Saturday, 3 December 2016

Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Sarajevo is the heart of Europe. It is a heart that has been beaten and bruised, torn apart and patched together again. It has been Christian and Muslim, Roman, Turkish, and Austrian, ruled by Europe’s great empires, occupied by the Nazis, part of the socialist Yugoslav state, and is now finding its feet as a nascent democracy. It was tested to breaking point as neighbours turned on neighbours during the terrible siege of the 1990s. It is a cultural crossroads whose language, Bosnian, has been written in turn in the Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin scripts. It took centre stage in the flashpoint that set the events of the First World War in motion. The assassination of the Austrian crown prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serb nationalists is symbolic of the upheaval of the old, imperial Europe, and the emergence of many of the new nation states that now comprise the continent. Its recent history serves as a powerful reminder of the barbarity that we Europeans are capable of. The atrocities in Bosnia occurred in a post-Cold War world, and are frighteningly close to our own time.  This city thus has a legacy of changing hands, of cultural exchange and of the depths of dark history. In short, the story of Sarajevo is that of Europe.

Here, one finds Balkan cuisine, Turkish-influenced coffee culture, and a currency that is still pegged to the Deutschmark (and is indeed called the mark). There is a refreshing dearth of nationalist symbols (no more crescent moons, eagles or fleur-de-lys) because of the need for neutrality between its three major ethnic groups. Here one can visit mosques beside Catholic churches beside synagogues beside Orthodox churches. It is a surprising, haunting, fascinating place. I would urge anyone not to go and join the hordes clogging up the Louvre, the Trevi Fountain and the Charles Bridge; go and see Sarajevo.

I will caveat the above by mentioning that it is a little more difficult to get to than the larger cities or resorts of Bosnia’s neighbours. I took a bus overnight from Belgrade, which proved to be not the smoothest ride owing to the lack of large, straight roads in the country. The bus initially followed the motorway towards Zagreb before turning onto smaller roads at Sremska Mitrovica and then crossing the border by way of a bridge over the Drina river at Loznica. I was sad not to be able to see this by day because the sinewy road wedged between cliffs and the river would have made for a wonderful journey. I somehow slept despite the twisting terrain and awoke on the R446 road to the south of the city to a rainy morning. The poor weather failed to dampen my excitement at seeing odd clusters of houses scattered here and there among the hills and forests, and every now and then a view through the trees across the valley and down into Sarajevo itself. These brief glimpses of the city, of brown roofs and needles of minarets were already captivating.

Before commencing with the narrative, it is worth making a quick but important point about the structure of the country. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of very few European states to have no clear majority ethnic group (the others I would list are Belgium and Switzerland). It has three major groups, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). It is divided into two entities, each intentionally designed to comprise almost exactly 50% of the country’s territory. These are not, as might be expected, called Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are the names of historical regions only. The so-called Dayton Line, drawn up in Ohio during the 1995 Dayton Accords that concluded the 1992-1995 war, cuts across Bosnia’s mountains and valleys and skirts around most of the major population centres, and delineates the northern and eastern Republika Srpska, home mostly to Bosnian Serbs, from the southern, central and western Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Croats and Bosniaks are found in larger numbers. These are henceforth referred to as the Republika and the Federation respectively. (The northern town of Brčko is a notable oddity as it is officially part of both entities because its strategic location meant it could split the Republika into two, preventing a hypothetical invading Serb army from occupying the entire Republika and sweeping into the rest of the country in a pincer movement.) These two regions, and the three ethnic communities that dwell within them, remain distinct but intrinsic components of the Bosnian nation.


Map of Bosnia & Herzegovina. The Republika Srpska is shown in orange, with the Federation of BiH in purple.
Sarajevo lies on the border, directly above the letter N of Herzegovina

Thus, when my bus terminated at Istočno bus station, I found myself just inside the Republika. The vast majority of the city is part of the Federation, with the Republika occupying only a small area. Because the Republika predominantly occupies eastern parts of Bosnia, this district is called East Sarajevo, and is eccentrically and paradoxically located on the southwestern edge of the city. I loitered at the bus station through the heaviest part of the rain, and once it had eased sufficiently, I set off. Not yet having local money and thus unable to buy a bus ticket, in need of a leg stretch, and keen to kill time before the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina opened, I set off towards the city proper on foot.

