There exists in southeastern Europe a living legacy of the over four-hundred-year-long Ottoman presence–a combined population, excluding European Turkey, of some five or six million Moslem inhabitants. Of these, the second largest component (after Moslem Albanians) is the Serbo-Croatian speaking Moslems of Bosnia-Hercegovina (hereafter referred to as Bosnian Moslems). As of the 1971 census, there are some one and three-quarter […]
The loss of Bosnia that we have experienced and the way in which we have experienced it is such that the country keeps coming back into our thoughts as it once was. We feel an urge to bring it back the way we experienced it and loved it. It is like the love that wishes to remain forever the same […]
National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. – Karl Marx The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilized life as the combination of men in society. Where political and national boundaries coincide, society ceases to advance and nations […]
The agony is like golden dust aswirled, Above me a yellow flower’s aflutter. Never before was there such fragrance In my little room—my great world. My weak hand reached for the yellow flower, Trying to grasp it, so yellow and so sweet, But in vain was my effort, the flower kept fleeing, And fell at last upon my chest and […]
This happened in the sheep world on the Sloping Meadows. Aja, a big ewe with thick fleece and round eyes, gave birth to her first lamb, who looked like all newborns, a fist of damp wool starting to bleat. It was a girl, an orphan, because a few days earlier Aja had lost her husband whom she dearly loved. The […]
In march the soldiers with rifles on their shoulders. out run through brambles the locals with their bundles. Off fly the envoys contemplating new ways of creating symmetry in a future cemetery. Up go the pundits explicating bandits. Clearly outworded, down go the murdered. The expensive warriors, sailing by on carriers flying Old Glory, signal hunky-dory. Far is the neighbor, […]
I didn’t know your name, but you became a part of my soul at the instant of your death. I was sixteen, and the war in Bosnia had just begun. Simply walking on the street became a game of Russian roulette. Each step could be the last. Indeed, death seemed inevitable. Still, we took our chances in daily searches for […]
(a greeting) Twenty years before the first multiparty elections as I watched the sweltering road along the seacoast get rolled up on the wheels like spaghetti next to my father’s sweaty shoulder I was taking lessons in life I wondered why he (for no obvious reason) was honking now and then to the approaching cars and why they honked to […]
They taught us about the climate of Ethiopia, the sheep population of New Zealand. They taught us the area of the USSR and the countries we have borders with. When my next-door neighbor showed up wearing combat boots instead of slippers it occurred to me: the area of the USSR is subject to change as is the number of sheep […]
To Adin While the country I was born in was approaching its forced landing our life and football appetites were soaring high. Deaf and blind to the questions that’d started exploding right in our faces, we contemplated a starry future for ourselves, for posterity, for our national football team. Asked why he kept a player in the center of the […]
Those I know have all grown old, my scattered friends. The snow is getting rusty in Sweden, from the other side of the globe brief electronic messages buzz in: there’s a fire, or else there isn’t. No news is news anymore, they’ve heard it all – my tired friends. Memories are the only news we are still curious about. We […]
The earth has done its work. We wouldn’t have thought it, my brother and I, but a friend said to us “Your father’s gotten slimmer.” “Huh?” “His grave is sinking in!” We went to the gravedigger to order the gravestone. “Don’t worry,” he said, “everything will be just right.” But we wanted a solid gravestone, cost didn’t matter to us. […]
It’s a secret thought, it’s the smallest of worms That slowly nibbles and warms the blood How so? On an eyelash of dreams a little dust At a casual smile moist with fear It banishes all that’s gray and stiff from a head Born of a thought, it lives on hope What’s that? A purple smile in a singing wind […]
Who are we Bosnians of the Muslim faith and what do we want in our homeland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a region to which we are connected by heritage and historical background, and Europe in which we belong geo-politically and culturally? When the identity of a people is in question as well as those characteristics which define its identity, there […]
As indelible memories go, this basketball moment will be a lot less traumatic than the first one. Elmir Brkanić will be honored on the court tonight, Feburary 13th, 2009, at Wilberforce University’s Gaston Lewis Arena. It’s Senior Night, and the 6-foot-5 forward from Bosnia likely will be playing his final home game for the Bulldogs, who face Pittsburgh’s Point Park […]
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. “Time,” they had briefed him in London, “is short. It’s too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in […]
Muharem Bazdulj, born in 1977, is one of the leading writers of the younger generation to appear in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He writes in a wide variety of genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, and essays; he is also active as a journalist and a translator. One of his short story collections has appeared in English (The […]
The times are terrible, dark, and heavy, Like a damned soul in disgrace; On Golgotha is hanging the victim From Nazareth, that wretched place! In His nest is expiring now That wounded white dove. Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani? – His last breath is heard from above. O, Lord, to You I am bringing now, In front of Your tree of […]
Outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the poet Mak Dizdar is relatively unknown. Modern anthologies from Croatia and Serbia seldom include the poet. While Dizdar is included in the anthology, Contemporary Yugoslav Poetry, he is refered to as “a Croatian poet.” Dizdar was born in 1917 in Stolac, Bosnia-Herzegovina and died in 1971. His pen-name, Mak, meaning “poppy,” is a pseudonym, which he […]
For a long time it was thought That it is was circular, As it was thought That the Earth was flat It is not a straight line, It comes out of the forefinger. It is everywhere And everything has it. If the cosmos were To have a meridian There, it would be similar. You do not take it In order […]
