On various continents, at airports, at stadiums, everywhere I meet people who more than twenty years ago, escaping war like I, settled far and wide around the world. I feel they are there around me, who they are and where from, but I don’t notice them right away since they are indistinguishable in the crowd. They are as ordinary as […]
I can hardly keep in mind anything from yesterday’s day, but the past I remember clearly. The early years are the first to sink into the dregs of a lifespan, just as the grime of the sun and red soil settles in olive oil. The rest has no taste. In October we were regularly late returning from school, stealing on […]
As part of UNESCO, education is seen as a part of culture; at the same time, the educational and socializing effects of culture are brought to the fore. Unlike with other international organizations, UNESCO prioritizes the foundational effects of culture and the cultural character of education. Through this engagement, UNESCO’s conceptions of economics and culture differ from other organizations. Three […]
Over the past thirty years many articles, including serious scholarly studies, have been written about the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1986). Meant to stand as a signpost for Serbia’s course at the turn of the century and a list of rational solutions, the SANU Memorandum did not serve this purpose, agree the authors who have […]
My paradox is complete: I don’t want to remember and yet I cannot forget. By mid-1992, I thought it would be over in a few days. By mid-1995, I realized it would never end. These two erroneous predictions outline the agony of the city that was able to survive without water longer than without cigarettes. And today, many, many years […]
Today, global society is in the stage of searching for a model of social cohabitation. The problem lies in the fact that global societies have constructed their identities through culture and religion and therefore the process of cohabitation with others appears only as a process of assimilation. The solution to this difficulty is usually found in a compromise that is […]
And this was writ By the captive who does not rejoice May he be the last captive The last man who has lost hope Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović and Stephen P. Meyer
Having fled Sarajevo as a child, I find it hard to tell refugees from Syria that they will be going back. I recognized Basel immediately when the shot cut to a group of refugees standing in the rain, and he turned to look briefly at the camera. I was at home a couple of months back watching a Sky News […]
Do we celebrate or commemorate twenty years of the Dayton Peace Agreement? This was something that crossed my mind when I was invited to come to Dayton and speak about post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. I do not feel like celebrating, to be honest, although to end a war is a tremendous human and humanitarian achievement. However, the sad truth is […]
Socrates: Our disagreement turns on this single point. Now what I want to know is this: Will a man who does wrong be happy if he is brought to justice and punished? Polus: On the contrary, he will then be most miserable. Socrates: By your account, if he is not brought to justice he will be happy? Polus: Yes. Socrates: […]
The verdict today by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) is that Radovan Karadžić committed genocide during his effort to create a Serb state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is yet another confirmation that the so-called “Republic of the Serbs” committed genocide at its founding. Genocide had to be committed, simply because it would be impossible to establish a Serb state on any territory […]
No one chooses his life: the pecking of boats at the ramparts. My messages to friends, my shame toward those whom we will conquer: you know the end and the beginning of everything, the words that led me to exile. We recuperated on Hvar, going there in winter and at night when the water was far from us, under the […]
Time and Place Tuesday, 22 February 1994 (Washington) It is difficult to arrange the days in retrospect, because time has shifted. We flew for nine hours on Sunday, setting off at 11:30 a.m. that day and arriving here in the afternoon at approximately 2 p.m. They say that it takes less time to fly back from here. The position of […]
Preface After the Vienna talks about the cantons and the final organisation of the Federation of BiH that took place from 8 to 11 May 1994, I stopped keeping a journal about the events that I was participating in. I had made a firm decision to no longer write out the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, believing that it had survived both […]
New Year’s Day. Snow overlaid the minefield. Adin Ljuca Translated by Keith Doubt
In the context of the continuing economic crisis the issue of where the Bosnian economics is today is often raised as well as the issue of whether it can act in concert with economic practices and contribute to finding adequate solutions to mitigate the effects and create a way out of the current economic crisis. The intellectual world, in the […]
Almost all the domestic film production in the ex-Yugoslav region inclines subtly to the ideological views of the country of origin and is set or reflected of war and the post-war period. One truly remarkable fact about the recent release of Hiljadarka is not just its genre as comedy but also its lack of any connection to the conflict and […]
She sheds a tear when no one is watching She feels the pain bottled in her chest She hopes the end is near She sheds a tear when no one is watching Her father, uncle, and cousins have not yet been found. Under her breath she speaks to a father she does not remember, To an uncle who would have […]
Chapter I A Shot In a fraction of a second there was no connection between Diki’s senses and his brain. He could not comprehend or explain to himself any of the things that were happening around him. He closed his eyes, reflexively, at the moment a shot was fired. The sound was deafening. He inhaled the pungent smell of gunpowder […]
Alexander, Ronelle. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. xxi + 464 pp. Alexander, Ronelle and Ellen Elias-Bursać. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook: With Exercises and Basic Grammar, Second edition. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010. xviii + 510 pp. The present article is an abridged version of a longer review […]