Robert Šoko: Vozdra Mister Štukan, how‘s life in Sarajevo these days? This summer I stumbled upon the book “Blank”, your recent masterpiece and read it in less than 4 hours (200 pages). Mesmerizing and brutally honest – chapeau!
And not only the story is breathtaking, but you also get the reader close to people like Angelina Jolie and/or Brad Pitt. What happened?

Feđa Štukan:
I was auditioning here for Angelina Jolie’s movie, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Then I got the role. We were supposed to shoot here I Sarajevo, but the Women of Srebrenica stood up and said: “Ah, you cannot make the movie.” Actually, it was a problem that a Muslim girl falls in love with a Serbian soldier. That was the first problem. And that was the truth. I played a bad guy, a Serbian soldier who rapes a Muslim girl, and then the good guy – a Serbian soldier who doesn’t rape the girl – kills me. It was a film about one Serbian unit that goes, kills, rapes and that stuff. 

I played in a movie before Angelina Jolie’s movie, where I had the lead role about a real-life situation that happened in one rape camp on the Serbian side. The story I played in was the truth. The girl fell in love with the soldier, who actually didn’t rape her. He was one the chiefs in that camp. It was a true story. It wasn’t imaginary.

Anyway, we were shooting in Budapest and I was on the set with Angelina and then we met, Brad Pitt and I. And then we went to Hollywood as Brad and Angelina’s guests at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. That was the start of our friendship, and that was how it all basically started. Brad told me: “Put it down on paper what you just told me. Whatever: one page, two pages.” And that became a book. I wrote those two pages and then I wrote some more. I added a line here and a line there. Something that I remembered, which I considered important to be in the movie. I added this and that and the other. And it became a book in the end.

Up until meeting Brad, I had never ever considered writing a book. Brad gave me the idea together with Angelina. Without that idea, I would never have sat down and written anything.

Robert Rigney:
Was it difficult writing the book?

Feđa Štukan:
I didn’t think about it. I had never thought about it. I never thought that I would write this book. Never. But it became a book after nine years. And how I published the book, this is the story: my friends are all pilots. All sorts of pilots. Helicopter pilots, big airline pilots, small airline pilots. But we are all pilots. And everyone loves to talk about the airplane that you are flying. So, if I am flying helicopters I will try to lord it over your airplane. So that your choice of aircraft is the best in the world and everything else is just wrong. You are the best. So, my best friend told me: “You must be fucking out of your mind to fly on a fucking paraglider. And I said to myself, “You are my best friend. I didn’t expect you to shit on my aircraft.” It’s one of my aircraft, not the only one. He referred to that kind of aircraft which I flew mostly, and it is fucking amazing because it is the latest in technology. Every day new models come out that fly higher and faster.

And so I said to him: “I will copy and paste one text about the paraglider. And I did tell him about flying close to the Himalayas with the eagles. And the paraglider is the only aircraft that can put you in that situation. No other aircraft can do that. In the world. Only paraglider.

And I said: “I will copy and paste one part of the text for you. And when you read this about paragliding you will completely change your mind.” Because he doesn’t know anything about paragliding. He just thinks it’s a suicidal kick, a ticket to sure death.

He told me: “I didn’t know you were writing.” And I said, “I don’t write. I just happened to have written something about paragliding, which I will send you.”

“No, no,” he said. “Send me everything that you write.”

I said: “No way man. Because you are my friend, and I want it to stay like that. Because I don’t want you to know what is written inside. Nobody should know that. Not even my parents  know. Not even my wife knows. When I published that book, I published it on Amazon at first on a Kindle, I said to my wife, “I forgot to tell you, I published a book. And she said, “What fucking book? You never wrote a book. What book are you talking about?” I said: “I wrote that book while I was sitting there. I was writing something.

Robert Rigney:
The culture of Sarajevo during the war. It is said by some that there were more cultural productions in Sarajevo during the siege than at any time previously or hence. What was it like as an artist in Sarajevo during the war?

Feđa Štukan:
The energy in young people was at such a high level because it was very obvious that you could lose your life at any moment. A lot of times it happened that we were one group of people that was always going to parties. There were parties all over the fucking place.  All over the place. When you walked down the street you heard the music from every second window. Everybody was partying.

Robert Šoko:
While the city was being attacked?

Feđa Štukan:
Yes. Because maybe it was your last moment. And for a lot of people that was the last moment.  Everyone felt that.  Somehow people lived during that time like every second in their lives counted. I continued to live, not in that sense – like drinking and taking drugs – but in all other senses and all other ways I am living every day fully. I am always on my motorcycle every day. Or in my airplane, or whatever. I am just enjoying life all the time.

