Tag: Bosnia

Leaving Bosnia

Civility Matters

Last week, I wrote about my friend Majda coming here to the U.S. As I’ve thought about her, I’ve wondered how our lack of civility here in America must frighten her. She saw this kind of tribalism tear her country apart. Her husband, who died during the war, reported on Yugoslavia’s breakup. She reported on the refugees. She knows about the death camps and the rape camps and the depths of human brutality.

How must she have cringed during the 2016 election when she heard the chants, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” She must be terrified by armed people on statehouse steps screaming, “Liberate Minnesota! Liberate Michigan! Liberate Virginia!” while people die.

Majda did something she was sure she’d never do. She met a man she loves and she’s remarried. Moved halfway across the continent and we’ve lost touch, but I can’t help thinking about her and her daughters.

Her youngest daughter—after the war—went back to Bosnia during summer breaks from college and gathered up the children. She taught them mediation, how to get along even if you have different beliefs. I wonder if she’s working in America now along with the other mediators I know.

How weary she must be.

Bridges

This week’s GirlieOnTheEdge challenge prompt is bridge—six sentences, no more, no less.

Sometimes bridges lead to nowhere
  1. Hanging in her living room, my friend Majda had a picture of the Stari Most bridge in her hometown, Mostar, Bosnia–before its destruction.
  2. She had left her torn country with her two beautiful daughters and what she (and they) could carry.
  3. In the U.S. she was learning her fifth language and trying to find a bridge between this unknown inexplicable country and the one she’d left.
  4. She saw no bridges in this country
  5. “I don’t even know my neighbors’ names,” she lamented. “They leave their apartments in the morning, jump in their cars , and go to work.”
  6. “In the evenings, they shut themselves in with their TVs and their air conditioners.”
Majda’s print was much darker than this

Brutal Craziness

The Carrot Ranch Literary Community blog prompt this week asks for something crazy in ninety-nine words, no more, no less.

Beauty and Insanity

Majda Obradovic thought she had left the craziness behind when she escaped Bosnia with only her daughters and her life—and some engraved shell casings. I’d realized before how people make beautiful things out of horrors—my dad had a coffee table made of military brass from the Korean Conflict. I don’t know the calibers of Majda’s shell casings, but I’m in awe of the engravings. Around the base of each casing were fleur de leis, and on the largest, central Sarajevo with its mosque, its synagogue, and its temple, and all the people on the promenade walking together.