The Greatest Kind of Writing

More about my new writer/filmmaker friend Roman: about 15 years ago he was the most prominent journalist in Croatia, so much so that the cafes and bars would bubble with discussion about his bold and controversial columns.

Then he wrote "the one" that made him "Public Enemy No. 1" of the totalitarian regime. He called for the political overthrow of the government, a peaceful, legal overthrow -- not a military coup (I read the translated column online). He pointed out their greedy, criminal, murderous ways to the public. And unlike previous columns he'd written, there was dead silence. No letters, phone calls, no discussion or opinions from his readers.

The government stated that his dissent must be stopped, and then they killed his wife with a car bomb. Then Roman had to scurry at night from friendly house to house, hiding while they tried to track him down. When war broke out, he saw his friends killed and wild pigs let loose in the streets to eat the flesh of the freshly dead, while Serbian snipers waited at the ready on rooftops. So the dead could not be retrieved without risking additional deaths. Ten of his friends decided they'd make a go for it, calling him a coward for not wanting to. They ran out, and seven of them were shot dead within seconds.

Some more of his friends were crucified, actually nailed to trees alive, with a booby-trap grenade rigged so they couldn't be moved, or anyone within 100 meters would be killed from the blast. "Can you imagine watching your best friends nailed up there, dying slowly in agony, and there is nothing you can do?" he asked me.

It was not until the Americans came, with advanced technology and tactics, and they were able to drill delicately through the back of the trees to defuse the grenades and let some men down. Even baby Croat boys were killed, or the breasts of the mother were carved off so the baby would starve and die.

Can you imagine what hate would propagate such acts?

He was eventually able to slip out of the country to the United States. To gain US political asylum, you must "prove" that you would be killed if you returned to your native country. So, the CIA agents and immigration officials questioned him at length, and then a CIA agent asked the final question, "How can you prove you'd be killed if you return?"

Roman pulled out an internal CIA report stamped, "Top Secret." It stated, quite simply, that he, Roman "XXXX", the dissident journalist, would be killed by the Croatian government if he were found. The agent asked, "How did you get this document?"

"What? You guys think you are the only spies? It's a war! Everyone is a spy."

His political asylum was granted.

I have the deepest respect for Roman. He had the courage to write the truth, and ultimately, when the totalitarian Croatian government came down, his writing helped change the world.

That is the greatest kind of writing.