Hometown Belgrade

Katerina Pejak

This series of personal sketches was drawn from the ‘hometown memories’ of students in response to watching Lowell Blues, a short film by Henry Ferrini based on readings from Jack Kerouac’s written recollections of growing up in Lowell, MA.

– Fred Bouchard, Associate Professor of Liberal Arts

 

The Belgrade of my childhood was a little street and a backyard, apricot trees and a big tall pine. A shabby staircase led to my house and I had scabs on my knees from falling on them again and again. Home smelled like roast peppers, crepes, and old humid walls.

Then we moved away from the quiet little street to the center, The Green Circuit Street, where buses roar day and night people are like ants, always going, going. The Gypsies selling socks and umbrellas yell and grey skies frown down on the whole sight. The smell of home changed into warm concrete and fuel from a million cars, but it’s still home.

Stole the Piper blows his pipe on the station just like he’s been doing for the past twenty years, and he tells jokes with his brandy smothered voice… When I was little and my dad took me walking downtown, I was afraid of him. Now his pipe puts me to sleep. On weekends he disappears and he comes back with a clean shirt and a clean hat. By the end of the week, he has no shirt, no hat, just his Rashomon-like coat hanging off his back in rags.

Stole never sleeps, he is the engine of the city, he’s on duty, always there, no matter what goes on in the streets. He walks through riots like he’s taking a stroll contributing by always blowing his old pipe. He salutes women in skirts, he salutes church processions. The only music he knows is the tune playing in his head, God knows why, nobody knows what’s wrong with him, and no one even cares to ask anymore. He walks with the rich and the poor; he can go anywhere. He’s the symbol of miserable freedom you can only have when you don’t have anyone or anything.

When I lay in my bed listening to his rusty voice, I can’t help but think that Belgrade itself is a bit like this old underground character. Mad, completely isolated, but free. And all of us are in it, like dancers without music, living our strange little lives in this little madhouse called Serbia.

When you look at Belgrade from one of its bridges, you’ll recognize its tired smile, wrinkled and gray, but still a smile. It awaits you with its arms wide open, like an old worn-out hooker who knows her customers and is always up for it. It’s a smile soaked in memories — you’ll see it, or is it just me? Maybe that’s the smile all people see when they come home.