Once upon a time in the spring of 1992 when theater maker Adrijan Siniša Rakić could no longer breathe. It seemed as if his lungs were no longer filling with oxygen, no matter how hard he sucked the air in, there, in his tiny apartment in Belgrade. I’m dying, he thought. And then: I have to go, I have to go, I have to go.
That was when Adrijan decided to leave Yugoslavia. His homeland where he had such a happy childhood with his sister and dear parents, where he studied, where his friends lived … “But I couldn’t stay there anymore. I really couldn’t.”
Home country
Now, almost thirty years later, he calls the Netherlands his home country. The theater maker tells his life story in a stone outbuilding of the asylum seekers’ center in the village of Schalkhaar, in the east of the country, near Deventer. There is a line of children in front of the entrance, they trickle in one by one, they come to watch Adrijan’s theater performance today.
–
–
In that row is a little girl. She has big brown eyes and she holds a drawing so tightly that the paper creases a little – because the wind is blowing outside, it is bleak, a little dark even, and this drawing should definitely not blow away. “It’s for Sinterklaas”, she whispers. And then, a little louder, giggling: “Sinterklaas Kapoentje.”
Magic
The girl is from Syria and is one of seventy children who found refuge with their families in Schalkhaar. Adrijan feels a bond with these children, which is why he creates performances for them. This time it is a Sinterklaas performance. “It is important to me that they can escape the bleak situation they are in and what they have been through. That is what theater can do.” He is smiling. Twinkle in his eye – almost childish. “Theater is magic.”
He himself is not on stage. He did, you know, in the past, but he is more, as he puts it himself, ‘a background man’. “I’d rather let someone else shine.”
–
–
All children have now sat down – on the edge of their seats, because on stage a puppeteer tells the story of Klaasje.
‘Once upon a time… a time when Sinterklaas was still a little girl’. Klaasje was unhappy because one leg was longer than the other. He limped and felt different. And alone.
“I also felt that myself”, says Adrijan after the performance. “That you don’t know where to go, what will happen to you.” Only then he was not a child, but an adult.
–
–
Playing outside for hours
Adrijan had a happy childhood, partly in Croatia, partly in Serbia. “I lived with my younger sister and my mother and father in different places. My father was a major in the army, so we often had to move. Life was good, I had a lot of boyfriends and girlfriends. Yugoslavia was a kind of left-wing semidictorship, but a safe country to grow up with with low crime rates. “
He remembers often going out to play with friends, only to return hours later. “Then we went into town. To playgrounds, squares, sidewalks, parks, alleys. That is unthinkable in Amsterdam: when they were little, I would leave my children alone on the street for less than five minutes.”
–
–
The people lived outside. Grandfathers and grandmothers sat on benches in front of their houses chatting, couples in love kissed in a park, people walked the streets late. “If you had told me then there was going to be a civil war, I would have thought you were crazy.”
Secret hatred
Yet it came. But first came the hatred. “You could feel it slumbering in the city, under the skin. There were protests that got bigger and bigger, there was political unrest, the atmosphere got grimmer.”
–
–
At the time, Adrijan lived in a small apartment in Belgrade, had a life as a freelance theater director with many trips to big cities, meeting many new people, art, culture. “It is difficult to point out: that is the turning point, then it became war. But I still remember very well how I had coffee with my neighbor. I knew her for years, she was a lovely woman, had a nice husband with whom she had two children. ”
And I was sitting there at the kitchen table, and all of a sudden she starts such a hateful conversation about ‘the enemies of the people’. I was shocked: what is this again? And then I started to worry. the 40 can already talk like that, what is that going to do to guys in their 20s who get guns? “
–
–
He got scared. Thought: there is going to be a catastrophe, we are going to kill each other. “In a pub you can have twenty people who talk amicably to each other, but one person comes and says something bad, then there is a dynamic that messes up everything,” he says. “We had that too, but in a whole country, where millions of people of all nationalities lived. And those people were driving themselves and each other crazy. Neat housewives, smart students, sweet teachers, wise politicians, caring aid workers: they all started out full of hatred. to talk about ‘the others’, a different ethnic group, a different republic. “
Imagine …
In 1991 the Yugoslav Civil War started, which lasted until 1999. “Just imagine. That people from Limburg suddenly come to Utrecht, with weapons. That’s how it went. That’s how it really went.”
