YOU HAVE, I HAVE NOT

Slavenka Drakulic travels heavy when she

returns to her native Croatia. It's all a matter of post-communist manners

Vienna ON the staircase of our apartment build- ing I encountered a neighbour who lives on the first floor. I was on my way in from the supermarket and was carrying an enor- mous canvas bag full of food in one hand, trying to balance it with two boxes of wash- ing-powder and a packet of nappies. Andrea was surprised to see me dragging all this home, but not as surprised as she was to see me with nappies. I explained to her that I was taking it all to Croatia. The nappies were for my friend's baby — they are much more expensive in Zagreb than in Vienna. I was slightly afraid that I would have to go into the nitty-gritty of Croatian economics and explain that while people there are paid only a fifth of the money Austrians earn, nappies still cost more than they do in Austria. But Andrea was kind enough not to enquire about the vagaries of the Croatian economy. Instead, she popped into her apartment and reap- peared with another bag of nappies.

Croatia — war and refugees are perhaps what Andrea had on her mind when she brought me the nappies. But my friend back home is not a refugee. She has a steady job, yet she simply cannot afford to buy nappies for her son, so I take some every time I go there. The other reason why I do this would be hard to explain to my kind Viennese neighbour: I feel obligat- ed to my friend with a baby — and to my mother, my relatives and other friends liv- ing there, too. They have no money: they all make only between 350 and 500 US dol- lars a month and face a higher cost of living than people in the West. My friend with the newborn son has taken two jobs in order to survive. She was not lucky enough to get a job abroad — not that she ever expressed the wish to leave, but being able to live abroad is considered great luck by everybody. This has nothing particularly to do with her life or mine — it is simply a legacy of our history and the kind of society we used to live in.

But to tell the truth, Andrea's question made me think about all the things I buy to take to Croatia. I was leaving for Zagreb in a couple of days and as usual I had started to prepare for that trip by carefully com- posing a shopping list. From the supermar- ket I'll buy salami, cheese, chocolate, Nescafe, two kilos of ground coffee, wash- ing-powder, margarine, powdered milk, canned tomatoes, olive oil, fresh fruits all cheaper in Vienna. Then I'll get some of those cheap stockings sold in packs of ten (handy for our teenage neighbour), under- wear for my mother — perhaps even a nice pullover. I'll also have several prescriptions made up at the chemist's for my mother's neighbour, and while I'm there I'll buy multivitamins (also a good present, because they are very expensive at home). Then there are cosmetics, perfumes and other gifts. After passing the Austrian border I will inevitably go to the duty-free shop for whisky and good cigarettes — for the doc- tor who takes care of my family.

Why do I do this every time I go back? Why are my suitcases always full of such trivia? Where is the logic in this? Am I try- ing to fulfil other people's expectations? And who is expecting presents from me? My relatives, my friends and people in need; the woman in the unemployment office who collects nice tin boxes; the nurse who likes to drink exotic kinds of tea; the neighbour who adores Austrian pralines, and another who is too fat to fit into a nor- It's always the same, don't ring us.' mal pair of tights. Going to Albania or Bulgaria it is the same story — except that where once I used to bring my friends use- ful things, like Tampax, now I bring them a bottle of French wine, good eau de cologne and the latest books. The times and the gifts have changed, but not their expectations.

These expectations are remnants of the old days, when those who could travel were really privileged. But now these goods can be found everywhere in Eastern Europe. The difference today is no longer the lack of choice, but the fact that very few people can afford luxuries.

In those days, too, I would make long lists of things to buy, knowing that in the end I would have to decide between a book and a pair of shoes. Most likely, I would have had the very same frustrations if I had lived in the West, but that did not occur to me then. Like other Eastern Europeans, I naively imagined that living in the West automatically guaranteed you a certain standard of living and that such agonising decisions were unknown. The idea that I could be poor living in the West, perhaps unemployed, the fact that there are hardship and financial insecurity everywhere in the world, was beyond my imagination. If we are all poor here, they must all be rich. What else were we to think, when we knew that a person living on social security in the West was rich compared to someone with a job in a com- munist country? It was typical for a visitor from a communist country to think that poor people in the West had voluntarily opted out, rather than lost their jobs. They would have made it if they'd only tried harder. After all, I had seen in the coun- tries I had visited — Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain — so many more opportunities to make money and have a decent life than there were at home.

But the myth of the advantage of living in the West has not lost its power since the demise of communism. Bringing presents is not only a social habit, the nice and expected gesture of someone who has `been there', but a kind of a proof that one has indeed 'been there'. There is also a psy- chological mechanism at work, namely the egalitarian principle with which we all grew up. It reminds me of a little boy of about seven whom I met in Bucharest. My taxi had stopped at some traffic lights. He ran up to me and said, 'Speak English?' When I nodded, he stretched his hand through the open car window. 'Give money!' he said.

`Why?' I asked him, not really expecting him to understand me.

To my astonishment, he looked at me as if surprised by my stupidity. 'You have, I not have,' he explained seriously in his rudimentary English.

There was nothing wrong with the boy's logic. It was obvious that he had no money, otherwise he would not have been asking me for it. It was obvious that I had money, otherwise I would not have been driving around in a taxi. Even at his age he knew that there are basically two categories of people in a society: those who have, and those who have not. But according to the egalitarian principles of any communist society, those 'haves' should share with the `have nots'. And because there is not much to share anyway, in the end that egalitari- anism boils down to the equal distribution of poverty. At least it would in theory — in practice it did not quite work.

But the egalitarian ideology survived in different forms, for example in codes of social behaviour. The equation in my case looks like this: I live in the West, I have, therefore I am obliged to share. And I do feel obliged. I can't turn anybody down. I am still a prisoner of that logic. Moreover, in a patriarchal society being married to a Westerner is considered a real achieve- ment, perhaps a bigger one than making a career or a name for yourself abroad. Nobody would doubt for one moment that my husband is a rich foreigner — why in the world would I marry a poor one? My marriage also means that I have escaped the common destiny of my people: the war, poverty, insecurity, unemployment, disap- pointment, political confusion, low wages and the feeling that time is running out fast and you can't be certain if the future will bring anything better. It is as if living in the West has somehow vaccinated me against misfortune. Who would not feel guilty for 'escaping' from such a situation, even if my 'escape' is only an imaginary one? I certainly do. My friends certainly don't deserve any less.

There is only one thing I seriously hold against my friends back home. They owe me something, too. It profoundly upsets me that I never hear from them. They do not call, they do not write. I know they have no money, and that international telephone calls are incredibly expensive because of the state monopoly of the sys- tem. It is accepted that people call you only when they want something — a place to stay, to borrow money, something to be sent or brought — or in a medical emer- gency. This I understand. But why don't they write? Stamps are not that expensive.

This experience is not unique to me: it is the general attitude of people in Eastern Europe. A friend living in Stockholm visit- ed Belgrade in the summer. Afterwards, she sent letters, books, packages. Just the other day she complained to me that six months have passed, but no answer has come back to her. Being Swedish, she was puzzled. Had the letters and books arrived there at all, she wondered.

Of course they had. But it is she, not her friends, who is expected to call and write and send things and keep communication alive. They are there: they are in need, they are too busy suffering to respond. And if you don't accept this one-way com- munication, they'll tell you for sure that you have forgotten them, that you don't need their friendship any longer now that your life is a bed of roses. As if friendship would have anything to do with that.

So I call them. What else can I do? I do need them. My secret is that I do not like what they see as my great luck; I do not like living abroad all that much.

©Copyright Slavenka Drakulic 1996, extracted from Café Europa, published by Abacus.