Kožo called me once at two past midnight to tell a joke. He has this habit of calling in the dead of night from the pub to tell a joke.
Elem, the little one asked grandma, "grandma", says, "what color is a plum?". Grandma says "blue", the little one confusedly asked her "then what is red?", and grandma answered - "because it's green".
In recent years - we will get to the green plum, slowly - you too have noticed an unusual natural phenomenon, namely that the map of Sarajevo and its surroundings looks like a map of the wider area of Los Angeles or London: Poljine Hills, City Garden, Bosmal City Center, Sarajevo Tower, Ilidža Towers, Aljazeera Residential, Duranovići Residential, Sarajevo Waves Riverside Residencies, Buroj Ozone City, Green Residence, Green Valley City, Green Hills, Golden Hills, Dobrinja Exclusive, Salam City, Nebocaj Forest, Sarajevo Sun, Sarajevo Resort Osenik, Ilidža Pearl Resort, Country Side Resort, there are as many resorts as you like: Saraya Resort, Dema Resort, Orchid Resort, Malak Resort, Jasmin Resort, Vlakovo Resort, Smrekovica Resort, Loulou Resort, Ovay Resort, Onay Resort.
As I understood it - correct me if I'm wrong - Mahala is now called a "resort", and a discerning traveler, looking from this distance, would say that Sarajevo and Bosnia were under the Americans and the British for four hundred years, not the Turks. By God, in 1463 under Bobovec, the terrible army of Edward IV the Conqueror appeared, the infamous Knights of the Round Table captured King Stjepan Tomašević in Key City Residence, called Ključ, and executed him in Little Ball Resort, today - clearly - better known as Jajce. They impaled him on that long cavalry spear, as the cruel English had already done, the great Bosnian Nobel laureate John Andrews later wrote about it in his famous "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
Well, the history of Bosnia would look different if some virtuous travel writer wrote a travelogue today, enchanted by traveling through Sarajevo's City, resorts, hills, residences and gardens, along the riverside down Miljacka, then through the countryside along Hadžići, and by God, Sarajevo's urban mythology would also look different if now new primitives appear, the Surrealists and No Smoking, from "Anarchy all over City Garden Čobani" to "Jogging across Poljine Hills". "Selena, come back, Selena/can't you hear the roar of the tigers/below your window/to Waves Riverside Residencies?"
Well, there was not this much construction in Sarajevo even before the mythical Winter Olympics of the eighty-fourth, nor did the Austrian empire in all its forty years build here as much as the Arab investors in the last five or six years: how, however, Austria and Yugoslavia built railways, roads, bridges, railway stations, post offices, kindergartens, schools, colleges, theaters, cinemas, libraries, halls, stadiums and factories, the Arabs have nothing left to build, dammit, only mosques and houses. A lot of mosques and a lot of houses: there is not a neighborhood in Sarajevo that these days does not have some monstrous housing-business luxury mahal made of Plexiglas and stainless steel, with video surveillance, underground garages, natural ventilation, underfloor heating and music playing.
Few of you - I'm just reminding you - believed Alija, Bakir and the Arab brothers when they promised Bosnia hills and valleys, and today, here, Bosnia is full of hills and valleys, nothing but hills and valleys, from Golden Hill to Green Valley : for some reason the Arab brothers call their luxury mansions hills, valleys, gardens, residentials, cities and resorts. Why, for example, Effendi Ali Saed al Salami from Abu Dhabi did not call his green valley resort in Vogošća Alwadi al Akhdar, when it is not Green Valley, the devil will know. Why Golden Hills in Tarčin is not Altilal al Dhahabi, why City Garden is not simply Hadiqat al Madina, so that the whole world understands - or at least all of Sarajevo - no one alive knows.
Will the Americans live in the new fiberglass shanties, did the Australian elite invade the houses in the hills and valleys, did the English crowd into Bosnia and look for garden residencies around Sarajevo? They won't, they didn't and they didn't: investors from the Arab Emirates are building concrete villas around Sarajevo only for buyers from the Arab Emirates and the Middle Eastern neighborhood, the Turkish brothers will also buy something, business people from Sandžak, and the new Sarajevo the elite, brought up in Arabic madrasahs and Turkish gymnasiums, will actually all buy traditional Bosnian countryside and riverside villas, except for Englishmen and Americans, and every language will be spoken in modern sunny courtyards except English. On the contrary, everyone is "welcome" in that neighborhood except, as I would say, those who say "welcome".
Why is this so - why the brothers from the desert emirates, fighting against the Americanization of Bosnia, spread their influence and culture by Americanizing Bosnia - I said, nobody smart knows, so how will the little guy from the beginning of the story, who until then stands confused in front of the painting "Poljina Hills Gardenview Residencies", so he asks the grandmother what "Fields" means.
In a new way, namely - that's why the old Koža joke about the green plum came to mind - he doesn't ask the grandmother what the color of the plum is, but he asks the grandmother where Sarajevo is exactly. Listen, where is Sarajevo? "In Bosnia," answered his grandmother. "Then what are mahalas called in English?", the little one asked confusedly, and the grandmother answered: "Because they were built by the Arabs."
In short, you got it, “because they are green”.
(oslobodjene.ba)
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