Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

A farewell for Serbs

Briefly pausing after gracefully bearing inky espressos and sleek Perriers to a hushed group gathered before a large television screen at his smoky cafe, Misko Sekulic offered a pungent observation.

On the screen, his team, Serbia-Montenegro, buckled under Argentina's relentless attack, suffering a second consecutive loss that eliminated it from the World Cup.

Sekulic shook his head.

"Today was the second to last time the world will ever hear the old Yugoslavian anthem," he said.

The last time will most likely be Wednesday, when the team faces Ivory Coast in a game inconsequential to Serbia-Montenegro's chances of advancing to the next round, then bids farewell to the World Cup - and to much more.

When the players return home, their nation will no longer exist because only days before the World Cup began, Montenegro, a spot on the Balkan map inhabited by about 600,000 people, declared its independence.

But that was only the last in a series of steps that began more than a decade ago, as ethnic conflict resulted in the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Created were new nations that include millions who speak the same language and often share the same culture, that of the Serbs.

These events, though they occur an ocean away, affect Serbs in the Las Vegas Valley, in as many different ways as the reasons for the wars. For many, the manner in which the news from home is absorbed also is shaped by whether they arrived by choice 30 years ago, or in escape from the nightmarish violence of the 90s, or because an already-established relative petitioned them through the immigration system last year.

Some local Serbs in a community that ranges from 1,690 to 10,000 - depending on whether you consult 2004 U.S. Census Bureau estimates or a local Serb - take the ongoing events abroad as a sign that their life here is set, since their former life no longer exists.

Alan Jurasovic, who like many local Serbs came to Las Vegas as a refugee, sat in his job recently at the Citizenship Project, a Culinary Union-sponsored program that helps people become citizens, trying to explain what his mother saw on a recent trip back to their Bosnian hometown.

"It's all new people nothing is the same," he concluded. Later, the 31-year-old noted that he has not insisted on teaching his Las Vegas-born children to speak Serbian. When they visit the former Yugoslavia someday, he said, "we will travel with an American passport."

Others, like Ljilja Savicic, who runs a store called Balkan Express next to Sekulic's cafe - "like a store in Yugoslavia 20 years ago," Sekulic says - are not without pain for their country's history.

Savicic, 45, said she was a chess champion in Belgrade and came nine years ago to the United States as a refugee. Her first year here, she said, "It was like I was blind. I didn't speak the language or know anybody."

She draws a map on a piece of paper on the store's counter, showing the conflicts in the mid-'90s. She ends by drawing an "X" through the map.

"Now, I don't have a country anymore. The USA is my country," she said.

For Savicic and others, the distance from home - geographic and emotional - allows some of the conflicts from abroad to disappear here. In Savicic's case, that means that her friends now come from all across the former map of Yugoslavia - whether Muslim, Croatian or Serbian - or from elsewhere.

After Argentina's 6-0 thrashing of Serbia-Montenegro on Friday - the equivalent of perhaps a 60-0 drubbing in American football - Branko Kruscic, a 38-year-old who also arrived as refugee and is now a floor supervisor at the Rampart Casino, spoke of a Bosnian Muslim who had been a prisoner during the war meeting the Serbian in Las Vegas who had been his guard.

"They shook hands, just like that - because they know in this country people don't tolerate this conflict," he said.

Kruscic and others said they find it nearly impossible to explain their history and culture to new neighbors and friends here, especially since TV news tends to reduce complex conflicts to "good guy-bad guy" scenarios.

Savicic's store - as well as Sekulic's Alexandra Cafe and two other Serbian restaurants in town - serve as clearinghouses of information for recent arrivals in need of jobs or places to live.

A few blocks south along South Jones Boulevard, the Saint Simeon Serbian Orthodox Church is another anchor for several dozen local Serbs on a weekly basis, and as many as 200 on holidays such as Christmas and the New Year.

Aleksandar Knezevich, church president, said there are plans to build a large cathedral where a small chapel now stands, a $2 million project that could take another 1 1/2 years. The expansion, he said, is a sign of the Serbian community's growth and its financial stability.

And soccer is another unifying element. Local Serbs, like most immigrant communities gathered around large screens in restaurants, bars and cafes in the weeks leading up the World Cup's July 9 finale, have their own soccer team - the Serbian Stars.

Milutin Nikolic, 58, plays with the Stars. He came to this country in 1971 and played in the first American Soccer League, now defunct.

Nikolic, who runs an auto repair shop, said he has done free repair work for recently-arrived Serbs.

"We are like a family," he said, pointing to his heart.

Across the table from him, Ognjen Brnjos, a 28-year-old truck driver from Belgrade, compared Serbian culture to Hispanics.

"We like close friends, social gatherings a lot of what we are doing now," he said, passing his hand over the table.

"You don't have that much here," he added.

After everyone left the cafe, Sekulic noted that in the next World Cup, Serbia will be an independent nation, with its own anthem. Then he displayed his county's characteristic dark humor, repeating a joke circulating among his people.

"We're like the Nokia cellphone," he said. "With each model, we get smaller and smaller."

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