It started snowy as I boarded the taxi to Sarajevo airport. We sped through the empty streets of Sarajevo, past glitzy malls, and soviet style apartment blocks, and passed a roundabout marking the Olympic Games of 1984, my year.
I'm happy to have visited, but at the same time also somewhat relieved to leave and be heading back to Canada, where I can begin the end of year holiday season (laden with more gifts and goodies). Not to mention the fact that my cold/fever has now progressed to a bad cough due to the poor air quality and the constant smell of smoke/smog and cigarettes in the air (worse than Beijing or New Delhi, shockingly...). A constant veil of yellowish hue of smog and fog hangs in the air.
It's been a quick stop in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the primary purpose of which was to check up on a friend I met in Australia. She was so welcoming, and greeted me at the airport, and pretty much spent the last few days with me, showing me around and accompanying me to even Mostar for a day.
She seems to be doing well, much healthier looking than the pale complexion she had when she was back in Australia. It seems like being back with family, which she often says is what she's doing, helps a lot. I just hope she gets the rest and assurance she needs here prior to returning to Australia in a month or two (as I will be doing).
She really is a kind soul, and a warm person, yet troubled, it seems in the mind. Or perhaps just very misunderstood. I sympathise with her, and her desire to make life elsewhere, even though her family seems quite tightly knit and close.
It's not easy, it can never be, to be from a country that is still reeling from the ravages of war, and perhaps one of the most horrendous genocides and crimes perpetuated on an entire population. Walking around Sarajevo, you can see buildings the sides of which are riddled with bullet holes and reminders of mortar fire. Echoes of a time when Sarajevo was sieged for over 3 years, when the population, including children , were targets of snipers and shelling from Serbian (and Croat?) nationalists.
The inhumanity and cruelty perpetuated against the Bosnian population is horrendous (crimes are perpetuated still perhaps, in Ukraine not so distant away by the invading Russian forces).
Yesterday, I went to the genocide museum, a small venue just a roomsful of artefacts, accounts, letters, shoes, clothing and personal items from a devastating part of history when I was around 8 years old. I've seen the images on tv at the time, but I did not fully comprehend the atrocities until much later. I remember the shelling of the old bridge in Mostar, which I walked on personally just days ago, which will probably be etched in my memory forever. I remember the investigation into how Dutch forces simply left the safe zone of Srbenica and allowed the army of Republika Sbrska to exexute thousands of civilians, and expel them from their homes. The symbolic failure of the international system to care for humanity and do anything in the face of abhorrent crimes against humanity, that would repeat itself in Rwanda just years later, Syria, and elsewhere around the world.
I remember the skin and bone figures of people emerging from concentration /death camps. People rounded up, killed, tortured, raped, and so denigrated to nothingness. Simply because they're Bosniaks, or Muslims. Simply because of Serbian and Croatian nationalism that sought to expand into the strategic crossroads of what emerged as BiH after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia.
There is an uncomfortable beauty in the countryside, which is marked by stunning mountains and valleys with winding rivers. Here and there, you can see empty shells of buildings , presumably from the Bosnian War, reminders that anywhere could be the site of undiscovered remains of innocent people taken to their early death because of human hatred and cruelty.
What is left behind, from the ashes of a country that was barely even born after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, is a country that is still struggling to reconcile with its past. Reminders of the war are everywhere. In monuments, mass cemeteries with tombstones from 1992, 1993, or 1995 that surround the city, and according to my friend, echoes from the past scream through the division and toxicity of politics and the media.
It makes me pensive to walk down the streets of Sarajevo, and to be in Bosnia. It makes me think of my own country, and what fate may await its people should a future war and invasion occur. All the familiar sights and streets of Taiwan, a war zone. I bet the proud people of Bosnia did not think that one day, their homes, their cities, their homeland would be host to a brutal war that shaped international politics, and international law for years to come.
Can you really escape war, after 30, 40, or even 90 years?
BiH, and the people of Bosnia, may you heal and grow...
