I'M THE ONLY ONE LEFT TO LIE IN THIS CEMETERY: Highlander Miko:‘That Winter, When My Mother Died, I Was Left Alone With No Income’

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This story came of its own accord. It imposed itself at the end of the day. And it moved us deeply.

The farm estate Caričina. The village of the same name. While a world wonder, a 1,400-kilogram stallion, Medo, is racing towards the Guinness record, propping up and running around, we catch a bit of shade under the eaves of the stable. Flies attack. Even in the mountains of Pešter, it's hot. The view stretches out to the hills, dotted with forests. To the right, a herd of semi-feral horses. In front, on the slope, a wooden house and a few outbuildings. Amidst the modern farm lies a trace of past times, of passive regions.

A few workers pass by. Most have gone to the meadows. Acres upon acres need mowing. The livestock is grazing, the shepherds are with them. Only purebred horses and newly lambed sheep with lambs remain in the stable.

"Oh, you heard the journalists were coming, so you got yourself all dressed up," a worker jokes from the direction of the enclosure log to the newcomer, who is wearing work trousers and a jumper.

Miko blushes and smiles, revealing a single front tooth. He left the Angus cattle up in the hills. He tends to these purebred cows here on the Selek family farm. The farm is vast, sprawling across the land. It's full of livestock because it’s a source of healthy food for their hotel in Sjenica, but also a paradise for relaxation. The Nemanjić dynasty, as well as Ottoman lords, once enjoyed this place.

Amidst the farm, there’s a weekend house for when the family visits from Novi Pazar, where they’re from, or from abroad, where they started heading back in the 1980s.

"Boss Feho (Fehim Selek, editor's note) is a friend, a comrade. My boss Feho. There’s only one Feho," he repeats, though no one asked, and we look at each other, wondering what's up with this man.

He says he's from Caričina. One of the few souls left here, about twenty kilometres from Sjenica. The desolate beauty of Serbia. Nothing new. And he just went off somewhere. We set out to do our story, and Medo distracted us...

Time flies. The sun has long dipped lower. Darkness will soon fall, and we haven’t filmed the Angus cattle. Our driver, Vlada, doesn’t want to overuse the car on the hills and farm tracks. I hop into the old van with Zoka. Another Miko, the farm supervisor, waits for the workers with tractors full of hay bales. Frustrated, he gets behind the wheel of the van, likely thinking: "Do I really have to drive these folks from Belgrade around when there's work to be done?" Bato, as his shirt reads, jumps in too.

“Let’s roll!,” we exclaim.

We race down the dirt road. To the right, a man is washing his boots with a hose next to a weekend house.

“Heya, what’s up?”

They call out to each other. We stop. He poses.

"I’ve been married three times, divorced as many. Now I’ve run away from women to the village," laughs a man from Sjenica with a government job, who often visits his ancestral land. We pass two or three more houses. The rest is just hills upon hills. And no cows in sight. We stop at a curve.

“Hey, Mikoooo,” echoes from both front seats.

Nothing..

"Where did he disappear to now, when we're in a hurry?" Miko, the driver, grumbles..

Bato jumps out and heads straight for the wooden house we saw from the stable. He disappears down a path, a little lower. We watch him from behind, the large, square stone below, the old logs above, weathered through decades, if not a century. Around it, a few white stones peek out from the grass.

I’m taken back to my childhood. In my mind’s eye, I see the top of that hill on the border between Serbia and Montenegro. And the old house where my grandmother and grandfather, long since passed, lived. Much larger than this one. And all those houses on the Rabrenska Hills, long abandoned. It’s like I’m actually looking at the storage room, the stone-walled basement where the chickens laid eggs. And how my grandmother would chase us when we collected them.

"I don’t know what my collateral is now," she would shout as we ran away.

I also remember the wooden stairs. No one has stepped on them for a long time. And who would dare now? And the black-and-white photo of great-grandfather Miloš on them, with a traditional Serbian cap, thick moustache, and white felt shoes, which I bet are still in the drawer of the electric stove. The same stove that was more like an ornament because it wasn’t considered proper at my grandmother’s unless there was a fire in the hearth. Memories flood in like a film - my brother and I sneaking up to the wooden house’s upper floor. Passing by trunks, an old, tilted mirror, with an embroidered cloth above it... The attic hatch, which we never dared to open... And Mum finding us there.

"Get out! It’s all old; the boards will break, and you’ll get hurt," she yells, grumbling again about the missing padlock.

Bato and Miko appear. I return to reality. As their figures grow larger and closer, I watch the tin being added to the roof of this wooden house. It turns out to be Miko’s. At the front, which we only see in the drone footage later, there’s plaster over the stone. And a PVC window has been installed. A pole stands in front of the house, so there’s electricity. An old boiler sits in the yard. From the upper floor, out of that wood, a pipe emerges, probably for water, descending to the ground. Clothes hang on the line. In front, a bright tarpaulin covers a haystack. Next to it, a doghouse with a blue tin roof... At the bottom, a spring. The Empress’s (Caričin’s), presumably…

The fences around the house have fallen over. Above them, the cows have also lain down. A goat slips away.

They get into the van and step on it. The Angus cattle are still nowhere to be seen.

"Where are these cows?" our driver finally asks.

We reach the highest hill. The view stretches wide and far... But it’s just barren hills.

"Come on, come on, come on!" Miko the shepherd disappears down the slope.

Shadows are already falling. We’re at the top of the hill. Through the grass, through the thin meadow stalks, white stone crosses emerge. And black slabs!

"What is this?!" I ask as if I don’t see it myself.

"A cemetery, can’t you see?" our driver responds.

"What cemetery, when there’s no house except for those two or three we passed?!"

The Angus cattle appear. Black, robust. There’s Miko too. Zoka and I are already among the gravestones. Mainly Bošković’s. And one other larger family. All covered in grass. No candles have been lit recently. At the base of a newer slab, the names of numerous grandchildren who erected it. They’ve done their duty, it seems, for those who passed long ago.

"My Bošković’s," Miko arrives.

"They came from Montenegro long, long ago."

He approaches a black gravestone. Crosses himself. Starts to cry.

"Look how beautiful my parents were," he says, kissing the images engraved on the stone.

Miko is over 60 years old now.

"I was born here; I've never left. I started secondary school, but I never finished, and I've never really worked anywhere," he explains.

As is clear from the gravestone, he lost his father Rafailo at just ten years old. And I’m reminded again of that border, and of my other great-grandfather on my mother’s side, who also died young. Rafailo. It took us children a long time to understand that someone could be named Rafailo. What an unusual name it seemed to us. But in Montenegro, it was perfectly normal. After all, the Rafailović family carried the name on.

"That winter of 2010, when my mother died, it was particularly hard for me. There were so many things that needed to be done in the house, food... and I was alone. I had no income. I lived off this little bit of livestock. Back then, I worked for Boss Feho in the horse stables for a few winters. He paid me well and helped me out. Now I help him with the Angus cattle. He always pays," Miko says, a repetition from the beginning of the story.

If it weren’t for the farm, Miko would practically have no company at all.

"There’s no one left in the village except for one man, a little older than me, in one house, and another young man in another house. And that fellow you passed by earlier, he sometimes comes, but he doesn’t keep any livestock. And I’m the only one left for this cemetery. No one else. The first and the last. That’s me..."

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