Memories of war, Ukraine, Serbia, USA.
Belgrade, Serbia 2022
At night, our neighbor blasts Guns ‘n’ Roses at full volume.
I should be sleeping.
I can’t sleep.
“Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they’ve always done before”
I want to go give her a hug.
I know
she’s afraid
there will be another war.
I don’t want to go back
to that world.
The fear of nuclear war.
Mass graves.
I watch my friends slowly
sink
back into it.
Give me at least a stone
to place a glass beside—
the one we never got to raise
in Kyiv,
with friends,
for life.
Civil War echoes off the courtyard walls, hauntingly.
I originally wrote this post in Finnish in April 2022: Sirpaleita maailmalta
“Look at the hate we’re breeding
Look at the fear we’re feeding
Look at the lives we’re leading
The way we’ve always done before”
Shards of wars
The song brings back memories of California from the 1990 recording year.
Good ones, and very bad ones.
Still, not as bad as for many ex-Yugoslavians.
For Ukrainians, they’re not even memories.
Why are we feeding hatred?
Our neighbor is a Serb originally from Sarajevo.
She moved to Belgrade during the Yugoslav wars to take care of her grandmother.
She watched, she heard
hissing missiles.
Deep, continuous inhale
destroying the white city,
for the forty-fourth time.
The sound stays in you forever,
but a first-timer wouldn’t recognize it.
Fragments from Kyiv
02/24/22 at 5 a.m.
We’re at home in Belgrade when our friend from Kyiv asks on Facebook what that explosion sound was.
The community responds: Our own air defense.
March 24, 2022 marks 23 years since NATO bombed Belgrade.
Exactly one month after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Wounds are ripped open.
Social media fills with bombing photos captioned Never Again.
“My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can’t deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars”
Memories of the war
Salinas, California
January 1991.
The first day of the Gulf War is hard to forget.
We’re watching the news in U.S. history class.
The internet tells me it was January 17, 1991.*
For some reason, I remember it as January 13.
But whether it was the 13th or the 17th,
that morning has stayed with me for decades.
Our history teacher, Mr. Baxter, turns on the TV.
The same Mr. Baxter who once sent me to the principal’s office
for being unpatriotic.
Unpatriotic stranger
I stand respectfully during the morning flag ceremony, facing the flag,
but I don’t recite the pledge aloud
and I keep my hands at my sides.
Mr. Baxter thinks I’m mocking the flag
because I don’t place my hand over my heart and swear allegiance.
I try to explain I’m not American. This isn’t my country.
It doesn’t help.
“D’you wear a black armband
When they shot the man
Who said ‘peace could last forever’
And in my first memories
They shot Kennedy
I went numb when I learned to see
So I never fell for Vietnam
We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all
That you can’t trust freedom
When it’s not in your hands
When everybody’s fightin’
For their promised land
And…”
My classmates try to defend me.
Some stand beside me during the morning pledge with their hands by their sides.
I can’t pledge something I don’t truly believe in.**
Not even if it means detention, discipline, or suspension.
For an exchange student, suspension could mean losing their visa.
Out of school, out of the country.
My Civil War
In class, we go over the American Civil War again and again.
To Mr. Baxter, the Gulf War is honorable.
He’s made up his mind: I’m no patriot.
This Winter War I can’t win.
“Look at the shoes you’re filling
Look at the blood we’re spilling
Look at the world we’re killing
The way we’ve always done before
Look in the doubt we’ve wallowed
Look at the leaders we’ve followed
Look at the lies we’ve swallowed
And I don’t want to hear no more”
When Mr. Bastard sends me to the office, the principal is out.
The vice principal is in.
Luckily, he’s of Finnish descent.
We chat for an hour, mostly about Finland and being Finnish.
He’s never been to Finland, but he’s proud of his roots.
There’s a sisu sticker on his office wall.
Back to history class
We’re watching the news, still believing the U.S. won’t go to war.
Of course not.
The news anchor smiles
the smile slowly fades.
Ten, nine, eight, seven…
One.
An unwritten pause.
She pulls herself together.
“We are in the war.”
Silence. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Complete silence.
My classmates stare at the screen in shock.
We’re at war.
As a Finn, I sit in my chair thinking: You don’t know the first thing about war.
It’s not even visible here.
I decide to stay, even though I’m offered the chance to return home.
My classmates are wondering where their older brothers will be stationed.
Why is he even going? He was promised college tuition in return for service.
No one said anything about going to war.
I live eight kilometers from one of the U.S.’s major air force bases.
It’s considered a potential target.
From a European perspective, the idea seems absurd.
I’m allowed to stay.
Maybe they will return
After the initial shock, the war isn’t much talked about.
Except in families whose kids are sent to fight on the other side of the world.
For many of them, it’s their first trip abroad.
Some return home
in coffins.
Officially, there are hardly any casualties.***
The media tries, and partly goes silent.
In the land of free speech, a couple of hundred journalists are arrested.
This confuses a budding journalist.
I receive newspapers from Finland—
fragments from the world,
a more neutral take on the situation.
Later that spring, I end up distributing Bill Clinton’s campaign flyers with friends.
The boys’ photos remain on the mantel.
Parents dust around them.
Maybe he will return?
“I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain’t that fresh
I don’t need your civil war
I don’t need one more war”
Sources
Lyrics quoted from “Civil War” by Guns N’ Roses
*As far as I know, there have even been recent legal battles in the U.S. over whether people—even citizens—must show respect to the flag.
Pledge of Allegiance in schools: The First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Free speech means that the government cannot punish people for what they say. It also means that the government cannot punish people for choosing not to speak or force them to speak.
**Referring to Wikipedia, the countdown was January 15, 1991:
“United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, adopted on 29 November 1990, gave Iraq an ultimatum, expiring on 15 January 1991, to implement Resolution 660 and withdraw from Kuwait, with member-states empowered to use “all necessary means” to force Iraq’s compliance. Initial efforts to dislodge the Iraqis from Kuwait began with aerial and naval bombardment of Iraq on 17 January, which continued for five weeks.”
***In 2025, the official statistics show that in the Gulf War, there were 219 US casualties.