Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

    Where do you get your ideas?

In that midnight garden where poetic mysteries grow
the deeper you dig, the bloodier the soil. Take off your shoes,
this is sacred ground—dig deep or go home.


    Graveyards of Our Glory

        |_|by the West Bank Wall
        the playgrounds are littered
        with intifada toys.


        Where once was genocide
        Now, in old town square, a child
        plays with a toy gun.


    The Inconvenient Truth is Out There

        I don’t know what I’m doing in Podgorica but
        if the alien body snatchers get me it
        is comforting to know my replicated pod replacement
            won’t either.


    Vessel of Opportunity, Object of Value

        Your eyes are the color of chlorine and broken glass,
        she says in a sigh—her breath like an altar
        sagging with the weight of fallen grace.


~•~

A Sarajevan Love Story

My first morning in Sarajevo, before having coffee, I set forth at 6AM on a quest to find a couple of friends I had never met.  Armed with my camera, two croissants from the pekara, and an ephemeral story pieced together from multiple sources, I walked a half dozen kilometers up the northern thoroughfare towards one of the far too many graveyards which sprinkled the hillsides of the city.  Without verification, I had narrowed my search for Lion Cemetery to one of the several which occupied the fields around the Olympic Stadium where, 16 years previous, the Winter Games had taken place.  I took some cursory pictures en route, but was driven by the rising sun and my own demons to find my unmet friends who lay waiting for my visit.

Lion Cemetery is unmistakable once you are upon it.  In hindsight, as I write this, I wonder why I did not aim my camera at the immense feline structure which perches like a sphinx sentinel over the Islamic and Orthodox residents of its field.  Yet even in finding the cemetery, locating a single grave—even a single grave housing two dearly departed—is not a simple task.  Lacking geographic space, the waiting list for entry, and—due to snipers and motor fire—the benefit of the living to devote much time to careful arrangement, the cemeteries of Sarajevo are quite cramped.  I had seen pictures of the heart-shaped stone marking where my unmet friends waited their visitors, but among the hundreds of closely laid white obelisks and gray blocks and crosses, I could not find them.

I began to wonder, after walking what rows there was space to walk, if Lion Cemetery was spread over more than one location—as St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans is—and for several minutes despaired of finding them.  I vowed one more careful pass of the graveyard when I spotted the outline of two linked hearts in polished marble—I had found them!

I do admit a smile upon standing at their feet.  The smile, albeit grim, of a weary traveler upon finally reaching their destination.  I had been waiting more than a few years to meet these two—friends in spirit if not in life.  Admira and Boško (declared in stone by his nickname, Bato).  The Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo.  Star-crossed lovers who had been together in life for more than 7 years; in death for 17.

 

The couple look out upon their city.

In my rush of excited sorrow, I had forgotten completely about my other unmet friend—one with whom I had shared two emails more than a decade before; one who had introduced me to them.  I was reminded of only when I bent down to set down my bottle of water and camera in a respectful space between graves and saw his name on a small headstone set in the ground at my feet.  Kurt Schork was the journalist who had witnessed Admira and Bato's death; had written about them and introduced the world to the small tragedy that was theirs amidst the larger tragedy that was Sarajevo's.  The tragedy that stains the soul of the western world due to apathy and arrogance.  Kurt Schork is, so far as I am aware, the only non-Sarajevan buried in Lion Cemetery.  This somewhat dubious honor is his because of his writing about the couple (for his part in reporting about the Siege, the road leading to the airport in Sarajevo is named after him).

After spending some time in quiet stillness with Admira and Bato, and then speaking a word of thanks to Mr Schork, I took up my weapon and began firing.  Unlike the sniper who cut them down, I fired emotion at the pair, not bullets.  When I had taken a dozen shots, I set down my camera again and stood with my hand on the cool polished stone of the two hearts linked together for as long as marble will stand unabashed.  That was when a woman, a Sarajevan, stepped heavy-footed up the narrow path and was surprised by finding someone in the graveyard this early in the morning.  Someone, that is, who was obviously not Sarajevan.


The look she cast upon me was, to be sure, less vile than those cast across enemy lines during the Siege, but nonetheless as sharp and bitter as any aimed at another in "civilized" interactions.  I was intruding upon her morning visit to where her loved ones rested.  It didn't matter how respectful or compassionate I may or may not be, I was an outsider, and tread upon her most sacred of ground.


I bowed slightly to her, collected my water bottle and camera, and carefully made my way back to the street to leave her with her ghosts and pain.

•~•

My connection with Admira and Bato is appropriately strange.  Here is my side of it:

On the day they prepared to leave Sarajevo—18 May 1993—I was in the bay area of California between shows while touring (i.e. following, not performing) with the Grateful Dead.  Two days previously, I had been in Las Vegas, and two days later, I would be in Mountain View at Shoreline Amphitheater.  18-20 May I was in Santa Cruz.  I clearly remember those few days, as I had just met some folks in Las Vegas who would become a turning point in my life a few months later, and it was dawning on me that Dead Tour was no longer what it once had been, becoming overtaken with ever-younger kids who were not showing up to the venues in hopes of getting inside to experience the show, but rather to linger in the parking lots with the sole purpose of scoring drugs.  Morals and ethics aside, the Dead family had always been one in which the music and friends were the foremost reason for being there, all other aspects taking a tertiary place in any hierarchy.