Istočno Sarajevo (East Sarajevo)
Agricultural, industrial and residential land, as well as distant mountains

My innate optimism meant I overlooked the fact that the museum was four miles away, but the early morning exercise was well worth it. Seeing the retreating rainclouds smoothly rolling away westwards over the verdant mountains that surround the city was a wonderful first impression. Sarajevo is unarguably stunningly situated.

In many cities, one can find a tangible trace of some distant battle. There is a cannonball from the English Civil War embedded in a building in the Dorset town of Weymouth. One of Munich’s churches is likewise home to such an artefact. In many other places all over Europe, it is possible for those with eyes peeled to find bullet marks here and there to mark engagements from the First or Second World War, or any of the innumerable others that have ravaged the continent. In Sarajevo, one doesn’t even need to look for them. Within five minutes of leaving the bus station, I was surrounded by blocks of flats, many of which were liberally sprayed with holes left by bullets. If these were relics on the Western Front, they would be remarkable; there would be plaques, perhaps even flags of combatant states. Here there was nothing out of ordinary about them and no fanfare. They were made within the last twenty five years and are now a part of the city’s architecture. I suspect this lack of cosmetic work is due to lack of investment rather than an active desire to commemorate the Bosnian War, but I liked the scarred appearance of these tower blocks. Reconstruction glosses over the negative history, regardless of the number of plaques that are put up. These ordinary residences were harrowingly poignant.

Battle damage on a residential building
The Miljacka river, flowing west from the city centre towards East Sarajevo

As I continued walking through these suburbs, past more houses, schools, petrol stations, corner shops, mosques and all the usual amenities, another characteristic of the city became increasingly apparent. Sarajevo has 11,000 stray dogs that have been tagged, and possibly upwards of 20,000 in total. I went on to encounter stray dogs on my further travels in Montenegro, where they were mostly timid, and in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia, where they were mostly just lazy. Not so in Sarajevo. They are typically medium to large dogs of a breed I couldn’t make out and with colourings similar to that of a German Shepherd. The first few I came across were in packs of three to five, and were found scavenging around large municipal bins. Later, on the approach to the museum, I was witness to a lengthy scrap between a dog and a hooded crow. The dog was determined to eat the crow and the crow seemingly forgot that it could simply fly out of reach, allowing the dog to persist. It was noisy, annoying and could have gone on forever. For me, these dogs were something of a novelty, but for locals, it must get incredibly tedious. Later in the day, I saw a dog licking his lips and tentatively trying to bite a man on the calf. Elsewhere I went, there were dogs barking noisily and incessantly. They can be scarily aggressive and can carry disease. The majority are lazy, but the few hostile ones keep you on your toes.

The Historical Museum was worth the few marks I paid to enter. I shall skimp on the details because the Bosnian conflict has been mentioned already and will return later. Suffice it to say that the museum comprised two parts. The first was on the topic of ‘Wasn’t Tito great and didn’t his mindset and tolerance of our differences and desire to stick two fingers up to the more brutal regimes in the Soviet bloc make all our lives in Yugoslavia wonderful’. The second was themed around ‘Look how tragic life is when we remember our differences and start listening to the people with pent-up rage who stir up our nationalist sentiments and encourage us to start killing each other and how awful that is and here are some photos and posters and artefacts to show it.’ It was good to get a more local perspective on events and much more emotional to see the pictures, news articles, poetry and physical objects that related to the very streets I was walking. It was much more involving than reading historians’ accounts or watching the excellent BBC documentaries of the late 1990s covering the Bosnian conflict. In the midst of the current migrant crisis and the truly terrible events going on in the Middle East today, it is easy to forget that Bosnia in the 1990s was the world’s Syria in the 2010s. Sarajevo was besieged by Serbs for four years - the longest siege in the history of modern warfare - during which its inhabitants would dash across streets such as the notorious ‘Sniper Alley’ to gather food and fuel during the bitter winters. It is almost impossible to imagine what those living there went through, and all the more troubling to consider that many of those who were once in the crosshairs may now live virtually side by side with those whose fingers were once poised to pull triggers.

