Anna Callaghan
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Sarajevo
The soccer game on TV was Bosnia vs. Greece. A patron shifted uncomfortably in his seat at Old Bridge restaurant in Astoria, Queens. He launched into a story. A piece of shrapnel, he told friends around him, is permanently lodged near a nerve in his upper leg, a painful remnant of the Bosnian War.
The war stories continued for a moment but conversation soon shifted back to the game. Novelist Kenan Trebincevic recalled this, an example of how the war often slips between the spaces of conversation, and how identity and war remain intertwined.
“They don’t want to get away from it,” he said. “It made them who they are. It changed their personality.”
Trebincevic is a refugee from the war; he settled in Connecticut with his father and brother in 1993 and now lives in Astoria. A physical therapist, Trebincevic spends his days helping people recover from physical injuries. Only once he started writing a book about his family’s harrowing experience did he start to understand how healing works internally.
According to Trebincevic, Bosnia is not ready for a new narrative – the country is still stuck in 1995, paralyzed by the Dayton Peace Accords that codified a broken society.
The end of a war often unleashes a renewed energy, but not in Bosnia. Division, fragmentation and corruption have been infectious. A Bosniak, Serbian and Croatian president share a rotating four-year term. There’s one central government and two autonomous regions. Identity, which painted these groups as adversaries during the war continues to place them in opposition. Blame circulates between groups, but ultimately everyone is Bosnian, whether they want to be or not.
“People have given up,” said Trebincevic.
Other countries experienced destructive wars in the 90s, like El Salvador and Rwanda. Why is Bosnia different? The nation descended into chaos from a fairly high level. A society that enjoyed a good standard of living and a stable economy that was unlike the others, collapsed dramatically and has been unable to pull itself back up.
Lack of progress and official unemployment nearing 45% discourage hope and increase the reliance on money sent back by the Diaspora.
“There everyday feels like a week,” he said. “There’s a lot of sitting around and complaining. People like to drink coffee, smoke and wear nice clothes. The lifestyle is very different.”
In Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan explains that Bosnia, especially because of its Muslim population “represents an intensification and a complication of the Serb-Croat dispute.” In 1991 war raged on the borders, but Bosnia remained quiet. Kaplan recalls the joke: “Why is there no fighting in Bosnia?” someone would ask. The reply: “Because Bosnia had advanced to the finals.” Even prior to the start of direct conflict there remained no “illusion about the tragedy that lay ahead.”
Trebincevic went back to Brcko, Bosnia for the first time 19 years after he left. He wanted to find and confront individuals who betrayed his family years ago. One of them was Petra, his old neighbor. She had told the paramilitary where the local Muslims lived and they were taken away in trucks.
“Betrayal is universal,” said Trebincevic.
But upon confrontation, Petra feigned ignorance. She rewrote the past in a favorable light, recalling his lovely mother. Trebincevic knew it was all a lie, but his only intention was to make it clear he hadn’t forgotten.
“She thought she was going to have it better.” People thought life would be better once the Muslims were gone, “but it’s not an easy, happy life.”
The atrocities and fragmentation during the war were so severe they spawned a verb: Balkanize. Other conflicts were awful too, but this particularly stagnant breed of awful has yet to recede. The war left no one better off, and besides maybe party members and corrupt officials, no one is satisfied.
“The war ended and created unfinished business. Nobody got what they wanted,” he said. “The only difference is that the guns were put down and the bullet holes were patched up.”
Currently the situation is dire and it’s perpetuating. Teachers, parents and politicians embed old sentiments in the minds of the younger generation, a generation who may carry the only hope of salvaging the broken nation.
Though the memories will never dissipate and old wounds will never heal completely, Trebincevic believes that everyone should go back to Bosnia to find peace with the place and recapture the parts of their hearts they left behind. To collect the things they didn’t know they forgot. Walking the streets of Brcko meant walking alongside the former criminals that now reside there. His former home brings him no sense of joy; nothing can bring the dead back.
Still, it was necessary.
“I think it took a while for me to come to terms with it,” he said. He expected that over the years he would heal, that going back and addressing these demons would be more of a relief. “We wanted the whole package, but we’re never going to get it. I don’t know why we thought time would give us that.”
In order to create a better Bosnia, certain things must be forgotten. That’s a difficult task when ethnic friction is engrained in institutions. Blame has become a shared burden passed around, but no one wants to claim it. Would anything even happen if they did?
Through his writing, Trebincevic has been able to process what happened to him as a child through the eyes of an adult. He wants to understand the past, but he also knows that people outside of the conflict will be able to relate to other themes of the story.
Most conflicts do breed betrayal. Trebincevic saw human beings in a way no one wants to and that’s not something easily forgotten, especially in Bosnia where reminders of the past are everywhere.
The piece of shrapnel can’t be removed from the flesh of the soccer fan. Trebincevic knows that an ACL tear or a sprained ankle can be mended through physical therapy. What’s proven to be more difficult is fixing the wounds that remain from the war, those that sit heavy on the heart and continue to occupy the spaces in between words.