The morning of the 19th—morning in California is 9 hours behind Sarajevo—I was out of sorts and put it down to just one of those days when, even on Dead Tour, I didn't feel I fit in among my surroundings.  In all objectivity, that was likely the case, but since those last days of May remain so clear in my mind, I do wonder if the connection was already there.  I was awake at sunrise.  The weather was clear and bay-area perfect—thin fog layering the air which the sun had yet to burn away—and I was discombobulated, but content with who and where I was.

A day later I would commit a selfish act which would create in me a principle I have, to this day, never violated. I took a 20 dollar bill I found which I knew only was not mine and, when confronted with having stolen it, had my friends defend me to the accuser.  More than the theft, it was being defended against it that irreparably damaged my sensibility; I had made liars of people who I valued.

A day later Admira and Bato lay on a bridge spanning the Mijacka River where they would lie for another week before their bodies were recovered.

As for their side of things, I will say only this—preferring to allow someone far more gifted with words than myself to speak on their behalf:

When I was awake on the morning of the 19th, and watched the fog burn away in the rising sun, Admira was shot—bleeding profusely and aware of lying in the dirt and heat of the springtime sun in a sticky river of blood; her own and her lover’s.  She crawled to Bato and tried to roll him over but couldn't move his dead weight so she slumped over him, motionless in the sticky brown liquid.  He'd already stopped breathing.  He would never again look at her and make her laugh.  She would never again feel how much she was wanted and loved by him.  How safe they felt together.  His life is over.  And hers soon would be.  On the Vrbanja Bridge in their beloved, accepting city, they were killed amidst something utterly smothering and incomprehensible.  Their story was at the end.

It wasn't poetic.  It wasn't theatrical.  It wasn't romantic.

Just dead.

To fill in some details, if only in a similar manner as I had done—by hypothesizing via distant empathy—is Slavenka Drakulić, from an article that first appeared in The New Republic, 10/25/93, Vol. 209, Issue 17:

'Love Story'

A true tale from Sarajevo.

I have seen their picture in newspapers. It was not clear, obviously taken from a distance: two bodies lying on the Sarajevo ground, two sports bags next to them. Admira is wearing a dark skirt covering the soft curves of her body. Boško is in jeans--what else?--and they both wear sneakers. But one can tell, even looking at that blurred photo, that Admira is embracing Boško as they are lying there, dead. This is how it happened: On Wednesday afternoon, May 19, around 4 p.m., they walked along the Miljacka river in no-man's-land, visible to both sides, the Serbian and the Bosnian. Their escape from the besieged city onto the Serbian side was prearranged; both sides had agreed to let them pass. They had to walk about 1,000 yards, but just before the Vrbana bridge--some fifty yards before safety--they fell to the ground, hit by a sudden burst of a sniper's fire.

I can almost hear that distinctive, short, yelping sound in the afternoon air. Boško died immediately, Admira lived long enough to crawl to him and embrace him. There they stayed for almost a week, rotting in the sun (unusually strong this May), the odor of their decaying bodies mixing with that of the young grass.

It is not known who killed them, and maybe it is not even important. There are people on both sides who saw them walking, then falling. Some of them say the fire came from the Serbian side, others claim just the opposite. However, for the next five days the two sides fought for possession of the bodies. On the sixth night, Serbian soldiers resolved the dispute by snatching the bodies.

Boško's mother, who had left Sarajevo a year before and now lived in Belgrade, had given permission for her son to be buried in Sarajevo. Admira's parents said they would prefer to have them buried in Sarajevo in order to attend to their grave, but they also said that the place was of no importance as long as the two were buried together. And finally it happened: the Muslim girl and the Serbian boy who had loved each other for nine years were put in the same coffin and buried in the same grave at the Serbian army graveyard south of Sarajevo.

Their attempt to escape from the war that threatened to destroy their love as well as their very existence had failed--so had their naive belief that love could overcome all obstacles. But I wonder: What did being a Serb or a Muslim mean to them before the breakout of this war? And when exactly did they realize that belonging to one nation or the other might determine their future? Looking at a picture taken after their high school graduation in 1985--both of them handsome, smiling as they hold each other--I can hardly imagine that nationality had any important meaning for these kids, or for any of their peers in ex-Yugoslavia. I am not suggesting that they were not aware of such things. They probably were, as much as anyone else around them. But nationality did not matter much: it could not decide their destiny, or prevent them from falling in love.

They were born in the late 1960s. They watched Spielberg movies; they listened to Iggy Pop; they read John Le Carre; they went to a disco every Saturday night and fantasized about traveling to Paris or London. They had friends in Croatia and Serbia whom they would meet in the summer to go camping somewhere along the Adriatic coast. And then the war broke out, and it was as if someone had opened an old history book: Chetniks against Ustashe, although this time Tito's Partisans were not around. It was the absurd, monstrous war of their grandfathers' stories. And now this war descended on them, crushing a whole generation that had been brought up under the illusion that they belonged to Europe, that they had a better, different future in store.

Boško and Admira decided to save themselves. After all, it was not their war. When Boško's mother asked Admira if this war could separate them, she answered, "No, only bullets could separate us"--as if she knew. This happened only a year ago. The moment Boško decided to stay behind when his mother left for Serbia, Admira and her parents understood it was only love that kept him in Sarajevo. But I imagine that he also decided to stay because neither he nor Admira believed that a war in Bosnia would be possible at all, not really. How could you divide people living on the same floor of an apartment building just because they are of different nationalities? (This is what people from Sarajevo would tell you as late as last spring.) How can you split up a mixed family?

