Let it Out

One of my best war stories is how I was in a bank in Banja Luka during the lae 1990s NATO bombing of Serbia and under strict instructions from my host not to speak because English would give away the fact that the dark-haired woman on the couch in the corner was an American dog.

Suddenly a man in line began gesticulating and yelling, storming around the place. Bank people began running up to him trying to calm him and my stomach dropped. I thought, this is it.

Actually, he was just really pissed off at the long and slow-moving line to the teller.

Public tantrums are common and accepted here, and not just those thrown by 3-year-olds.

This weekend in the zoo, as Miranda and her mother and I were sipping coffee at the Mushroom restaurant waiting for the rain to taper off, a big man at the table behind up began yelling. I could make out Jebe te!! plainly enough, the Bosnian version of the F-word. Like us people at other tables craned their necks to see what was going on. The man was yelling into his cell phone and jumped up from the table.

Miranda and her mother put their heads down. Don't laugh, Donna warned. A mother at a nearby table grabbed her kid.

"Bosnians have a temper," Miranda said, unnecessarily. "Bosnian men."

It's true and kind of scary if you're brought up in "nice" American offices where outbursts and any display of anger will get you sensitivity training or counseling if not disciplinary action.

Last night I watched a popular 2004 Serbian movie called When I Grow Up I'll Be Kangeroo. The movie is skeptical and gloomy, with characters, all under or unemployed and broke expecting to get little more out of life than a winning football bet, a beer and a good cheese pie. A girlfriend seems out of reach. One character dreams about drinking a case of beer and pissing all week as an idyllic experience. The main character Braco who is handsome and seemingly sympathetic, has repeated wild outbursts of rage. He kicks out a movie theater chair and screams incoherently shaking his fists at the sky. This is the hero of the piece.

It actually was an amusing movie, which reading back, I know I'm not conveying. But that's my point, depression, skepticism and rage are just part of the backdrop here.