He should have a tranquil face saying how you were together once and how those times glow beyond all other times. There should be two women you two have pleased countless times, whose little laurels of fat tremble delicately when they smile. There should also be a beach, a pebbled beach, and a couple of kids gazing at the pebbles […]
Throughout its existence, Bosnia has been a religiously pluralist society. The various Christian churches, Judaism, and Islam, plus numerous syncretic forms, as reflected in one language and their various experiences with it, have contributed to this plurality. In the modern era, this means that Bosnia is considered an anomaly, because its pluralist culture does not readily fit into modern nation-based […]
[One] Here lies Berko Miotoš, on his noble land. If you would my tombstone overturn, overturn it, but spare your arms and legs. This stone is too heavy to move, and far too heavy to overturn. Its weight has blistered my bones. If you would still tread my bones Do, and the Good Lord and I shall forgive, but do […]
The Extravagant State Structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina The extravagant state structure inaugurated by the Dayton Agreement resulted in, among other things, a series of negative effects on the education sector. According to a recent study, “From the very beginning, the Constitution created a decentralized, asymmetric, and defective education management system that has undermined unity in educational policies, common educational goals, […]
This hand says to you stop And contemplate your own hands. Translated by Keith Doubt
With hand raised to endless sky To great monuments around me I say All daily words entangled by the grave Which ensnare me in painful motion Pain magnifying on the way To the one Stop I say to the sun That scorches my scalp To the ground that holds me firm To the day that leaves again To the ancient […]
The most massive protests over the failure to adopt the Law on the Unique Master Citizen Number (JMBG) were held June 11, 2013, when thousands of citizens came onto the streets. As the most radical act carried out after the war, these protests were a blockage of the B&H institutions. The protests were characterized by the peaceful gathering of citizens […]
I went to a conference in Bosnia in July and talked with friends in Sarajevo about the social and political situation in the country. During the war, some eighteen years ago, people in Bosnia suffered war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Nationalist politicians leading the neighboring countries of Croatia and Serbia were directly responsible for these war crimes, crimes […]
When the Vilić brothers married off their sister, They sacrificed three hundred sheep, Built three new mausoleums, Circumcised three hundred young boys, That their sister might cross the mountain alive and well. When their sister had crossed over the mountain alive and well, She crossed over the mountain, and went into the field, A freezing rain mixed with sleet struck […]
When the famous 1985 New York Times Book Review polemic between Milan Kundera and Joseph Brodsky (the latter, a poet; the former, a novelist—but I like them both more as essayists) came again into my hands after several years, I let myself be seduced by the text out of habit, enchanted by the beauty of the authors’ sentences—until I eventually […]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has acquitted on appeal Momcilo Perisic, former Chief of Staff of the Army of Yugoslavia (VJ), who had previously been sentenced to 27 years in prison for war-crimes in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. He was one of only six officials from Serbia-Montenegro ever indicted by the ICTY for war-crimes in Bosnia. He was […]
Clothesline: Bosnia-Herzegovina features interviews with women in Mostar who contributed to the Global Clothesline Project. The Clothesline Project, started as a grass-roots movement in Cape Cod, U.S.A. in the early 1990s, invites women to construct T-shirts that express the violence they have suffered and the healing they are experiencing. Clothesline: Bosnia-Herzegovina continues this work and features interviews conducted with women […]
When he’s, usually after midnight, returning home, the cold concrete of the staircase is waiting for him, and he, such as he is, cannot control the tidal wave of ontology: what is when what is he’s what is returning what is home what is what …? In front of the entrance, he starts shaking empirically and sees himself as Ulysses […]
In the Liberation obituaries I find that F. has died. She was the prettiest girl at the Sarajevo Philosophy Faculty, Class of 1974. My roommate in the student dorm Drank day and night because of her, but she once told me “I like you better.” There was no love between us. I caressed her once on a shaded bench on […]
“Hello?” Saša answered. “Hello, it’s Adin, hello . . .” From the phone booth, I raised my voice over the clattering of a passing streetcar. “Adin, man! You’re alive? Alive, damm, you’re alive! Where are you calling from?” “From Zagreb.” “Yeah, I can hear you’re in Zagreb. How did you get out? Man, I thought you were dead. You went […]