BRIDGE OF SIGHS

Things are very bad in Mostar at the moment. First it was the Serbs who bombarded the city. Now they watch, their ‘Divide-and-Conquer’ policy in train, as Croatian forces daily pound it with more shells than Sarajevo is getting; a city six times more populous. At night, when the shelling stops, the snipers eyes are watching for people who come out from their cellars for rations.

The weather has become an enemy too. Eleven people froze to death the night the first snows came on November 21st. But, as Emir Stranjaw, Mostar citizen, now exiled in Dublin, points out, “The main problem is wind. Because on these days there is very strong winds. It can go even a hundred miles per hour.

Mostar is an old city with a unique historical past. From prehistory there have been settlements there, but as Emir explains, “The first time the name Mostar is mentioned is in the middle of the 15th Century, actually 1465. Since then it become a centre of culture and the trades. Like it was the centre where all people around came to sell stuff, buy stuff and everything.

“Mostar was the only city in the Southern region of Bosnia-Herzgovina,” Emir goes on. “Before the war in Mostar lived 130,000.” (It is estimated that there are some 55,000 left. Emir believes that at least 10,000 have been killed, the rest evacuated.) “It was approximately 42% Muslims, 40% Croats, 16% Serbs, and the rest Jewish, Gypsies and all other nationalities. So as you can see from these figures it was completely mixed. And it’s the same picture in my whole country. My whole country (Bosnia-Herzgovina) is completely mixed. So there is no way to divide it on ethnical lines anyway.”

When Emir talks of Mostar his voice is a mixture of passion and a weary, unbelieving sadness. “The little streets in the old town you couldn’t see anywhere else in the world,” he tells. “That complete mixture between Ottoman Empire, Christianity, Orthodox . . . All that mixture in a very, very small area. You have three religions. You hear bells from Catholic church, bells from Orthodox church and voice from the Mosque calling to prayer. I’m not sure there is anywhere else in the world you can find that. And that’s what’s mostly really hurting me. That they kill that idea of unity.

“Before all three religions there lived only one nation, named Bojgumili, which means ‘God Love Us.’ And when the Franciscans arrived, that nation just took their religion. Not because they believed in that religion. Just because they lived much easier if they accepted that. Because in these days – it was 1291 – you have witch burnings, so it’s much easier if you accept that religion.

“And then in the areas where the Ottoman Empire reached, with them came Serbs as their soldiers, after that came Orthodox priests. The Bojgumili accept them as well for the same reason. So it was pretty easy for them to change religion. It just depends which one is better, if you know what I mean.

“In my country at the moment you have one surname in all three confessions. For instance the surname ‘Maric’ belongs to all three confessions. All over the world it’s pretty easy to know which religion someone belongs to by his surname. But in my country it’s very hard. Because you couldn’t be sure definitely. For instance, if you have five people around a table in my country, at least two of them are not what they think they are. So it’s very hard and it’s a pretty stupid idea to say now, listen you are Muslim definitely. You are Muslim for the last five hundred years. There is no way. And 70% of marriages are mixed. And it’s going through the centuries. So if you have mother as Croatian and father as Muslim, which nationality is the child?”

Bridges have always been an important part of Mostar’s cultural heritage. Mostar takes its name from the Croatian word ‘most’ for ‘bridge’. “Bridge, it’s not just building,” Emir explains passionately. “Bridge is much more. Bridge is making people much closer. Just breaking the barriers. And in my city before the war, there were eleven bridges. Now all eleven are destroyed. Even The Old Bridge, which was built from 1556-66. The river of Neretva which is going through the centre of the city, it means life for that city. And that bridge it was just – how would you say – some sort of raising hands between both sides. The Old Bridge was blown down a few months ago. And now I think it is not very important who destroyed that bridge. It’s much more important that that bridge does not exist anymore. It was heritage, a central heritage. It was a part of the soul of our city. If you kill the soul of the city there is no city anymore. So definitely Mostar wouldn’t be the same never again.”

When asked why this was all happening, why the bridges were destroyed, why 700 hundred years of living together is being buried under shell mortar and sniper fire, he shrugged and shook his head. He was genuinely perplexed, unable to fully comprehend the destruction of his culture. “You have Maastricht agreement where they want to live together, all nations together,” he finally says, trying to find some comparison, some benchmark. “And Maastricht idea we had already in Bosnia but they now kill that. I don’t know why. Because we live together for 700 years, all three peoples.

“There is no Mostar any more,” he goes on. “There is a place where Mostar was once. But whoever conquers that area it will be all the time threatening for them. Because the people there love that city. There is pure stone. There is no green country like Ireland. It’s just stone and snakes. But my people love that. They would change for nothing else.”

“All war in my country is not purely military operation,” he explains. “It’s just wiping out of common people. More than 80% of victims of this war are civilians. So you couldn’t call that a war. There is no normal war with front lines or whatever. The main idea of war in my country was to kill that idea to live together. So, it’s not war. It’s genocide.”

