A Message from God?

On a journey of enlightenment, a brave author is attacked without provocation.

Bob was one of the lucky ones.

BELGRADE, SERBIA – This morning, I was either Tippi Hedren or touched by God. Explanation to follow.

As you can see from the dateline, here I am again in Belgrade, a lively city in the heart of the not-especially mysterious Balkans. You might recall from my dispatches last summer that I’m writing a book about this country. Obviously, publishers are champing at the bit to get dibs on the manuscript. Why?

1. Serbia’s unbelievably traumatic history and its location on the map have put a tiny little landlocked nation at the center of human events — in the 20th century alone World War I, World War II, the Cold War and Slobodan Milosevic’s barbaric assaults on Bosnia and Croatia in the early 90s — not to mention many bloody centuries as the last European bastion of the Ottoman Empire.

2. Therefore, periodically, it is the subject of extraordinary expeditions by authors documenting the trauma, tragedy and complexity of the country and its people. The most famous of those, from 1941, was Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by the illustrious Rebecca West. Other westerners (Robert Kaplan, Misha Glenny, Tim Noah, Brian Hall) have followed brilliantly, if not quite as majestically, in her footsteps.

3. America, understandably, is on the edge of its seat for the next such chronicle. The amount of curiosity about, passion for and dare I say obsession with Serbia makes any new book on this subject a guaranteed blockbuster. I couldn’t have chosen better to write Taylor Swift’s I-Love-Cats Diet.

That last part is possibly not true. The most common Google searches for the place are: “serbia is where”  and “serbia is in which country.” When I told my agent of my plans, she asked me if I was drunk. But I am undaunted. It is but for me, in my journey of gonzo cultural anthropology, to demonstrate a special sauce. Part of that is to leaven the historical pain and horror with elements of travelog, documenting some of the country’s quite endearing qualities, its jaw dropping absurdities, its native geniuses, its untold stories and its hidden treasures.

Rebecca West ventured hither and yon in what was then Yugoslavia, but she never got to the Bac Paprikash Festival, Waiter High School, the chomping grounds of Count Dracula or the world’s worst wax museum. She also did not uncover a human trait, especially but not uniquely prevalent among Serbs, that may explain the most catastrophic and irrational acts of violence in the history of man. Have I blundered into the cave containing the Dead Sea Scrolls? Have I stumbled upon the Oldavai Gorge? Won’t say more now, but just maybe I have.

But I’ve veered off the point. Early this morning, as I walked Henry the Small White Dog along a still boulevard in New Belgrade, I was attacked. This is reputedly one of the safest cities in Europe. Street incidents are seldom more violent than a pickpocket or a purse-snatching. But there I was, in broad daylight, assaulted not one, not two but three times.

By birds. Hooded crows, to be precise. Three solid thumps to my back and the back of the head. Utterly unprovoked. I don't have a bone of anti-crow prejudice in my body.

So … why? One possibility is that I am, indeed, a latter-day Tippi Hedren. In 1961, you’ll recall, in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, she makes two grave mistakes. The first is trying to cross a sand dune with Rod Taylor in heels. The second is going outdoors among an aggressive flock of hooded crows. Both were terrifying.

Obviously, I’ve investigated the latter. Some answers come courtesy of the NIH library, which turned up a 2023 Hungarian research study whimsically titled, “Is the Hitchcock Story Really True? Public Opinion on Hooded Crows in Cities as Input to Management.” The pertinent findings:

The Hooded crow (Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758) is a large crow species widespread in much of Eurasia. This species used to be a typical bird of rural agricultural areas; however in recent decades, this species has colonized large cities, rapidly adapted to urban environments, and increased in number in many cities in Europe. Hooded crows are known to have outstanding cognitive abilities and general intelligence among birds which make them especially successful in adapting to new environments. Crows can also be noisy at times, and permanent noise is also a cause of concern. During the breeding season, hooded crows can be aggressive around their nests and will attack humans and their pets by dive-bombing them.

Aha!

Perhaps that is what took place this morning. But I cannot exclude another possibility. In the aforementioned Rebecca West masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the titular bird refers to an episode on the eve of medieval Serbian prince Knez Lazar’s fateful 1389 battle against the Ottoman Turks on a field in Kosovo. Both armies were wiped out, including Lazar himself, an episode that lives today in the heart and psyche of every Serb (mostly to their detriment). As the legend goes — it’s called “The Kosovo Myth” — Lazar was visited by the spirit of the biblical prophet Elijah in the form of the bird, and told battlefield sacrifice for the Serb nation would lead him to the Kingdom of Heaven. His subsequent martyrdom has been embraced as national destiny ever since.

What if the hooded crows were delivering me a message from the divine? Perhaps God was telling me to persevere. To make any sacrifice for the cause of my manuscript. It makes sense, right? Or maybe the message wasn’t from Elijah. Maybe it was from my agent: “Enough of this. Walk the dog. Pack your bags and come home.”