Robert Rigney:
Do you think this has something to do with what you went through during the war?

Feđa Štukan:
During the war I understood what life is about. Life is short. Life can be taken away in a moment. I started to appreciate life more. On the other hand, I started to do drugs a lot. Actually, I started to use drugs more when I left Sarajevo and went to Germany. But there were drugs there also. Not heavy drugs, but there was marijuana. Everyone had plants in their homes.

Robert Rigney:
After the war you moved to Frankfurt, you and you band-members. How did you make a living?

Feđa Štukan:
We were living in the apartment – it was actually like a commune, more like a commune than an apartment.  More like a squat. All the time there were  drug dealers were coming in and out. When someone robbed a gasoline station, they brought the money to our apartment to count and split that money. Or when some new hookers came, the pimps came to our flat to pick them up. The big drug dealers were also there. It was the meeting point of all the scum in Frankfurt, actually, in that little apartment there.  We were full of drugs all the time because all the big dealers and the smaller ones went there to cut the pieces and mix the heroin and cocaine with some sugar and blah,blah,blah. Also,  thieves were coming to us. They had a tool for picking the locks all over the place; there were seven or eight sets of these little tools; they came there to practice on the locks. So, it was like a hub for all the criminals of Frankfurt. For the big, big fish and the smaller ones. Everyone came there.

Robert Rigney:
And also with regards to this period of your life, you had to do with the Yugo nightlife scene. What was that like?

Feđa Štukan:
In Germany it was very clear, these ethnic separation in clubs. In Vienna the ethnic groups were together and still they are together, all three nations. They lived like they lived before. There are some new people who came after the war, opening clubs only for Orthodox or only for Catholics or Bosniaks. But most of the people from my generation still live together.

I was there in a book promotion in Vienna several months ago and I acted in a few theatrical productions there, and everybody comes. They have mailing lists with all names. Whereas in Germany, you knew the names and who was who and they kept separate. Our band was totally mixed and made up of different nationalities, but in Germany we knew in which kind of club we were going to play.

Robert Rigney:
When you were in Frankfurt did you ever go to Berlin?

Feđa Štukan:
Upon leaving Sarajevo in 1995 we were actually first in Berlin, in Kottbusser Tor. Me and my bass player were caught taking drugs. The Lutheran church – the guy from the church – he is a great guy, a priest – he is still alive, but very old – he actually hooked us up with that church. We dealt with those sorts of people: believers, followers of the Lutheran way of thinking, when we came to Berlin. But we first went to Munich, I think. Deutsche Welle, who knew that we were coming from Sarajevo, they invited us to appear as guests on a TV show.

We went there, and we were supposed to stay there, and we stayed there for around a month or something. But they caught us taking drugs – me and the bass player – and told us that it was over between us and them and we were supposed to go to one Jürgen’s apartment. Jürgen’s apartment was great, a huge penthouse apartment. He had some sort of crises there. He wanted to stop taking heroin, and so he locked himself in that apartment where he had all other drugs. So when we arrived in that apartment, Jürgen said, basically: “Use whatever you like.” It was full of drugs. All drugs. Except heroin. So we, basically, made ourselves at home.

Robert Rigney:
What is it that you experienced which accounts for the fact that you have stayed clean all these years?

Feđa Štukan:
I have a friend, who is a doctor. She’s an anesthesiologist, and she thinks that when I die, they should take my brain and slice it open and see what happened in that brain to determine how it is possible that I could have survived all that I survived. My doctor who was also in the academy of stage arts and dealt with drug addicts all his life, he also told me: “I’ve never known a case like yours. I don’t know what is happening there. I saw all kinds of addicts. I can tell you, you are one of five people, I’m not sure who they are, that shouldn’t be alive today, but congratulations to you for what you  have been through and what you survived.

Robert Rigney: 
OK. Another subject:
Narodna Muzika (folk music). What is your take on it?

Feđa Štukan:
I cannot stand folk music. I really cannot. Because the people that are fond of that kind of music actually started all of this shit (the wars).

Nationalism is a part of folklore. And religion is also a part of folklore, and more so than in bigger areas. And that music is also a part of folklore. In my head everything is clear. So it’s really like a clash of cultures going on. That gap between people from big cities and people from villages and small towns is bigger than the differences between Catholics and Muslims. Culturally, sociologically, in all ways.

It is a big difference in knowledge and in understanding things and in terms of openness to everything. There is really a big difference.

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Copyrights © Robert Rigney & Robert Šoko | Interviewed 14. October 2024, Berlin

This interview is a part of our greater imagination aiming at completing a BalkanBeats Book.