‘IN ONE TRIBE, THEY GAVE ME A RECIPE FOR HUMAN FLESH’ – Life Story of Viktor Lazić

MY LIFE STORY

He is probably the only, or at least one of the few Serbs, who has visited more than a hundred countries on six continents in his lifetime. For a long time now, he says, he doesn't go to any country unless he can stay there for at least a month. He has a library of two million books. His goal is to explore as much of our planet as possible and to leave a mark in a travelogue opus that has not yet been achieved in Serbian literature. He says only God knows how and why his head is still on his shoulders.

I inherited a large family library that my ancestors have been filling for generations – I am the ninth generation since, according to family tradition, the first book was brought into our home, and the sixth since my great-great-grandfather Aleksandar Lazić opened a reading room in Kumane near Zrenjanin in 1882. On these foundations, the Belgrade Museum of Books and Travel and the Museum of Serbian Literature within the Adligat Association were established.

I was born and raised among books, listening to my grandmother's stories about the rich family library, about my great-grandfather Luka and the theatre troupe he participated in and wrote scripts for, about how he carried books across Albania sewn into his coat, buried them to hide them from the communists, and refused to sell them even when there was no food in the house.

Growing Up

The happiest moments of my childhood were when I discovered the greats of poetry – Đura Jakšić, Crnjanski, Jacques Prévert, Paul Éluard... When I first read Dostoevsky, it felt like I was enchanted – I couldn't stop reading the book, I even walked down the street reading. I jumped with joy with every verse of Mayakovsky – it thrilled me so much that such verses existed on the planet! At the same time, I began to discover foreign countries and peoples through books, and then through postage stamps, which I started collecting at the age of seven with the careful guidance of my father. Even then, I wanted to visit all those places. Reading and travelling are two sides of the same coin, whose essence is knowledge.

Family

My parents always emphasised the values of education, reading, and broad perspectives. During my upbringing, they were not strict, except regarding school grades. My mother was the deputy general manager of the travel agency Putnik, a giant of the former state and developed tourism, and I spent part of my childhood in her office, learning a bit about distant lands from an early age.

Straight-A Student

I was always a straight-A student, and during high school, I was the top student of my generation and one of the 40 recipients of a scholarship from the City of Belgrade for the best students. I participated and won in several national competitions – in criminal law, oratory, and typing... The most exciting years were in high school, when, thanks to an extraordinary Serbian language and oratory teacher, Svetlana Gradinac, who was my homeroom teacher, I gained the freedom and encouragement to engage in art. We organised many exhibitions and theatre performances for which I wrote scripts and acted in. In the third year of high school, I published my first book, Goethe - Poetry and Truth. This period paved my current path. It was also then that I wrote my first travelogue – about Ephesus, published in the school newspaper, which I helped establish.

First Crushes...

My family had been renting out the house to embassies for decades. I was probably about ten years old when diplomats from Indonesia moved into one of the apartments in our family house. I fell in love with their daughter Vinda, who was much older than me. It was my first kiss. A few years later, Brazilians from UNPROFOR lived in our house. I spent my days with their daughter Tatiana, and there too, sincere affections were born. Decades have passed since then, but even today, Indonesian and Brazilian women hold a special place in my heart.

A Writer with a Law Degree

I wanted to study literature and reluctantly accepted my parents' wish for me to complete a law degree. It was difficult, and on several occasions, I wanted to switch to literature, even though I passed my exams on time and with an average grade above eight. Between high school and university, I travelled to Thailand, and that’s how my first travel book, Wandering the Land of Smiles, came about. Even then, I knew I would travel and write for the rest of my life. I made an agreement with my parents that as long as I was a regular student, the money they would pay for my studies would be given to me for travel. I carried textbooks, studying criminal procedural law in the crater of a volcano in Sumatra, family law among the peaks of the Tibetan mountains... I returned before exams, sometimes going straight from the airport to the exam hall.

Law has helped me a lot in life; I’ve been a lawyer for ten years now. Many countries I wouldn’t have visited, many projects I wouldn’t have accomplished without a legal education. I’ve lectured on the legal aspects of international relations from Vladivostok to London, and law has opened doors to many important people.

