It’s time for a different kind of Yugonostalgia: nostalgia for the days when you didn’t have to go to work if the sirocco (in Croatian language: “Yugo wind”) was blowing 😀
At least, that’s how things worked in the Republic of Dubrovnik…
There was a rule, namely, that the governing bodies would neither convene nor make decisions during periods of the humid sirocco wind. Why? Because the humidity and air pressure meant that people were not quite themselves, and therefore couldn’t think clearly or make sound decisions about serious matters. Even crimes committed during the sirocco were treated with more understanding and leniency.
As the Dubrovnik writer Tereza Buconić Gović once said: “The sirocco is a punishment in itself, and the mind collapses. The joy of life drains away through clouded eyes and darkened faces. You don’t even like yourself in such weather – so how could you, with reason thus muddled, make decisions about others?”
Some historians and tour guides, however, will quietly pull you aside and whisper that this was merely an excuse: as the Republic grew, so did the volume of work and the number of council meetings – and those in power were simply trying to get out of doing their jobs. Now that sounds like one of our own!
(Sometimes it feels as though today’s rulers have extended this rule to all possible weather conditions.)
Jokes aside, there really is something about the sirocco. Even the French thinker Voltaire, writing about the weather that causes “black melancholy,” noted that England’s King Charles I was executed during the English Civil War, on a day marked by an easterly wind. In their defence, the English like to say: “When the wind is in the east, ’tis good for neither man nor beast.”
The sirocco, incidentally, comes from the Sahara and, as it crosses the Mediterranean Sea, gathers moisture over the water. Its international name comes from derivatives of the Arabic word sharqiya (sharq meaning east, sharqiya meaning eastern): scirocco, siroco, sorokos, shirok…
And the romance doesn’t end there. Let’s complete it with verses by Jozo Lovrić Jadrijev, a local Dalmatian poet:
“Warm wind, seductive trickster!
Wild sea, maternal and vast!”
