Looking at the undulating areas through the airplane window, I think that Bosnia, ironed out, would be bigger than Hungary. I remember my first trip to Sarajevo.
I slung a backpack over my shoulder that had beach stuff in it. In Tuzla, I boarded a Transservis bus - that was the name of the Tuzla transport company at the time. It was warm, early summer 1981.
A big promise
Živinice, Kladanj, Olovo. Karaula - a pass that, with its steepness, forced almost hysterical screeching of the bus. Semizovac. Vogošća. And then, when the bus exited the Kobilja glava hill to the left, the beehive of the city appeared in the valley and on the slopes.
That scene was a great promise for the eighteen-year-old, who took the entrance exam for journalism, and then went on to Boka, so that before going to the army, he could soak up the sun one more time, inhale the salt and see girls in bikinis.
For him, who would spend five years there in the eighth decade of the last century, the city fulfilled a great promise - it was the place of his journalistic, poetical, romantic and human initiation.
When the wheels of the plane connect with the runway, I will be reunited with that eighteen-year-old boy who gazes lovingly at the city from the Mare's Head.
This is the only place in the world where somewhere deep inside I am eternally young.
Here, the propeller plane is approaching the Sarajevo airport, little clouds like tiny moles on the hazy blue underline the autumn beauty of the day - and I am looking forward to that city. I like to believe that he is also happy for me.
That can't even change a trick landing that has Igman shaking in my eyes.
Entering the palimpsest
My friend meets me at the airport. While driving me into town, he talked about people I've known for a long time. This is when the mother died. The one who passed the corona. This one is back from America. That story merges with the promotion of Novi Sarajevo blocks by the window of his jeep. On the left, I recognize the concrete cube of the television building. And like a bunch of faces pop up. One of them is the smiling, fine face and warm, melancholic eyes of Jadranka Stojaković. My college colleague, Selma, who already worked in one of the newsrooms, met us, while I was wandering around the building as a newly minted journalist of the Youth Program. We are getting closer and closer to the city center. And the crystalline voice of a dead woman bursts into my inner hearing: "Why are you gone...".
I realize that for me this city is a palimpsest. A map from which war, ideologies, time have scraped the street names, and a series of non-existent addresses multiply in my head, connecting with the characters of people who are no longer in this city or in this world.
A climb into the past
Due to the pandemic flight schedule, I had to arrive two days before my literary obligations at the Bookstan festival, which the organizers, out of pure enthusiastic defiance, still organized.
I can't remember when I had a whole day in Sarajevo all to myself - to look back on the decades that left scars on both me and the city, only that the city was more severely wounded. I decided to follow the student paths. Drvenija is one of the bridges that was demolished and then rebuilt - its new clothes do not remember the steps of that young man who goes down to the city every evening.
Right behind Drvenija is a steep alley that leads uphill - these are Sarajevo's peculiarities, because those alleys are actually steps carved into the steep slope. This alley at the top of which I lived for a whole year was called Žagrići. It's not called that anymore. To the left of the first staircase, a two-story house looks sadly at me through the misty windows.
For the soul of comrades
Nisvet Dzhanko, a geography student, later television travel writer, lived in it for a while in a small room. My friend and roommate Dragan Šimović introduced me to him, who studied at the same university as Nisvet, and later became a prose writer and poet. One night, Dragan and I didn't have the will to climb up Žagrić, so we knocked on Džanka's window at three in the morning. He let us in, even though the owner was against illegal guests, and opened the window. We sat like that and talked until, behind Trebević, some sunlight came down Miljacka. It's a pity that there is no written or audio track of our conversation. I only remember the voices of my friends, the will to celebrate life without sleeping, and the desire for such companionship to last.
The last time I saw Nisvet was at the funeral of Dragan Šimović, in January 2007, in Dragan's hometown in Herzegovina, in Gabela. The cemetery under the cypress trees, we hug and look into each other's tearful eyes. Nisvet says infinitely sadly: "Damn, what have we experienced, that we meet at the funerals of young men". We promised to meet and drink one for Dragan's soul. We didn't keep our promise. Nisvet moved in with Dragan in May 2012. The fact that I stopped in front of the window we knocked on, the fact that I am writing this, is for the soul of the two of them.
Memory mapping
I succeeded with Žagrić. I did not recognize the entrance to the yard, at the end of which was a concrete shed converted into a student dormitory. At the end of the stairs, under the bypass that was built before the Olympic Games, Sarajevo can be seen from a bird's eye view. Some dog keeps me company, so he leaves too. I rest my eyes on the city. I know his body well, as one knows the body of a lover. From here I descended into that basin with joyous tremors in my plexus, because the night might bring new music, a new idea worth fighting for, a new round of drinks, a new love.
I climb the Bypass and head west. Sarajevo is legible to me from here. Below, at the bottom of the abyss, passes the street where there was a pizzeria Gaul. I celebrated my university graduation in it. A little lower were the cafes Teater or around the corner Courage which has been converted into a hotel. Before the bridge, Čobani is no longer there either Theater pubs neither luxuriant trees, nor gardens with checkered tablecloths. To the left of the tavern Two fishermen it keeps a dead watch, refusing to die like other important places of the time.
The view glides all the way to the roof of Skenderija. There in Kaktus Čičak played music. Concerts - from Atomac, through the British band Wishbone Ash to Peter Green.
Darkness
Walking along the Ring Road like a harlequin, high above the city, I come across an alley that branches off to the left, upwards. I'm reading on the board - Mrakusha. I spent several years in that alley.
Some man is mowing down the space in front of my former window. I greet him and say that I used to live there. He said hello and stared at me for a long time. He can't remember. I think it's the boss's son. I ask him. He confirms, says that Abdulah Šehić died before the war, that he was 88 years old. Back then, when we were giving him the rent, he was walking with his over eighty years old, with a cane, but a cane.
Enver, his son with whom I am talking, somewhere in my generation, a teacher in a traffic school about to retire, says that the plot and the house are for sale. We talked a lot about French high-speed railways, about the former state and the Olympic Express. I'm glad I found him - once our paths crossed here.
Dark blues
His son Admir, a guy with a degree from the Faculty of Political Sciences, joins us briefly. He is preparing to go to Germany in a few days. His Bosnian fiancee, whose family moved out a long time ago, is waiting for him there. New life, new language. I encourage the young man, the pandemic will pass, and there will be work in Germany.
In a way, he is also my countryman - since that young man from the eighties was also once in the Darkness hatching plans to conquer the world.
We shake hands, despite the infection, as if we were parting with good friends. I go down to the city, through Mrakuša, through the bypass, along Tekija alley, down the stairs, all the way to Skenderija. To the left is the slope with the Jewish cemetery, from where I used to watch the red orb of the sun sink there towards Igman. In front of me is the Skenderija bridge. When I cross it, I will step out of my own past into the warm October evening of 2020.
Bonus video: