& Everyone Goes Home Happy

Your brother-in-law jokes that you are getting the “War Tour” of Sarajevo and Bosnia, and it’s funny, and it’s fitting, and it’s true. But looking around, there is really no other tour to give. He shows you the places that were completely bombed out, you a pass by a bustling market; a shell exploded there and killed 40 people, drive down sniper alley, there that building was bombed to the ground, there the first casualties, two women, occurred can you see their memorial? Once I found a disposable bazooka, you try and imagine and you cannot. 10 years after it hosted the Olympics, this city was destroyed, and it is only just beginning to crawl out of its ashes. You visit the tunnel, 800 m long, that was the only way in and out of the city, alive, for years. You brother’s father, an old man now, pleasant, bad lungs he smokes too much you wave at each other because that is your only form of communication, this man is a war hero. Honored, respected, never lost a man.

Everyone speaks calmly of before the war, after the war. Time stops for no war, you must keep living even if there are shells flying overhead. You may die tomorrow, be paralyzed, but so what. That is tomorrow, today we have things to do. The war was something to be endured and, look, now it’s over.

Sarajevo has the cleanest water you have ever tasted, you have seen the spring it comes from, it is crystal, crystal clear. It is misty and green, and everything you longed for when you were younger when outside was just asphalt and swimming pools. There are bridges and streams, and secret paths, and trees thick for miles and ”Landmines. Don’t go behind the taped-off area, they haven’t found them all yet.” Even here? “Everywhere.”

The city is ringed by mountains. The clouds are so thick that the sky seems much lower, much closer, but a closeness that brings comfort, not claustrophobia. Out of the corner of your eyes, you think you see huge storm clouds in the distance, but when you turn your head, they are only mountains. You try to imagine them thick with soldiers, and shells, and spies and danger, you try and try and the fear is there for just a moment, hovering just above your head, and then a flock of birds, and it is gone.

And now, you must too.

The city disappears from view as you fly higher into the clouds. First one wisp, then two, they become thicker, faster and you struggle to have one last look before nothing is left, not even the mountains.

You face forward, to Zagreb, to home.