Of course, the power of politics proved stronger than their belief in tolerance and togetherness. After tens of thousands of civilians--their neighbors, friends and relatives--had been killed for no other reason than being of the "wrong" nationality, Boško and Admira realized that they had no chance. The rest of the world had given up on Sarajevo. And while one can perhaps stand lack of electricity and water, even bitter cold and no food, one cannot stand a state of hopelessness for too long. So, when Boško and Admira decided to leave, it made it easier for them to go knowing that the city they once knew did not exist any longer. Perhaps Admira's friends thought she was crazy to leave for Serbia, being a Muslim. What would happen to her once she arrived there? But how could Admira explain to them that in the war she was nothing--only part of a nation, doomed to be "cleansed"? She was confident that Boško and his mother would protect her and that in Belgrade there would be at least a chance for survival.

I can almost see her on that evening of Tuesday, May 18, as she takes out her old Adidas sports bag and begins to pack. "Don't take too many things with you,"--Boško warns, as he leaves the house to make sure everything is ready--"just imagine we are going to visit my mother for a week." But this time Admira lacks imagination. If she would go for a week's visit, she would not take a photo of her parents, her high school diary, her diploma. She would not take her favorite winter dress (not now, it is spring), her golden bracelet and an old rubber doll that brings her luck.

And she would not sit down to write a letter.

When she finishes packing, it is late at night. The city is strangely quiet as if everyone is sound asleep, tired from this endless war. Admira takes a piece of lined paper out of her notebook. There is only the dim light of a candle in her room, but her eyes are used to it by now. "Dear mother and father," she writes. Then she pauses. What can she tell them? that she has to go because Sarajevo is not safe for Boško any longer, that he could be drafted by the Bosnian army at any moment? that they could be separated or killed because they are of different nationalities? or that it is only a matter of time before they will be killed by shells in the middle of one of Sarajevo's streets, for no reason other than that they live there? Mama and Papa know it all, thinks Admira, as she sits alone in her room. There is nothing to tell them, nothing to explain. They only need to be sure that we managed to escape the death sentence.

Admira sits for a while, then decides to write about her cat. "Please, take care of my cat. He is looking at me and meowing as I am crying and writing this. Sleep with him at least once a month and talk to him all the time." Then she puts out the candle (candles are precious) and goes to bed, staring into the darkness for a while.

The next day it all happened, and this is how I imagine it: On Wednesday afternoon, after briefly hugging her parents, she leaves the house. She must have been very brave not to have shed tears, not to have looked back. As she approaches the river, she can see Boško waiting. It is easy to recognize his tall figure, his nervous gestures. Suddenly she feels that her palms are wet with sweat, but as she rushes to him, she fears no longer. Everything is going to be all right--she thinks--as long as we are together. Then they leave their shelter and get out into the open. They are on the north bank of the river. They do not run. They think there is no need to because they have been guaranteed safe passage. Holding hands, they walk briskly toward the bridge, and all that they hear is the creaking of sand under their feet and the murmur of the river.

The safety zone is not so far away now, and Boško speeds up a little. Slow down please, I can't run, Admira wants to tell him, thinking about how foolish she was to pack so many things in her bag, so many unnecessary things that make it heavy now, too heavy to run. But just as she is about to utter those words, she feels something warm gushing out of her stomach. As she looks down in surprise, she sees that her hands are full of blood. Then pain takes over and she falls on the ground. She can see Boško already lying there motionless, far from her, as if he had been pushed away by some unknown force. "How strange, I heard nothing," she thinks, crawling toward him with the bag in her hand, as if they might still have a chance. But before she sinks into emptiness, she lives long enough to come close to him, to raise her left hand and embrace him.

Boško's mother, Radmila, is the only one from the two families to attend the funeral on May 27 on the barren hilltop south of Sarajevo. Admira's parents don't dare come, although the Serbian forces have guaranteed them safe passage. They can hardly trust guarantees from either side. What should we make, then, of the fact that the two families were never at odds? They tried together to help the young couple escape from what finally became their destiny. On the top of a plain wooden coffin Radmila drapes a pullover she has knitted for Admira. Then she throws a handful of dust into the open grave: "My children, you were blown here by the wind of war," she says. She has no more words, no more tears. I can imagine her there, her feet sinking into a greasy yellow clay. Even if she was not aware of it, her grief had become our grief. Boško and Admira, two young people who represented the future, were driven into the past by a war from which neither generation could save itself.

~•~

Four Videos

The World I Walk

presents

an Abnatural production

The Travelogue Series

1. Adriatic Evening (Budva, Crna Gora)

(Music by Vibrolux)

2. One Night in Mostar (Mostar, Hercegovina)

(Music by Bongwater)

3. Who Is, Who Was, Who Is To Come (Beograd, Srbija)

(Music by Woven Hand)

4. In the Field Around the Palace (Sarajevo, Bosna)

(Music by Nataraj XT)

Coming Soon To A Computer

(or handheld mobile device)

Near You

~•~

Playing for Change

My friend Milan in Bela Crkva turned me onto this.







~•~

Portion of Verse

This is from the small book Srebrenica is a falling star published in July 2000, five years after the genocide.

I'm continually amazed at the power a few words have.  Here's 65 of them...

I have yet to call for help […]
Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel,
I have yet to ask them
to paint:
the regions turned to Hell,
the torment of the innocent,
iconostasis of horror,
and, then, to thread up a caravan of satanic faces,
the horde of the damned,
lost souls,
on their blood-soaked
course
in the twentieth century
to Gehenna,
as they pass through
Bosnia.

—Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi



~•~

Manuscript Cover

Compositions I

 A few compositions...

Crossed Signals

I Never Promised You A Rose Splatter

manuscript cover [draft]

Bismillah Mostari

~ • ~

11/7/95

~•~

Images I-V

•~•

I.

Dogend of a Day Gone By

•~•

II.

Evening in Budva

•~•

III.

Sv. Sava's Temple

•~•

IIII.

One Night in Mostar

•~•

V.

Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque & Fountain

~*~

Notebook Routines

{Some miscellany from the four notebooks.  I didn't fill four notebooks, but I wrote in each of them at something akin to random, so my notes are non-sequential in all of them.}


•~•

I'm no moral compass, but I am what you might call a moral traffic signal. Too close to the edge and I'm right here to remind you of all the good things you still got.


•~•

Amazed, she says, "I just give you the address and away you go."

Yup, that's me.  Headlong forward until I fall.

•~•

Ubek biti tu ćuprija.

•~•

[from the Višegrad trek:]

Thoughts went swimmingly adrift... a sinking thought into the depths: was there arsenic in the sugar bowl?

•~•


[from the Višegrad trek:]

I remember the rain on metal and terra cotta while the Pixies play ''Cactus'' in my head.

•~•

I saw her aspects.

•~•

Fortunately, it's a rare fetish... for Islamic girls in leather jackets.

•~•

"The greatest creation in human history is the bridge."

"The bridge does not ask who crosses it."

~Matija Bećković, 3.VI.2000+10

•

When you come to any city
and to any city one usually comes very late
When you come to any city . . .
you will take the road you had to take
which before you did not exist
but was born with you
To take your own road
and meet the one you had to meet
on the road you had to take.

•~•

There's nothing to say about Srebrenica, you just have to go there.

•~•

Now there's a Bridge between us

What once was lost is found

And I have been a witness

When you walked on sacred ground

How long will you remember

Awake on that Rumi morn'?

''Come in.'' I said, ''I'll give you

Shelter from the Storm.''

~(Sıdıka Vuković)

•~•

She was filled with velvet & violence.

•~•

I need to write this.  To nail my demons to the page.

•~•

Generosity has allowed this journey to Serbia and Sarajevo.  I am grateful for this opportunity to experience this learning.  Thank you...

•~•

A single tiny light struggling against
encroaching darkness forever.
Amen.

Srebrenica

11/7/95

•~•



Mi o vuku, a vuk na vrata.

Speak of the devil and he is bound to appear.

Krv nije voda.

Blood is thicker than water.

Niko ne zna šta nosi jutro ašta već.

No one knows what will happen to him before sunset.

Tiha voda breg roni.

Still water runs deep.

Raj na zemlji.

Heaven on earth.

Rajski vrt.

Garden of Eden.

•~•

Antik Electronics.

•~•

The gunmetal day triggered a bullet-black night.

•~•

The confluence is not stagnant, it's just flowing underground.

•~•

This was a bridge between us.
There is a bridge between us.
The Bridge Will Always Be There.

•~•

You can talk of Free Will, but we are all really just homing pigeons in the end.

•~•

Guy walks into a auto parts garage.
''I'd like an ashtray for my Yugo.''
The mechanic replies, ''Sounds like a fair trade.''

•~•

After the triumphs of last night come the failures of this morning.

•~•

Evil lives where fear dwells.  Without fear, evil can never find purchase.

•~•

Acquisitive.

•~•

''Are you going to or coming from?''

•~•

[to a vocal atheist:]

If there is no god, is there at least a pattern-making demiurge?

[quoting Anthony Burgess]


•~•

More mi misli.

I am haunted by thoughts.

•~•

I have breathed the ash of Treblenkan flesh,
—danced counting upon bonepiles in the the Khmer Rouge jungle heat
—painted myself a war mask from the flow of blood after Srebrenica
—held a thousand machet'd hands in Nyarubuye
I would that Ruman and Gabriel scorch those rotten Lowland souls who would stand aside to watch...

•~•


Poor English translation on multi-language sign:

Museum of Naive Art.


•~•

The field is a sea of green clover and grass blown by winds in waves crested with red flowers named from the blood of fallen martyrs.

•~•

Her hair is the color of Coca-Cola foam.


•~•

[Sıdıka to an outside bartender as the thunderstorm breaks:]

 ''Is the rain dampening your spirits?''

•~•

 You have to understand from the outset—and perhaps remind yourself several times throughout—that the only way this can be written and studied critically, and ultimately understood to any degree at all is that I (you, and anyone), as needs must, turn off empathy and emotion... the pathos must defer to the logos to assess and analyze.  As for the ethos, well, ethics of another culture, another way of living day by day, is so arbitrary to any other.  However much we—you, I, them, the other people—wish to pass Judgment on others in order to carry out our constructed sense of Justice, which is a figment in the most stable of realms, let alone in the mythic seething cauldron among the Balkans... we quickly find that Justice is abitrarily different when applied others than if would would have it befall for our own misdeeds.

•~•

This is what happens when religions collide.

•~•

It's a beautiful sadness...

•~•

I like politics, but I don't like politicians.

•~•

Menu = a map of the food.

•~•

The devil comes dressed in beautiful robes.

•~•

Curiosity is a boundary between love and fear.

•~•

Go upriver to where the tunnel hides the road.  Pass over the tunnel and make way to the bastion...

•~•

''He who ruins bridges ruins himself.''

~Sarajevan boy's picture of a bridge
found among the rubble
of a bombed school building.

