O, Arabic writing, you are full of curved Sabers and crescent moons. There are no more dragons in the Ropušnica Cavern But the treasure is also gone upon which they once lay Through here, who knows when, The conquerors rode their horses, And even now, we still sneeze from the dust That their hooves Disturbed. And where has it gone […]
It is a stillness and solitude from which perhaps God begins Green and blue they are like polar ice The stillness and solitude one can find only in a soul that, Having just torn itself from its flesh and, delivered from the world’s Evil, is looking upon the earthly globe from above With the eyes of an eagle. It is […]
Asja P, the girl with a dog: sometimes I meet her walking her beautifully trained Irish setter. Her father was a philosopher, a well-known university professor, so I suppose he named his only daughter after Asja Lacis, who used to be the director of the theater in Riga. It was passionate love for Asja Lacis that made the Jewish mystic […]
A nighttime panorama of Sarajevo caught by the light of shellfire, gunpowder flashbulbs, by the dance of silhouettes in which only the persistence of vision can make out the former shapes (calling up flickering skyline lights, orange neon canyons, evening crescendos of headlights tracing their fluorescent snakes on a time exposure). But only this possible postcard can literally catch the […]
We’ve changed? Hardly, not significantly. The world has changed. I’ve stayed the same: I live in constant change and I know all about you, all that can be known, all but your address, the city you live in, your children, the language you fill out forms in, where you go in the morning and who you come back to in […]
It rained all night and the first snow showed up in the morning. But the café is cozy. You can sip hot coffee and look out the window at the street. The whiteness emphasizes shapes, movements, the day’s subtle mechanics. Here on the terrace, last summer there was a huge video screen. Now it’s just an empty steel square. Quite […]
To R. Konstantinović I wanted to listen, hear, understand the conversation between one wave and one conch But they told me, nice but have you been listening, hearing, understanding the conversation of those who walk upright like you of those who soar beneath heaven’s clouds like you but like you they are not birds they descend to the bottom of […]
Introduction What holds today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina together? Unfortunately, there is no internal cohesive energy that would be strong enough to keep it together if the international community would cease to guard its integrity. This insight is disturbing, but if it is accurate, there is no use turning one’s head away from it. Rather, this insight should serve as the […]
Oh, Jesus, how I would love it if you would care To come into my humble home, Where quite ordinary things hang on the wall Where the day dies early in the windows. I would tell you how I light a dim candle To make this short day last longer. How I live quite a simple life. And serve with […]
In the sixteenth century, at the time of the arrival of the Sephardim in Bosnia, the Ottoman Empire was at the peak of its power, constantly advancing westward and northward; during the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), it would reach its greatest glory. That time coincides with the greatest power of the Sephardic community, its ascendance, and success: it […]
The Great War began in Sarajevo, on a hot summer day in 1914. It was a Sunday; I was a student. In the afternoon a girl came by, in pigtails as was the custom in those days. She held a large yellow straw hat in her hand. The hat was like summer: it reminded one of hay, crickets, and poppies. […]