Zlatko Serdarevic and Drazen Pera Ondelj have been friends since childhood. Their fathers were partisans who went to the battlefield together and continued to socialize after the war. The friendship of the fathers was passed on to Drazen and Zlatko.
Drazen is now almost 87 years old.
“I took great care not to hurt any of my father’s friends, and if he did something to me, I didn’t react because I knew he was my father’s friend. There was tolerance. And then we knew each other very well, we basically knew how each other breathed, so you couldn’t get angry. We were relaxed to say anything without being taken for granted. It’s not like that today,” said Drazen.
He points out that honest and open communication is very important, but that today many are afraid of the truth.
Zlatko says that Pera is a symbol of cosmopolitanism.
“It’s a relationship that doesn’t need much explanation. We think the same, want the same and behave the same. The time he was talking about was the time of humanity, character, consideration, respect for the elderly. Everyone had it. That’s how society raised people. Today, we techies say 1/X, which is wrong. Today everything is completely opposite. There is no respect, no morals, no friendships. There is a small percentage that will save us,” he said.
He points out that people who came from “somewhere else“canceled all traditions.
“Today, Mostar is run from three centers and now it is centralism, but the society was totalitarianism. Now I amexperiencing three totalitarianisms because my relatives are from three sides. I don’t know how long it will last, probably as long as the financial benefits can be extracted because this is a profit society”, said Drazen.
He says that people live together and that they helped each other in the war, but that they don’t talk about it.
“While the world strives for globalization, we strive for diametrically opposite things, and we had globalization in small,” said Drazen.
Zlatko says that the government is trying to keep power by “dividing” and talking about “divided Mostar”.
“The people have remained the same and all three nations want to free themselves. The three nations do not have freedom from their official representatives. Here is the struggle of the people and the government. It is true that the people elect that government because of some privileges that they will have later, but they are based on different backgrounds”, Zlatko pointed out.
He says that they all went to midnight Mass and that they did not lose their identity.
“You don’t lose anything when you enter a mosque or a church,” he said.
They point out that theirs is the “Mostar religion” – the one in which everyone respects each other.
They drink their favorite morning coffee together and in it, they find an oasis and joke, given that the situation in the world is very dire.
“We try to laugh as much as possible. People stopped laughing, everything became too serious”, said Drazen.
At the very end, Drazen and Zlatko told jokes, N1 writes.
Photo: N1
E.Dz.
