Born in Sarajevo

The gunpowder flows through the air
There are friends sitting on a tank
And there are too few moments to realize
They are targeting someone they know,
Someone who will this last time
Try to wave, try to smile
I run, but in my heart I want to stay
Because this is still Home
The blood covers our street and I am afraid
To look around, I am ashamed to hope that
A bird was hit while she flew
Toward her nest to feed her young ones,
But all I can see is Sarajevo helpless, alone,
No matter how far I would go
I’ll remember this is my home
Sarajevo, March 1992

Foreword

Sarajevo came into existence in Balkan in 1506, resembling a magnificent pearl awaiting discovery of its timeless resilience, inner calm, and opulent beauty; even so, almost five centuries later, the city known as "castle field" emerged matured and perfectly off-balance, but steadfast, through the many tumultuous attacks. Despite everything, Sarajevo is, and will continue to thrive.

Built in a blended delight of Serbian-Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval, Baroque, Gothic and Renaissance styles, Sarajevo was often depicted as a brilliant snowflake caressing the sky during wintertime.

The Illyrians were the first inhabitants of this area, followed by four cultures from the east: Hellenism in the prehistoric period, Mithraism in the late Classical age, the Byzantine culture in the fourth century, and the Turkish Islamic culture in the fifteen century.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages in the seventh century came the Slavic people. In 1991, Slavs would become traitors to their homeland and to each other. They began to rage simultaneously, to conquer systematically, and to clean their country ethnically. The land, peace, and unity were in their hands, but they threw all of them away, abolished fairness and logic, and embraced war and suffering. And even if suffering usually does much to bring people together and coax out the humanity in them, in Yugoslavia, it did the opposite. For these Slavs, in 1994, Mozart’s “Requiem” was performed in Sarajevo to honor those who lost their lives in the Bloody Crush. Now, in the twenty-first century, Slavs still have many damaged buildings and towers as a memorial to their civil war. Many of them will remember their tragedies and will grieve during the worst and the best moments in their lives.

Sarajevo is situated in the valley of the River Miljacka and surrounded by mountains Jahorina, Trebevic, Treskavica, Igman, and Bjelasnica. Through the crossroads that run along the valleys of the rivers Bosnia and Neretva, Sarajevo connects northern Europe with the Mediterranean Sea and the customs of the Mediterranean people. The city is located at a cultural intersection between Eastern and Western Europe and has always been a geographic, political, and ethnic focal point. The beginning of World War I, the XIV Winter Olympic Games, and the center of “Ethnic Cleansing” after the fall of Yugoslavia all happened in Sarajevo.

The city also heralds the rituals of many different religions. Every day at 2:00 a.m. the clock strikes on the Catholic Cathedral in Sarajevo. Approximately two minutes later, the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church announces itself. The Muezzin from Sahat Tower of Beg’s Mosque follows with his call of the Allahu Akbar. Amidst all of this, the Jewish Synagogue stands unmoved, facing east toward Jerusalem. Yugoslavia left Sarajevo behind to prove that ethnic differences can and will keep people together, and Sarajevo has succeeded by integrating all religions into its culture. Sarajevo is a city where wars may begin, but love always triumphs as the victor.

There are twenty-four cities from different world countries that share a brotherhood with Sarajevo including Coventry, Great Britain from 1957; Magdeburg, Germany from 1972; Napoli, Italy from 1994; Ankara, Turkey from 1994; Budapest, Hungary from 1995; Serre-Chevalier, France from 1995; Barcelona, Spain from 1996; Stockholm, Sweden from 1997; Kuwait, Kuwait from 1998; and Dayton, Ohio from 1999. As for the other parts of the world, they will always be, as during the 1984 Olympic Games, welcome in Sarajevo.

“Let’s stop all wars” was the first idea that came to my mind when I started writing this book. But when I lifted my head from my writing and looked around at our society, where the balance between emotionalism and indifferentism is often lost, I realized that in the beginning it is sometimes better to take baby steps instead of galloping. So, I started imagining a multitude of people holding hands while walking down a long road, each person having a belief that one day the world will be a better place, a place where all people can feel at home.

Can you imagine if all 6,445,588,021 people of this world would think about peace together for just one moment? I can. And I can smile with all my heart while trying to picture the world taking a break from war. I can be happy even for that moment when in the spotlight will be a beautiful princess called peace, even though I would know that somewhere in the back wings will be a battalion called war, impatiently waiting to take her innocence away.

In the beginning of his book, Despite All Crappers, Jan Urban wrote: “I don’t know why you want to read this, I know but I’m worried how you’re going to read it.” And I am not sure how you are going to interpret this reaction to war. I don’t know the filters through which you are watching people like me. I don’t know how many more living beings I will encounter and hear saying, “War is now in the past for your country. It is no longer covered by headline news.” I don’t know how many more people will not consider a war as being a war unless it is a fight for oil. Who among them will be interested in what someone born in Sarajevo has to say? Probably very few, if any at all. But how many of these people know that there are thousands of landmines in Sarajevo that are still taking lives and won’t stop for many generations? How many know there are numerous post-war radiation-related diseases that will keep destroying people’s lives?

Today, in Sarajevo many people are living and dying in poverty and many war orphans have eyes filled with tears and hearts filled with memories of the families that are gone. How many know that to understand Sarajevo as a city and Sarajevans as a people, one should just look around and listen? We are not just history; we are not invisible, unmoving, or silent; we still exist and we still struggle to reconstruct our lives.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . Getting tired of counting? Imagine, if you can, counting all the way to 1,620 and seeing dead children’s faces in place of these numbers. These children could have been the next Nikola Tesla, Ivo Andric, Ivan Mestrovic or Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa). They could have been the future of Sarajevo, the future of Yugoslavia; but instead, they are just names on tombstones, statistics of wars that never should have existed. Today, war is still the most common response to many conflicts; but war is not the answer to the world’s problems, and it never will be.