A few days ago, we visited Nova Gorica. A friend took us to Rafut Park, a place set right on the border of two countries. Today, this border is almost invisible—not really invisible, but rather appearing like the colours in an aquarelle, flowing into one another, so that Slovenia gradually merges into Italy. But in the old days, when our imagination was budding in Yugoslavia, this was the border between two worlds, between two clashing ways of life. Back then, the neglected Rafut Park, with the Rafut Villa housing the Institute of Hygiene, marked the point where Yugoslavia ended. Above the Institute stood the famous Franciscan Kostanjevica Monastery containing the Bourbon tomb, where King Charles X of France, some members of his family and one minister await resurrection. To us, however, the children of our time, the Institute of Hygiene had much greater significance.
When I found myself before the entrance to the park, the first thing I saw felt intimate and familiar. The architectural features of the portal, its shapes and ornaments, form part of my somewhat complicated native perception of the world. So it was only natural that I felt a special kind of affection towards those features, similar to the affection I feel for Anton Laščak—also known as Lasciac Bey or Laščak-beg—who decided to build a villa here, in his homeland, unaware of what life would have in store for him, or what great history would take away.
Anton Laščak was born in Gorizia into a Slovenian family. He studied architecture in Vienna, but by his cultural and national affiliation, he was Italian and Friulian. He is said to have publicly spoken Slovene without shame, but did not consider himself a Slovenian. My grandfather, Franjo Rejc, was a ten-year-old boy growing up in Tolmin when Laščak purchased the property in Pristava, on the southern slopes of Kostanjevica, intending to build a villa surrounded by a large park where he, already a renowned quinquagenarian, imagined he would grow old. Franjo Rejc, on the other hand, although from a similar background to Laščak, remained a convinced Slovenian all his life.
My grandfather, Franjo Rejc, was a ten-year-old boy growing up in Tolmin when Laščak purchased the property in Pristava.
Despite his relatives fighting bloody battles against Italians when their homes suddenly found themselves located in Italy during the rise of fascism, Franjo was able to explain the process of national differentiation in the Primorska region very calmly and rationally: people from the countryside and the suburbs, the poor, servants and porters remained Slovenians, but those who moved to towns and cities and climbed the social ladder became Italians. Franjo reasoned that it had less to do with lineage and national consciousness, and much more to do with city culture. Only the most stubborn people, such as the insurgents from Kneža, remained Slovenian always and everywhere, even at the cost of their lives. Was my grandfather proud to remain a Slovenian until the end? That was not the most important question of his life. What mattered much more was that he bore no resentment towards people whose lives and feelings had led them in other directions, and who, although born to Slovenian parents, became Italians.
Was my grandfather proud to remain a Slovenian until the end? What mattered much more was that he bore no resentment towards people whose lives and feelings had led them in other directions.
Anton Laščak, a Vienna-schooled architect, travelled to Egypt, where he made a name for himself as a builder of palaces, banks and public buildings in Alexandria and Cairo. He established his own unique architectural style, which art and architecture historians would later describe simply as ‘neo-Islamic’. However, this label is imprecise, too general and distant from Laščak’s life and world to encompass everything he created. In fact, he was erecting buildings modelled on what he had seen and experienced in Alexandria. Looking at his buildings online or standing in front of the Rafut Villa and the entrance gate to the park, I recognise elements or the spirit of Ottoman architecture, which I grew up with in Sarajevo. But this is not the same, just as Sarajevo, Plovdiv and Istanbul are not the same as Alexandria and Cairo.
I find the few existing photographs of Anton Laščak, also known as Antonio Lasciac, posing in the attire of an Egyptian dignitary, complete with a fez on his head and medals on his chest, both beautiful and touching. In these photographs, to which I feel an intimate connection, Laščak-beg is exactly the kind of person I myself would have aspired to be had I been born into the same world a hundred years earlier.
His edifices in Alexandria and Cairo not only incorporate elements of Oriental or Ottoman architecture and details characteristic of Egyptian noble mansions, but also reflect his unique and unresolved identities. Rafut Park itself, with its villa perched atop the hill, is a self-portrait of that man. Nothing can define us better than the house where we would like to spend the rest of our life.
