Our Sarajevo

The voice of ‘Azaan’ or the first prayer from the mosque didn’t wake me up, so much so as the sound of the horn out of my ground floor window did. It was close to nine in the morning and I liked the feeling of not knowing what to do today. I had slept over many webpages of Sarajevo open. Top things to do, map, a day in Sarajevo, balkonology, etc etc. But when I woke up I just felt like walking out of the room without looking at last nights things. The morning started with, breakfast in a café, which had menu’s only in English and Turkish. Later I realized, this was like many others, a business run by a Turkish

The Bosnian coffee !

The Bosnian coffee is not so much different to taste than its Turkish cousin, maybe a little lighter, but its served with more intimacy, if you have it at the right place that is. I was here to see if Sarajevo has something that the Indian group would ‘feel’, but I guess it took me some minutes the night earlier to say ‘yes’ to Sarajevo.

With a ‘yes’ in me, it was easy to just wander around without a fixed objective. There were places that I had read about on Trip Advisor the night earlier and I was happy when one of them just came in my path. The Gallerie 11/07/95 .. and boom !! you travel back in time for 20 years, to the years of the Siege. At the entrance you are looked at by the 653 missing peoples eyes which follow you through the exhibition and the movies that are on showcase, do the rest. The images whether moving or stationary are a gruesome reminder of what a war is, and the fact that it happened in our times it makes you wonder, how can such a tragedy take place in the 90’s.

The undercurrents are everywhere!

The day earlier the visible effects of the war were the outnumbering damaged houses at the start of the border of BiH, but now with the human content, I could feel the warunder my skin. As I exited the Gallery (after 2.5 hours), I wondered if Sarajevo, is all about the war? ‘Felt like Istanbul last night and Berlin today’.

In 1993 where the city was cut out from the rest of Bosnia, the only way out was a 800 mtr tunnel that went underneath the airport runway. When I entered one part of the tunnel, I couldn’t imagine how 4000 people made this every day for two years. But then food, water, medicines and most importantly cigarretes had to be bought in the city. Actually the only cigarette factory in the city had a year long supply of tobacco but no paper to wrap it in. As cigarettes became the currency to deal in to even buy milk and potatoes, books were torn and old news papers were used to wrap the content to be smoked or any many cases just to barter with.

The city has a distinct feel. The ottomans ruled it and they left their descendants. ‘We are not the regular muslims’, my taxi driver said to me, ‘we have the best of both worlds, we eat all meat, we drink and we have a culture’. It is true, Sarajevo is a city of Culture with a capital C!

This year it will be 20 years since the Serbs, attacked and left, only to be just 30 kms away, where they live in their own republic Srpska.

Everyone lives now .. but they live with scars, that cant be forgotten so soon. I asked a Serb near Sarajevo, ‘will you go to Sarajevo to study’?, This is Sarajevo too he said, Our Sarajevo!

A Serbian Orthodox church .. A Catholic church .. A Mosque and  Synagogue all in 1 sq km!

That’s what the city signifies .. They all belong there .. The Serbs, the Bosniaks and some Croats. The old town maybe muslim, the republica Srpska maybe only 30 kms away. But everyone calls the city, “our Sarajevo”, just as they did, before the war.