KOSOVO 1999

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M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell if victims of this war are suffering we must aid them and prevent further suffering. We also cannot permit these abuses to continue. When the punisher becomes even more wretched and evil than the one who has perpetrated the first evil, the police become the punishers. This is the danger that must be checked at every step of the way. How can we say that when one innocent person dies because of a war, that war is justified? I do not know. I think not. Equally so, if victims of this war are suffering we must aid them and prevent further suffering. We also cannot permit these abuses to continue. Here in Thessalonica my thoughts are now based on the need to act. I am focused on the task at hand. Although prior to departure I vacillated, it is difficult to gauge how correct my actions are now. All I can do is continue, one step at a time. In the act of travelling to the Kosovo border we are attempting to import both a pure energy and a message about refugees in war. I use the metaphor of creating a homeopathic remedy. Importing one small drop of purity or peace and releasing it into in a million parts of the frequency of war. From the homeopathic perspective this will create a healing crisis. But is this just a dumb metaphor? We will soon find out. The woman who recommended that I embark on this adventure and mission is the first hero of this odyssey. I don’t believe in heroines. Everyone is a hero for me. She was Melina, a Greek-Australian, mother-Goddess archetype, who was a volunteer at Friends of the Earth, an NGO close to my house. I was passing her after donating a painting for an exhibition. Lingering to talk, I saw her in Smith Street Collingwood with her raven black and lustrous hair and crumpled dress, looking beautiful. I had been asking many people over the last week whether I should go to Kosovo or Albania to help? Each had replied with the same cautionary fear and stereotypical trepidation: ‘No, Dominic, going into that area is far too dangerous…don’t go!’ But Melina’s response was strangely direct: ‘Dominic, it would be awesome’. For her, the enormity of this tragedy was an opportunity to witness and even help. Whether it came from the heart or not, her dark almond eyes glistened. That was what clicked. Now alone, I walked through the autumn leaves of the oaks up Victoria Parade in Fitzroy towards twilight, and I wandered into St Patrick’s Cathedral where I stood in the vestibule and saw a psychedelic stained glass image of one of the apostles. Here the light
M I N U T E S T O WA R : Picnic in Hell In Thessalonica there are large avenues, parks and squares, where elegant lines of trees frame commercial streets with showy shop windows. was shining through the stained glass windows. It sounds such a bad worn-out cliché but at that moment I felt resolved. I believe in the eternity of the soul and the judgment of souls, but I am also not someone who believes in the sanctity of organised religion. All religions are hands pointing to the same mountain of truth. But they also have the capacity to control, the potential to undermine freedom rather than to give it credence. Nonetheless this moment sharpened me and I felt that the time was right for me to depart. Meanwhile back in the Hotel Pella I am dictating in the foyer gazing out onto the busy metropolis. I can see a beautiful clear blue sky and hurrying pedestrians near stalls of ice-cream sellers. In Thessalonica there are large avenues, parks and squares, where elegant lines of trees frame commercial streets with showy shop windows. Neoclassical buildings stand side by side with modern dwellings as the old and present merge at old taverns, ‘ouzeries’, restaurants or ‘bouzouki halls’. Just now a mysterious woman with blonde hair has strode confidently into the foyer where I am dictating looking as if she is late for an appointment and made me think of my father, Patrick, on the Italian Rivierra. He once fell in love with a Greek actress called Melina Mecouri…another Melina. It was in Italy, 1957, while providing a yacht which was being used as a prop in a film, a single masted schooner called Dwyn Wynne. I think the film was called The Woman who came from the Sea. Her red Fiat convertible had broken down and she needed a lift back to Rome from Fumicino. Instead of giving her a lift Patrick fixed her car and in the process lost his chance at love. Now, in this waiting room, the woman who reminds me so much of this actress has found her friends. She is hugging and kissing them and it is heart-warming. I am also waiting for Firouz who is just about to arrive. He is the gentleman that accompanied me the last time to the Middle East as the assistant on the Peace Project and camera operator. ‘Firouz you have arrived. Was it successful?’ He replies blandly with his deadpan irony: ‘Not so successful. The bank is closed and everything is changing. Not good.’ Thursday, 22nd April, <strong>1999</strong>, Hotel Pella Thessalonica, Greece The Hotel Pella has seven flights of stairs and we were sleeping in room 701 on the top floor. Bored, I lounged on my unmade bed and stretching my arm found the select button on the Panasonic remote control and aimed. So we had discovered there are four channels of twenty-four hour sex, where silicone breasted women gyrate and slowly undress to techno Flash Daddy and His Cosmic Suck Sucks music as acid pink telephone numbers flash pulsating across the screen. It was advertising TV-sex or telephone-sex — anything after twenty
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KOSOVO 1999

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