To Adin While the country I was born in was approaching its forced landing our life and football appetites were soaring high. Deaf and blind to the questions that’d started exploding right in our faces, we contemplated a starry future for ourselves, for posterity, for our national football team. Asked why he kept a player in the center of the […]
Those I know have all grown old, my scattered friends. The snow is getting rusty in Sweden, from the other side of the globe brief electronic messages buzz in: there’s a fire, or else there isn’t. No news is news anymore, they’ve heard it all – my tired friends. Memories are the only news we are still curious about. We […]
The earth has done its work. We wouldn’t have thought it, my brother and I, but a friend said to us “Your father’s gotten slimmer.” “Huh?” “His grave is sinking in!” We went to the gravedigger to order the gravestone. “Don’t worry,” he said, “everything will be just right.” But we wanted a solid gravestone, cost didn’t matter to us. […]
It’s a secret thought, it’s the smallest of worms That slowly nibbles and warms the blood How so? On an eyelash of dreams a little dust At a casual smile moist with fear It banishes all that’s gray and stiff from a head Born of a thought, it lives on hope What’s that? A purple smile in a singing wind […]
Who are we Bosnians of the Muslim faith and what do we want in our homeland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a region to which we are connected by heritage and historical background, and Europe in which we belong geo-politically and culturally? When the identity of a people is in question as well as those characteristics which define its identity, there […]
As indelible memories go, this basketball moment will be a lot less traumatic than the first one. Elmir Brkanić will be honored on the court tonight, Feburary 13th, 2009, at Wilberforce University’s Gaston Lewis Arena. It’s Senior Night, and the 6-foot-5 forward from Bosnia likely will be playing his final home game for the Bulldogs, who face Pittsburgh’s Point Park […]
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. “Time,” they had briefed him in London, “is short. It’s too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in […]
Muharem Bazdulj, born in 1977, is one of the leading writers of the younger generation to appear in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He writes in a wide variety of genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, and essays; he is also active as a journalist and a translator. One of his short story collections has appeared in English (The […]
The times are terrible, dark, and heavy, Like a damned soul in disgrace; On Golgotha is hanging the victim From Nazareth, that wretched place! In His nest is expiring now That wounded white dove. Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani? – His last breath is heard from above. O, Lord, to You I am bringing now, In front of Your tree of […]
Outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the poet Mak Dizdar is relatively unknown. Modern anthologies from Croatia and Serbia seldom include the poet. While Dizdar is included in the anthology, Contemporary Yugoslav Poetry, he is refered to as “a Croatian poet.” Dizdar was born in 1917 in Stolac, Bosnia-Herzegovina and died in 1971. His pen-name, Mak, meaning “poppy,” is a pseudonym, which he […]
For a long time it was thought That it is was circular, As it was thought That the Earth was flat It is not a straight line, It comes out of the forefinger. It is everywhere And everything has it. If the cosmos were To have a meridian There, it would be similar. You do not take it In order […]
––Why are you not like parrots or horses at least, so that you mechanically memorize the road, or some isolated word by those chosen by God— more intelligent than us?— said the professor in passing. Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović and Keith Doubt – © 2009 Omer Hadžiselimović
Hasan remembered how in Constantinople he had spoken about the dignity of his countrymen, and laughed. Fortunately for himself, he did not hold anything against anyone or complain. He took everything that happened to him like a cruel joke. Others are even worse, he would say, and it seemed to me that he was defending his earlier enthusiasm more than […]
She sings still boisterously for a long time And we do not really know who she is or what she is And when we eat these well-baked tasty cakes That she herself prepares and serves We will be transformed into lions, wolves, boars Wild animals without their wildness We will retain all that otherwise adorns us Human propriety instantaneous Courage […]
(This text is a slightly modified version of an article written toward the end of the war in Bosnia and first published in the Boston daily The Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1995) Radovan Karadžić is a Montenegrin who claims he is a Serb, a psychiatrist who tries to be a poet, and a war criminal who insists that he […]
Something has changed between me and people since I became a parent to one of them. – Paul Claudel I’m running home with my little daughter – again, shells have surprised us on the street. Shells have, for centuries, been falling every day, and every time they surprise us. I’m hurrying her on with angry words: transferring my rage from […]
Like everything else our language is particular to us Outsiders cannot learn it it’s gibberish to them Yesterday I heard a woman say “This war has destroyed my life” Why do we always say “this war”? To acknowledge the wars that came before? To remember future wars? To say this war is to acknowledge that one the last one and […]
Darling, your face is turning white becoming featureless an untracked field of snow Your eyes which once burned like blue sky are flattening out memory fails us both I curse my failing memory try to catch it it disappears around a bend another another The exact timbre of your voice the gesture that moved me so the way your laughter […]
In Sarajevo I was happy there cafés theater nightlife twenty minutes to the mountains three hours to the sea a good job a cosmopolitan life but when the war started I felt unsafe so I came to Belgrade to live among my own I thought a better life no shelling here there is water electricity that works neighbors are not […]
This summer I took a class on the city of Sarajevo in light of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Built into this course was the opportunity to go to Sarajevo for a week. I knew immediately that I had to take this class. I am ashamed to admit that I knew very little about the war. I was six […]