Mostar Bosnia Quotes

A refugee is someone who survived and who can create the future.

you see how strangely history repeats itself.Here and now in Bosnia we are seeing images like those of the second world war. I remember that war very well.I was 16 when it began ,and 20 when it ended . Then,too, there were Chentniks and Ustasha,and they are again.the difference is that these Chetniks are worse than the Chetniks of that time,these Ustasha worse than those Ustasha.I can say this with complete confidence ,because Ustasha of that time didn't destroy the Old Bridge ,nor the mosques of Mostar ,and these have done so.

A Mall and Bullet Holes" While walking in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country devastated and drained by the wars of the global elite, exactly like mine, I arrived at an intersection and noticed a huge mall on the right side… On the left side, there was an old residential building filled with bullet holes that looked like eyewitnesses to all the free death that took place here in a war that has since ended, yet its real causes and the criminals behind it are still lurking in every corner, like infected pus ready to burst at any moment of awareness… I wondered bitterly: When will the world understand that violence never erupts inadvertently, that all violence in our times is premeditated and agreed upon by a small elite that decides in advance that any nation that rejects malls, consumption, and superficiality, must be disciplined with free death for those who resist! It is also agreed upon – and it all costs – that the minds and souls of all survivors must permanently be pierced with bullet holes! In the same intersection, I observed a redhaired elderly woman with sorrowful eyes deep as bullet holes… I then saw a group of youth wearing modern clothes, like those we see in malls… The elderly woman looked at them as if wishing to tell them about all that happened here, but they didn’t notice her existence for their eyes were fixated on their phones… I painfully wondered then: Has anyone told them about what happened here? Can they distinguish the sounds of bombs from those of fireworks? Has this elderly woman, who looked broken and brokenhearted, told them about the real price she’d paid with all the holes left in her heart and her history for the sake of these malls and cheap consumer goods? [Original poem published in Arabic on July 4, 2024 at ahewar.org]

As hungry as he was, Marin was nonetheless transfixed by the scene in front of him. He’d seen pictures, of course, but no two-dimensional photograph could possibly convey the sense he had of having walked into the medieval past, into a still thriving corner of the Ottoman Empire. The fine, high arch of Stari Most, the Old Bridge, rose nearly thirty metres above the blue-green river, flanked by stone towers and minarets. The bridge, the towers and the surrounding buildings seemed to flow up organically from their footings in the raw, rocky banks of the river, all rendered from the same pale limestone. Behind his sunglasses, tears welled up as Marin was assailed by a wave of unexpected emotion.