Why Bosnia, why.

So like with most in my life, I pick up a stone, turn it over and there is a treasure, which keeps reappearing in my pocket thereafter, even if initially I don’t think what I found is a treasure. In short, I did not choose Bosnia, Bosnia chose me. It’s got its little fingers dug into me, and I can ignore it no longer.

To expand a little, though many of you are fully aware that films and food started majority of my journeys, interests and life alterations.   From film to soundtracks, from soundtracks to new artists, from a great Indian dish to researching the multitude of religions that region possesses, from Prague Spring photographs to a book about American gypsies and or picking up Bruce Lee’s philosophy book and then giving it over and over to people, and re-reading it without having seen a single film of his back in 2000 when the book, again chose me.  From “Kama Sutra: The Tale of Love” the film that inspired years of East Indian cultural interest, learning the art of henna, musical and film voyages, food and  weddings, dance and religion journeys.  It’s always a chance that any one thing can change my life forever at any given point in time, and that is one aspect of these spirals I simply marvel at, everything comes to my hands like a bird wanting to eat the day old bread I am holding up in the air. 

So was it with the Bosnian war.  It flew into my arms over and over.

When I went to see “In the land of blood and honey” by Angelina Jolie, she wasn’t the reason, it was the religious conflict that peeked my interest, I wrote a poem for the film (for the film "In the Land Of Blood And Honey"), realizing I know nothing about this war, nothing about this piece of history that I was alive for unlike other major wars for which I was not here.  And so the interest was peeked but it immediately converted itself into a sleeper cell, a terrorist in waiting. One day to open fire and have a super impact, pardon the use of violence as a comparison, it seemed fitting, to me.  Because my brain literally explodes with the desire to find out more about something, it’s like an unstoppable bomb. 

Months later “Bury Me Standing – the gypsy history in Europe” and it tied into my love for history as well as it brought me to the Balkans, again as the entire book was written about gypsies in that region.  A reportage and live-in study, written by Isabel Fonseca over period of many years in the 90’s, without going into much detail - what an incredible book.  It has opened my eyes to so many of my own (as a child I was told not to trust cigans and that they are thieves and so on growing up under communism I remember we took a school trip to eastern Slovakia where there were villages of them, no windows, no doors, everything broken up, and it solidified in my brain as a child, this notion these people do not appreciate things and I left it at that, then of course gypsy music found me and I needed to re-examine) misinterpretations about this culture, this people.  So again, we are in that region and I am doing more reading on American gypsies and so I spun off that and kept going.

Next time it rained I walked into Barnes and Nobles and picked up a book (Fools Rush In by Bill Carter) because it’s cover reminded me of another amazing book (The Kite Runner) and I looked at the back and it was biographical, I needed no more than two pages to realize this will not be the last time I will read this book.  So I was now in Bosnia, more respectively in Sarajevo, with an outsider, who became an insider, who lost everything in the US and found it in a war-torn country.  I mean his story is beyond inspirational, mainly because he chose to go to a country that was not his, to a place that was danger zone at the very least, not to mention he convinced U2 to play images of Sarajevo during their concerts during the war.  I still wonder why that did not speed up things. That film is called Miss Sarajevo, a documentary he was compelled to start making after he lived there for about 6 months, in conditions he describes in such detail you will feel as if you are there walking along side.

I decided to get a library card, because I imagined there were going to be many books I’d want to read and that could be an expensive habit, mind you I have not checked out a book out of the library (thank you Amazon.com) since HS.  So this too is in a way, a victory.  The next two books were “This was not our war” and “Sarajevo, exodus of a city”.   I can’t say enough about these two books.  I’ve learned so much about the city of Sarajevo and the role women play during war time and how much more they should be allowed into more space when it comes to war, as they glue communities together when men are at the front lines, it’s almost silly to think we still have front lines, war zones.  But that is our reality no matter how incredible it may seem.

After finishing “Fools Rush In”, a good friend of mine that I should meet her friend (who’s nationality I did not know and she did not know of my new-found interest) that we’d have lot in common.  Her friend was a Croat from Serbia. After this meet a few weeks ran by and due to the setback of hurricane Sandy I went to a speakeasy I been to once or twice before to celebrate my mom’s birthday and all the bartenders were Serbs and Bosnians.  So you see it just keeps coming, flooding my pools.  In my 21 years in the USA I believe I have only met one Yugoslavian girl and that was in High School (15 years prior).  So it’s clear, that the rolling stone keeps telling me this is my road, my path to embrace for now and for as long as my brain and I can walk it.  No one is telling me to write stories; no one is asking me to do this research.  Someone other than me has chosen it all. And I say thank you to that spin of the wind, I am grateful not only because I am learning about what I should have known decades ago and perhaps we all should have known but also because my passion for history is now expanded past WWII and I feel that is an amazing thing. 

It is my sincere hope that Bosnia, now 16 years after the end of the war is stronger, more beautiful and brazen than it ever has been. 

So this should quench your thirst about wanting why Bosnia, why.   

Good soul shakes, yours truly I remain.