Monday, May 12, 2008
An American in Belgrade finds that real life isn't nearly as interesting as the one her Serbian neighbors imagine for her.
Jul 24, 2000 | "Oh no," groaned one of my new neighbors when I moved into an apartment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in January. "Whenever an American moves into the neighborhood, something terrible happens." His good-natured jibes were delivered with smiles as I was quickly adopted as a refreshing new addition to the neighborhood. So began my career as a spy in Yugoslavia.
I loved my new apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up attic of exposed wooden beams and sloping ceilings, in a leafy, old neighborhood of 19th century town houses known as Dorcol. Its main selling point was a small balcony with a view that stretched all the way to the Sava River.
What I didn't know when I moved in was that a year ago an American named Kevin had rented the same flat, saying he was in the timber business. Kevin captured the hearts of the neighborhood, only to disappear a few days before the NATO bombing began. The neighbors recall that as a convoy of vehicles waited on the street below for him, Kevin turned to his friends, winked and said, "I'm the best," before being driven off. Then they experienced 11 weeks of bombing, which, they point out, never stopped them from dressing up and getting out to the neighborhood cafe.
My compatriot, the NATO bombing and Slobodan Milosevic's hysterically anti-American propaganda left me a difficult legacy. Whether or not Kevin was a spy, I, a freelance journalist living in Belgrade, was perceived as an agent of the American government, which is about the most dreadful thing one can be in Serbia these days.
At first, I laughed at the neighborhood joke that I was a spy. I had worked as a reporter in the region for four years, spending months in Sarajevo, Skopje, Pristina, Istanbul, even in Belgrade before, without ever being accused of espionage, and at first it struck me as so outrageous as to be funny. It seemed obvious to me that no spy would talk as openly and as much as I did, speak Serbian as badly and be so underfunded. (I couldn't afford a car, a proper desk for my new apartment or a regular translator.)
During my trips out of Serbia, I let Belgrade friends stay at the flat. What spy would do that? Besides, I had other friends in town from my earlier reporting trips to Belgrade. They would sometimes drop by, and those relationships would confirm my credibility with my new neighbors, I reasoned.
They didn't.
"I've only known you for a short time, and I think you are an American spy, but you are always safe here," the cafe owner, Milan, assured me a few days after I moved in. We'd taken to arguing politics. "I will never let anyone lay a finger on you."
That kind of mixed reception, friendly but cautious, was typical. Who, after all, was Milan offering to protect me from?
"You're a spy, but it's OK, it doesn't matter," another neighbor said, as I protested.
"We decided the CIA used to send male agents, and now they're sending us female spies," another neighbor, Gojko, informed me.
It was exasperating. I printed out copies of my articles and showed them to my neighbors as proof I was a journalist. But to my enormous frustration, I found it didn't matter. I talked myself blue in the face explaining my work, the joys and frustrations of reporting, the events I'd seen in other parts of the Balkans, the difficulties of working as a freelancer abroad, with family and friends far away. All for naught.
"Hello, FBI," the local hash dealer greeted me whenever I walked out my door, raising his hand in a high-five.
With a growing sense of self-consciousness, I discovered that the day-to-day business of reporting looked a little bit like what a spy might do. I wanted to understand how everything worked, to put political and news events in the context of their society. I asked people what they thought about things. I heard the news (Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic's assassination, the shooting of Vuk Draskovic) early. I received various Balkans news services and regularly interviewed opposition politicians, human rights activists, local mayors, student activists, economists and humanitarian-aid workers.
Before, knowing a bit of the language had been an asset for me in the region. Now it was a source of suspicion. When my neighbors saw me reading the headlines in a Cyrillic-script newspaper, they gave each other knowing nods.
At the same time, as an outsider, and an American no less, I became a magnet for those who wanted a glimpse of the outside, who wanted to test out a theory or debate international policy, confess a war story, complain about the NATO bombing, reminisce about a trip abroad, get courage for a major life step or simply tell their story to someone who'd listen. I felt very strongly the pain of isolation my Serbian neighbors feel. If at times I was overwhelmed with a sense of claustrophobia in Belgrade, they felt it too, their world shrunk to a country condemned. People in Belgrade often talk about Serbia as a prison, with Milosevic and the international community their jailers.
As people got to know me, some would concede that maybe I really didn't know I was an American agent. "Maybe they are using you, but you don't know it."
But as the run-up to the one-year anniversary of the NATO bombing approached, the mood darkened. Suddenly almost everyone in Belgrade seemed convinced a new wave of bombing was imminent, and I was viewed with greater suspicion. Just what is she doing up there in her apartment? Picking targets for new NATO bombs, maybe? Those still friendly with me told me to be careful of the others.
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