War was coming to Yugoslavia and in 1990 we fled to the heavenly Canada. When we arrived I was immediately brainwashed by all the newness. Right away I concluded these must be superior people to my own and the way they live must be better. Everything seemed new, clean, and proper. The roads were wider, no pot holes, no crime, no graffiti, fresh painted buildings, a fast and efficient public transportation system (Toronto) and even subways! I had only seen this type of environment in Hollywood movies and in my dreams.
In Canada I thought I experienced, in these 32 years so far, all the best life had to offer. I was convinced that this type of fun and happiness I could never have had back home in Belgrade. Having been born disabled due to congenital cataracts I was stuck with low vision my whole life and had to wear pretty thick glasses. I never felt bullied anywhere I went but in our North York neighbourhood I felt especially accepted and well received by everyone, at school, in my front yard, at home, everywhere we went I felt joy.
We bought a super expensive computer and I mastered music composing – this must be heaven for sure I thought. My dad bought Borland Pascal box bundle and I mastered coding in several languages, including assembler, C++, and even got my hands on Slackware and began mastering Linux. I certainly would have never experienced any of this in Serbia. Things there were unimaginably expensive and there was a lot of oppression from the communist government and the justice system. Still I was becoming more Canadian with each day and eventually I even stopped writing letters to my friends back home and in their place had new friends on various BBS systems I accessed through our super fast modem. We got a Sega Genesis and I played tons of games, we got rollerblades and the roads were perfectly paved so I enjoyed that with my walkman. At home we had a nice stereo system so every night I enjoyed the Top Ten at Ten on Q107, too. What does Belgrade have that compares with any of this other than war, military service, destruction, and crazy government?
Then in my 20s I had several jobs in the tech industry despite finding high school boring and dropping out and never having any official degrees. I made more money than people with PhDs, lived in a building with a giant swimming pool on the roof and a sauna, had girlfriends, made love for hours, went to the cinema sometimes several times a week, was the emergency on-call for Canada’s backbone at UUNET Canada, it was all like a big giant fun adventure. I never once felt a single sad moment, not once. Meanwhile in Belgrade people were lining up for hours just to get a little flour, war rations were a serious thing. I was even able to send some money back to my grandparents during these hard times which made my grandpa cry even. I was a hero, I was living independently despite being disabled – this was the dream I always hoped for.
Then in my 30s I took a different direction from technology and studied variou subjects independently, even got the much coveted CCNA certification from Cisco after merely two months of studying. I come from a long line of fast learners and self-starters you see! But that didn’t seem like enough fun so I joined a Shaolin Kung Fu school in Chinatown and even became a Kung Fu instructor for a year or so. It was a lot of fun teaching Gentle Kung Fu to all kinds of people. Several years like that and I needed to do something different so I went to U of T, but not as a student, but merely as someone who loves sports. Turns out anyone can go there as it’s a public place and can sit in their libraries browsing books, eating great food, and even enjoying the soccer fields in the back campus. All for free! So for a few years I enjoy soccer for half the day, covering my clothes with dripping sweat. It was an incredibly fun time in my life. I thought these were the best moments of my life.
Canada also has plenty of diverse foods to offer, as I’m sure most modern cities do these days. There’s everything from shawarma, butter chicken, and tabolleh, to baba ghanouj, and hummus. Can you tell my preference is kind of Middle Eastern? I was able to enjoy food from all over the world and was able to discover I had that preferfence. Would I have had that freedom in Belgrade? Would there have been money in post-war Serbia for someone like me whose glasses cost $1,000 each to explore life like this? Surely not.
Every year my dear mom went to a far Serbian store called C Market somewhere near Danforth. And she would buy me Chevapi. It is a Serbian specialty meat that is often best BBQed. And whenever she would prepare this, often for my birthday or in the summer, as my birthday is July 13th, I felt such a burst of happiness that I can’t quite explain. It was always an over the top experience, too. I still compose music and usually after eating chevapi I noticed I write the best music ever. How can all my experiences in Canada pale by comparison to a simple meal of chevapi? And I don’t even eat a lot of them, I don’t pig out either. But how are chevapi better than sex, international cuisine, work, sports, and all the luxuries?
