Sarajevo, Bosnia: A Tenuous Equilibrium 
By Graham Fortier

It is 10 p.m., and from up in the hills we begin to see the ambient city light. We have been on a bus for ten hours—including an hour delay at the Croatian-Bosnian border due to unclaimed cargo.  I start looking through three crumpled up pieces of paper that will serve as my guide to Bosnia, trying to find the address of a cheap place to stay.

I look over to find Hunter smiling and talking to a thirty-year-old woman, sneaking a cigarette in the back seat of the bus. She is thin and frail, with curly brown hair that clumps together at her shoulders. She has a beautiful face. It is hardened, and there is something about it that makes you trust her. Or at least, it makes us trust her.

Sanja, as she tells us, was born in Sarajevo and has lived there all her life. She has a son, Haris, and works for the UN. Our conversation lasts all of fifteen minutes before she invites us to stay the night at her place.

“I would like to ask you,” she says as we carry our backpacks up the staircase to her house, “why have you come to Sarajevo?”

“We want to see what it’s like,” Hunter says, because it is the best answer he can come up with.

Over the next few days Sanja proves a gracious host; she drives us around, gives us food, tells us where to go, picks us up, and takes us out with her friends. She never asks us for a thing in return.

Sarajevo has been described as the gateway between West and East.  The city is made up of three ethnic groups; Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) make up about 77%, Serbs about 12%, and Croats 8%. Residents boast that it is one of the only cities in the world where you can find a Mosque, a Church, and a Synagogue all in the same one-mile radius.

When Bosnia declared its independence on April 5, 1992, the Serbian leadership in Belgrade feared that without Bosnia there would be no chance of a united Serb-dominated, Yugoslavia.

As legislation for Bosnia's independence began earlier that year, Slobodan Milosevic began moving troops and artillery to the hills surrounding the city, and as residents marched peacefully through the streets on April 5th, shots were fired into the crowd, killing two Sarajevo citizens and officially starting the siege.

"You see, up over there?" Sanja says to us the next day, gesturing out the car window to the emerald green hillside. We look out at the hills that surround the city and are flooded with withering, clay roofed houses, probably built centuries ago.

"From the hills," Sanja continues, "the snipers would shoot at us. Many people died."

"Fuck, shit!" screams Haris, emerging from the house in canvas shoes and white underwear. His English, though good for a seven-year-old, covers only a few household vocabulary words, although somehow he has managed to learn ten different ways to curse someone out. Giggling maniacally, he climbs onto Hunter's lap and begins yanking on the greasy curls of his hair.

"Haris! No! Stop!"

"He understands you," I say to Hunter, "he just doesn't care."

"Giva Shit!" Haris yells, bursting into another fit of laughter.

Sanja steps outside to sit with us on the porch, holding a lit cigarette and a cup of coffee in the same hand.

"Haris!" she screams, and begins scolding her son in Bosnian.

Haris sticks his tongue out at his mother and continues to pull at Hunter's hair. I laugh, Haris laughs, Sanja frowns and Hunter just looks confused.

"Hit him," Sanja says calmly, taking a drag of her cigarette.

"What?" Hunter replies.

"Hit him. With your hand, hit him on the back of his head."

Hunter looks at me, baffled. I just shrug back at him.

Before Hunter does anything, Sanja grabs her son's arm, and getting closer to him, begins to apply and then remove a clothespin on his nose. Like clockwork, Haris lets out an uninterrupted cry whenever the pin clenches down across the bridge of his nose, and stops crying as soon as his mother releases it.

Hunter and I are so shocked that we just start giggling. This in turn makes Haris laugh, at least while his nose isn’t being pinched, and then all four of us are laughing.

That evening at Sanja friend Normella's apartment, our host comes into her living room with a penis-shaped candle, the wick lit, and a small flame protruding from the urethra.

“You got one?” Sanja asks.

“A gift for our American visitors,” Normella says.

Hunter and I are wedged next to Sanja and her friend Dario on a small couch in Normella’s living room. Dario is a photographer for a music magazine in Sarajevo.

“I get to meet a lot of really cool bands,” Dario tells us with a gap-toothed smile as he refills our glasses of red wine.

Normella’s apartment has dark wooden floors and a soft, pink lighting. A dozen or so candles are placed on tabletops and windowsills, casting a yellow glow and leaving circular shadows on the ceiling.

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