We sell out for different reasons. We look the other way and bow our heads because fighting back is hard.
I am an immigrant. A stranger in my homeland and a stranger at home. I see a whole generation of my peers selling detergents and mobile service packages. It was rough for a while in the Balkans so we let our dreams go, instead of chasing them. All in the name of a normal life.
No more wars. No more suffering.
Now they want us to let go our memories and our histories. They will erase all evidence of our existence to make room for banks, shopping malls, idiotic monuments, churches and mosques. We will keep our heads bowed and look the other way.
The story of A Somewhat Better Ending explores the idea of such a man who decides to fight back for once. He fails in the end, he uses a desperate girl and she sees through him. He fails as a human. He fails the way we all fail. We want to fight back but without taking the risk. This hero, Beks, thinks that helping the girl will somehow make his life ok. That it would justify all the shitty decisions, all the pain he has caused to his girlfriend, the years he spent without giving a fuck. If he does this one thing, it will somehow balance things out.
Beks wants to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I like to think of myself as someone who constantly does the wrong thing for the right reasons. If Beks and I could trade characteristics the result would be a really great guy and an awful bastard.
The Macedonian government are robbing me of my memories and my personal history. I do not fight against them. I write. It is the one thing I may be able to do right, and for the right reasons.