•~•

A verbal reciept was my only conclusion.

•~•

''If ideologies are techtonic plates, Sarajevo is on a mjor fault line.''

 ''Islam never had its French Revolution.''

~Pedja Kojović

•~•

Holiday Greetings You'll Never Hear:

Happy Holocaust Day!

•~•

That dude has a copy & paste personality.


•~•


Dig deep or go home.



•~•

There is a fine line between comedy and vomit.


•~•


''I'm a pre-ex-feminist.''



•~•

''Don't be so irromantic.''


•~•


''If you are going to write about this, your heart needs to be large enough to hold the grief.''



•~•





~•~

This is what happens when I get out more...

(as opposed to those other times when I need to get out more).

I miss xkcds like this one:

I've been hungry for a while now, but still sit here catching up on xkcd.  I haven't even started on Sinfest yet, and still I'm hungry.

And wondering what the hell Allen Ginsberg was doing in Serbia and sending friends of mine postcards...?

Kahve cehennem kadar kara, ölüm kadar güçlü ve aşk kadar, da tatlı olmalıdır...

Result of my first attempt brewing kafa bosankska at home.

It wasn't anywhere nearly as good as Zeytin's made for me, but it was tasty to have sitting at my own desk.  And it was better when I brewed it up this morning.

It should be noted that, despite the appearances being virtually identical, kafa bosankska differs from Turkish coffee (aside from using the questionably-sourced proverb quoted above), bosankska is made differently than is Turkish.  [once the grounds are in the fildžan—or dzezva, if you're making kafa jugoslavska—you put the container on a low-heat to 'roast' the grounds while the water almost-boils, and after the almost-boiling water is poured (slowly now, else you'll have an exploding mud pot of almost-boiling coffee sludge flying out at 90º+ radius around the fildžan) over the grounds, the fildžan is placed on a low-heat to froth a few times (to taste, I suppose) before serving.  I have no sugar cubes, and prefer raw sugar to refined, so I use the little brass spoon to measure out loose sugar for each cup.  While I do not sweeten my coffee to the degree that Bosnians (nor Jugoslavs, for that matter) do, I have brought myself from wanting milk in it (an heretical act!).  Alas!  I have no rahatlokum (Turkish delight) to nibble while drinking, but I'm sure in larger cities in this country, I'd be able to track some down.  I like the white ones with figs and nuts in them, then rolled in coconut.  Of the six-some variants I've had, those go nicely on my palette.

So, I've had my morning coffee and shared a bit about it.  Time to organize some things and do laudry and such that is much needed.  Today I hope to begin sorting through my notebooks and posting some things I hoped to post during the journey but couldn't or didn't.  These recent ten hours of sleep were just what I needed.

I'd fully enjoy being home if the air conditioning worked properly in this corner of the house.

~•~

P.S.  The proverb above is recounted in English as something like, "Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love..."

~•~

Almost Copless Journey

There was me, that is, Your Humble Narrator, and my devotchka droog, Sıdıka, and we prowled about the wretched ruins around Potočari looking for photos and not listening to the silence screaming of several ten thousand voices once present in that vicinity.  Here is what we found:

Imagine a Kafkaesque police tale set in the Balkans against the atmospheric backdrop of genocidal terror.  Then imagine Your Humble Narrator encountered head on the foreign police state and making a critical success in his fast talk skill check to befuddle and intimidate two Republika Srpska policemen.

O my Brothers... (and Sisters, too!) ...and Sisters, too...

There was me, in Potočari, with my devotchka droog, Sıdıka, who participated in this scenario which would have been bleakly hilarious had it not been so potentially dreadful.  I would have laughed at the moment, as I am wont to do in aburdist po-lice situations, had Sıdıka not been (literally, far more than figuratively) a little beyond the edge of terrified hysteria.  (Due to the nature of her being Bosnia Muslim and the police being Bosnian Serbs, and the balance of emotion between those two entities being, at best, spiteful, and at worst ... Srebrenican.)

The RS -- ironically enough in cyrillic, PC -- came up as I was still in one building and Sıdıka waited just inside the pushed apart, padlocked fence gate.  I hurried out and the cops demanded, in Serbian, to know what I was doing and to show them my ID.  I handed over my international student card rather than my passport.  Sıdıka showed them her BiH card.  One cop spoke some English and told me I was trespassing.  I played dumb and said there was no sign saying so (since it was lying face down in the dirt and gravel, I know this because I looked at it and took a photo of it), and we both skipped over discussing the fact that the gate to the fence surrounding the building was padlocked.

He asked was I was doing in the building, and I motioned with my camera... "Takin' pictures," I said with a deliberate tinge of Southern accent.  he asked if I'd been in the other buildings between this one and the memorial a few kilometers back down the road.

When I said I hadn't, the cop was staring at my camera and I knew I'd just trapped myself.  Given the circumstances, I didn't think I could keep him from taking my camera... legally nor physically.

When the other cop suggested, in Serbian, they take us both into custody (or something to that effect) Sıdıka offered a quick interpretation with her voice wavering beneath the tides of fear swelling within her.

That, O my Brothers, and Sisters, too, was when Your Humble Narrator tossed his metaphysical percentile dice to roll a critical success and dazzled the cops with International verbal dexterity and baffled them with good ol' fashioned American bullshit.  Neither of which pulled Sıdıka back from dangling into the abysmal voice of transference déjà vu (see previous comment concerning Muslim-Bosnian Serb relations and Srebrenica) with this RS-uniformed cop while the Westerner stands by to witness.

