by Josh Spilker
Dragan (pronounced “dragon”) has an African Grey in his living room, and it’s staring me down. It has large eyes on either side of its head and glances at me cautiously, in its bird sort of way. The bird is silent for a moment, a rarity in its life. She does not know what to make of me, a stranger. She has become content in this home, flying in peace, in her own recognizable surroundings, and I’m an intruder.
But I know more about the bird than she knows about me. Maybe she knows that we are talking about her, that Dragan is sharing intimate details about her life with me. The bird’s name is Lola. She’s a tropical bird, the African Grey. Her head is the size of a small cup, and fully feathered, but her body is mostly bare, too bare for a bird.
Lola looks at me and then back at Dragan. She needs reassurance from him about my character. Dragan tells me not to touch her, that she’ll snip at me. Dragan is Lola’s savior, and she trusts him. Dragan rescued her, driving five hours from Wilmington, NC to Virginia Beach to get her. To bring her here, a safe place in which Lola can be herself, and talk to whoever she wants.
Dragan picks up Lola from her perch and brings her over to the couch for a conversation. We are in Dragan’s home, a paneled house near Monkey Junction. His home contains three aquariums, all of which he built. There’s a large bird cage for Lola and another perch.
As we sit down on the couch, Dragan tells me Lola doesn’t just mimic, she listens and responds in words. Like how a dog barks, except with a vocabulary. Dragan says she can pick up as much language as a three year old. So if Lola is thirsty she asks for water. If she wants Dragan to take her down she will ask “Where are you?” The bird is not much different from a child who needs care and attention, which Dragan says many people don’t consider before purchasing such a bird. That’s why he had to rescue her.
“For three years, the lady didn’t take care of her. She fed her peanuts, and that’s it,” he says. Dragan compared it to a human eating only bread. The woman didn’t know how to care of her, Dragan explains and Lola is still naked from the stress, missing many feathers.
Dragan is certified as a tropical bird rescuer by Phoenix Landing, an animal rescue shelter for tropical birds. Based out of Asheville, N.C., Phoenix Landing will contact Dragan if there are birds from pet stores or delinquent owners who don’t want them anymore. Once Dragan retrieves them, Phoenix Landing will put them up for adoption. Dragan decided to keep Lola as his own.
Apparently, they’re not the most considerate of birds. African Greys demand affection and attention, just like a member of the family. They also live a long time, and may need assisted living.
“People don’t think that these birds live 50-70 years,” Dragan says. “You need to think that the bird will be with you for your life. That’s a decision for your life. You need to think that if something would happen to you, who would keep that bird, who would take care of that bird?”
Dragan Zeljkovic is in his mid-thirties and currently a cab driver. Originally from Bosnia, the town of Gradiska on the Sava River, he came to America surviving much of the fighting in his home country. Gradiska is split into Bosnian and Croatian sides. He lived on the Bosnian side and his house was bombed by Croatia in the Yugoslav Civil Wars during the early 90s. It was a civil war that broke up Yugoslavia.
“First, in speaking about the war there is nothing nice to say. Really, most don’t talk about it, but there were three different religions fighting for territory, around Croatia in that area,” says Dragan.
We stepped out from his back porch where Dragan lit a cigarette and showed me another piece of his handiwork, the decorative garden pool. It’s covered with rocks and he said he wants to put larger fish in there, if he had more time to care for them. He later shows me pictures of one similar pool and patio that he installed on Oak Island. The conversation returns to his homeland.
“I chose to go with the UN Peacekeepers, two sides fighting - you go in the middle,” Dragan continues. “I was with a special border police, because I had a lot of friends in that area, and I had friends that were Serb, Croatian and Muslim.”
As a member of the border police, Dragan watched different groups, like UNICEF, coming in and out. He checked paperwork and checked what was inside the various cars.
“That war was a very nice cover for people to take advantage of the war, and make it a business and make a lot of money,” he says.
In 1993, in the third year of the war, he lost “everything,” he says. He was a jack of all trades, having gone to school for metalworking, raised tropical fish to sell and even had a pet shop or two around town. “No good side,” he says about the war. “Everyone lost something. It’s been a waste of time.”
After displacement from his home in Gradiska, Dragan went to Belgrade, the largest city in Serbia. He found work doing odd jobs, one of which was supplying angelfish to a local general mercantile store. He still raises angelfish. In addition to the three large aquariums in his home, he tells me he sold a few others recently.
“Too much upkeep,” he says. We look at a few of the fish, and he shows me pictures of others.
“I grew up on that river (the Sava River), fishing and stuff, and now you can’t go fishing on that half,” he says.
Dragan arrived in the U.S. and then Wilmington in 2003. He came to Wilmington because he had people here willing to “sponsor” him, Winter Park Baptist Church of Wilmington. From what I gather, he was here for twenty days, and was able to find a job, and start out on his own. He’s been a manager for Chuck E. Cheese, he’s built countertops, worked at Mayfaire Cinema, bred angelfish, constructed elaborate rock ponds on Oak Island, drives a cab and sometimes delivers flowers. Now, Dragan can go fishing whenever he wants, or raise his own fish. His choice. And choices were very few when he was stuck between two or three warring factions.
“It’s ridiculous,” he continues. “There’s a bunch of hardcore stories, and I can’t take it. I want to live my life and I want to have peace and that’s it.”
Actual peace on land and peace on pieces of paper are different things. Peace may have been achieved to a degree between countries in Western Europe for the time being, but that doesn’t mean peace has occurred with its occupants. Dragan said that Gradiska was a good city until the war made it unbearable.
“War destroyed the middle class of the people, so it’s very hard to find a job,” Dragan says. “If you have a job, it’s like $200 a month, not like here.”
Such a common occurrence spread his family over three continents. His parents are in Australia, he’s in America, and his daughter is back in Belgrade. It’s a situation he doesn’t see changing, though he would like his seven year old daughter to one day make it here.
“I survived and I lost everything and I don’t want to do it again,” Dragan says. “America is pretty much a secure country, and I like it. And I think I’ll stay right here where I am.”
Dragan’s demeanor is pleasant. He is friendly and easy to talk. His openness is enjoyable and he’s always favored work with the public. The openness has a positive side effect in that he has more time to speak English which is accented, but pretty flawless.
“I learned Oxford English, but when I came here I didn’t understand 50% of what people were saying,” he says mentioning a particular British form of English. “I spent nights and nights on the Internet learning grammar and spelling. You can’t translate word by word, you must take the meaning of that sentence, and put it inside my head, translate it and put it another way backwards and put it out. So my head has been like a freaking computer. Sometimes, by myself, I have headaches talking to people. It’s been very hard for me, translating for people.”
Dragan may struggle with American English, but it’s different than dealing with translating rude American behavior. He recalls a cab story involving a drunk girl he picked up from lower Market Street in downtown Wilmington. He was picking up some of his regular customers from downtown, and the girl stepped in front of his cab because she thought he was ignoring her. He was ignoring her, but to pick up somebody else. Then the girl grew angry and began yelling at him from outside the cab. He picked up his customers and then returned for this girl. Upon returning, the girl didn’t understand how he would still be nice to her.
“If I help you, because it’s my pleasure,” Dragan says. “What you need to see is that if I help you, you help someone else. And if everybody acts like that, this world would be a lot nicer place to live.”
www.phoenixlanding.org
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