Before the war you actually had to ask people’s names to know who they were. Now you can just observe what side of the river they live on. On the east side are the Bosniaks — Muslim citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the west are Croats, Catholic by faith. The two groups split my hometown of Mostar down the […]
Bordered by rivers and the Dinaric range, mountainous Bosnia, which once was an independent kingdom, has always been difficult for outsiders to conquer and control. The Ottoman Empire, which entered the country at the invitation of some rebellious magnates (from which came the saying “Bosnia fell with a whisper” – “šaptom Bosna pade”) ruled that turbulent land for more than […]
The first evidence of an English travel interest in Bosnia-Herzegovina emerged at the end of the 16th century, an interest, however, that was short-term in the extreme and came to a quick end in the first years of the 17th century. For early travellers Bosnia-Herzegovina was just one stage in a much longer journey with Istanbul as the final destination. […]
LIFSCHULTZ: While we are on the subject of multinational states, would you elaborate a little on your argument in The National Question in Yugoslavia that democracy and Yugoslav “unitarism” were incompatible phenomena. In other multinational states such as Pakistan and India, for example, precisely the opposite position has been argued. Thus Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971 has primarily been seen as […]
“Malodušnost” is the Serbo-Croatian word that Henry Cooper uses to describe the subject of Meša Selimović’s novel, Death and the Dervish in his preface to the novel. Faintheartedness and moral cowardice translate the Serbo-Croatian word adequately, but its transliteration—small or diminished soul—adds as well to our understanding of the word’s meaning and the novel’s subject. Ahmed Nuruddin, the novel’s protagonist, […]
How shall we bury the screams deeply in the ground of oblivion So they do not reach us on these arduous paths How shall we place every cherished word and smile in these tight bags How shall we lace these swollen feet with ever tightening hide Behind us let sadness and her companions remain Rather than torches crusading in the dark […]
Rabia Ali: The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been generally perceived in the West as a civil war or a tribal blood feud ––the product of centuries-old enmities between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. In the media and in the pronouncements of statesmen and political commentators, the conflict is described as a “typical” Balkan convulsion which cannot be understood, much less […]
The Srebrenica genocide is and will remain an enduring trauma for all generations in Serbia, both present and future. Each new judgment passed by the Hague tribunal reveals new details and lays bare the enormity of the crime. Although fifteen years have passed since the atrocity, the collective consciousness in Serbia remains largely unchanged. Criticism of selective memory as a […]
Oct. 6, 1969, Monday. Across Serbia southwest of Beograd. From this flat country we got into hillier & hillier terrain, and by the time we crossed the beautiful Drina at Zvornik we were definitely in Bosnia: mosques with their minarets, and the women in their flowery bloomers and some even with their headscarves covering nose & mouth. The more rugged […]
The Book of Genesis Chapter One In the beginning thou didst create the heaven and the earth And the earth was without form and void And there was darkness over the abyss And thou saidest Let there be light And there was light And thou didst see that the light was good And didst divide from it the darkness And […]
Snow has fallen on the springtime fruit trees, Time to love whoever you may please. If she won’t hear, there’s no way to push her, Love is no use if she cannot choose. If my bad luck could ever turn to good, I would climb up to your chamber door, So I could sit in the middle of your cushions, […]
At the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo on July 8, 2010, BZK “Preporod” (“Renaissance”) organized a lecture on remembering the Srebrenica genocide 1995-2010. The speakers that evening were the president of BZK “Preporod” Senadin Lavić and professors Edina Bećirević, Ćazim Sadiković, Šaćir Filandra, Asim Mujkić and Dino Abazović. Fifteen years have passed since July 1995 in Srebrenica. Many questions have still […]
Fifteen years have passed since the genocide in Srebrenica and the major culprit of that crime, Ratko Mladić, is still at large. This is a moral mortgage that prevents us from moving forwards. New generations are held hostage to this mortgage; new generations are held hostage to the Serbian Government’s lack of readiness to fulfill its obligations toward not only […]
Ascending the stairs of poetry, Nikola Šop (1904 – 1982) went from the utterly material verses, via an elementary confessional poetry, the poetry of Christian and mystic symbolism, intimate meditations, to an extremely dematerialized poetry of cosmic regions. Going through these poetic stages, he proved, practically as well, that a poet’s physical position in relation to the world also essentially […]
An Invitation to Dear Jesus I’d be so happy if, oh Jesus, you would enter my dwelling deign. Where things quite common hang on the walls. Where day drops off early on the window pane. I would tell you of lighting A dim lamp to lengthen the short day. Of my very small life, serving rancorously with my brothers away. […]
Men are, typically, bad at telling colors apart. Still, it would have been hard to find someone as clueless in the matter of colors as my grandfather. His spectrum boiled down to four basic colors, and as for all the rest—either they did not exist or (if the old guy was in a good mood) they were reduced, in short […]
Jim Timony, my social worker, left for Nebraska to finish his doctorate, and so the whole of next week I did not have to do my obligatory script of contrition and blabbing such lies that no one in his right mind would swallow: “Have you ever beaten anyone?”, “Who? Me? Who do you think I am?” “Did your father beat […]
The story of the Bosnian bogomils, called “krstjani” (“christians”), has been oversimplified by those who see the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century as a glorious time in which the dualist church and state worked together and prospered. In fact, the krstjani efforts to replicate early Christianity and follow an apostolic path were often obstructed by churchmen and […]
She is here and she stands firmly You think: silently once she fell but she waits for you around the corner Like trout in the Vrbas like the Vrbas in its gorge like that gorge in the mountain Bosnia—always in her Bosnian ways Even today we need her Bogomil beliefs her Ku’ran her Pater Noster her King Tvrtko and some […]
Regardless of the party in power, Serbia’s strategy for Bosnia-Herzegovina is a constant. Belgrade has not given up its strategic goals in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the safeguard of Republika Srpska as laid down in the Dayton Peace Agreement. Serbia therefore seizes every opportunity to insist on the status quo and invoke the Dayton Agreement as “the only legal and legitimate international act” […]