Or, in this case, does a little soft-shoe shuffle dance fast talk à la Mr. Bojangles in A Clockwork Orange routine.

"She has been hired to accompany me in Republika Srpska and act as my translator and interpreter. I cannot be left unaccompanied by her so long as i am here.  I'm traveling on a Fellowship Grant from the University of North Carolina in Wilmington which makes her an employee of the University--" here I quickly pointed at the laminated green card in the cop's hand (with which most European officials of museums, train stations, and legal establishments are familiar) "--so separating her from me would mean a breech of contract with the University and would, by necessity, involve the United States Department of Secretary of State and Ms. Hillery Clinton..."

Being the Fourth of July, I did my best to channel the voice of the Framers of the Constitution, as well as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet (a curiously French word to indicate something at the heart of modern Americanism).  And, if there is one place left on earth where the proper name of Clinton invokes memories of actual destruction and death it would be Waco, Texas... er... um... no, almost everyone in Waco is dead it would be Serbia, and by extension, Republika Srpska.

As I was speaking, when I stepped forawrd to point at my ID card, I had also consciously/unconsciously stepped between the cops and Sıdıka.

The two cops withdrew a couple of meters to consider my verbal effulgence, understandably skeptical of everything in my claim except, perhaps, the bullshit.  But they talked it over in Serbian -- Sıdıka offering no direct interpretation due to her drowning in fear -- but it wasn't difficult to figure out what they were saying.  Copspeak is the same the world over.

+ Forget her, she's not worth the hassle.
- What about him?
+ He's full of shit.
-Yup.
+ But he's got a point on the University thing.  We don't want trouble with some American know-it-alls.  Schools are different over there.  They like to sue each other.
- Yup.
+ But he was trespassing.
- Yup.
+ And I hate these snobby American kids.
- Me too.
+ Let's fuck with him a little.
- Yup.

When they came back over, the one who spoke some English demanded my camera.

I refused.

He said it could have evidence of criminal activity and needed to be checked.  If there was nothing incriminating on it, we would be free to go.  He demanded it again.

I had been attempting, while he was demanding things of me, to remove the camera's memory card.  However, one of the user-unfriendly features of the Sony DSC H5 camera is that the memory card is not easy nor quick to remove.  I hadn't gotten it out when he reached over to take the camera from me.  The compartment where the card was also houses the twin batteries so when he took the camera, the batteries fell out.  He picked them up and dropped them back in -- getting them positioned correctly on the first try.  Most digital cameras are similar enough that the cop didn't take long to figure out how to scroll through the photos and, sure enough, evidence of entry into other buildings, and the Serbian equivalent of the Keep Out sign I had ignored, yet photographed.

I had returned to Srebrenica for two reasons.  One was that Sıdıka had family there and had never been.  Fear and pain had kept her from it.  She said she'd go if I went with her.  She felt safe with me.

I also went to conduct a photo essay to list the names of the dead.  My own version of a necronomicon.

In the mythology created by H. P. Lovecraft, copies of the dreaded Necronomicon -- Al-Azif -- were systematically destroyed throughout history by the Catholic Church (and, curiously, by any right-minded occultist), so that by the 20th Century, only a half-doyen copies survived.

My images to name the dead were, in this 21st Century, systematically deleted with the press of a two buttons: Delete All -- Are You Sure?

There were no survivors.

The cop handed me back my camera.  He wore the sort of a smile a politician wears after just having lied to an audience of millions and knowing virtually every one of them believed...

I lost my photos.

But I wasn't arrested.

I had my camera.

Sıdıka was not hassled.

We watched them walk back to their car and drive away.

Sıdıka trembled.

I've seen animals tremble with fear.  Dogs, cats, small rodents.

I've described characters in stories as trembling.  But I have never actually seen a person tremble in the manner she did.  The adrenaline aftermath of panic and knowledgeable terror.

After a few minutes we began walking.  It was about 6 kilometers back to the bus station.  In the town of Srebrenica.  She didn't speak.

The most common phrase Sarajevans have about the genocide at Srebrenica is There is nothing to say.  You just have to go there.  These words felt like concertina wire wrapping my heart as i walked.  The sound of my boots on gravel and asphalt and muddy grass became the only conversation. The wind and the heat added their say.  the two people present were silent.

There was nothing to say.  We just had to go to Srebrenica.

The only bus going backto Sarajevo departed in forty minutes.

Considering the history of those who have walked that same landscape, O my Brothers and Sisters, too, it was the saddest walk I had ever made.  However, since the buses those people in the past walked towards took them away from their loved ones -- and the loved ones away to their torturous murder -- and the bus we walked towards would, by the exchange of some 30 marks, take us in relative safety to Sarajevo... it was also one of the easiest walks I have ever made in my life.

I lost my photos.  I had the company of my friend.

And an idea for making something of art from this genocide.

Ideas and art change the world.  And they are necessary after genocide.  When walls are constructed, more bridges are needed...


4 July 2010

~between Srebrenica & Sarajevo

w/ Sıdıka asleep beside me on the bus

~*~

Ubek Biti Tu Ćuprija

In all of human history there has never been a kitty more tired than this one right now.  Not only will my hamster engine wheel not turn, but my hamster cannot even climb on the wheel.

After about four hours of sleep Saturday night, I was up at 6 am Sunday morning to go back to Srebrenica.  Back from there, I got a bus to Mostar to catch night photos, then back at 6 am to Sarajevo where I sit now debating a shower before an afternoon of sleep.

