After 56 years, I am back in the place where I grew up, played and learned about life. I am walking through this old workers’ settlement in Miladije, which consists of two short rows of ‘old barracks’ and a couple of houses longer ‘New Column’, a total of 20 houses with two small apartments each. I am trying to remember which family lived in which house. Mostly mining, working families: Užičanin, Novaliċi, Josiċi, Kopiċi… I have forgotten many last names. I remember the names much better: Muharem, Bogdan, Mehmed, Mirko, Jovo, Himzo… … My mother’s ‘sevda’ and women’s klapa: Zlata, Fata, Hata, Ana, Hana and Cana. My friend Esad lived in this house, Boban in this one, Brano here, Hasan and Ulfeta here, Mario there… Under the same roof, on the other side of our house, my school friend Pero lived for a short time. Some of them, I heard, are no longer alive.
Memories come flooding back, the memories are numerous. The entire street was a children's playground. On the (asphalt) road, we played football, 'between two fires' and 'ebereĉke-ebertute', unhindered by traffic. There were no vehicles on the street, no one had a car. The only 'means of transport' back then were hand-made scooters and tricycles, in winter sledges and ligures, and rarely a bicycle.
At the place where the street made an 'L-curve' at its end for two more houses and a row of coal sheds, and ended at a stream that was later filled in, there was a small meadow. It served everyone, it was a natural 'social center'. After a hard day's work, fathers would sit in the meadow, play 'tablanet' and sip brandy; mothers drank shared coffee, crocheted, knitted and embroidered, boys and girls played volleyball and flew around each other, and we children played ‘rotten mares’ and wrestled there in the summer, and in the winter we built snow forts and fought snowball wars. The meadow is gone – it is partly concreted and partly covered with gravel. It serves as a shared parking lot. Cars have taken over the street.