This is my grandma.
When I was a kid, my grandma gave me a book.
It was a children's book.
My famous author, Jovan Jovanovic, is my.
It was written in Cyrillic.
Back then, my home country still existed.
Yugoslavia.
And in Yugoslavia, two sets of alphabets were used.
The Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet.
I learned to read and write both.
And then the politicians came and told us
that our friends and neighbors and families were not
our friends, neighbors, and families.
But Ustashe, and Cetnice, and Bale.
And then there was war.
And Yugoslavia died.
Now, instead of one country, there are six individual countries.
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.
With the beginning of the war, Croats
stopped using the Cyrillic alphabet.
I am Croat.
Now, when I go to Bosnia and pass through the Serbian regions
of Bosnia or when I go to Serbia to visit my family,
I can't read a thing.
I can't read road signs.
I can't read nothing.
I have no sense of orientation whatsoever.
People have all kinds of New Year's resolutions
to stop smoking, to lose weight.
My New Year's resolution is to learn to read and write
the Cyrillic alphabet again.
So when I visited my mom over the holidays,
I rummaged through her cellar.
And I opened all the drawers and all the boxes
until I found my book.
This is the children's book my grandma gave me.
I've been practicing.
It's been really hard, but I think I'm getting there.
I'm going to read you my favorite story.
U mraku.
Ni e vampir što u mraku preti, več se može o što god zapeti.
Zapneš, padneš, krv, prolieš, mlaku, zatubudi, oprezan u mraku.
And I can write, too.
