Nationalism You Can\'t Go Home

Nationalism

You can't go home again, Yugoslavia" -- Natasha Radojcic's novel Homecoming

The title of Natasha Radojcic's novel Homecoming is bitterly ironic. On one hand, the main character Halid has been released from the army and thus can 'go home' to the land he has been fighting to free. He can reclaim the national identity he has been attempting to liberate from tyranny. Yet, rather than view this prospect with joy, home is "the last place in the world he wanted to see" after witnessing scenes of war, and bearing the scars of war upon his soul. Although he fought for his homeland, he has no desire to live there or return there, yet feels inexorably pulled, by the force of history, back to his childhood dwelling, just as the force of history pulled him to fight for the army. He has no way of getting a job anywhere else; all employment is barred to those who are not 'local.' He has not even been reading the letters written to him by his mother, because the letters bear only the drumbeat of death from his homeland, the death that eventually will come to him by the end of the novel.

Halid is traumatized and confused because he does not want to return to a place that should bring him comfort. In fact, rather than seeing his mother, he instead avoids his childhood home, although he knows his mother loves him. Home has become a prison, in different ways, for both son and mother. Home, for author Radojcic, is impossible to replicate and to restore, despite the nationalist ideal that homecoming and a return to a state of pure, national, unity is possible. This is a historical lie, like the lie that war can be liberating or cleansing. But despite the fact that nationalism is a human construction, the fable that human beings have created about national identity is so power that people die over it. The lie has become so powerful, like custom, it is inescapable. The ideal of a national home and identity entraps Halid and causes his death and fighting for a nationalist cause provides him no comfort of return or sense of internal or external stability. Halid is confronted with the reality that he can never be the same man he was before the war, that he cannot 'go home' again, like the old cliche. And even if he could return to a land that was the same before the war, this would be empty -- reminders of the recent communist past and the failures of communism, another lie of commonly shared identity line the streets.

Halid's own personal past and childhood identity has become damaged, even if it ever was pure, by the wartime experience. He has lost his chance to have a family, he believes, and to find identity in yet another place and 'home.' His one hope is to marry his best friend's widow, but because Momir was a Christian, Momir's family hates Halid. Halid sees little chance to escape the fences between neighbors the war has created, and when he does finally return to see his mother her touch is almost wounding to him, rather than life-sustaining. He feels she cannot understand him because of the gulf between their experiences. He is called a hero upon arriving, but even though his side has won, he feels as if he has lost everything -- his family, his ability to love, his will to live, his best friend, as well as his home.

Because of the laws prohibiting individuals from working anywhere but 'home' and the fact that the war he fought in was supposed to be for a national identity and home, home provides such a potent, gripping force for Halid that he does not leave his own town, even though he knows his 'friends' desire to kill him. The idea of friends is now confusing, as the Christians he once called friends before the war now loathe the sight of him. Thus the skill of Homecoming is that it shows the paradox of national identity. The power that we invest in the concept of home and national self-determination often kills us, and kills our sense of self, even though it is supposed to provide these essential elements of our character. National identity and familial ties are not so powerful that they can erase the memory of wartime atrocities committed on a level of simple, basic humanity. Nationalism destroys Halid's hope of marriage and a family.

Halid cannot entirely extricate himself from his bonds to his homeland, however much he may wish to evade them and escape. There is no sense that even a man who wishes to eschew homecoming all together can evade his destiny, and Halid's acceptance of his death seem almost tragic and Grecian in style. Briefly, he entertains a plot to go to America with Momir's widow Mira, but is unsurprised when it comes to failure. The novel echoes the themes of the film "LAmerica" which is also about the power of place. "LAmerica" is set in the formerly communist land of Albania. The film shows immorality of a different kind, not a state-generated war, but two Italian conmen trying to make a 'fast buck.' However, one of them, Gino, becomes emotionally involved with the people of Albania and like Halid, forms ties that cross narrow bonds of identity. The lie of a singular national identity and narrative in the film is demonstrated by how the Albanians view Italy as a kind of Promised Land, just as the Italians see Albania's poverty as a money-making opportunity, and how Gino comes to look like an Albanian, simply by becoming dirty like a refugee. Like Halid, everyone dreams of escape, even if national partisans insist that they should only dream of home, but often the appearance of identity is merely a surface construction, a title.