I think in large part it stems from where I first had chevapi. It was long ago, almost 40 years ago now that I am turning 46 this year. It was in our backyard in Vozhdovac, a suburb of Belgrade. Back then in the 1980s there wasn’t tall structures anywhere on our street, all the houses were unique and at most two floors, with a shorter building being the only exception in the middle of our street of maybe three or four floors. My grandparents went early to the local pijaca (market) up the street on the hill and would bring fresh groceries almost every other day. In the summer on the weekend my grandpa would tend to the BBQ in the backyard and my grandma would make fresh chevapi.
Back then there wasn’t fast food in Belgrade, not like there is now. Nobody was buying pre-made chevapi. Everyone was making them from fresh ground beef, salt, sugar, and spices in their kitchens. People lived a healthier life. There was almost no cars on our street so we as kids could draw a full tennis court in the middle of the road and play for hours. People weren’t obsessed with technology, and even though we had a ZX Spectrum computer I only played it for one hour a day – it was no match for my best friends and our outdoor adventures! There wasn’t an abundance of condos, tall skyscrapers – in fact to this day I have a picture of when my grandparents took me to the center of the city to see the tallest building in all of Belgrade. There was just one like it, that’s right. I remember when the first McDonald’s open in the middle of downtown Belgrade. We didn’t go to it every day, every Friday, every celebration – we went to it once a year. There weren’t obese people like there are today, there wasn’t graffiti everywhere, there wasn’t tattoos and ripped jeans. People were wholesome, good and all the neighbourhouds were helping each other.
Chevapi for me is almost a spiritual event. Here in Canada I so rarely have it that I have nearly forgotten my Serbian roots, and that’s perhaps the dark magic of these people’s culture. In brainwashing us with how beautiful they are we are meant to see our own heritage as lesser. There are people here who regularly have beer in the mornings, or burgers for breakfast. I have never had chevapi in the mornings, as my culture, the way I was raised, has taught me that certain things just aren’t right. Yes certainly I can afford to eat chevapi every morning every week – but just because I can do a thing it doesn’t mean I’m going to. My grandparents helped to raise me, as did my great grandparents who were alive until about my eighth birthday, and my great grandma was alive until my eighteenth birthday! I lived with two uncles as well, and my own family, parents and two sisters. We had a two story house, nothing fancy, with almost eleven people. So I always had a different perspective and was never bored as always someone was available to spend time with. And if I ever got bored I could always walk around the street and visit friends or neighbours. There was a handful of cars passing by so riding bicycles was also quite safe for us kids. The SUV obsession hadn’t hit the world yet so cars moved slower and were much easier to control.
Through my whole life, chevapi was remained a fantastic voyage to the past. Even today whenever I have them I am transported back in time to when people didn’t need all this technology, all these things, materialistic needs, and all this bad stuff, and when people were jamming and more relaxed. Chevapi for me is a religious experience even though I don’t believe in any God per se. I especially love them when they’re served on a bed of chopped onions – I love onions almost as much as chevapi. In fact, the healthy nature of my meals at home has given me a great foundation for my whole life. Even though we had BBQ, nobody ever overate. And when we had Coke or other drinks, we never drank more than a cup or two and these were normal sized cups, 250ml, which seem small by modern standards. I know that in Canada it is usual to drink almost half a liter of soda with a meal but this isn’t right for me. Chevapi has showed me how to behave around others, as my family always conversed and gathered when my grandpa said “Food is ready!”. We all took life slowly one day at a time and nobody ever raised their voice at others, let alone was drunk or all the other horrendous things I’ve heard happening here in North America. Chevapi always cheers me up, and even when I can’t afford to eat them, as currently I am unemployed, just being near a restaurant that serves them makes me smile endlessly. I love chevapi and so you should, too. The BBQs in Belgrade when my family and friends gathered together to share chevapi and razhnjichi, these memories are better than anything I have ever experienced here in Canada. Ever. No contest.
Thousandth Cloud 