DIASPORA OF THE HEART

             The word diaspora has always sounded like a medical diagnosis to me. Even when symptoms of nostalgia are added to it, I think that physicians should be prescribing plane tickets instead of medicine. But, even if you were to get a recipe for native Mrčajevci or a safari in Kenya (because all roots come from Africa), there is little chance that you would go on a trip during the pandemic.

             Believe it or not, a group of over eighty thousand people from the area of the former Yugoslavia managed to travel the world in the past year without leaving their sofa. They joined a Facebook group where they posted photos taken from their windows, balconies and over neighbors' fences, from over 140 countries around the world. Optimistic and in a good mood, with a lot of free time due to movement restrictions, they got to know and recognize each other virtually. Life wrote novels through greetings from exotic locations and those buried by sandstorms, until it occurred to someone in the Group that the idea should be realized on printing paper.

             Money was collected just in the nick of time (when you want, anything is possible) and under the baton of Slavka Antić, the founder of the Group, a composition of selected photos and texts was created. From the greatest love, the book Greetings from My Window was born in Subotica, weighing 900 grams and 24 centimeters long! On the page marker that comes with the book it says - I am your plane, train and road; I will take you far away to magical places. And indeed, the book has a tourist arrangement on 300 pages, from the Balkans to the northernmost point below the screw on the globe, where Milena lives. Many photos, taken by amateurs using their phones, are worthy of being on the front page of National Geographic magazine or one of ten Kodak moments.

             There are beautiful photos in other books as well, but with these, treats were served in the form of stories written by more or less literary authors, the very ones who photographed those scenes. You are simply seduced by destinies carried away by business opportunities, war, love (which may not have been real), or mere coincidence. As if on a polygraph, people tell their truths, memories, trials, summarize mistakes and successes, and a girl from Serbia reveals that she changed her name to Monika Bellucci in Italy! If you can't stop laughing, wait until you find out what her brother's new name is. You can learn everything through sketches from other people's lives, including the fact that Koreans are well-mannered, that Greeks greet each other with good morning until three in the afternoon, and Africans see the moon upside down.

             The authors of the stories weigh the primordial question - are those who stay or those who return happier and smarter?

             Many love the experience of different cultures and are proud of their children who are more skilled with chopsticks than forks. They tried flying a motorized kite and dived among the sharks, feeding them from their hand. Others complain that foreigners are cold and don't know how to socialize, so they save up and can't wait to get back to where they can still smell their grandma’s apple pie. So many people, so many opinions, logic is lost and everything ultimately boils down to a matter of the heart.

             And as for nostalgia, it's a strange pain. Do you believe that anyone misses the snow? Would you trade coconuts for plums and walnuts? Reading this book, I realized that sometimes abroad, of all dear aunts and uncles, what we miss the most is a jar of good ajvar!