Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Quiet Flows the Una

really couldn’t tell which leaves were the tree’s and which belonged to the velvety creeper. I would climb up into that crown, to where it was quiet and peaceful inside. The darkness there was my ally, while the main thoroughfare of Marshal Tito Street ran below it, full of comings and goings: people, cars, horse- drawn carts, ambulances, stooped peasant women... But there were also upright ones carrying heavy loads on their heads; women whose necks were surely able to carry whole slabs of the world, chunks their households rested on. Old men passed by too, bitterly spitting out something akin to the acrimony of their lives. Everything was in motion: lines of lizards, ants and red- black beetles, columns of cattle, sheep from the high

pastures of the Grmeč range, nomadic shepherds in fur hats like those of Cossacks, the blind and the drunk, children and youth, workers who were also drunkards, and torrents of people who knew nothing and expected nothing, because no one could see the future. It was guaranteed by the weight of the big stone letters up on Tećija Hill that spelled the name of the greatest son of all the Yugoslav peoples. Up in the tree, in the peace and quiet, I was perfectly invisible. I didn’t exist. I could even close my eyes and the world would become insignificant. I would be all by myself, a small light in the darkness, before the storm blowing in from Grmeč. One body, nothing more, that shiveredwith cold as the wind rushed through the green

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