Poster calling for Sarajevo to be awarded European Cultural Capital,
at the height of the siege when the city was cut off from the world.
Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina
'Death to Fascism'
Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Weighed down by these thoughts, I left the museum and was almost immediately beside the tall skyscraper of the Executive Council Building, which was infamously set ablaze after being hit by artillery fire in 1992, giving me yet more cause to dwell upon the siege. The Greek government contributed €17 million to rebuild it, and it is now called the Greece-Bosnia and Herzegovina Friendship Building. Just beneath the building, I saw my first ‘Sarajevo rose’, a shell hole in the ground that has been filled with red paint to create a distinctive and tragic memorial. During my sombre reflections, I became aware of the fact that a stray dog had begun to stalk me, and we started to play a sinister version of ‘grandmother’s footsteps’, with my pursuer stopping dead whenever I turned around to give a menacing glare or aggressive stomp in its direction. The dog eventually got the message and was last seen following an unsuspecting pensioner using a zebra crossing to get to his church.

The Executive Council Building
A Sarajevo rose
One of at least 11,000 stray dogs in Sarajevo

Twenty years on from the resolution of the conflict and this part of Sarajevo appears up and coming, with one or two high rise developments, and a couple of attractive shopping centres. The Sarajevo City Center mall has especially swanky bathrooms, compared to the more spartan offerings that are the usual standard of the region. Bosnia is still among the poorest nations in Europe, and I didn’t really wait to establish whether the clientele of the Western outlets were typical Bosnians or a wealthy elite. I rather suspected the latter. Nevertheless, these tentative signs of investment may translate to greater prosperity in years to come.

The Academy of Fine Arts

My onward walk took me back in time as I reached the milk chocolate brown Miljacka river and followed the one-way Obala Kulina bana due east towards the old quarter of Sarajevo. By now, the sun was out and it was a pleasant route beside the city’s shallow waterway, flanked on one side by more historic buildings than those I had seen earlier and on the other by government buildings and then a leafy park. Bridge after bridge came and went and then the one I wanted to see came into view. I recognised the Latin Bridge (Latinska ćuprija) instantly.

In 1914, the ageing Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I sent his nephew and heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Sarajevo to oversee military training. Austria-Hungary had inherited Bosnia from the declining Ottoman Empire in 1878 and had a tentative control of this new acquisition. In the last years of the nineteenth century, several nations such as Albania and Bulgaria emerged in the Balkans and the idea of a free state for Serbs in Bosnia became the goal of many nationalists including a nineteen year old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip. He and his co-conspirators planned an intervention during this visit. The trip was planned for 28 June (15 June in the old Julian calendar), a date that was no coincidence. This was the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, in which invading Ottoman forces defeated a Serb army. (This battle is also part of the reason Kosovo is so important to Serbs; it had been Serb land before the Ottoman victory facilitated its Turkification, culminating in today’s contentious, majority Muslim, ethnically Albanian, Kosovan state. That’s a can of worms for another time though). 28 June is a hugely important day for Serbs, and a visit to consolidate the imperial stranglehold on Serbs upon the day that marks their most significant defeat to a foreign power was a mighty slap in the face.

The full story involves a failed attack by bomb, an unplanned hospital visit, some reluctance to take their opportunity on the part of many of the conspirators, a driver who didn’t know exactly where he was going and some incredible chance. After his comrades had failed to do the deed, Princip happened to be standing outside a café beside the Latin Bridge when Franz Ferdinand’s car took a wrong turn, allowing him to leap aboard and shoot the archduke and his wife Sophie dead at close range. Princip then tried to kill himself but was prevented from doing so by a crowd of onlookers. Another plotter, Nedeljko Čabrinović, tried to drown himself in the Miljacka. Presumably he had failed to notice that the river was only 10cm deep. Both would go on to die before the war’s end in prison at Terezín in today’s Czech Republic. The wider implication of this event is of course that it set in motion a catastrophic failure of European diplomacy, with the incensed Austria-Hungary and its erstwhile ally Germany perhaps more at fault than others for the ensuing string of declarations of war by the belligerent European powers. Regardless, the First World War was born and it would go on to cause upwards of 15 million deaths in four years. And it all kicked off right beneath my feet. For the second time this morning, I felt overawed by Sarajevo.

