It was rather obvious in 1991 that Bosnia and Herzegovina, then one of the six Yugoslav republics, was not going to survive the collapse of Yugoslavia without plunging into violence. The question, which was discussed at several workshops in Sarajevo that year, still sounds pertinent: Could the 1992-5 war have been avoided and a relatively smooth transition to independence achieved […]
Everyone says that I’m a valuable witness. To what? Truth, you say? Truth is no longer naked. It wears designer clothes created on some Sunrise Avenue and stitched together in some Jamarta, San Singo, Getucipalga. Truth is no longer plain. It’s like sophisticated fake jewelry on a fabulously rich woman. You either know it’s fake but say nothing aware that […]
Beyond everything unreal Nothing is the only verity – finding a blind spot of a mortar shell lighting the pilot light as the sniper’s eye blinks – Crazed calculations Courting involuntary muscles – as if the body could absorb the blow and make the brain disown the pain when the entrails rise ethereal like batter dough and a salty crust […]
Thousand and one nights away In a city where all windows had glaucoma And hunger was a cannibal dancing in the brain, I stole voraciously candles and matches To copy the death-bed edition Of “Leaves of Grass” in minuscule letters Of another language and make it lighter In a battered vinyl case when lugged Across the powder bleached field. My […]
It is always possible to YES or NO. – Hannah Arendt When searching for an answer to why the question of civil courage had become so important for me, I came to the event in my own life which had been decisive for me. When I was six, my mother, who had been trying for sixteen years to find out […]
Where it is none knows We know little but it’s known Beyond forest beyond valley Beyond seven beyond eight Still worse still crazier Over weary over bitter Over blackthorn over bramble Over heat over strictness Over foreboding over doubts Beyond nine beyond ten Still deeper still stronger Beyond quiet beyond dark Where no cock crows Where no horn’s voice is […]
The modern-day Horsemen of the Apocalypse—death, destruction, ethnic cleansing and lies—ride over Bosnia today. Everything that the human spirit and labor of our greatgrandfathers created over thousands of years is being destroyed. Day after day, month after month, year after year, they leave behind devastated towns, torched villages, and dead bodies, fated only to become statistics. Every new figure in […]
Stay here!… The sun that shines in a foreign place, Will never warm you like the sun in your own; The bread has a bitter taste there Where one has no one, not even a brother. Who would find a better mother than one’s own, And your mother is this country; Take a look upon the limestones and the field, […]