every person who breaks free from those rules even just a little, and I believe he has succeeded in that in every regard.
And so, fascinated by him, I summoned the courage and approached him with a fictitious microphone in my hand and a real camera resting on the shoulder of an amateur cameraman.
“Good afternoon, may I ask you a question?” I said, leaning towards him and pretending not to know who he was.
He nodded.
“Why are you here right now? Have you come because of the FAKI festival, and would you like to join us in the line for a better tomorrow?” I asked him excitedly, my face flushed red, unable to hide my pride and excitement that I was the one asking him that particular question at that particular moment.
“J’attends mon ami,” he replied calmly, with a smile.
I nodded in confusion as a way of thanking him for the answer. I stared at him for a few more seconds, then thanked him for his time and quickly stepped away, pulling the cameraman by the sleeve.
I felt confused. Karakaš had answered me in French? I didn’t know what he meant by it, or whether he had recognised me as someone who knew who he was, but in the end it didn’t really matter.
Karakaš is Karakaš, I concluded. He doesn’t meet anyone’s expectations, so why would he meet mine? Why would he answer me in the language I want to hear and in a way that suits me?
After all, that’s exactly why I respect him — because he doesn’t follow absurd rules and couldn’t care less what people think of him.
More importantly, it wasn’t his moment.
It was my moment in time.
I was where I wanted to be, with people who made me happy and activities that fulfilled me. Even though I didn’t know what I would live on in the future, since I was volunteering here and was unemployed, I felt more fulfilled and more needed than ever before.
I was here with a purpose, and that purpose didn’t include anything material.
We spent the rest of the day in the city centre, planting grass along the road with a group of Austrians whose performance was guerrilla gardening — planting flowers and grass on pavements. We lay on the pavements hoping to be noticed, hoping passersby would recognise our message.
FAKI truly occupied the entire city that day.
By evening, about a hundred people had gathered in the Medika factory. Medika had once been an actual factory, and when it went under, a group of young people who had rejected the system turned it into a squat. A few years earlier, they had received permission from the city to turn the factory into a cultural centre, even though some people still lived there as in a squat.
Vegetarian lunch those days was cooked for all of us in huge pots. We had some beer and wine from donations, and you could buy them at low prices. In the evening, a big party awaited us. Fešta Balkanika in the great hall of Medika was exactly what we needed — a blend of electronic music mixed with traditional rhythms and sounds from the Balkans.
During the evening, at the entrance to the building, another spontaneous party broke out in a small corridor near the toilets, where plaster was falling off walls covered in old posters.
In that corridor there were two sofas, so worn out that I couldn’t tell which one was older, more tattered, and had been doused with beer or burnt by cigarettes more times.
About ten of us sat in a circle, and someone had a guitar. The loudest were the Macedonians, a theatre group called Kud Ljud — heart and soul. That’s what all the Macedonians I’ve ever met are like, it seems to me.
“You’re just so — like some kind of angel here,” said one of the girls from Macedonia, smiling at me.
“Thank you. That’s such a lovely thing to say,” I replied, my cheeks turning red, even though I didn’t quite understand what she meant by “so” — but it sounded very positive.
“She’s waking up...”
Someone’s voice suddenly rang through the room to the sound of a guitar.
“...She has no one to tell her... you are mine, you are mine, you are mine...”
Soon everyone was singing this iconic song by Šarlo Akrobata. A song that everyone probably knew at the time — except me.
I was still under the impression of the compliment the Macedonian girl had given me when they started singing, and now, whenever I remember that moment, I have the feeling that they were all singing that song just for me.
Even though I wasn’t eighteen but nearly twenty-eight, I felt a little like the girl from that song, and I truly had the feeling in that moment that I was waking up and had no one except them, that sense of freedom, and the melody of that song.
Although the following year I officially worked PR for FAKI and was more than just part of the team — I was in the organisation itself — FAKI was no longer for me what it had been that first year.
FAKI gave me what it was supposed to, and even though I’m no longer part of that alternative world, that world is now part of me.
FAKI was the beginning of a new me.
