3 minute read
THE PHOTO ESSAY
A VIEW OF CROATIA AND THE STORY OF THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS.
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By Michael Doherty
Michael Doherty is a film and television editor based in Toronto. He is also an avid traveller. The photos and story are from his visit to Croatia in 2019.
One of the joys of travelling is encountering the unexpected, either through interacting with a new environment or in meeting strangers. For a brief time, you become part of a someone’s life, a chapter in their story. This is one of those chapters.
I took the 2:45 p.m. train from Ljubljana to Zagreb. It was an old style train and I was in a compartment with four other people: three students touring Europe and a Croatian woman in her 50s who had gone to Ljubljana for the day. The five of us chatted about many things to pass the time. I asked the
woman if she could recommend a restaurant in the center of Zagreb. “Boban” was her answer. I spontaneously invited her to join me. She wasn’t sure, but said if she could make it, she would be outside my hotel at 7:30 p.m.
At 7:30 she was there - wearing a red dress, red lipstick and matching red earrings. We talked about her decision to meet a total stranger for dinner, went to Boban, sat outside in the back garden for a grappa, lovely pasta and white wine. Then she told me her story.
A DIFFICULT LIFE
The war in the years 1991-1995 was very difficult for her family. They lived in a basement without electricity for a long time. On Fridays, she would go out and get cheese and bread that needed to last the week. She couldn’t believe that in the late 20th century she would find herself suffering from the results of a war in Europe.
The family survived and a few years later, now in her mid-20s, she went to Istria for a holiday. While there, she met and fell in love with an Italian man. He was a great cook and treated her beautifully. At the end of the trip he asked her to marry him. She followed her heart rather than her head and said yes. She returned to Zagreb to prepare for her wedding then received devastating news. Her groom-to-be had jumped into a river to help a struggling friend and had drowned.
Over the years she recovered emotionally, met a Croatian man with whom she fell in love, and they agreed to marry. A few days before the wedding, her husband-to-be had a massive heart attack and died. Devastated again, she retreated into her work as a veterinarian.
Years later she met another lovely man; he proposed to her after they dated for a year. She accepted. Not
long after, a friend called to say he had slipped off a wharf and was sucked under the water and drowned.
A SURPRISING HAPPINESS
She was still single when we met, living a happy life but not accepting of any subsequent marriage proposals – there had been a few. As a Christian she hoped one day to have the answer to why things happened the way they did. I told her I wasn’t sure she ever would.
After dinner and chatting, I walked her to the blue tram that would take her home. She got on and was the only person on board. My last image of her is of a woman in a red dress, alone on a blue tram waving and smiling as she pulled away from the station. We never shared our contact info and I never knew her name.
