While Ukraine stands as a witness of horrific, yet live streamed, history in the making, Sarajevo breathes history in its very flesh and blood up until today.
The choice of destination resulted from a bunch of unordered events - my most beautiful uncalculated adventure, leaving an indelible mark. Other than transparency and acknowledgment of reality, the sole thing I truly ever valued is the ability to stimulate a reflection. It comes in the form of a guidance of thought to the unforeseen dimensions. Once could find it in a book, in a movie, in a song, in a person (yet the most prove to be tiring a great deal), and, most remarkably, in a journey, which encloses all and beyond. Above all, questioning is what makes it all worth it.
In this vein, Sarajevo did - the experience of which lies in the hazard of the questions asked and the answers received in the surroundings I found myself in. The very same is also true for how we go through life. People we met on our way startled me with an amount of accumulated knowledge on world events, a sharp mind and this very basic curiosity so rare in many. I cannot help but wonder that growing up in the basement hiding from 300 average daily shell impacts at the age of 8 or witnessing your father silent for years as a traumatic response inevitably forces you to ask the question why way more times than a regular human being would. It must foster the urge to grasp history, political tensions and the very essence of human nature way beyond your regional borders.
The following narratives on Sarajevo are the resulting outcome - my mere impressions with a little bit of context from the past to make the present more comprehensible.
AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE WORLDS
Our journey starts with Nino, our guide and the very first key to Sarajevo of today through its past. He considers himself a so-called the Other - agnostic junction of Serbian father and Bosnian Muslim mother. Nino greets us by announcing that political tensions are back in the region as Serbian nationalism is stirring up trouble, again. The path to plausible calamity opened up as a direct result of the war unleashed in Ukraine. People are doomed to grim reminiscences while watching devastated Mariupol on their TV screens. « Two days after the war started my mother prepared a small parcel containing the most essential things, including passeports, just in case. »
Next to the Sacred Heart Cathedral, where we stand, Pope John Paul II Monument unveiled in 2014, highly greeted by Bosnian Muslims, embodies a strive for peace on the torn and devastated land. Today, new graffiti started appearing on the walls of Sarajevo with this one word - mir | мир.
One could hardly find a better place to experience historical and cultural richness built through clashes and divisions - a genuine open air museum. In Sarajevo, you find yourself at the crossroads of the worlds - the one of the Ottomon Empire, of Austria-Hungary, of communism in Tito’s Yugoslavia, of the Siege in the shoes of Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and the Others. Sarajevo reveals itself as dense, complex, yet the most beautiful.
What was it like in Sarajevo during the longest military siege of modern history from 1992 to 1996? « Like gambling with your life. » As we walk the paved roads of Baščaršija, Nino adds « My mother used to wear heels even on these. She said that if she died, she preferred to die in style. »