With a great delay, I have begun to write my memories and reminiscences of my homeland, after many dear and respected fellow citizens have passed away, including my closest friends. Today, there are only a few friends left from my youth; all the others have long since died. I often remember some of them and always keep them in my thoughts, but that is no consolation. I feel - as I read in an old story - like a bird that has fallen behind its flock. My flock has long since begun to fly away and has flown away.
The plow of time has passed over my face, leaving deep furrows not only on my forehead but also elsewhere. In those furrows, it seems, hope has been sown, which will no longer flourish and bloom, but will smolder, and I will strive to do a little more for my homeland.
These late years of my life still provide me with the opportunity to remember what was beautiful in life and to record those memories, leaving them to the youth for posterity. In the book of the long-deceased doctor Dr. Dragoljub Mihajlović, where he writes his memories of his native Vranje, I read such beautiful words that have deeply etched themselves in my memory. They seem to faithfully express my feelings that envelop me whenever I think, especially when I sit down to write about my homeland, and I therefore quote them here:
"Happiness is built in the human soul from the beautiful gifts that the world we live in surrounds us with."
The well-known Hungarian writer Zilahy writes in his novel "When the Soul Dies":
"The shine of small things is what gives warmth to life."
I attribute that collection to my homeland, for it is everything that surrounded us in it and everything that happened there that instilled joy and warmth. I was its child, its painter, and its historian, sometimes even a critic of negligence or insufficient care to preserve at least what had to be preserved to remind us of those past, beautiful, and warm times.
Today, when someone decides to try to depict that recent past, as a collection of impressions left by youth, only then do they pause and mourn for the disappearance of so much, much that provided us with daily quiet and almost imperceptible joy, yet strong enough that we felt happy and satisfied.
Those memories sound like some warm song of the rich autumn of our fields, but with our old age, and the autumn of our beloved homeland. I belong to those who long ago left their homeland. I often think of Zilahy's novel When the Soul Dies, where he expresses his sorrow for the oblivion of the place where he spent his youth and grew up.
Whenever I remember his words, I become sad. I have often rejoiced when the name of our long-forgotten fellow citizen or some word I hadn't heard since I was growing up in the homeland resurfaces in my memory, instead of seeing it as a misfortune that it could have faded from my memory at all. It is sad that I have not only physically separated myself from all this but also forgotten their names and titles. Zilahy calls this the dying of the soul.
Every person, since their earliest days, and especially later, cares about their dignity by being mindful of their everyday behavior. They strive to leave a favorable impression on their peers: friends, relatives, neighbors, and all acquaintances, even in front of unknown faces. It is not just the fear during childhood that parents will find out something bad about our behavior, but the concern that friends, neighbors, and the entire community accept and love us as kind and humble children and that they will come to our aid in certain moments and protect us from any misfortune.
I wanted to say that our life, our happiness, and satisfaction have been significantly influenced not only by our parents and family but also by the closer and wider environment - neighbors and all fellow citizens, which is probably what we call the homeland.
We owe so much to it that we are not even aware that everything good we do in life is simultaneously a concern not to tarnish the homeland, not to embarrass it with our negligence and carelessness.
The homeland, just like the family itself, made us honorable and honest, providing us with countless joys and all the beautiful experiences we have had in life. Yet, of all, the most beautiful is what our youth left us, what we were given, and what we carried from our homeland.
People are aware of the happiness, joy, kindness, and beauty in general that a mother provides with her care and love; yet, there is no one who has even come close to repaying her. Children repay their mother with care and love for their offspring. Everything a mother does is her pure love and the nobility of her soul, without thinking that she is thereby burdening her children and that they should repay her. She is happy when she feels that her children respect her and visit her in old age and when she can boast to neighbors and loved ones: "I have good children; they take care of me."
The homeland, just like a mother, does not seek any repayment of "debt," but there is no doubt that it takes pride in the deeds of its fellow citizens if they are noble and contribute to spreading and celebrating the name of the homeland for the good. Not everyone can be a Tesla or a Pupin and carry the name of their homeland (Smiljan and Idvor) around the world, but everyone in the homeland takes pride in every success and good deed of their fellow citizens. In this case, just as children repay their mothers, primarily through their relationship with their own children, so we repay our homeland by creating beauty, a warm and healthy climate for raising new generations.
Just as flower lovers wear a flower in the lapel of their coat, I have continuously felt that my homeland is in that lapel, reminding me with its presence of pride and dignity, and above all, of love and gratitude for all the beautiful things it has done for me.
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