And then that one day came. In the summer of 1992, when Adrijan could no longer breathe. Hyperventilation, he later realized. “I heard through the media that there were still a few buses allowed to cross the border to Germany. That was something from before the war, because in Germany you could buy cheap electrical appliances. I actually think the government kept that bus route open on purpose. people who wouldn’t fight. You drove there at night, did your shopping, and then you came back. “
–
–
Only: Adrijan never came back. Just like the other young men who were on the bus, all of whom were conscripts. They were dropped in Munich, Adrijan had a bag with him with some clothes and his dolls. He bought a train ticket to Amsterdam with his last money, because he knew someone with whom he could stay temporarily. His lungs filled with air again.
This is temporary
For a long time he thought: I will stay here temporarily, until the nonsense in my own country is over. “You say to yourself: two weeks, and then I will go back. And then again: two weeks. A few months. Another few months.” He slept with his acquaintance, and then he met some squatters who found him a squat. During the day he played on the street with his dolls, on the Leidseplein, in the Kalverstraat, but also in Utrecht, Haarlem. “It didn’t comfort me, but it did make money.”
–
–
Until he became acquainted with the Dutch autumn. Rain, wind, cold, few people on the street, and besides, he was illegal. “It was a real tragedy. I never felt like an asylum seeker, I thought: those are the people who are unable to take care of themselves. It was a hard blow when I realized that I also needed help.”
He applied for asylum. After filling in his details, he asked the people behind the desk: “And now?” Perhaps naively, but he thought and hoped: they can help me find temporary shelter, if necessary in an asylum seekers’ center. But they were all full.
–
–
Very uncomfortable
He went from squat to squat for a year and a half, lived on a modest state benefit, and then he was granted a residence permit and a home. “I found that very uncomfortable. There was now a housing shortage, there were people who had to wait seven years for a house, and as a newcomer I immediately came to live in the center. I did not like to tell people that.”
When he had “nicely decorated” his house, he fell ill. He was finished. Tired, sad, he ate badly, slept badly. “Now I understand it better, then I had no idea it was a burnout.”
–
–
What helped him out? Theater. No doubt. “I met a lot of artistic people, made friends for life.” He founded with ten other refugee artists from Yugoslavia a theater group op, the Wolkentheater, to make performances for asylum children. “We wanted to communicate that we were there for every child. Whatever nationality or background or skin color. We wanted to show: we are not the bad guys. Because we all knew what had gone wrong in former Yugoslavia: division.”
We were needed there
The first production was in 1993. “Asylum seekers’ centers are needed in the Netherlands, but they are not happy places, with few activities. We were needed there to give those children something extra and unexpected.”
Theater helped Adrijan feel at home in the Netherlands. More at home than in his native country. From time to time Adrijan returns to the former Yugoslavia, his family still lives there. The first time he came back, just after the war, he met a girl there. “I knew her from the past, and I was so happy to see her. It felt a bit like coming home.”
–
–
They got into a relationship and she came to the Netherlands for Adrijan. “That was really great luck.” They still live in Amsterdam. But now with the four of us: Adrijan has a daughter of 20 and a son of 16. He no longer wants to return to his homeland. In any case: not for a longer period of time.
Scared, restless
“Whenever I’m there, I feel restless. I have to do something with that, I think, I have to process things. Maybe talk more about it.”
It is, he says, the same oppressive feeling he had until recently when he went to asylum seekers’ centers. “It’s a trauma, you see those displaced children, and I know so well how they feel. I feel my own fear and uncertainty again, from then.”
–
–
You recognize despondency from a distance, says Adrijan. “Whenever I drive to an asylum seekers’ center, and I see people in the area from behind, I can tell whether they have fled or not. You can tell by the attitude. Those people trudge, hang shoulders.”
Moved
But in recent years, Adrijan has felt more at ease in asylum seekers’ centers. “I realize more and more: we are doing it for those children.”
He can be moved by that and enjoy it at the same time. From that little girl who sits on the edge of her chair and shouts, “Sinterkláááás.” From that little boy who may come forward and show a trick. And the song they all sing at the end. Sinterklaas Kapoentje.
–
–
