Reading Safe Area Gorazde brought back my memories from Bosnia. The way Joe Sacco wrote about the people that he got to know there, made me remember the people of Bosnia. I have been to Bosnia and Herzgovina twice. Once in 2009 and the other time in 2016. I had the chance to see the change of a war-torn city and how they decide on what to restore and what to leave as it is. The first time I went, the city was pretty much still healing itself. It was usual to see the ruins of what once were homes of Bosnian Muslims.
A house with only some walls left, also the walls are full of holes left by many types of projectiles.
But the second time in 2016 there were no houses like this, most of the ruins were fixed. But I realized that some of the places were left as it was before. I learned that they chose to leave it that way for it to become a symbol of what happened in times of war and genocide. The change is best seen at the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is Sarajevo. I chose two of the symbolic buildings of Sarajevo: one of them is the national library and the other one is called the tunnel which I’ll explain later.
The following photos are a side by side comparison of the National Library in 2009 and 2016. This is a building that they chose to restore for next generations to benefit. The library was newly opened in 2016, it took a long time to restore, as I remember that they had started the restoration process back when I first got there. It is incredible to see how the city heals by seeing it twice after the war.
2009 National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina
2016 National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina
This sign on the door of the library says: Do not forget! Which was a recurring theme in the ASTU class. Remembering is an important part of Bosnian people’s lives because they still live in a city which feels like it is filled with the ghosts of the loved ones. It hasn’t been much since the war and people still try to heal from the horror that they have faced. They never forget what happened and neither should we. This sign is a good example of why remembering is important.
On this place Serbian criminals in the night of 25th-26th August 1992, set on fire National and University’s Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 2 millions of books, periodicals and documents vanished in the flame. DO NOT FORGET, REMEMBER AND WARN!
Another important war site in Sarajevo is Tunel Spasa which translates to The Tunnel of Life. This tunnel was dug because the city didn’t have any resources such as food and humanitarian aid was at the other side of the airport. It was dug 800 metres and it was wide enough for a person to pass. It is said that during the war 1000 people passed it to go in and out of the city. It was turned into a museum after the war.
The following photos are of the Tunel Spasa in 2009 and 2016:
2009 Tunel Spasa
2016 Tunel Spasa
They haven’t restored most of the tunnel because it shows the hardships of a city under siege, and how they had to help themselves while the world was watching them die. The walls haven’t been restored and the inside of the tunnel is a museum which has stayed the same since it first happened after the war. The opening of the tunnel is even open for visitors to see how small it was. “Leaving it as it is” has helped the Bosnian people to convey the memory of war to other generations. I wasn’t born when the war was happening in Bosnia, but when I went there both as a child and a teenager, I understood their pain. It is important to preserve the memory in cases like the Tunel Spasa.
It is hard to decide on what to preserve in the heart of a city, while the people who saw the war lives in it. I kept asking myself “is seeing the memories of war everywhere, better than forgetting the pain?”. There are many parts of Bosnia full of the memories of war. But the people living in it might want to forget. Leaving the remains would make their forgetting process harder. But I am sure that these remains teach the outsiders a lesson. Bosnian people lived all through it and the only way to understand the pain is by looking at what the war left behind and their memories.
A graffiti near the grave of Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo. The people of Sarajevo wants no one to ever forget about what happened in Srebrenica because it is important to remember what happened to prevent it from happening again in the future.
The decision to restore the library is a nice way of looking at the future as bright. The decision to leave the tunnel as it is after the war is a way of preserving the past. Sarajevo is an incredible city to see because it is a great synthesis of the past and the present at the same time and at the same place. Seeing it twice in ten years, I saw how fast the city has healed and what they left for us to see later. Choosing the right remains and memories to preserve and giving the right message about the war is very important in Bosnia because they want people to see how they were left alone with the inhumane conditions of the war in what we call the “modern world”.