Anton Laščak was a child of the era, which came to an end with the shots fired by Gavrilo Princip. Only in the Hapsburg Monarchy, an empire of magical-realist identities with distant external borders and a complex network of internal demarcations, could Laščak-beg have been born and raised: an Italian and Friulian with Slovenian parents who adopted a Viennese cultural worldview and found peace and solace in the elements of a religion that was not his own. Ultimately, Anton Laščak died in Cairo at the age of ninety. During World War II, he fled from his Gorizian homeland to his Egyptian one.
Rafut Park itself, with its villa perched atop the hill, is a self-portrait of that man. Nothing can define us better than the house where we would like to spend the rest of our life.
Although I grew up in Yugoslavia and witnessed its disappearance when I was twenty-five, I was neither in Nova Gorica nor in Tolmin at the time. Nor was I in a position to really feel the border between the worlds that had existed there and that had rubbed against my grandpa Franjo Rejc all his life like an ill-fitting shoe. This is why, in September 2025, as we stroll through Rafut Park and take photos by the old cork oak and the fascinating bamboo grove, I can only imagine what this place looked like in the Yugoslav times, when rich Westerners crossed the border to gamble in the Park Hotel casinos, which were of course off limits for citizens of the SFRY. The Party kept a close eye on us to preserve our integrity, as if we were houris, maidens of paradise, destined to lose our virginity only when Communism finally arrived.
And now, as I stand before the derelict villa, which they say will be restored to its former glory with European money, it suddenly occurs to me that, in spring 1972, crowds of people were probably flocking to the Institute of Hygiene to be vaccinated against smallpox. The country was facing a catastrophe of biblical proportions, and the vaccination campaign was the responsibility of the army. The virus was contained effectively in Yugoslavia and never spread to Europe. It did not cross the nearby border —the same border we can walk across freely today, without the Italian police paying us as much as a glance. Those who were vaccinated back then bear a lifelong scar on their left shoulder and still remember the fear they felt during that gloomy Yugoslav spring.
The virus was contained effectively in Yugoslavia and never spread to Europe.
In the former Yugoslavia, the Institutes of Hygiene were fortresses against the spread of contagious diseases. As the most important preventive measure, they ran vigorous propaganda campaigns to promote good hygiene habits among our nations and nationalities. Before socialism, we were dirty people. We did not wash our hands, we ate from communal dishes and we suffered from common diseases that we passed on from generation to generation as the dominant cultural heritage. Before socialism, Bosnia and Herzegovina harboured endemic syphilis, and large numbers of mostly young people were dying of tuberculosis from Triglav to Gevgelija. Good hygiene habits emerged through the teachings of Andrija Štampar, who also studied in Vienna. In 1919, he was appointed Principal of the Department of Public Health in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1946, he became one of the founders of the World Health Organization. What could not be fully implemented in the Kingdom, because the ruling political system was unable to ensure adequate care for the poor, was fully realised in the socialist Yugoslavia.
Maintaining bodily hygiene is easy, but maintaining the hygiene of the soul is more difficult. In this respect, socialism proved completely inefficient, as did all the political systems that followed it.
Maintaining bodily hygiene is easy, but maintaining the hygiene of the soul is more difficult. In this respect, socialism proved completely inefficient, as did all the political systems that followed it.
The hygiene of the soul lies with people like Laščak-beg, who offer to narrators their life as an eternally unfinished story, exploring what human identities can consist of and what the soul longs for in order to feel complete. While the hygiene of the body aspires to cleanliness, the hygiene of the soul yearns for something for which, unfortunately, we have no word, but which is the exact opposite of cleanliness. For while the body seeks to avoid anything that could harm its health, the soul seeks to absorb everything it can.
Translated by Lili Potpara
Language editing by Fiona Thompson
___________________________________________________________________________________
The project On the Balcony of the Balkans, hosted on the AirBeletrina portal, seeks to foster intercultural dialogue and strengthen cooperation among artists, institutions, and countries of the former Yugoslavia. It is not rooted in nostalgia or focused on the past, but is instead centered on present realities and, above all, aimed at reflecting on the future, as it seeks to contribute to the most successful possible development of the region. It is carried out with the support of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.
