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 […]
Bosnian Herzegovinian American Academy of Arts and Sciences (BHAAAS) 2411 Newburg Rd. Louisville, KY 40205 United States info@bhaaas.org | aterzich@iu.edu (502) 379-7304 December 14, 2025 The Honorable Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State The Honorable James E. Risch, Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate The Honorable Brian Mast, Chairman, House Foreign Affairs Committee, […]
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. […]
The recent decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to not hold Serbia directly responsible and accountable for the genocide that occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina is troubling and disappointing. The decision strengthens the cynical perception of the international community obstructing Bosnia-Herzegovina’s need for justice to rebuild a stable and unified society. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement fractured Bosnia-Herzegovina into […]
Humankind will be able to recall July 11th and 12th in 1995, remembering the genocide that was committed in the United Nations safe area, Srebrenica, by the criminal hordes controlled by Ratko Mladić. Shortly after the commission of the crimes in Srebrenica, with blood on their hands and with ardent cannons, the same hordes took off to a second United […]
1. The Mural from Vozuca On the wall of an abandoned house in Vozu!a near Zavidovi!i a poem was discovered. Above the poem a message: Here it is still autumn and it is raining. I have decided, tomorrow I am leaving. And before I go, I am leaving you this poem, so write it down, if you want. If I […]
After the Second World War, Samokovlija dedicated one of his stories to his mother, Sara, with these words: “I’m happy that she died before the war and did not experience the horrors to which we have been witnesses.” I cite this dedication, the bitterest of all dedications I know, with an uncertain memory, for nowhere in his collected or selected […]
To a dear friend and a member of the Sarajevo Shakespeare Society – (Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1992-3, and beyond) “Nermin Tulich, a young Sarajevo actor, lost both of his legs in the artillery attack on the bread-line…”, Associated Press (AP), on Bosnia’s misery What has shorn off the legs of Nermin Tulich? What madness has left them twitching on a Sarajevo […]
(TV interview: Question: “Then Bosnia is lost, Mr. Secretary?” Answer: “Oh, no, no; we are doing everything we can; no, no…” – Spring 1993) Turning back (in anger?) and seeing clearly: yes, then Bosnia is lost! Lost in the coils of good will, of global love and cosmic order, lost in the pragmatic betrayals, in the fog of political correctness, […]
For M.H. This town, catching up to us, clasping us to its arms and around our necks – we watch it from above. We are Caesars of the moment, breathing in Sarajevo’s breath: human bodies, divine blossoms, murmuring stations… the calm of the Japanese cherry in the State Museum Garden, and those who were dear to us and nested in […]
The girls of my youth, nausicaas The girls of my youth, dianas, danaias, lolitas they are only in their forties, but they are already gray haired, creased foreheads, wrinkled hands those “ladylike ones behind the sewing machines” Many of them are already toughened, have already forgotten love as a foreign language is forgotten. The girls of my youth, ruths and […]
Prologue – Svetlana Broz “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift.” – Anonymous “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi The Schools for Civil Courage, organized for 218 young people between the ages of 15 and 25 by the GARIWO non-governmental organization with the help and support of […]
Bosnia has always had a special place in the heart of Bosnian Franciscans through the centuries of their activities. They felt it deeply as their homeland and their home, and they have never questioned it or abandoned it. They enshrine it as their native land and love it as the country of their fathers. They have lived for Bosnia, loved […]
As you pour yourself a scotch, crush a roach, or scratch your crotch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die. In the towns with funny names, hit by bullets, caught in flames, by and large not knowing why, people die. In small places you don’t know of, yet big for having no chance to scream or say good-bye, people […]
Trains are the finest metaphor for present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three and a half years after Dayton the imaginary state is still slumbering between the covers of the famous Accord, and life is for the most part going on without it and despite it. It’s much the same with the trains. Hundreds of kilometre of tracks are overgrown with grass, with wrecked, […]
The “Hasanaginica” (Hasan Aga’s Wife) is a folk ballad written in the ten-syllable heroic epic line. It first came to the attention of West Europeans when it was published by the abbot Alberto Fortis, in his two-volume Viaggio in Dalmazia (A Voyage in Dalmatia, Venice, 1774). Fortis gave the song both in Serbo-Croatian and in Italian translation. The Viaggio was […]