The Latin Bridge
The Latin Bridge. Gavrilo Princip waited at the base of the pink/grey building before shooting Franz Ferdinand right at the corner of the bridge
The Miljacka and its waterfront. Between the river and the buildings runs Obala Kulina bana, the street along which Franz Ferdinand's car proceeded on the fateful day of 28 June 1914

I turned away from the river and headed into the Turkish Quarter to explore Sarajevo’s most historic district. The central landmarks here are the 16th century Gazi Husrev-Bey Mosque (Gazi Husrev-begova džamija), the similarly old Morića Han (a han is an Ottoman roadside inn), and the 18th century Ottoman Sebilj, a wooden fountain traditionally used for purification before entering the mosque. The surrounding streets form a market called Baščaršija. Compared to the modernity I found in Belgrade the day before, this was like stepping back in time. Men in traditional Bosnian clothes and women with headscarves wandered the streets and congregated outside the mosques. Colourful handmade Turkish-style carpets and cobalt blue and white nazar beads hung from shop fronts and swayed gently in the breeze. Restaurants advertised coffee and kebabs. Shining brass and copper coffee grinders and džezve (coffee pots) stood outside shop fronts, alongside bullets and shell casings.

Carpets for sale in Sarajevo's Baščaršija 
The Morića Han
The Sebilj
Baščaršija Square
The Old Orthodox Church
The Sacred Heart Cathedral
Interior of the Sacred Heart Cathedral

Being that it was now the holy month of Ramadan, I had to wait until later in the day to visit the Gazi Husrev-Bey Mosque. In the meantime, I went to the Old Orthodox Church (Stara Crkva), a square stone building enclosed within a courtyard that was founded before the 6th century. A priest and a congregation of two or three were worshipping so I tiptoed around them and took in this charming building. A short way beyond was the Sacred Heart Cathedral (Katedrala Srca Isusova), the primary Catholic place of worship in Sarajevo. The abundance of such a variety of religious buildings is part of what makes this city so interesting. Each of the Serb, Croat and Bosniak communities are historically associated with a different religion (Orthodox Christianity, Catholic Christianity, and Islam – mainly non-denominational or Sunni). Since the cessation of hostilities in 1995, it seems that members of all three groups can practise freely and live in relative harmony. I saw no prejudice at all; just peaceful coexistence. How permanent this situation is remains to be seen, but for now it would appear that the terms of the Dayton Agreement have been successful. The Federation and the Republika each have a degree of political and legal autonomy, and the presidency of the country as a whole consists of one representative of each major ethnic group, with the chairmanship of the presidency rotating among the three for eight months at a time within a total term of four years. The real danger is that the current issues that face Bosnia, including chronic unemployment and anger at the government, combined with external issues such as the crises in the Middle East, may yet shatter the peace. Bosnia is a candidate to join both the EU and NATO, and accession to such organisations, particularly NATO, might isolate Bosnian Serbs. Meanwhile, the war and the genocide are still news events, and earlier this year the former President of the Republika Srpska, Ratko Karadžić, was found guilty of genocide at a war crimes trial and sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment. The related trial of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić is still ongoing.

