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This is how
Pula, the first chapter of
Fa, Sol, La Si Forever starts
Pula
Oh,
where can I get my cock sucked?
Where can I get my ass fucked?
I may have no money
But I know where to put it every time
Cocksucker Blues
Mick Jagger / Keith Richards
… In 1968
Sibylla was 10 years old. It did not seem fair to her that her parents have
decided to just up and move to another town. Though Struga was populated mainly
by Macedonians, it was her home. Being a minority in one of Yugoslavia’s Federal
states in the late 1960’s was not too bad. Discrimination was happening all the
time but in the eyes of the law everyone was equal and at her age she was not
aware of those things at all. Her mother was a Vlach and her father was half
Romany and half Croatian. Balkanics have been fighting and hating each other for
a few thousand years but still a lot of them had managed somehow to intermarry
and have beautiful mixed children. As much as some racial theorists would like
to deny the truth, genetic mixtures from various sources give birth to the
healthiest, most beautiful and most intelligent offspring.
Yugoslavia
was a very strange amalgam of states with different religions, native languages
and ethnicity. The Balkan Peninsula has served as the arena for thousand year
old battles and its very name had entered the dictionary as an expression
denoting the tendency of certain groups to split into smaller and smaller
factions that couldn’t help fighting amongst themselves. Anyway, in 1968
Yugoslavia was still a united nation thanks largely to the power and charisma of
their leader Josip Broz Tito. Under his guidance Yugoslavia had managed to avoid
becoming a Soviet puppet like the rest of the Communist countries of Europe.
Yugoslavia was going to build its own version of Socialism and though it ran
into some bumpy periods, on the overall it had a much more advanced government
than its Communist neighbors. Because of that as well as the higher value of
Western currencies it was slowly becoming a major competitor of the French and
Italian Riviera. The Adriatic coast, protected by the Italian peninsula boot had
the most amazing sandy beaches and their beauty was augmented by the mild
Mediterranean weather. Value-wise it slowly became the best resort area around
the Mediterranean Basin.
Sibylla did not
care much about any of that. Moving to another town meant that she had to say
goodbye to some close friends and classmates. It may have been only 10 hours or
so by train but for a 10 year old it was a world away. Growing up in Macedonia
with parents of mixed ethnicity had produced a child who was fluent in 4
languages, |
amongst them
Romanian so she had a difficult time telling her friends that they were moving
to a Croatian city named Pula. In Romanian Pula, spelled and pronounced exactly
the same way, means The Cock (and not as in rooster,) so at 10 years old she
would usually blush and snicker every time she heard that word and would prefer
not to have to repeat it. Pula is a beautiful city located at the southern tip
of the Istrian peninsula - its beautiful beaches, and exciting dives to ancient
sunken Roman galleys as well as WWI warships make it a very attractive location
for tourists. Sibylla’s parents were of course aware of those things and the
fact that Pula was 3-4 times larger than Struga had made them use all their
connections as well as whatever little capital they had saved, to secure a
little booth in the merchants row on the Pula promenade. The move was actually
quite clever - the increased tourist traffic generated a decent revenue from the
sales of various memorabilia and beach products. Sibylla spent the next 9 years
or so, going to school and together with her brother, helping her parents with
their shop. Looking back on those 9 years she felt that they were quite peaceful
and mostly happy.
Being
multi-lingual made it easy for her to pick up some other languages, some of
which she sharpened at school, so by the age of 18 when she graduated
high-school she was fluent in Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Romany,
English and Russian. In addition, she could carry a decent conversation in
French, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch. To some of us this may sound
incredible, but it is one of the benefits of being a Balkanic and not at all
surprising to the locals.
***
Part two,
Fa, Sol, La, Si Forever
will be published in the fall of 2017. Part three is still in the planning stages, but
it stretches all the way to 2050 and a little beyond that. It is tentatively
named A
Neverending Song. The scope of the
entire work is to tackle some industry issues that are currently damaging the
health of the entire world. Among them, High Fructose Corn Syrup, killer
radiation therapies that made oncologists the richest of doctors, vaccines that
cause retardation and other related issues. There are two main groups of
protagonists: the kernel group of a Coney Island Freak Show and the
core of a Nevada cat house. Their weapon of choice is sex, though they also know
how to enjoy it. |
