Montenegro: the women behind the warriors

We were invited to dinner at an old French restaurant in Boston to meet with a group of Slavists who were in town for their annual convention. The waitress escorted us to a small room in the back, where we were seated at one of the five round tables. Just as we settled, the lady sitting down and the table next to us accidentally dropped her cane. My partner reached out to lift it.

- Thank you. I knew it will fall, and I knew you will lift it. It’s the reason why I sat here. - she laughed and winked. I hope to be that playful and fun (and flirty!) when I am her age, I thought. (Zorka proudly announced that she is ninety years old as she was sitting down, although you would never tell she is more than fifty by looking at her.)

- I am Milosh.

- Zorka Milich. And you look like a Montenegrin warrior. Are you?

Milosh is over two meters tall, with broad shoulders, and sharp facial features, so she could guess he has Montenegrin heritage by the name and the looks alone...perhaps. But it turned out that her knowledge of Montenegro is much deeper than just the conclusions she could make with these surface observations. Zorka Milich, is a retired professor from New York, the author of Stranger’s Supper: An Oral History of Centenarian Women in Montenegro.

- What is stranger’s supper?

-It is the supper a woman makes on her first night at her husband’s house. The one that she makes for strangers, that marks the beginning of her life, the manifestation of the purpose of her existence.

Zorka’s answer provided the basis for an evening of discussion about Montenegro, patriarchy, our shared history, and experience with mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives. In her book, she interviewed women living in remote villages in Montenegro in 1990, just before fighting erupted again in the Balkans. All women were over 100 years old. Interviewed by Zorka Milich, herself a Montenegrin by origin, these centenarians explain what life was like for the women behind Montenegro's warriors through the Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II.

I ordered her book online on our drive back home and started reading it the moment it arrived in the mail. The stories presented were all familiar to me, I heard some version of them from the women in my own family. Yet, this book set in motion a range of emotions that was initially incredibly difficult to understand. Anger and sorrow often come hand in hand for me, but this book reminded me of the reasons why they do so, and it provided catharsis and acceptance I was not aware that I didn’t already commit to.

Patriarchy has many damaging consequences for society and the individual, but I always believed that one of the most harmful must be the self-oppression it causes in women. The self-harm that carries over through generations, unnoticed, under the cloak of tradition, culture, and the nature of family relationships. The denial of self-love, self-compassion, self-expression, and the selfless investment of energy, time, and emotion in everyone else’s well being, safety, comfort, and happiness. Emotional labor, we refer to it today. But for Montenegrin women in this book, the emotional labor was the least of her burdens.

Born as a disappointment to her family because she was not a boy, a girl arrived in Montenegro with only one mission - to serve and give birth to the men she is not. Each woman interviewed in this book was subject to an arranged marriage, and most have never seen their husbands before. They moved to their family homes on their wedding day, and from that moment on devoted their lives to serving their husbands, their family, and their children. If she is lucky, she was blessed with sons which made her a “good woman” and a “good wife” but if she was so unlucky as to have only daughters, she was as good as a woman who could not have children at all - she was considered useless and her life a failure.

They married strangers, gave birth to their children outside and alone, never cried in front of others, never knew what romance is, worked all days, witnessed unbelievable violence, and experienced loss of several family members, most often their children. The warrior culture of Montenegro demanded this role for women, Milich finds. Each son born meant a stronger family, protected by another “male head” and richer for the family he will start and grow under his parent’s roof. The role of a daughter is to birth those sons, the men who will continue to demand the constraint of her life to the fences of the family house and the surrounding land, while also guaranteeing her protection and the protection of her children. With age, however, women received more respect and more freedom. After they turned fifty, it was acceptable for women to smoke, drink, and even to tell dirty jokes. They enjoyed a status more similar to that of their male partners, as younger women in the family now serve them and their needs. After a lifetime of hard work and service, however, most women do not relax to enjoy the old age, but rather regard themselves as a burden to the family.

Despite the dark picture of reality and the painful existence of these women, there is something equally empowering in these pages. These women’s stories tell us that they too are true warriors and that their superpowers go way beyond the battlefield. They possess the strength rarely seen and their ability to preserve calmness, presence in the moment, beauty and love in their language, and honesty in their words is a true inspiration.

The women who bring logs in one arm and newly born babies in the other when returning home from the mountains are nothing short than superheroes in my world!

This is a beautiful book!

Read it.