The effects of the war are visible everywhere. I ambled through the Gradska tržnica, an enclosed market hall where in August 1995, a mortar attack killed 43 people. I then grabbed a burek, a meat- or cheese-filled pastry (another legacy of the centuries of Ottoman rule in Bosnia) and climbed out of the historic quarter towards another poignant symbol of the tragedy that happened in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

The Gradska tržnica
Sarajevo City Hall; Franz Ferdinand visited this building shortly before being assassinated
The City Hall formerly held the world's largest collection of Bosnian literature

The date is 14 February 1984. Two ice dancers from Nottingham, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, take centre stage at the Zetra Olympic Hall wearing dip-dyed purple outfits. Ravel’s Bolero begins to play and they start a fluent, elegant routine, gliding swan-like across the ice with the music gradually building up to a tragic climax as the doomed lovers appear to die and finish sprawled upon the rink. The date, Valentine’s Day, makes this beguiling performance all the more romantic. The enraptured crowd of 8,500 erupt into a sea of applause. The judges award the pair the maximum possible score for artistic impression. 24 million people back in the UK watch Torvill and Dean win gold, Great Britain’s only medal of the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Eight years on, the Zetra stadium lay in ruins, the result of Serb shellfire. In 1993, it was reported that the stadium’s wooden seats were being looted to create coffins for Muslim war dead. The man responsible routinely went alone, believing that if he were accompanied, he would become more of a target for the Serb snipers stationed in the hills around the city. Happily, the Zetra stadium has now been rebuilt and is due to host the winter version of the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2019. Along the hillside just above the stadium is a large cemetery complex, divided into sections, with rows of stone-topped graves indicating Christians and rows of white stone columns denoting Muslim burials. It is heartbreaking and very eerie to pan across and see headstones engraved with the same few years, over and over.

Christian and Muslim graves in a cemetery at Koševo, close to the Zetra stadium
Muslim graves at Koševo. The rebuilt Zetra stadium (grey) can be seen on the left; the stadium on the right is the Asim Ferhatović Olympic Stadium, where FK Sarajevo and the national football team play
An enormous cemetery across the valley from the Zetra stadium

More cemeteries were dotted about in the green hilltop suburbs of Sarajevo, the dead unknowingly interred overlooking a stunning view of their city far below, a jumbled pile of red roofs nestled among verdant mountains. I was careful to stick to paved roads, even here on the edge of Bosnia’s capital. Sadly, not all the minefields from the war have been cleared and it is advised not to stray off piste. (This warning had to be reiterated this summer because of the danger of Pokémon Go players getting carried away in their search for virtual monsters and blowing themselves up). Thinking my surroundings could get no more captivating, the call to prayer from a minaret began to ring out, followed by echoes from the many whitewashed minarets that are scattered high and low all over Sarajevo’s hillsides, black-tipped spikes protruding from the residential rooftops. This blend of sounds cascading from the higher hills and rising up from lower down was utterly absorbing, a much-needed reminder that despite all the violence that has torn this city apart in recent years, life goes on, and the affected communities are still active. From here, with the ezan sounding all around and knowing that somewhere in the mess of buildings down below, church bells were ringing, incense burning, Torahs being read, it was not hard to see why Sarajevo bears the moniker ‘the Jerusalem of Europe’.

At the far eastern end of the valley Sarajevo occupies, the Miljacka river emerges from a gorge and flows into the city. High above sits the ruined fortress of Bijela tabija, and from here I paused to do justice to the mesmerising view. Sarajevo is a long and thin city, oriented east to west along the river, so from here I was flanked by untouched mountains to the north and south but could gaze down the river and pick out the Latin Bridge, the Gazi Husrev-Bey Mosque and further on, the Executive Council Building, now standing proudly intact unlike the infamous photo of it ablaze in 1992.

