Opinion An evening at Marshall

I’m one of over 10,000 ex-Yugoslavians in Queens. I have my hair cut by my old countryman Gigi and eat cevapi at the Old Bridge (owned by a Sarajevan also named Kenan). The most ambitious place I’ve frequented around here was Marshall,a Yugoslavia-themed restaurant and lounge meant to help my generation forget about the ethnic hatreds that tore my old country apart. Gigi,who in addition to the hair salon runs a neighbourhood wine bar,opened Marshall in 2009. When my brother Eldin and I first went there that December,it was like walking back into our childhood,to the home I was forced to flee at age 13. The DJ was blasting Is Sarajevo Where It Once Was,by Dino Merlin,the famous Bosniak pop artist. Pictures of the Yugoslavian soccer team hung on the walls.

But we were sceptical; the Bosniak owners,Serbian waitresses and nearby Croatian bar could be a recipe for disaster. We felt bad for the American bouncer,who probably thought he had it easy,overseeing seemingly mild-mannered white patrons. The waitresses who brought our $6 Buds wore white shirts and red scarves,like acolytes of Marshal Tito,the moderate dictator who once united Yugoslavia’s antagonistic groups,and a granite bust of Tito’s head sat on the bar’s top shelf. I turned to Eldin and said,“Think this will make us forget the 250,000 dead?”

I was born the year Tito died,in the city of Brcko. At seven,I pledged in front of my class and my favourite teacher,Milutin,to spread the unity that Tito had fought for. Five years later,in the first month of warfare,I bumped into Milutin,now in uniform. “Hey,teacher,” I called. He knocked the grocery bag out of my hand,saying,“Balije don’t need bread.” (“Balije” was a slur for Bosniak.) Holding me by my hair,he rested his rifle against my head. “It’s jammed,” he complained. As I ran away,I caught him waving a three-finger salute,a gesture of Serbian nationalism based on the Orthodox sign of the cross.

That year,I became a pariah. My karate teammates demanded that I return the He-Man trading cards we’d collected. My best friends stopped picking me for soccer games. I’d watch them play from behind the shades of my window,which were closed to protect us from bullets. My mother,Adisa (now deceased),had loved to listen to pop-rock while trimming her plants. But without sunlight and with nothing but patriotic songs on the radio,the flowers died one by one.

The writer is a New York-based physical therapist

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