Our impressions from Sarajevo

There Once Was a Land Called Bosnia

Zapis o zemlji    —Mak Dizdar

Pitao jednom tako jednoga vrli pitac neki
A kto je ta sta je ta da prostis
Gdje li je ta
Odakle je
Kuda je
Ta
Bosna
Rekti
A zapitam odgovor njemu hitan tad dade:
Bosna da prostis jedna zemlja imade
I posna i bosa da prostis
I hladna i gladna
I k tomu jos
Da prostis
Prkosna
Od
Sna


A Text About a Land

Once upon a time a worthy questioner asked:
Forgive me who is and what sir
Where is
Whence and
Whither sir
Prithee sir
is this
Bosnia
The questioned swiftly replied in this wise:
Forgive me there once was a land sir called Bosnia
A fasting a frosty a
Footsore a drossy a
Land forgive me
That wakes from sleep sir
With a
Defiant
Sneer


The sun came down and colored the mountains a deep lavender as our fleet of taxi cabs cut across the old city of Sarajevo. We were heading from our little hotel in the hills above Baščaršija to the Bosmal City Center, a massive, modern structure at the other end of town. The Center stood out amongst a dense gathering of weathered and pockmarked communist-era high rises and was home to the concluding reception for Humanity in Action’s Third Annual Conference in Bosnia and Herzegovina. To celebrate this end, we secured this motorcade of taxis in the dusk heat and climbed in, four fellows to each cab, counting marks in sweaty palms to pay for the quick trip across town.

The taxi made its way at a steady rate, pulling tight curves and stopping often for trams and pedestrians at the crowded intersections of Old Town. Our driver, an older man with wild, dark eyes, turned to regard each one of us, his hands drawing back from the steering wheel as he surveyed our faces and asked where we came from. We told him we were two Ukrainians, two Americans, and this answer made his driving quicken and his busy hands move up and down along the wheel with added zeal. “But what are you doing here?,” he continued, a perplexed investigation in his voice. The other fellows explained about the conference on his country and I listened with my gaze out the window, attention drawn toward the landscape of the city, this strange blend of cobblestones, minarets, bridges, and steeples.

Sarajevo, I concluded, was one of the most beautiful cities I had ever seen. Of course, this was a beauty imbued with an incredible measure of pain. From my view in the taxi that evening, the city possessed a neo-noir kind of beauty, to draw from the film aesthetic—vibrant even in its shadows and flecked with loveliness at its tears and corners like the tiny, remarkable details of a crime-scene photograph. Most cities stand atop layers of ashes, bones, and dust—hasty monuments, memories of ugliness and mourning. Sarajevo was no exception, her topsoil showing in places signs of a recent and barbarous turning, culling, and gleaning. Romancing with the city from my window, just as I was rewriting Roman Polański’s Chinatown to the narrow streets of Sarajevo, I was pulled back to the conversation with our taxi driver. The tone of his voice had changed as he settled into a deliberate, impassioned monologue. “This is important,” he said. I took out my notebook and wrote it down:

“Bosnia has no power. It is so different. What is Bosnia? It is not something you have in your head. It is something you have in your heart. People came here 500 years ago; Bosnia was not created through violence. It could respect all people, no power or force. I want to tell you that. It is very important. I’ve been here 58 years. Democracy is an excellent state to be in, but democracy cannot solve problems during a crisis. Democracy works in rich, stabilized countries, but any crisis, and democracy cannot solve problems. Is there an alternative? It seems democracy is not possible in a place like Bosnia. It is not possible here. Why? Too much bribery and organized crime here. Stronger measures need to solve that problem. It wouldn’t destroy our rights. What rights have we now? Who has rights? Criminals? Corrupt politicians? This is my opinion. My experience in ex-Yugoslavia, I felt much stronger then than in this moment. Only politicians, criminals, and dogs are protected here.”

I scratched his words down the page and five minutes later he settled into silence as we pulled up to the City Center and paid for the ride. None of us knew what to say except hvala and ćao and then he was off, driving east without any idea he’d given the perfect closing remarks to the Sarajevo Conference. This impromptu education, removed from the chilled air, lecture halls, and coffee breaks of the past few days, hung above me in the stifling heat as we ascended to the penthouse event. Taking a glass of wine and regarding the city from panoramic windows, I watched the urgency of Sarajevo’s recent history spread itself out before me. William Faulkner’s famous and endlessly relevant line rang out: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
Conference or no conference, it seems Sarajevo is one of those cities that considers its history by the hour, in coffee shops and petrol stations, mosques and churches, classrooms and taxi cabs. Standing so high above the city, seeing Sarajevo imprinted within the slopes and steep curves of the valley, I could not help but think of the Siege and the earlier times the city had been regarded from such a height. I could not imagine a time when this view was considered strategic and hostile, rather than simply magnificent. I could not even truly imagine our talkative taxi driver living through all of that, let alone a whole population.

Since leaving the Balkans, we fellows often discuss the question of agency and progress, returning to the core questions of the conference. What can we do? How could we possibly fix this? Change anything at all? With these questions muddling my thoughts and driving my plans for the future, I turn to another quote from Faulkner. In 1950, speaking to a discouraged generation and a world of young writers who believed there was no real hope for mankind, Faulkner challenged them by saying:

“I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Whether we become lawyers or poet laureates, diplomats or doctors, journalists or academics, I think this duty and this hope is the only thing that will sustain us. Where we draw it from, the source of this hope is individual and varied, but hopefully Humanity in Action can serve as a common ground and meeting place for these small ambitions to unite.
- Anna Duensing (US Fellow)