Then ... hrmmmmmm ... pack to .... ick ... leave.


In Mostar, I got some great photos, even if many of them didn't come out the way I had hoped.  I caught a couple of the Stari Most that perhaps have not been captured before...

In Srebrenica (Potočari), I ... well, I had almost made it through this trip without a cop encounter.  I didn't kick an embassy, but I did go somewhere the Republika Srpska police didn't want an American and a Bosnian citizen going.  Probably the UN wouldn't have been too keen on it either.

Now that you have the teaser trailer, you'll have to wait for the film.


Shower.  Then sleep.  Then catch up on other things.  Then .. well, the rest of it so I can take five planes to span a quarter of the planet in thirty hours.





~*~

Guerrilla Art

Revisited the Sarajevan Historz Museum and noticed this little feature which I hadn't before:

 ...and a closer look:

The placard also seems to be made out of a band aid box, which, I suppose, might add to the bleak humor of the piece.  Not that I would ehem know for certain about any of it.  I was merely a visitor to the museum and have nothing to do with any of the displays...

~*~

"You're just riffing now, aren't you?"

The line of black angels
long tired of dancing
fall softer than a pin drop

into love after midnight
in the garden between
the good and evil
which dwells in the shadows
of every heart turned to stone.

30 June 2010
Noon
~Sarajevo~

~*~

Humor in Tragedy / Art after Srebrenica

Like Sarajevans and Mostaris, I've long held the disquieting trait of laughing at tragedy and disaster.  Watching planes play into iconic buildings nine years ago brought this into a public forum where I was repeatedly accused of being uncaring, un-American, inhuman.  To theose folks, I merely laughed harder.  They didn't understand the complexities of emotion, preferring to, perhaps, be spoon-fed what they should feel via CNN, Fox, or Steven Speilberg-types.

After visiting Srebrenica last week, this trait was tested.  I barely had words to speak about it (still, I do not have words to express much at all about that place, that history), let alone the ability to laugh.

Yet...

I mentioned this to someone the other evening and immediately a joke sprang to mind.

Q: How many Srebenicans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: They don't need a lightbulb.  Srebrenicans are protected by UN Dutchbats against the Dark.

And thus there is humor, as well as art, even after Srebrenica.



~*~

Becoming Sarajevan

In Sarajevo, everyone knows everyone else.  I have been here long enough that I walk past a coppersmith's shop and the coppersmith recognizes me, invites me in for coffee with him and his wife (neither of whom speak English), then run into the scarf-maker whose husband talks theology with me for an hour, then, this evening, I am walking down the main street in the čaršija and hear someone call my name.  It's Pedja (I hope I've spelled that corretly), a friend of Danis's. I sit and have coffee with him and his girlfriend for a while.  We discuss this photographer whose work I discovered by name today.  And, while talking about Tarik Samarah, who should walk up to our table at the cafe...?

As I thought when I first arrived here... I have come home again for the very first time.




~•~

Being that I saw no Archdukes this morning, I had coffee instead...

Gavrilo Princip

Assassin of Empires

~•~

Further Metafiction Blending in the Shades of Morning Gray

So here in Sarajevo, I've been mistaken a few times for a local musician (long-haired and--for Bosnia--curiously-bearded ((as opposed to just bearded))) who's stage name is Puško.  This morning, as I go over my hand-written manuscript for a short-story I wrote during the week between Višegrad and Sarajevo, I discover what this name--Puško--means.

In Bosnian, it's the male denominative for rifle.

Those with a knowledge of rifle manufacturers and my own surname might notice the synchronistic irony.  My own ironic poisoning is due to the fact that I discover as someone writes out the name Puško on a notebook page of my short story ... which involves a sniper in the hills above Sarajevo.

Given my surname matches such a weapon and I was searching for the correct nickname for the character (I'd been told the actual one, that is, the character in this reality who is the basis for the character on the reality of the page--did you follow that?--but since I did not know the correct spelling, I wrote it phonetically...and since she is a she and not a he, the name is Puška), these moments of coincidence could easily be seen as just that: mere coincidence.  I see it all as pieces of a puzzle being given me to assemble.

A grail, if you will, from my time here in the field around the palace...

In the past of this reality, Puška wrote poetry between trigger pulls.

In the reality of the page, I am using the poetry of two people I know (slightly altered to fit the shading of the story).  They have not been asked for their permission yet, but I feel confident in my stealing their words for such a purpose.

They will be, as they have long been, my first readers.




~•~

Tanović & Metafiction

Met with film director Danis Tanović yesterday morning.  He introduced me to the five other members (there may be a few others) of his political party at their headquarters.  Which, like all great political parties, is a sedate café.  We didn't exactly hit it off at first, due to a misunderstanding on the telephone the evening before about just where to meet.  I waited outside the whole while he was inside...  Funny how things work out.
But, through numerous distractions and a sideline conversation about other things, he, one other, and myself ended up, as he said, "Discussing philosophy with this guy from North Carolina before 10 in the morning."

He said he didn't think he could help me with my work, even as the few incidents he spoke of were just the sort of thing that does indeed inform my work.  Perceptions.  Confusion.  Lack of rational sense to any of it.

That's what this is all about.  Forming so kind of narrative out of these bundles of chaos and confusion.

In the end, he did tell me that they meet most every morning at their campaign headquarters (my euphemism, not his), and that I was welcome to drop in again before leaving Sarajevo.

I think I will do just that.


