From Sarajevo

I’m in Sarajevo right now, which is a stunningly beautiful city, but the recent past is viscerally present – not only in the buildings ridden with bullet holes, but in other ways too.  An explosion went off in the hills that surround the town yesterday morning – people were speculating a landmine, but it sounded bigger.  It was in a crowd of people and it was like being surrounded by a collective startle reaction when the explosion sounded. Everyone came out of the shops, stopped doing whatever they were doing, and started looking up at the hills. And speaking of the hills – there are graveyards dotted almost every way you look – and when you get up close you see all the deaths are from the same years.
Even though I know inside out and back to front the hell this place went through, and even though the after-effects of the war are still so present, the human imagination is a limited thing. Strolling around today, munching on a Zeljanica, talking to people doing the same things people do in any city anywhere in the world – and doing it all within 3 km radius that includes stunning mosques, Catholic and Orthodox churches and a synagogue – my mind still finds it hard to wrap itself around the reality of what we humans, at our worst, can do to each other.