Actress Mira Furlan said this for Feral last year, and four months later it is completely certain that her nostalgia for the streets of her native town will remain in the realm of dreams; thanks to one shameful verdict issued by the Municipal Court in Zagreb.
On Saturday 31st March, at the pages reserved for show business news and reports from competitions for misses and misters of various towns and villages, Vecernji list published the news that Mira Furlan had lost the case against the capital city. The case against Mira Furlan and her husband Goran Gajic was started in June 1992, and the aim of the procedure was to invalidate their right of tenure in the apartment in Petrova Street. About nine years later, the judge of the Municipal Court in Zagreb Zivana Perkov issued the verdict "on behalf of the Republic of Croatia" against Mira Furlan and her right to be the owner of the apartment that she inherited from her grandmother.
This dry, bureaucratic formulation deprived of elementary literacy, has temporarily ended the ten years long heroic war of the Croatian men and women against Mira Furlan; besides, the fact that it was fought with dry legal language, this war was also conducted with breezy newspaper articles that stunk of stale domestic chauvinism and were motivated by the holy mission to make the "state" empty of "people and things" as soon as possible.
"This verdict 'on behalf of the Republic of Croatia' is a definite and clear message to me to stop fooling myself and expecting that the things between me and Zagreb will settle down in the near future", said Mira Furlan, and added: "The irony is that this court procedure, which started nine years ago, has been finished now, when the government has changed, and allegedly democracy won. I am sorry that I dared to believe that there was the need for dialogue. I am most grateful for the efficient cure against nostalgia, which was so promptly sent to me in the form of this verdict. The city of Zagreb, which sued me, has won another victory and I congratulate it from the bottom of my heart. Cheers!"
After being informed that the actress and her husband left Zagreb, the Zagreb city authorities started sending their emissaries to her apartment, they rang and banged at the door, but no one opened. In June of 1992, the city of Zagreb started a procedure against Mira Furlan, requesting the court to take away her tenant's right. They started summoning her neighbors, who were saying they hadn't seen the actress since June 1991, and the emissaries of the city government said they had been ringing and banging, but no one opened.
Judge Zivana Perkov was not interested in why Mira Furlan hasn't been coming to Zagreb for all those years, not was she interested in the social circumstances that had made her leave her native town and the apartment in which she had been born. She only concluded that "according to the article 100 of the Law on tenure rights, the defendants haven't proved that they hadn't been using the apartment for justified reasons - temporary work in the US - and the plaintiff renounces the defendants' right to live in the apartment, based on the reason specified in the article 99 of the Law on tenant's rights - failure to use the apartment permanently and for longer than six months".
"I guess this verdict means that the rule of law has finally begun functioning. Kudos for the current government, kudos", said ironically lawyer Cedo Prodanovic, who represented Mira Furlan. Milan Bandic certainly has every reason to open a bottle of champagne and propose a toast to the fact that the city he heads got itself 63 square meters that were under the "enemy" siege until now. Cheers!