Let me preface this argument by indulging in a bit of quasi-diasporic nostalgia, for although it’s not what led me down this track originally, it has certainly informed my argument.
In 1906, my (great?)-great-grandfather left his little village of Goranci tucked away in the hills near Mostar in what was then still part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Within the year, he ended up in Chicago, Illinois, USA, an Eastern European immigrant among many. In 1907, his wife followed suit.
In 2003, almost a century after this journey, I found myself hiking the 15km from Mostar back to his village in search of my so-called roots.
Growing up, my surname stuck out in a crowd for its difficult pronunciation, and often people asked where it came from. ‘It’s Croatian,’ I would reply, usually having to explain where Croatia was, never mind how it was related to Yugoslavia. And so, little by little ‘being Croatian’ crept into my identity.
Which is why it came as a shock to me when, during my junior year abroad in France, I started planning my Spring Break trip to Croatia only to find that Mostar, the city of family lore, was not there. Rather, history had left Mostar in what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina. I felt suddenly vulnerable, my identity threatened. Was I now Bosnian or, god forbid, Herzegovinian? I could hardly spell the latter let alone pronounce it (turns out Mostar is the capital of the Herzegovinian half of the country of course). 怎么办呢！
When I eventually arrived in the verdant valley of Mostar, after an almost epic train and bus journey from France, I was surprised by what I found. In my home in Colorado (USA) we had a small tile mosaic of the city brought over on one of the family’s subsequent sojourns back to the mother country. Growing up I always thought that one of the focuses of the picture was a church steeple. Upon arrival I discovered that I was sorely mistaken.
The city itself is divided roughly in half by a river that meanders through the bottom of the valley. But beyond a geographical division, this river is a symbolic division. Ethnic Croatians (Roman Catholic) live(d) on the north side, ethnic Albanians (Muslims) on the south. The Stari Most (Old Bridge) was also then a powerful symbol, for beyond its architectural splendor, it was the point of contact between these two disparate factions. And though the bridge featured prominently in my family’s tile mosaic, it was mosques that actually filled the background, not churches.
Of course, when I arrived in 2003, the bridge was in the middle of reconstruction, having been completely destroyed (neither side claimed responsibility) during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Indeed, half the town was under reconstruction. Bombed out shells of apartment buildings stood next to newly finished flats. The United Colors of Benneton stood proudly in the center of town, a nod to the future aspirations of the city. The hills that loomed over the valley were covered with cemeteries, and it was recommended that one not go wandering in the hills for fear of landmines. NATO forces were discreet but omnipresent—at one point I even chatted with a French soldier in army fatigues.
And so as I sat at a café overlooking the bridge, sipping Turkish coffee and listening to the chants of the imams broadcast over PAs at evening prayers, I couldn’t help but wonder how it all came to this—a question that has stayed with me ever since.
The answer that I arrived at just last week is globalization. This is what globalization looks like at its extreme end point. I was arguing that recent balkanesque impulses around the globe were examples not of a maintained power of the nation-state, but of a resurgence of the importance of the regional/local. And so, Yugoslavia was divided as a direct result of wars, redefining nation-states to coincide with local cultures—divisional units which arguably make more sense than arbitrary geographical ones.
But then there was Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was the leftovers, the remainder, the odd one out. Croatia pulled away from Yugoslavia because it was mainly (though it’s important to note, not entirely!!!!!) Croat. Albania shared Islam. Slovenia had its own unifying language. Serbia was the heart of the Yugoslav ‘regime’, and as such tried to retain as much of its geographic integrity as possible, but ultimately, what was left convened around Serbian identity (except perhaps Montenegro and a few other regions). But then there was Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Here, in the center of all these other ‘countries’, it became the meeting point, the juncture of metissage, and so how could it be divided except by artificial geographic boundaries? Indeed, what relation does Bosnia have to Herzegovina besides an outwardly imposed bed to share, enforced by NATO troops and tied to its Austrio-Hungarian roots via the continued use of the Deutsch Mark.
It was global forces that brought B-H to where it is today, it’s mix of cultures and ethnicities indivisible in its recombination. A home to a vast diasporic community, many of whom were forced out by the atrocities of war, some of whom left at the prospects of better economic opportunities elsewhere.
The ultimate symbol of Mostar’s globalization? Red Bull adverts that are played in London’s double-decker buses which show men diving off the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Stari Most (Old Bridge)—the symbol of connection now the symbol of capitalist hegemony.
Labels: Diatribes, Favs, Worldly
