Gora in the picture - Gora in the heart

Abstract

It has been said many times before and it will doubtless be repeated here today, and from very competent sources that Goranies are a truly unique, specfic ethnic community in our lands. They have carried their specfic character through the turbulent history of the Balkans, in uninterrupted continuity, since the Middle Ages to this day, and there are irrefutable records to prove it. What is the true essence of this specfic Gorany identity, which history and their neighbours are constantly challenging and threatening, and to which they cling so powerfully and so passionately as a guarantee of their survival? In short, in our time, the essence lies in that Goranies are Serbs by origin and Muslims by religion, or, even more fatefully, that this is how they want to remain, cherishing both components of their collective being. Can one be a Serb and a Muslim in this day and age? Processes in southeastern Europe, among the South Slavs, their politics and churches, have long moved in the direction where the only possible answer to this question is in the negative. All the forces of the world seem to have come into collusion not for the first time to persuade the Goranies of the impossibility of their survival as they are in their own lands. But Goranies are still here, in their beautiful Sar Mountains, and this is where they want to stay. The Gorany story, thus, is a testimonial to the threatened identity of a small ethnic group of peaceful, good and proud people, the target for the intolerant chauvinistic passions of Balkan nationalism, which Academician Milovan Ekmecic has aptly named "doomsday nationalism". The right to be different, which is all that Goranies ask, is under attack. The message of their philosophy of life is simple: Be whatever you want to be, but let us be what we are. We leave you alone, so please leave us alone! We are prepared to cooperate with everybody, we can endure and survive even without cooperation with those who do not want to cooperate; the only thing we are not prepared to do is to disappear just because somebody seems to wish and to be trying to make us disappear. Is it so much to ask? It seems to be far too