Sarajevo

Bosnia-Hercegovina

[this one's a little late:]

first impressions (turkish district): this is the small-town mountain quaintness i'm missing in hungary. beautiful cobblestone streets, turkish towers, shopping district pristine-- bought two pendants cheaply. mosques lit up in the early, early morning light...
but this city, too, has its contradictions. once my sleepy bliss wore off, my feet carried me further on, i found i found all that the war had left.

'how,' i questioned disbelieving, 'can people live with bulletholes?' like 10-year-old wounds in the buildings-- but these are noy healing and scarring; they are just open.

i become obsessed with these bulletholes. i take pictures. i walk, feeling them with my fingers. i feel my way this way though the city, through sniper's alley, all along the water, throug the turkish quarters again, and then to the outskirts, past the holiday inn, seeing what i was not seeing in the dawnlight.
a fourteenth-century mosque, another casualty of the recent war. dilapidated. at times, the beauty of the hills distracts be from my hol(y)ed mission: snow-roofed houses, chimneys smoking... and then the distinct tree-line in the hills cut down by the citydwellers venturing just far enough for the fuel just long enough to cut them down and returning quickly to their basements to their interior rooms to their own holes...

later, as i fled those too-recent scars... i met a bosnian girl on a train: 21, studying journalism, and a friend from school... we began discussing school, languages, they asked what my favorite actor was and of course i could not remember any names...her friend spoke too through her explaining to me how each of my "turkish towers" was actually a part of a mosque (how many of them!) going on, approximating the muslim-orthodox-catholic percentages (30-30-30), how bosnian, serbian, montenegrian, croatian are really all the same language yet every nation has something else to add.

i mention the bulletholes, because i was seeing them here too-- the off handed but in all seriousness references to the war. the tune of the conversation changed quickly, soberly. she began telling and i kept asking. they wondered what i thought of bosnia after the war; i was taken aback. what DID i think? i stammered out something regarding investment economics-- who gets what* and how it's decided and so on and so forth. i asked what they though of joining the EU? 'no good,' he spoke up. 'we are a just a poor country, not like them.' she said, 'i have traveled to france, to italy. here is not so much running around all the time. it is a different way of life.'

and the war. 'i was 7 when it started,' she said. five years long. 'i still lived in my town. we lived just all the time in the basement. our fathers would have guns, fighting for their families, fighting for our nation.' questions flooded from my mouth and bits fly from the walls. she begins her sentences with phrases such as 'in war, you know...' and 'during wartime, you see...' this eight-year-old girl is hiding from bullets while i am braiding my best friend's hair. 'i had no childhood.' at nine, i begin sleepovers. 'there are still very many missing; we think they are all dead, but you always keep that hope...' at ten, they must walk 5 miles for water, i run freely through the sprinkler. 'there was never any electricity besides the water.' at eleven i obtain a boombox. 'and the walk was-- still is-- dangerous because they put the guns under the ground and...' 'mines,' i volunteer. yes, she nods. at twelve, her sister, mother, father, and her are still living in that dark waterless basement. food packages are delivered by UNESCO, and they grow what they can.

'do not keep saying to feel sorry for us,' he tells her to tell me, lastly. 'i,' i begin, 'just know i could never begin to imagine.' he nods, this must be acceptable.

he asks with suspicion if i have a lot of free time. i explain, no, i've always worked two or three jobs along with school, i pay for my apartments. for them, at twenty-one there is still no free time. whatever scant money her mother makes is spent on housing and food, little aid for the daughter in school in the big city.

i long to go, to come back. i feel bad answering truthfully every question they ask of me. my favorite country, how i will fly home, if i have free time. i feel badly at the questions i'm asking to mask my ignorance on their land, their war. their bulletholes that i am still constantly poking at. i do not think my probing is making those holes heal.


*slovenia is by far the leader in economic terms; croatia, however, receives more in foreign direct investment. bosnia, hardest-hit, still receives little rebuilding money.