Emir is contemptuous of the EC’s and Western World’s response to the ‘war’ of genocide and ethnic cleansing. “Europe wants to be on the winner’s side,” he states. “And now it’s very hard to say who will win in that war. So they just wait. I heard Mr Owen some months ago in the College of Surgeons. He had a speech. I told him, actually, Mr Owen, please don’t help us anymore because we couldn’t stand it. We all will be dead before you decide to do something. So just leave us alone because we have a bigger chance to survive without you than with you.”

Before leaving Mostar to help organise foreign aid for the city, Emir worked at the Children’s Consulate. “It was run by a real good poet, Miso Maric,” he explains. “And I joined them on the 4th of May 1992. And between 29th of April and 13th of May we evacuated 10,500 mothers, children, pregnant women, elderly and sick people. We intended to do much more but Serbian soldiers wouldn’t let us. Because they said, you want to save your civilians and after that fight back. So they keep them as some kind of wall.”

The evacuation procedure was fraught with difficulties. Fuel and vehicles had to be secured. Miso Maric (a Serb) spent hours upon hours on the phone begging the Serbian commander, General Pusara, to temporarily halt the bombardment. Eventually, Pusara would snap that they had an hour to get the people on the vehicles and get them out. “So then it was really hard to decide,” Emir remembers. “Because you have let’s say 5,000 people to evacuate and you have 400 places. It was very hard to decide who will go and who will not. And I was one among the people who worked there. And if it’s OK I would like to mention their names. Because I think they are the real heroes of that war. There was Maxi, a Muslim, Bozo, a Serb, Mosa, a Croat, Kamenko, a Croat, Edna, a Muslim . . . All of these are nicknames, but many people know them under their nicknames. And the drivers, Goran Bakovic, a Croat, Amel Brkovic, a Muslim . . .

Emir, a Muslim by birth himself, though not a practising one, mentioned the religions of the people he worked with simply to illustrate that the fight to save Mostar was not for the triumph of one religion or ethnic set of beliefs. It was and is a fight to save a city perhaps unique in the world, a city where the human species had learned to respect and accommodate varieties of cultural expression.

In October 1992 Emir went to Split on the coast to try and organise aid, and in December made contact with Sonia Zambakides and Jadzia Kaminska from CRADLE. CRADLE is an Irish-based non-governmental, non-political organisation, set up to provide aid for all people of the conflict. “I took Sonia Zambakides into Mostar just to show her how it looks like,” he recounts. “And when she saw that, on our way back she started to cry. Because despite all the destruction, that big hope in the people to survive and live there was amazing.”

In February 1993, the first Irish aid arrived in Mostar; two forty foot lorries. “I must mention one more name if it’s OK,” Emir asks. “Mr Timothy Cronin from Cronin Movers here in Ireland. That man, he done a really good job. He drove with the aid into the middle of the city, during the shelling, during everything. Just wanted to be sure that aid would go to the right place, that no one would steal or sell it. People from CRADLE and Mr Timothy Cronin, I really admire them. Because what they did for my country, I’m not sure I would do for your country. I must be completely honest with you. I’m not sure that I would go in the middle of the war. Because the second day of his staying in Mostar was very heavy shelling, very heavy, all day. And he was all day in a cellar. He had no reason to do that. So he is very, very brave. And Sonia, she actually came back maybe ten days ago from Mostar. She spent one month there just to see what happened. And that was very brave, extremely good.”

We Irish know only too well what it is like to be forced to leave our homes. Our emigration ballads contain such history perhaps better than any book ever will. Thus, it is easy to relate to Emir’s mixture of pride and melancholy as he thinks back on his favourite time of year in Mostar. “It’s May,” he states. “May in Mostar is amazing. I’ve been in a few countries, more than a few actually, but I never saw that beauty. Because in May everything is blooming. There are oak trees, pine trees, rose bushes, olive trees, sunflowers. And the main smell of Mostar – it’s really reminding me these days – is the smell of the lavender tree. And its colour; white, pure white, bleaching white actually. It’s very amazing.

“Mostar is in a valley. All around is mountains. And it’s not mountains with forests. There’s very small per cent of forests. Mostly pure stone, sun-bleached stone. During the summer the sun on these mountains is very, very hot. That’s the reason why there are many snakes. It’s very frightening when you’re talking to someone about snakes but we used to want them. Because even snakes was part of our heritage.”

Emir laughs sadly when he thinks of the snakes. When asked if he wants to go back, he replies: “I’ll go back definitely. Maybe even just to die there. But I’ll go back. And many people will go back. We have that almost unbelievable love for that country. That little part… middle of nowhere. But it’s ours. We were born there, we lived there and we want to die there. So I’ll go back. I don’t know when. Maybe in five years, maybe in three months, who knows. Maybe in fifty years. But I’ll be there again, definitely.”

The oak, pine and lavender trees are gone, burned for firewood. The parks in which they grew are now graveyards. The Old Bridge, designed by Hairudin, the disciple of the great Osmanli-Turkish architect Koja Sinan, and a masterpiece of 16th Century architecture, is gone. And for Emir, “There is no Mostar anymore. There is a place where Mostar was once.”

But despite everything, he will not despair. He hopes for a certain kind of victory. But as he points out, “People in my country don’t want victory as we’re used to in the war movies. We want to be able to live alone as a country. To live together as we have lived for the last 700 years. Because if we lived together for 700 years, we can live another 700 years together.”