Books

I was born in a house full of books, where not only were the shelves overflowing with quality literature, but even the entire bed rested on books. My parents read to me every evening from my earliest childhood. When people ask me how long I have been involved with books, I usually say 250 years because I feel a sense of continuity with my ancestors who were engaged in this.

Travelling

My love for travel was awakened at my mother’s insistence, as I preferred to stay at home as a child. During my teenage years, I began visiting relatives and friends in Europe, and every summer I spent with my aunt in London. There, I had the opportunity to meet many different peoples and fell in love with the richness that the diversity of cultures brings. People often ask me how many countries I’ve visited. I don’t know the exact number, and it would be complicated to count due to the problematic status of many territories I’ve visited. I usually say that I have visited about a hundred countries on six continents and spent around fifteen years travelling.

I Want to Discover the Planet

I don't count women and countries. In such records, the meaning, respect, and beauty are lost. Each country is special and cannot become just a number. What does it mean if you come to Serbia for two hours or one day? Can an American or a New Zealander, for example, who comes on such a quick visit, has a coffee at Terazije, and leaves, really boast that they have understood our country, culture, history, our mentality? And what about countries that are twenty or a hundred times larger than Serbia, and these "counters" visit them for a few hours? If I had wanted to, I would have visited all the countries in the world in this way a long time ago. For a long time now, I haven't gone to any country unless I can stay there for at least a month. Of course, I believe that I will eventually visit every country on the planet, and I would like, for the largest countries, to visit every one of their provinces.

My goal is to learn as much as possible about our planet and to leave a mark in a travelogue opus that has not yet been achieved in Serbian literature. At the same time, I am developing a network of members and donors for the Museum of Books and Travel, filling that museum with unusual items such as books printed on silk, those made to be edible – from rice, but also completely inedible, for example, from paper made from elephant dung, with covers made from human bones, written on palm or banana leaves...

Encounter with Death

Only God knows how and why my head is still on my shoulders! Once, in Metohija, Albanians lined up children who indicated they wanted to slit my throat... In Iraq, they shot at my Lada Niva, and a bullet shattered the left headlight. I took my fiancée to lunch in Chernobyl, but we were uneasy when they later measured how much radiation we had been exposed to. In Ethiopia, for no reason, a strong African started strangling me, and I was barely saved by a companion who happened to be with me that day; otherwise, I was traveling alone. In remote African tribes they stoned me, shot arrows at me... However, the hardest experience was in South Ossetia, when they put me in prison for about ten days to "investigate" me. They barely let me go, after many terrifying experiences, upon the personal intervention of Sergei Lavrov. I described this in the book At the Gates of the East.

Doll

On many trips, I wasn't alone. I carried with me an inflatable sex doll, Mileva. Worried about my safety, my parents placed a (dressed) sex doll with a cap and a cigarette in its mouth on the back seat of the car. So, to others, it would seem as if I was not traveling alone, that there was someone else with me in the car. The adventures with Mileva are epic; she became a TV star in Bulgaria because journalists were interviewing her, and in Russia, drunks wanted to beat me because I left a lonely woman waiting for me in the car while I was drinking vodka with them. However, the hardest time was in the South Ossetian prison when the guards wanted to spend the night with her, and I didn't allow it – neither pleas nor threats, nor even attempts to bribe me, helped. I defended Mileva's innocence as if my life depended on it, innocence in which none of them believed…

New Book - About Kenya

In this book, I describe in detail my encounters with lions, snakes, antelopes, rhinos, cheetahs, hippos, the occasional ostrich and hyena, as well as the hustle and bustle of the dangerous streets of Nairobi and Mombasa. In the traffic jam of Nairobi, I saw a lion that had escaped from the nearby savannah! In one national park, I had the opportunity to kiss a giraffe for the first time in my life. I learned how to adopt a turtle, what to do if a venomous snake bit me (first, I need to take a picture of it!)... I listened to people I encountered, recorded their life stories, fears, struggles, and hopes. I visited remote archaeological sites, a specialized hospital for donkeys, and distant giant baobab trees – one of them impressed me so much that I even wrote a poem about it! Kenya is a huge country, seven times larger than Serbia, and I visited an area as large as two of my homelands. With 44 peoples and more than 50 million people, this vast country is a true treasure trove of cultures and natural wealth. Everything I experienced and saw I have woven into the book Kenya – The Pulses of the Wilderness, which has just been published by Laguna.

