Remembering the forgotten

The cobbled lanes lined with colourful lanterns and copperware emanated a golden hue. Young boys darted in and out of humble shop fronts delivering trays of tea, while warm breeze carried scents of stewed meat. Without towering concrete giants imposing on the sun the Old Town had a fresh, openness of bygone city centres.

Sitting down at a small cafe I asked for a traditional Bosnian coffee. Excitedly, the shop owner returned with a tray crowded with copper pots, turkish delight, cinnamon drinks, and sugar cubes. Sitting down beside me, she taught me everything from her coffee to her country. Interested by my interest. Her gestures so friendly, so open, so foreign to the bored faces you’re met with as a tourist in France or Spain. I had come to Sarajevo unexpectedly on an off-hand recommendation, wanting to escape the textbook Euro-trail. I was in awe.

Naive and inspired by my first day in the Old Town oasis, I found a gallery and ambled in. Thousands of tiny photographs of faces filled the entrance.

“They are the people still missing,” said the man behind the desk. “Some of the mass graves still haven’t been uncovered.”

What?

Staring back at me were the faces of men, women, children. Confused, I continued into the next room. Enormous black and white photographs occupied the walls; excruciatingly beautiful. An image that echoed Michelangelo’s David captivated me. But drawing closer I could see it strayed far from a godly scene. Immortalised: the gloved hand of a aid worker reaching for the preserved arm of a corpse protruding from the cold earth.

There are no words for this. A morbid mix of sadness, mortification, outrage and shame at what I did not know. The feeling of a great injustice just uncovered. Of a tragedy under appreciated, forgotten.

In need of air I slipped out. It was then I started to understand the cracks, the holes. Bullet holes. Everywhere. Wounds covered every surface. Scars. Decimating the city.


Later I saw what I now consider the embodiment of Bosnia. A flower shop. Filled with life and beauty, blossoming from a mutilated building so ravished by bullet holes it seemed more of a corpse, a skeleton. And in front of this shop, graves. Hundreds of meters of graves. Still the flower shop nestled among the hurt; alive, beautiful. Defiant in its life. This was Bosnia. A most bizarre paradox of life and death, pain and beauty.