Life in the New: Petar Bošković

“This is my kingdom!”

Petar Bošković has barely planted his feet on the ground after getting out of his red Jeep, which has just put its four-wheel drive to good use on a stretch of dirt road. Taxi drivers are not happy when they must venture out here.

His kingdom is a floating house permanently anchored to the Sava riverbank on Ada Ciganlija, an island transformed into an artificial peninsula in the late fifties. Since then, it has been a favorite leisure location for Belgraders lucky enough to own a spot at the riverbed. Petar is one of these, and for the past thirty years, the red houseboat has served as his home away from home. “When you come to the river, negative energy goes away,” he explains.

Technically, the riverbed is not part of Novi Beograd. Nevertheless, from his floating holiday home one can catch sight of Blok 45 and its characteristic brick solitaries in the distance on the other side of the Sava River. If a soaring crow were to pass across, it would presumably not need to beat its wings until it was safely on the other side.

Music is pouring out of the radio, and ducks are quacking gently in the water current below the deck. The sounds are unable to penetrate the peacefulness. Clouds overcast the sky, but it’s steaming. The humidity turns t-shirts into a sweat-drenched, torso-wrapping varnish. “Been around the world and I, I, I – I can’t find my baby,” Lisa Stansfield sings longingly in the background.

Petar is used to diving into the river to cool down and swim. “It’s a big privilege. You can’t do that in many cities; leave home and be at your floating house and in nature in five minutes”. Here he has access to the same amenities as his home in Novi Beograd: electricity, TV, internet, air conditioning, food, and drinks. Flags from countries he has sailed and traveled to in his job hang from the ceiling beams in the salon and the bedroom upstairs.

For Petar, water is not just a big part of his personality. It has also been a big part of his professional career. “I have spent my whole life on a ship. I simply love water. If you are close to water, you sleep better, think more clearly. You are less anxious”. He feeds the ducks with pieces of bread. Petar is a retired battleship captain and former head of the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Defense. He has been appointed and replaced as a general twice.

“I was the one, the weakest one of all, and now I’m oh, oh, so sad,” Stansfield continues from the radio outside while the clouds are scattering. Petar meticulously walks through his career as a battleship captain. He uses the photos on the wall inside the houseboat as a reference book.

He points at a French Sirius-class coastal minesweeper with hull number M152 in Ploče, Croatia. Then a smaller minesweeper followed by a tank-transporting boat, both from the River Military Flotilla of Yugoslavia in Novi Sad. Then, at a control ship РПБ-30 “Kozara” of the Serbian River Flotilla. He’s been a commander at all of them. 

“My career took a slightly Hemingwayesque turn, to put it like that,” he says at his wife’s and his apartment in Novi Beograd’s Blok 9A a few months earlier, where they live with their son. “What I mean by that is, I was on the ship, I loved the sea, and then my hobby came to the fore, which was writing,” Petar says. He applied to the Yugoslav Institute of Journalism, got accepted, and started studying. His career in journalism began in 1989. “I switched to military journalism, left the ship, and returned to Belgrade after ten years.”

Since then, he has lived in four apartments within a fifty-meter radius. “Both of my previous apartments can be seen from the balcony here. My wife insisted that we stay in this area because the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers are nearby, and the wind rose is phenomenal.” He speedwalks to Branko’s Bridge and back every morning. His routine includes drinking a small glass of rakia before and after his walks, and the latter he drinks with his tea.

“The idea of life in Novi Beograd was extremely well thought-out and devised. Other buildings are not too close. They do not block the view, and there is a lot of space, a wideness, which is different from the city center. Everything was done really well in terms of urban planning.”

Before Novi Beograd saw its current form, the location was a no-man’s land mainly consisting of uninhabitable marshland, meaning that nothing could be built on the fields. Ninety million cubic meters of sand and gravel had to be excavated from the Danube to fill in and level the 40 square kilometers of vast wetland. That was just a few years after the war. Resources were scarce, and someone had to do it. 

Nearly 200.000 volunteers from all over Yugoslavia – consisting primarily of youth work brigades – joined forces to carry out the immense workload. Two of them were Petar’s late parents, who met each other at one of the many voluntary work events. “All young people did their part in the volunteer work, and they would spend between one and three months away, doing it.” They came to Belgrade to study; his mother studied literature, and his father went to the music academy.

People describe Petar as a soldier with a bohemian soul. Even generals asked why he pursued a career in the military, given his background. “I am an only child, and it is interesting how I come from an artistic family but decided to go in an entirely different direction. My uncle said that I was the black sheep of the family. I’ve just always loved ships.” He shows a saber with the inscription “Do not draw me without motive, do not put me back without honor, ” which he received from the President of Serbia when he graduated from the National Defense School.

He got his first apartment from the military, and per military regulations, he was supposed to get a bigger one in exchange when starting a family. “I retired in the meantime, and they never gave it to me. But I wasn’t exactly eligible, to put it like that.” He asserts that getting neither the rank nor the apartment despite serving as a general for fifteen years was the price he had to pay for having opinions and attitudes that didn’t match his superiors.

“I have always radiated positive energy. I never complain. I never moan and groan. When I do something well, I don’t brag about it like a hen laying an egg that starts clucking as if no other hen had ever accomplished the same.”

That is not the preferred way to do things in the military, where he was appointed and replaced as a general twice. “I never got an official remark; there was never an official reason for the reduction in rank.” His lightness of being has been a weight he has carried all his life.

“I simply love life, as sailors do.”

Prints from Life in the New

See the price list for prints from my Life in the New book project here.