Rerouting the Orient Express

Seated on a low step, legs extended over refurbished Ottoman-era cobblestone, I had an ideal vantage point to look out and up at the figures beginning to populate Sarajevo’s Bašcaršija as darkness fell on one of the last days of Ramadan. What had been an unexpectedly quiet bazaar during the August afternoon sunshine became an unassuming intersection of lives teeming with hunger and faith, laughter and stillness, just visible through the nighttime glow of busy baklava shops and Italian-style cafés, increasingly cacaphonic as voices exiting the august mosques enclosing the district merged with the chatter of vendors. After a day of exploring alleys and asking for directions, an opportune moment had arrived—to watch, listen, and reflect.
After only four days in Bosnia & Herzegovina, I had much to process, especially since I received political commentary, historical details, and anecdotes from travel companion spouse, who is a Balkan hybrid: a Macedonian citizen born before the breakup of Yugoslavia to parents of Croatian, Greek, and Macedonian descent. While our Balkan tour had encouraged our comparativist approach to food (the region’s well-known burek pastry may seem uniform at first, but after living in the region for 18 month, I learned quickly to discern variations in texture, greasiness, and filling), the history of the region and its peoples took more effort to digest. In particular, our previous days in bullet-scarred Mostar had prompted tears and wartime memories, shared though a Macedonian teenager’s 1992 eyes, of a family living in fear of a spreading conflict and sorrow for the loss of former countrymen.
While I still don’t know the perspective of a Bosnian Muslim woman, that trip brought me into that of my new family, now discernible from the narratives competing to voice the Balkans’ stories. As I try to sift through the layers of history in a place like Sarajevo, I can recognize the beauty in what is and is not familiar.