Vakuf

I lived in the Balkans six or seven years. The Balkans have lived in me for thirteen years now. We only have begun down this path together. Many things have changed. An American who married perhaps a month earlier for a visa; they wouldn’t let me stay in Serbia without a reason. It took me six days from Sarajevo to Nis. The only time I asked the American Embassy to help me plan a trip. Obviously I was going to get married. Certain trips have certain destination. An American who became Bosnian; where your wife is from so are you. There is such a nation I assure you no matter how they draw their lines.

An UNPROFORAC who understands the answers were not as complex as they seemed. The West is easy to blame for everything, but there are simple truths. People will tell you the world is not black and white, but it is in important ways. The plan made sense on paper. Let us rebuild the houses and put people back in their places. The answer to ethnic cleansing is not democracy I am afraid. The OSCE mission reported the conditions where not good for elections. They were told to be more positive. This is no news flash nor anything anyone would care to discuss. It is a real fact. After all those Bosnian people left, for other countries and other plains of existence: Elections by default left to those still standing everything.

Would you invite people back to your town to vote against you? The UN wanted names and transparency. They got nothing. The houses where rebuilt in great number for those standing both the cleansed and the cleaners. Call it genocide or call it civil war. It brought us ethnic cleansing in a modern European form. Democracy was not the answer. To this day I write, the west has the final say over this Bosnian Democracy. They have no real faith in their own prescription.

There is no concern for my Balkans. So many have gone. So many have come. It is about place. Given time the center is where people find peace. Just that in Bosnia everybody learns where the center of their city is located eventually even strangers if they stay long; I’ll give you a hint there usually is a fountain there. From those places flows the water of life so many speak. The west has all the answers and all the technology, but no center: no peace. When things gather too much in one place things become dangerous; the World Trade Center is really a pile of money that came tumbling down. The people there where drawn from so many places some for questionable motives. And terrorists came with the worst.

In Bosna they lost something even more precious, but it will be ok. So many have gone. So many ways. So many have come to take the same place. It is about place. When you never have to worry about losing your job based on the vote you cast, things will work I believe how they always have on the Balkans. Better than average when you take the long view and have faith.

Those absent from us through no fault of their own are our strength. The Angels of our waking attentions. Have you seen them? Are you still looking for them? They are calling to us to make things better.

Has reason left us? Do you hear them answer, “It just departed, the world is not fair, everyone has their own, but do not fear we are still in this together.”

There are many ways to describe it, but my closest friends in Bosnia really taught me that all you really need is a Turbe and a Vakuf. Doesn’t matter your historical perspective call them what you will. This book is not about those stories; and perhaps this one is finished.