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into my hallucinatory Slavonian mist, several washing
machines under each arm, logic settled back into place,
and it seemed to me that it would be hard to find a more
normal petrol station attendant in the middle of this
lousy stretch of nothingness between Zagreb and
Belgrade. For the locals, it was surely normal that their
grasp on geography in this, their God-forsaken world, did
not extend to the escarpments of misery behind the Sava
River, from which I had come. It was also probable that
Serbian expatriates, whose relatives in Brčko likely lived
in the houses of expelled Muslims or Croats, were none
too likeable to begin with. So it was normal that he
wouldn’t pretend to be professional, just to please
passers-by.
This version of normal was strange to me, but that didn’t
explain why I still felt bad. I’d never thought of myself as
sensitive, and barrages of swearing don’t move me at all.
But I suppose I felt that all of this was somehow
connected to my father’s Lazarus situation, and I
wondered if Mr. Moustache could read my sense of guilt.
Hadn’t my own sense of innocence, which I had believed
whole-heartedly until recently, irreversibly ruptured the
moment I decided to Google my dead father’s name? Was
that why I couldn’t look Mr. Moustache in the eye and tell
him to fuck off? Was that why I now felt like someone in
the dock, judged by the self-righteous?