One Dinar for an Old Woman and Her Best Friend

Back in 1995 I learned first-hand what it means to have and then to have nothing. I spent my refugee years on the street, forever hungry and tired, like an abandoned dog. With scant clothing and worn-out shoes I survived on the street, dreaming of my own home and the warm corner I had lost overnight that year. The will to live was there, but my wishes and reality did not meet at a single point. A lost gaze over an uncertain future left deep marks every day and tore at the soul in all sorts of ways. Year after year brought a genuine struggle for life and a better tomorrow. Slowly the wounds began to heal, time did its work, and I looked at every new day as a victory, accepting both the good and the bad that life brought. In time I forgot what it means to live on the street, on cold concrete, hungry and thirsty. Until today, when fate decided to remind me of old wounds.

I set off from Čačak to Belgrade on business. I had enough time, so I felt like taking a walk down Knez Mihailova Street, as I used to, and remembering those hard and uncertain refugee days. I parked the car near the railway station and headed towards Zeleni Venac. After only ten minutes of walking I saw a scene that sent a chill through me and brought back all the pain accumulated over the years. Two truly lost souls. A frail old woman whose wrinkles betray years of a hard life, and a young dog with an innocent gaze at the twisted world around him. I politely asked to take a photograph, leaving a modest contribution in return.

In the moment that befell me back then, youth and health kept me going, but I wonder what miracle has to happen to change the fate of a grandmother who begs for small, dirty coins that cruelly separate her and her best friend from hunger, and therefore from death. So here I am now, like a beggar, pleading with those whose path leads them to the passage at Zeleni Venac to set aside a part of their “dirty money” and leave it in the little red bowl, if not to help the frail old grandmother, then for her best friend.

MY DOG