you should have known all along things are not as they appear, though once they do they are what they are – sheer luck got you across the open space, creating the illusion the mind’s eye was to be parallel to the line of sight: but a straight path, whether there or not, is just a manifestation, to be negotiated […]
Questions of the legitimacy of an independent state have become particularly topical today in light of the debate over the status of Kosovo. These discussions are still needlessly being politicized and carry over into Bosnia and Herzegovina, with attempts to “internationalize” the problem of Kosovo, particularly as a means of exerting pressure on the international community from Belgrade and Banja […]
We are perfect. We do not make mistakes. We comprehend. We are the best. We are going to win. We will show them all. We can. We will. And we have bribed help at our disposal, too. We dream. We see. We accomplish. We win. And then you inhale for the first time in your new life. The perfect children. […]
The question regarding the responsibilities for the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina brings to attention the responsibilities of the international community. It requires focusing on those members of the international community who had the greatest impact on the course of events in ex-Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of creating the conditions for the beginning of the war, supporting […]
Journalist and historian William Miller (1864-1945) was educated at Rugby and Oxford, after which he devoted himself to the study of Turkish and Balkan society and politics. His book Travels and Politics in the Near East (1898) was, as he points out in the “Preface,” “the result of four visits to the Balkan Peninsula in the years 1894, 1896, 1897, […]
O, Arabic writing, you are full of curved Sabers and crescent moons. There are no more dragons in the Ropušnica Cavern But the treasure is also gone upon which they once lay Through here, who knows when, The conquerors rode their horses, And even now, we still sneeze from the dust That their hooves Disturbed. And where has it gone […]
It is a stillness and solitude from which perhaps God begins Green and blue they are like polar ice The stillness and solitude one can find only in a soul that, Having just torn itself from its flesh and, delivered from the world’s Evil, is looking upon the earthly globe from above With the eyes of an eagle. It is […]
Asja P, the girl with a dog: sometimes I meet her walking her beautifully trained Irish setter. Her father was a philosopher, a well-known university professor, so I suppose he named his only daughter after Asja Lacis, who used to be the director of the theater in Riga. It was passionate love for Asja Lacis that made the Jewish mystic […]
A nighttime panorama of Sarajevo caught by the light of shellfire, gunpowder flashbulbs, by the dance of silhouettes in which only the persistence of vision can make out the former shapes (calling up flickering skyline lights, orange neon canyons, evening crescendos of headlights tracing their fluorescent snakes on a time exposure). But only this possible postcard can literally catch the […]
We’ve changed? Hardly, not significantly. The world has changed. I’ve stayed the same: I live in constant change and I know all about you, all that can be known, all but your address, the city you live in, your children, the language you fill out forms in, where you go in the morning and who you come back to in […]
It rained all night and the first snow showed up in the morning. But the café is cozy. You can sip hot coffee and look out the window at the street. The whiteness emphasizes shapes, movements, the day’s subtle mechanics. Here on the terrace, last summer there was a huge video screen. Now it’s just an empty steel square. Quite […]
To R. Konstantinović I wanted to listen, hear, understand the conversation between one wave and one conch But they told me, nice but have you been listening, hearing, understanding the conversation of those who walk upright like you of those who soar beneath heaven’s clouds like you but like you they are not birds they descend to the bottom of […]
Introduction What holds today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina together? Unfortunately, there is no internal cohesive energy that would be strong enough to keep it together if the international community would cease to guard its integrity. This insight is disturbing, but if it is accurate, there is no use turning one’s head away from it. Rather, this insight should serve as the […]
Oh, Jesus, how I would love it if you would care To come into my humble home, Where quite ordinary things hang on the wall Where the day dies early in the windows. I would tell you how I light a dim candle To make this short day last longer. How I live quite a simple life. And serve with […]
In the sixteenth century, at the time of the arrival of the Sephardim in Bosnia, the Ottoman Empire was at the peak of its power, constantly advancing westward and northward; during the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), it would reach its greatest glory. That time coincides with the greatest power of the Sephardic community, its ascendance, and success: it […]
The Great War began in Sarajevo, on a hot summer day in 1914. It was a Sunday; I was a student. In the afternoon a girl came by, in pigtails as was the custom in those days. She held a large yellow straw hat in her hand. The hat was like summer: it reminded one of hay, crickets, and poppies. […]
The recent decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to not hold Serbia directly responsible and accountable for the genocide that occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina is troubling and disappointing. The decision strengthens the cynical perception of the international community obstructing Bosnia-Herzegovina’s need for justice to rebuild a stable and unified society. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement fractured Bosnia-Herzegovina into […]
Humankind will be able to recall July 11th and 12th in 1995, remembering the genocide that was committed in the United Nations safe area, Srebrenica, by the criminal hordes controlled by Ratko Mladić. Shortly after the commission of the crimes in Srebrenica, with blood on their hands and with ardent cannons, the same hordes took off to a second United […]
1. The Mural from Vozuca On the wall of an abandoned house in Vozu!a near Zavidovi!i a poem was discovered. Above the poem a message: Here it is still autumn and it is raining. I have decided, tomorrow I am leaving. And before I go, I am leaving you this poem, so write it down, if you want. If I […]
After the Second World War, Samokovlija dedicated one of his stories to his mother, Sara, with these words: “I’m happy that she died before the war and did not experience the horrors to which we have been witnesses.” I cite this dedication, the bitterest of all dedications I know, with an uncertain memory, for nowhere in his collected or selected […]