Next entry, I may voice a few things about Višegrad.  It seems to be where I entered Chapel Perilous; moved from the field around into the Palace...  Certainly where my journey became metafiction (that is, beyond realistic belief), which, I suppose, is as it should be.  Pararealism at the other side of the Bridge on the Drina.


~•~

Srebrenica

Yesterday, while here in this internet cafe posting the photos, the internet caretaker (a lady of a few years older than me) saw them from over my shoulder and asked about them.  I told her I'd just returned from there.  She looked at me and said in a relatively even voice, "My husband is in Srebrenica."

She didn't say died, she didn't say killed, she didn't say buried.

Any of the others might not have slipped past my defenses I have placed against emotional reaction against these stories.  But her expression and words slipped in and tore a hole.  For the next half hour when other people would come into the cafe, I heard the break hidden in her voice.  She canceled out my time on the computer (essentially giving me an hour for free), and, when I finished, I walked over to her and said, "I'm not sure what it would mean to you, but I am sorry."

She clutched my hand tightly in hers and spoke so hushed her words sounded like an escaped sigh.  "Thank you.  Thank you for visiting there."

Later, in speaking with a close acquaintance here, I heard the repeated phrase, "There is nothing to say about Srebrenica.  It is a place you simply have to go to."  And, "Everyone on the planet should visit Srebrenica."

I've been through two Nazi death camps.

The town of Srebrenica and the memorial at Potočari are different.  Not that there's an atrocity contest, but this place is different than Treblinka.  It's different than Auschwitz and Birkenau.

It is a still and quiet place.  It is a place far beyond words.

"My husband is in Srebrenica."

That was the most painful thing I have ever heard spoken in my entire life.

The rest is silence.



~•~

Almost Wordless...

I'm not yet ready to talk about the people I met outside of Višegrad and what I saw and heard there, but in returning from there, I met up with an American girl who's been doing research here in Sarajevo for the past month and together we voyaged to Potočari / Srebrenica today...

Srebrenica Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shakedown Bear in Potočari

~•~

Old town alleys

No matter how many old town alleys you wander after midnight,

the same hungry shadows find you

to gnaw at your heart in the borderlands

between your Love and Fear.

The Gate is closer than it's ever been,

and I have seen the Palace.

But the Path is still obscured from me...

"Not yet," the ghosts all tell me

while the angels still are crying

lament their whispers in the dark.

~•~

The silent, slumming angels after midnight in old town

There's a story that goes with this, however it should not be taken as proof of anything.  If there's one truism that is entirely untrue, it is the saying that pictures never lie.

Writers are the other hand... well, all writers are liars.  Good writers are notorious liars.

The story that accompanies this is true.  As to any belief you place in it, that part is entirely up to you.

While out after midnight taking photos again with Sıdıka, I was crouched taking this photo (not the best of the series, of course):

With Sıdıka behind me.  As I snapped the shot I was aware of someone walking around where I was, sticking to the shadows out of the line of photo shot.  At first, I assumed it was Sıdıka, but the person passed on, walking all-but stealthily.  Sıdıka and I both decided immediately that we weren't the sort to be snuck-up-on and yet here was this person who did.  I realized I had a camera in my hand and, as if it would verify the moment, I got off a shot--albeit blurred.  The girl turned the corner and we both hurried after her, intrigued by someone who walks as quick and invisible as we do.

We reached the corner and found only the empty midnight street, distant sounds echoing up from the few clubs open in old town.  The shop fronts were all boarded shut, without a door in sight.


There an old Sarajevan story about the angels (of all the religions) wandering the land weeping for the lost souls of this land.  When I snapped the blurry photo of the soundless girl, I literally looked to see if her feet touched the cobbled stone.


They did.  But I'm not convinced that she wasn't a slumming angel.


A blurry photo offers no veracity of any kind.


If I told you that story and offered a detailed photographic study of a girl with large black wings would you be any more convinced my story was true?  Or would that merely add new layers of possible doubt (PhotoShop being what it is and all)?


There are ghosts all over this city.  Not all of them are those of the dead.  Not all of them are even from humans...


...the National Library burned in 1992 incinerating more than 2 3 million books.


Tell me a convincing story where that happens and leaves no ghosts in its wake...

~•~

Food of ubiquitous acclaim

I do have to take a moment here and acknowledge the food.  Not only is the average above average, but a couple of recent meals in particular should be cited as spectacular cuisine.

Last night I had a dish at To Be Or Not To Be (sic) that read ''Beefsteak in Choco-Chili Sauce.''  It began with a mixed salad (customarily eaten with dinner and not before) of white cabbage, white peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  The side dish of the entrée was grilled sliced potatoes, sliced vegetable resembling a cross between an eggplant and a zucchini, and more sliced white peppers, sprinkled with chili powder and paprika.  The main dish was indeed a supremely tender steak doused in choco-chili sauce that, in lavishly praising the previous dishes, I ran out of English and French superlatives to say anything further than yum-yum.

Tonight's visit to the Pivnica and its chicken breast in green curry sauce was positively anti-climatic in comparison of its delicious-ness.

The flaws in each, respectively: bland, unspectacular bread, overly-salted rice.

Kind of like my adverbs in this entry.

The ćevapi is of course, the best.  And the pekara (bakeries) are achingly tasty.  I haven't tried the local ice cream, which is said to rival the rest of the cuisine in town, and it should be noted that although there may be a McDonalds or BK somewhere in the country, I have seen no evidence of such as yet.  The same cannot be said of the infamous Coca-Cola label...



~•~