Of course, a couple of days after remarking on the style of Serbian men, it becomes apparent that a mirror is being held up, inviting me to look into it. Oh yeah, there I am, and there’s somebody behind me waving a piece of paper around, actually it’s more of a file, and it’s marked in big bold letters: CONFIDENTIAL.
Is nothing sacred?
My ‘fight to see’ is modified by shame: look, but deny it; look, but don’t look too closely; look, but don’t join up the dots.
Secret pages on sale in Istanbul
How did my Uncle Walter get into all this?
I remember revealing to mmj, as we walked down the street we came to call the spine of that segment of Istanbul, (turn right or left and descend to either the Golden Horn or the Sea of Marmara), returning from “danger” near the City Walls, that he was stoker on ships during WW2, later a stoker in power stations. Short and burly, given to imflammatory talk and much humour. He and my Dad used to go to watch Crystal Palace play. Never me, though I do remember (when I was about 12) going to Crystal Palace V Chelsea–I didn’t like footbal anyway and I was no good at it which must have been a great disappointment to my father. My father, football enthusiast and who may have been good enough to be considered for a chance as a professional when he was fifteen, had been a fire fighter in London during the War, more peaceable, more given to reason than Walter’s hot-headed retorts. One lighting the fires, the other putting them out.
Who could I turn to for help? No brother, and not my father, it would seem; nor as it happens Walter or the other brothers–all locked into worlds that I didn’t understand and there was no available evidence that they could see me–in order to mitigate my shame.
Somehow one had to live alongside the shame.
Talking to a friend on Thursday afternoon about Serbian men. She had her experience these recent years of meeting with groups of women in Bosnia: she wondered about what the Serbian men had done to women . . .
My shame was of not being ‘big enough’ to deal honourably with situations of conflict.
I lead with shame, Serbian men appear to lead with their honour, out front, so to speak.
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