The M5 highway emerges from the unspoilt mountains just a mile from the historic district of Sarajevo
The view west down the valley from Bijela tabija
At Bijela tabija; one of the most wonderful views I have ever seen

With storm clouds gathering, I reluctantly left this supreme vantage point and returned to the valley floor to explore the old town further. Towards the end of the afternoon, I went to await the brief window when the Gazi Husrev-Bey Mosque opened its doors to non-Muslims. I had never been into a mosque before, and wanted to err on the side of caution when it came to respect, especially since it was currently Ramadan. I needn’t really have worried. Sarajevo, despite having a majority Muslim population, is remarkably secular and very welcoming to all faiths. As the Bosniak faithful emerged slowly from the mosque and began to congregate in the porched area to sit and chat unhurriedly, I visited the small office that also stood within the mosque’s courtyard and got a ticket from a friendly attendant who apologetically informed me that during Ramadan, there were no guides touring, and that he would be on hand to answer any questions I had. I was also under no obligation to remove my shoes because there were plastic mats covering the prayer rugs in the entire area that tourists were currently allowed into. The most striking thing I noted from visiting this building was the sheer similarity to a church. Though the layout was noticeably different, with a more square orientation, no altar or iconoclasm, and no aisle or pews, the general feel of the place, the atmosphere, was comparable. Maybe this tells us something about people in general, that our various religions are more alike than they are different, that we are humans first and Muslims, Orthodox, Catholic, Jews and the rest second. Moreover, one might hope that this understanding, along with their understandable weariness of division and war, has enabled the inhabitants of Sarajevo to live alongside one another in tolerance.

Gazi Husrev-begova džamija (Gazi Husrev-Bey Mosque)
The interior of the mosque
Colourful ceiling decorations
Prayer rugs cover the floor of the mosque

It is thus that today’s Bosnia bears very little symbolism that can be associated with any one group. Its national flag features an unending line of stars, neutral blue and yellow colours taken from the EU’s flag, and a triangle representing both the shape of the country and the three major ethnic groups. Its currency bears the name of the former German mark, again to avoid adopting a name like dinar (as is used in Serbia) in case its historical connotations isolate one group or other. Its football team’s recent successes, reaching a maiden World Cup in 2014, may provide another unifying factor for the Bosnian people. I now had football on the brain; earlier in the day I had seen a little of Croatia’s 1-0 victory over Turkey, and had to wonder whether the Bosnian fans were more likely to root for their neighbours Croatia or their cultural cousins the Turks. I left the mosque and within a few minutes was drinking a beer in a bar; I noted that Turkish restaurants and more observant Muslim establishments weren’t serving alcohol but it was easy to find it in less strict places or in those run by non-Muslims. Over a supper of ćevapčići – a local dish consisting of pieces of beef sausage grilled with onions and served inside a soft, doughy flatbread – I saw debutants Northern Ireland lose to Poland by a single goal. Later still, having dashed to my hostel as a monsoon-like rainstorm descended upon Sarajevo, I had a first shower in three days and retired to collect my thoughts and prepare for another day in this wonderful, complex place.

Ćevapčići
Unarguably true

The most enduringly emotional memory of this visit I can summon is that of lying in my bed that evening, rain lashing the windows and distant thunder growling, my shut eyes envisaging the beautiful views of the city from the surrounding heights, U2’s Miss Sarajevo completing the picture. The Irish band played at the city’s Koševo stadium in September 1997, having abandoned a plan to be smuggled into the city to perform during the siege but instead controversially broadcast nightly performances into the city by satellite, assisted by Bill Carter, a US journalist and aid worker based at Radiotelevizija Bosne i Hercegovine. Among the songs they performed at their 1997 concert was Miss Sarajevo, written in 1995 and inspired by the wonderfully human story of a beauty pageant that went ahead despite the chaos of the siege, at a time when the city was very literally cut off from the rest of the world. U2 has plenty of haters and critics, many of whom are perfectly justified, but I find it hard to be disparaging towards this subtle and emotive piece, particularly once collaborating guest Luciano Pavarotti adds his operatic vocals, peaking with a stirring crescendo of ‘L’amore giungerà’ – ‘Love will come’. His voice is determined but the lyrics hesitant. He can no longer hope for love, no longer wait for it. Twenty years on, I hope the harmonious peace that Sarajevo has found for now will endure. I hope that the love Pavarotti doubts has indeed come, and is here to stay. Sarajevo has certainly won my heart.


This magnificent view is the backdrop to the final resting place of thousands of victims of the Bosnian war.
Sarajevo seen from Bijela tabija

No comments:

Post a Comment