GROWING UP JEWISH (November 19, 1989)

Since 1983 I spend most of my summers in Belgrade and on the Yugoslav coast. When in Belgrade, I go out every evening. There are many places I like, but my favorite place is the Pen Club, next door to the National Theater. The owners and many guests of this Belgrade establishment know me since childhood, when my parents occasionally took me there. They were regulars for several decades. The Club is a lively and crowded place. You cannot sit alone for too long—someone you know will join you and start talking about anything under the sun. This is how I gradually learned that many of my acquaintances were surprised to learn that I was not Jewish. When I was growing up, my last name and my performance in school were apparently taken as sufficient proofs of my origins. People kept quiet about it on account of war atrocities, I suppose. The truth started surfacing only gradually, many years after I left Yugoslavia for good. I was amused by all this at first. It took me several years to realize that I had been shaped by the behavior of people who perceived me as different and thus alien. It took me several years to realize that I, in fact, grew up Jewish.