Xeni Jardin:
Jasmina Tesanovic
An Underworld Journey
Serbia: March 31, 2006
Heading southeast, to inner Serbia, close to the Bulgarian border.
An area famous for women who are mysteries, said my friend, the film
director Zivojin Pavlovic, whose mother was born there.
A euphemism really. In that magical region, men are rare.
It's said that girl births far outnumber those of boys.
Men marry into female families and are called "the brides."
A local wedding is a long caravan, exposed furniture
paraded on wheels, like dollhouse rooms, rolling
one
after another in display all around the city, the village, the hills.
Mother's names are always officially recorded while the father often
is simply called the shepherd, the clerk...
Presumably he is never sure the he is the father at all ...
Struggling for patriarchy , men here as almost everywhere in the world
have all the legal power, and they take their revenge on their female
husbands by beating them and often killing them. The region has a
high rate of male domestic violence.
We are a caravan of women for peace Thirty of us have a performance
in the market place: we want to celebrate our dead feminist friend,
who wrote the first history of women's movements in Serbia,
describing the past centuries of struggle. We intend to dance and
sing, and eat enormous amounts of garlic, and dine on the local dish
of stinging nettles, and drink the prohibited local black wine which
is tainted with methyl alcohol.
[image: "Grandma Lena," Serbia, by Aleksandra RadoniÄ[omega]]
Gaga is beautiful in her red shoes, long raven hair:
her husband just
tried to kill
her. She took him to the court and denied him the fatherhood to her
20 year old affectionate son who follows her like a
big shadow. She is our hostess in Zajecar. She
prepared our dinner with violently mashed and pureed foodstuffs,
in a wooden place called the Mill. Only one man is there, other than
her son. This man is attending us: he looks proud and scared...
This is the most amazing story! I've quoted very little of it here; it's quite long. It is definitely a must-read.
Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com.
Previous posts on BoingBoing:
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
-
Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral
- Link to previous posts about Jasmina's work.
 [Boing Boing]
8:30:14 AM 
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