ERO HAMAN FROM THE OTHER WORLD Notes from isolation

By Amir Sužanj

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I, Muzafer S., son of Muharem and Nevzeta, in my fifty-fourth year, neither guilty nor innocent, ended up in isolation. To tell you the truth, I wasn't even sure what isolation was. How would I know, I never liked books or school, I've been chasing trucks across Europe my whole life, so I wasn't interested, but when they shoved me into this room of mine and yelled at me not to cross the threshold, I immediately understood that the devil had taken the joke and that it was a big trouble.

They accused me of being with some cluster! No, man, but with my buddy Miroslav from Veliki Palančište under Kozara. The man had just returned from Italy, left without a truck and without money, so he called me to bring him something on loan in Banja Luka.

I figured, it's not right not to help a man out, we worked together even before the war, and he also helped me out when I lost my job the year before last. Never mind that they packed me in here, but I was so scared until I figured out what they were accusing me of. They insisted - cluster, cluster, I thought it was some kind of drug. I thought - oh my Muzafer, you've gone to Zenica, God help you, you've been wronged, unjustly, and you haven't even seen this cluster, who knows who will make money off your imprisonment!

And here I am, in that isolation in my own home, poor mother!!!

...It's been about ten years now, ever since those highway bandits in Bulgaria, in that godforsaken place when you head from Plovdiv towards Svilengrad, punctured my truck tires and stole my phone, I've been dreaming of stretching out on a bed for at least two or three weeks, without having to lift a finger. I always thought - how good that would be, watching matches all day, eating and drinking, only going out to the nearest betting shop and the grocery store for more logistics, as that old sevdalinka goes... Yes, but as my late grandmother Šida from Jarčedol would say, the ass doesn't get to the stream easily, forgive me and your honor! I lay down in that isolation for two full weeks, they monitored me every day, so I couldn't even go near the door. And if I could, what good would it do me? The second day of my imprisonment, an order arrived - cafes, bars, hookah bars, betting shops were closing, everything was locked up as if the Day of Judgment had dawned. And what are you going to do now - sit where you are, you're good for nothing, as that Šime from Primošten would say, who drove a truck behind me and Šaban when we transported power line structures to Istria in 1990, got drunk at that rest stop near Delnice and luckily slept through the beginning of the log revolution - and we would have run straight into the barricades on the Lika highway!

One would somehow manage with television if these lunatics hadn't issued a decree to suspend all competitions. Never mind that there's no Roland Garros and Formula 1, no big deal, but there are no top five leagues... no Champions League! They postponed the European Championship. I just thought we would finally pass the playoffs, the sun shone on me when Bajević became the coach, I thought to myself: well, this time, by God, we'll pass with God's help, even if we play against three Portugals... but no! Džeko in isolation, Pjanić in isolation, everyone isolated somewhere, so they seem like brothers in misfortune... Only they isolate themselves in their villas with pools, and I'm at the top of a skyscraper in Alipašino Polje, as soon as the sun shines for two days, my brain wants to boil under this concrete slab.

Wherever you turn on a sports channel, it's all archival footage - when Pelé was young, when that referee Grigorije Jovičić disqualified Evander Holyfield at the Olympics in Los Angeles and thus helped Anto Josipović win a gold medal in boxing, then how Maradona scored that goal with his hand at the World Cup.... All archives after archives, to make you despair. Well, I would get tired of them repeating Zuban's masterpiece from '98 at Koševo when dear God moved the post, the ball flew into the net and we became champions, and Alen Avdić cried like a year, ... and how will I not get tired of this thing from the 1982 World Cup. Look, from so many reruns on the arenas, I've learned the entire Italian squad by heart, you could wake me from the deepest sleep and I'd sing it: Zoff, Gentile, Scirea, Bettega, Cabrini, Colovati, Tardelli, Oriali, Rossi, Graziani, and Conti.

What can I do, I escape to movie channels... When there - Captain Leši is rolling around with that mare, a tavern singer. I know exactly when he'll slap her on the butt and when she'll spill coffee in his tabac, and how Leši will beat up that black marketeer in the tavern and how he'll run over a chicken with his jeep, and by God, I know what that singer looks like under that green shirt, I've watched it a hundred times... like that, investigatively, with understanding...

I switch to something else. That one is escaping from prison in Šuošenk, then Captain Corelli is mining a bomb on the beach, but he didn't measure the distance well, so he flies with it into the heavens... On the next channel, Bruce Willis in the movie "Die Hard 2" in that snowy blizzard and storm waves burning torches at the airport occupied by terrorists....

God strike me dead if I don't know at least 80 percent of those roles by heart, I could act them out now. In my great boredom and tedium, my gaze fell on a news item on some portal: Jennifer Lopez in isolation! And she tells us how we should use this time, which dear God has given us to spend at home. Well, I would isolate myself with her not for 14 days but for 14 years, on bread and water, as that priest from "Miracle Without a Witness" would say, I wouldn't even think about how to spend that time...

And right there, on that frame, the voice of my wife from the next room inevitably startles me. She is also in isolation because of me, and every now and then, so tender and emotional, full of understanding and trust as God gave her, she sends me words of encouragement: "Serves you right, Muzafer, you brute, who told you to hang around in Banja Luka pubs and run after women with that Potkozarje lover when all honest people are fighting the coronavirus!"