Private Life

I have turned my hobbies into public good – I am a philatelist, and my collection is now in the Museum of Books and Travel; I am a bibliophile, and that’s how the collection of the Museum of Books and Travel was created... Who in their right mind would keep two million books and various treasures to take them to the grave? What’s the point if only I see and experience the richness of the world? My wealth consists in enriching others.

I got married two years ago in an Orthodox church in Jakarta to an Indonesian woman I met in a library at the foot of three volcanoes. Indonesia is a huge country with 18,000 islands and nearly 300 million inhabitants, and I have visited it 14 times. There I also had the opportunity to befriend real pirates, and, in a tribe of former cannibals, I recorded recipes for human flesh. That’s when, for the first (and so far only) time, I ran away from my own wedding, which they organized for me, due to a language misunderstanding in the Batak tribe. I described all this in the book In the Heart of Sumatra, which was long an optional reading for high schools. I don’t have children yet, at least not that I know of.

On Happiness

Happiness for me is not excitement, but tranquillity, inhaling beauty. I often experience such moments on travels, especially in nature and with animals or in remote tribes where brotherhood and goodness are felt. The wonders of nature are particularly inspiring: for example, swimming among glowing plankton in a Kenyan bay is like swimming among stars. Millions of organisms glow like fireflies all around me, and, as I swim, they glow more brightly around my body...

On Departures

The deaths of my grandmother and grandfather, friends like Vera Dražić, an English teacher who supported the creation of Adligat and my travelogues in the hardest times, Professor Ivo Tartalja, who gave me original letters of Miloš Crnjanski because of a travelogue about Sumatra, Vladeta Jerotić, who always asked me to show him photos after my travels and talk about the beauty of local women, then the death of Milovan Danojlić, philatelist Jovan Ašler... Such news often caught up with me on my travels and marked certain destinations where I found myself at the time.

Thoughts on Death

It's not the disappearance that's hard, but the parting, as I wrote in the book In the Heart of Sumatra. I have never feared death, I have often entered tombs, probably more than most archaeologists; once members of a royal family from the Toraja tribe in Indonesia even brought their dead mummified grandfather out of the grave just for me to meet him... I have never had a problem with the dead, but with the living the headaches never end! And I only fear living people. I believe that death, the transition to another world, brings peace and that the soul then has more important things to do than to be evil and malicious. Then it is connected with more beautiful worlds and deeper values. If it remains twisted, I believe that my pure, open, and kind relationship towards the beyond creates a barrier for bad things. I would like death to find me somewhere at the end of the world, for example on top of an extremely high mountain, with a view that has no end, with clouds within reach. There is no wrong time for either life or death, every moment is the right one.

On Faith

I believe in eternity, even in the eternity of every moment. Even transience, just like movement, is eternal! The purpose of my wandering around the planet is to collect and preserve cultural treasures and write travelogues. As Goethe wrote, we are here to immortalise ourselves...

Looking Back...

I wish I had written more and travelled more. On my travels, I have literally been a guest of kings in palaces and beggars under bridges, and it has happened that I respect and desire the friendship of the beggar more. Travels have taught me to be calmer, more curious, more honest, to love and respect diversity, everyone and everything, even the smallest ant, to find beauty in everything, to pause and be delighted by simple things, a beautiful building, the magnificent blue sky.

I generally do not look back or think about the past, but I have realised that I mostly regret what I have not done, that there is much less regret for a mistake made than for a missed opportunity.

Message for the End

The planet offers so much exciting, new, beautiful. As the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus said: "What is the most beautiful? The world, because all beautiful things are only a part of it. What is the wisest? Time, because it creates everything. What is the most widespread? Hope, because even those who have nothing else still have it."