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| Mak Dizdar (1917-1971) |
Months
go by, and then years go by, and you still feel disconnected from the place
that gave birth to you, that made you.
Bosnia is a place for me, whose temporality and physicality I see, but
it is always out of reach. Reasons are
firstly practical. It takes time and
money to fly from America to Bosnia. And
it takes time to save up that money, which you need in the first place.
Another
reason is a lack of purposeful connection.
What I mean is something more than visiting family, which is naturally
important. But every time you visit, you
feel like an outsider, a stranger in your own country. And you experience another displacement. The grounding which you thought you had is
not there.
But
language of the country – whether literally a language, or language of the
landscape, war, peace, childhood – taps at your shoulder. Do not forget. Remember me every day. And every day you wake up with the
remembrance and it makes you feel like someone has placed an entire burden of
being and humanity into your stomach and you are meant to carry it.
During
the day, you busy yourself with tasks, and jobs, and paying bills, and watching
awful news, and television. You know
exactly which show is on which night and you look forward to it even though you
are convinced that the cast is ok and that the writing is worse than
mediocre. But you settle for it.
But
the yearning for the country is still there.
You want to feel some semblance of being whole, or at least having
certainty that those parts from the past are still in you. You look for news and cultural and artistic
aspects of Bosnia which you want to connect to, and you settle for whatever is
offered. I usually watch recent films
that find their way into the American market.
And I’ve settled for it, but I don’t think I can do it anymore.
Don’t
get me wrong, there are plenty of good films out there but they always remain
on the surface of human condition. Most
new Bosnian films in some way deal with the war, which is perfectly fine. War is on my mind all the time. But almost always (as if with inevitability)
it takes a form of some kind of crudeness.
I
began watching one of the films, and 10 minutes into it, I thought, I am
turning this off. It was taking place in
a small town somewhere in Bosnia. The
narrator begins by talking about a friend of his, with whom is sharing a house,
reason being that his friend lost both arms when he tried to de-mine his own
house after the war was over.
These
are unfortunate realities even after the war officially ended (whatever that
means). Men, like our narrator, are
quite depressed and have devolved into a life of drinking and fucking. It has become a reflex for them.
As
he and his armless friend sit at the table, recovering from a drunken stupor
the night before and are forcing themselves to have breakfast, another man
comes in. He is familiar with them, and
he makes himself at home, despite the fact that he does not live there. “What’s up, faggots? Did you get any pussy last night?”
I
sighed. I was not angry, and I have
recognized a reality of such human beings, who do exist. I have even recognized the humanity and
suffering, which perhaps goes on in their minds and hearts. But I chose not to continue to watch it. Maybe that was unfair of me. Maybe the film changed its tone, who
knows. Maybe I should have given it
another chance. But I couldn’t. By that point, I was tired of hearing one
more comment about “tits,” and “ass,” and “pussy.” And you understand, not for feminist
reasons. I was not offended as a
woman. Actually, I was not offended at
all. And not for moral reasons either. I can’t stand moralists. I was just fatigued by the emphasis on the
most basic of instincts, which of course, all of us have. Bosnians have never had problems with body
and sex, and I am very happy about that.
But the lack of any philosophical perspective in art is making me depressed.
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| Mesa Selimovic (1910-1982) |
Could
it be that the existentialism of Meša Selimović, or the poetic theology of Mak
Dizdar, or the Sephardic musings on the peasants of Isak Samokovlija are part
of the past never to be renewed? These
are the markings of my culture, which I admire so much and which bring me
closer to the embodiment of my very self.
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| Isak Samokovlija (1889-1955) |
Well,
I’m not going to sit idly and lament. I
have a voice, I have a sensitivity for reality of what human beings are,
whether they are peasants, intellectuals, children, men, women, and yes, even
those obsessed with a great pair of “tits.”
We need to move beyond basic instinct and into the interiority and
complexity of a suffering soul. We need
to see the other’s face. Perhaps this is true of the entire world, not
just in relation to Bosnian art forms currently created.
My
eyes hurt. My body is tired and it needs
something, which moves in the in-between-ness of the sacred and profane. I suppose, the simplest way to say it is: I
am desiring beauty. I must find a way to
create it because I will grow more and more tired and the possibility of
creation will become smaller and smaller.
But as long as there is life, there is a possibility too.
{Below are links for books by the writers I mention that are in translation}
Dizdar - Stone Sleeper (1966-71)
Samokovlija - Tales of Old Sarajevo (1949)
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