ON THE ROAD

The Russian Computer by Semezdin Mehmedinović (Fraktura, Zagreb, 2011)

By: Lamija Neimarlija

“The Russian Computer” by Semezdin Mehmedinović has a timeline from the end of August 1995 until August 1996 and it presents an unintentional diary of moving through Sarajevo – Prague – Zagreb – Phoenix – New York – Phoenix – Washington, DC. In the ‘’Introduction’’, which sets a certain frame for understanding the notes from the diary, where the author explains how this experience of leaving comes as a memory of events that he understood only later on. This story does not integrate reasoning from a (time) distance and consists of notes from periods of moving, without any interventions in the text by the author. Drafts, as starting points for newspaper texts, were made by cutting out the surplus from the manuscript that was a lot longer, because everything he wrote was in the same document (story drafts, songs, letters, magazine texts etc).

The fragment-scenes of his life are from a period when he was leaving his home, from a special psychological state of mind, which he describes (as written in the ‘’Introduction’’), as an urge to give up writing (as soon as he recognises a new place as his own), as a lack of responsibility to what he has written (admits he easily gives up on a manuscript and still loses what he writes), as a joy of writing and as a feeling of indifference at the very thought of publication. There is a conflict between the publication of the manuscript, which Mehmedinović describes as a debt to himself, and these ‘’views’’ which are in the text: This book is written for one reader, for me, because it contains answers that I need. While writing, I kept asking myself – where am I going?, and I ended up (we could say unintentionally) finding out – where do I come from?

Questions without answers

The composition of the novel is a result of this misunderstanding, the publication of something that should not have been published, the literature that was created as a desire to give up on literature… As a certain evidence of Mehmedinović, of the person he was before, this text is not a sum of facts on reality of war and immigration; the emphasis is on the impression left by these facts on his conscience: the horror (hardly awake, on a mattress on a floor, he sees a cat’s head in front of his nose, swinging a mouse in its jaw, left and right), the nothingness (when he buries his friend Karim, he has a need to write but he can not), the ubiquitous death (most of the names in his address book are the names of the dead), the depression (when he arrives in a rented flat in Phoenix)… Often ‘’a small’’ story in Mehmedinović’s note creates a privileged moment, in which experiences are gathered and certain visions of symbolic value come to light. For example, the story of a strange Russian computer tells of Mehmedinović as he was when he was keeping a diary: this computer, unlike other mechanical machines, has no visual idea of a beginning and of an ending, there is no frame of the real A4 page, so the person writing is faced with a misunderstanding between himself and the text. There is not a beginning or an ending to the text, with which Mehmedinović ‘’justifies’’ the composition of his diary notes that were written without an obligation to unity. The media in which the notes were made/kept give evidence of its specificum, of the, as the author says, psychological state in which they were written in.

Destruction of a firm composition is not the only part of this novel that creates ironic meaning. The perspective of a young writer and intellectual allows an ironic shift and the parody is often achieved by pushing over the edge. Mahmedinović chooses his words skillfully to present a certain situation. For example, he sees the members of the anti-diversant unit whiole they are working out, flopping around in their diving suits; then the same scene gets a humours dimension, because a serious situation has been described ‘’realistically’’: And with Miljacka so shallow that their asses keep popping up above the water. The effect he achieves with contrast between a serious situation and a banal event and the detail is very interesting. The crucial questions about the destiny of his family and his future are left unanswered, because in such moments he gives up writing, or he directs his thoughts on something else, as during the conversation with his friend Ćiro M. in Prague: an uneasy conversation about what will Semezdin do when he gets to America, that is, what will he live off of (his friend is not happy with Semezdin’s idea to work as a writer of comic book stories). Instead of an answer, the scene ends with a description of an American girl, serving them in a coffee shop, with a nicely shaped body and unusually large, so that she keeps popping into their frame of view.

On war, metaphors and stylistic figures

A certain counterbalance to the humour, is the emphasis on the pathos, for example, he keeps asking himself What am I doing here? while in a foreign country. Such questions are very ‘’loud’’ when written as a separate note in the diary and the interval between the sections seems uncomfortable, as a piercing silence: Sanja: “Who are you? Where do you come from? And where are you going?, no one will tell you the truth like I will.’’ Individual subjective experiences appear as rare moments of joy (in the smell of the orange trees surrounding the immigrant complex in Phoenix or in the sounds of a familiar language), which exist in the everyday life of an immigrant; but Mehmedinović “strips naked’’ that moment of joy: If we forget the winter smell of an orange flower, Phoenix is one big parking-lot in the middle of a desert. The text is filled with stylistic figures and linguistic bravuras. The author uses metaphor and image to describe the war and immigration. For instance, the inner state of ‘’the writer’’ (his longing for Sarajevo, for his home) reflects on the cities and spaces where he is doomed to stay at: Zagreb is a vicious city, because it treats its river as if it does not exist; the moving from Phoenix to D.C. means being three hours closer to Sarajevo – the first step towards home… Such is the thought process of his inner life: when in Prague, he would imagine Vltava to be Miljacka, because only in comparison to Miljacka’s bed can he have a clear view of the four sides of the world.

Mehmedinović’s writing seems to be the result of the conscious and mostly of the unconscious mechanism of writing. The strong penetration of the unconscious into the conscious can be explained as an identity crises. It can be stated that the unconscious level, when he leaves Sarajevo, was a search for a new place, which he will recognise as his own. In any case, the author does not want to tell a story of lives of citizens in a city under siege, or of a life of an immigrant or considers it to be possible. He gives a hint of this surviving below the threshold of humanity with his poetic expression. Hence, if there are reasons to publish a diary on war or immigration, they should be explored in moments that he ‘’gathers’’ in a vision, a picture or a metaphor. He gives them the right to speak for him.