Anna Callaghan
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Sarajevo
What the place lacked in curb appeal, it made up for in hospitality. I was welcomed with a refuge from a bitter February evening and offers of hot coffee. Dark beams crossed the ceiling, sitting atop bright orange paint. Small square tables were in rows around the room, and brown benches lined the perimeter, topped with red vinyl cushions.
The smells from the stove-top drifted into the dining area. The dishes, like their preparers, were born in the Balkans but exist today in Queens, New York. The plate of food exits the Old Bridge kitchen in the hands of a smiling chef, her cheerfulness almost tangible.
I was served cevapi (chay-vop-ee), a dish of the heavily seasoned beef sausages that are a staple in Bosnian cuisine, not too different from American sausages. They’re served inside a warm pita with chopped raw onion, topped with a red pepper and yogurt sauce.
Though the food is popular, business at Old Bridge is struggling, according to Adnan Rudanovic, who helps his brother run the restaurant while also working as a broadcast technician. Business boomed following a 2010 New York Times article but has since dropped off significantly.
“It’s not crowded – it should be. People should want to come support this place,” he said.
Roughly thirty minutes outside of the city by subway, Astoria, Queens is across the East River from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The unassuming one-story building sits on 42nd Street just off 30th Avenue, a two-lane arterial lined with businesses and restaurants, their ownership a microcosm of world ethnicities.
Parked cars and a telephone pole obscure an overhang displaying stark white letters – Old Bridge Balkan Burgers. The faded, curling Times article taped to the window praises the burger.
The restaurant used to be where the Bosnian community gathered to watch the national soccer team. As long as crowds avoided politics they could find some semblance of unity around the starting lineup.
“There is no other place that shows games, Old Bridge is the only place to watch in New York City,” Rudanovic added proudly. But these days fewer people show up.
In many countries, watching the national team evokes nationalist sentiments. Games offer a platform where people can band together, but Bosnians seem more used to being pitted against one another.
Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, sparking the Bosnian Civil War. Ethnic cleansing and forced migration populated the next three years. The worst atrocities ceased with direct conflict, but manufactured ethnic tensions between Muslims, Serbs and Croats that helped catalyze the war still linger.
“The Bosnian community was bigger maybe 10 or 12 years ago, more united then and more willing to participate socially,” said Rudanovic.
Old Bridge is English for “Stari Most,” a bridge that crosses the river Neretva in Mostar, Bosnia. Like many things, it was destroyed during the war. Today it’s a divider. On one side the Muslim Serbs and the other the Catholic Croats.
A half-mile away is another restaurant, Djerdan Burek. First opened by their parents, Selma Medunjanin-Ismajli and her brother mainly run it now. Unlike Old Bridge, Djerdan Burek has seen steady business.
“You can get the whole world in New York,” she said. “It’s great exposure.”
Djerdan is famous for their burek, another popular dish made of hand-stretched phyllo dough filled with meat, cheese or spinach, brought to the Balkans by the Ottomans.
“In Sarajevo, the old town smells like cevapi,” said Medunjanin-Ismajli. “The whole town smells delicious.”
Burek, like cevapi, is simple, cheap fast food. But making burek by hand is a complicated, expensive process. Women of an older generation know how to make it, but few young people can.
“A couple of years ago I realized we were going to run into trouble,” said Medunjanin- Ismajli. “The people who make the burek were getting older.”
Djerdan Burek purchased machinery from Turkey that expedites the process. It allows them to sell frozen burek in grocery stores and support the catering arm of the business as the women retire.
“It’s not just Bosnians that eat here,” she said, “You’d really be surprised.”
The Bosnian community in New York is a nice group, however small, according to Medunianin-Ismaili. The annual Bosnia and Herzegovina Film Festival (BHFF), held every spring, is an opportunity to come together. Despite Medunjanin-Ismajli’s noticeable accent, she feels more like a New Yorker.
“I speak the language actively and am connected to my roots,” she said. “Everybody loves Bosnia, but it’s not everything.”
The community is different now than it was in the mid-1990s, when Rudanovic and Medunjanin-Ismajli came as refugees, it’s also different from when they started their restaurants, in 2004 and 1998 respectively.
Food was once a unifier and restaurants a place to hold court, but Bosnian identity has become less central, lost amidst an ethnically diverse society.
So why does Djerdan Burek find success while Old Bridge struggles? The answer may lie in the gap between generations. Medunjanin-Ismaili came to the U.S. in her early teens, while Rudanovic came at 25, bringing distinctly different memories.
Both were kind and trusting. I tried to pay Rudanovic for my meal, but he waved my money away.
“No,” he said sternly. “You are our guest.”
I had been the only person in the restaurant for two hours.
Identity seems to be eroding as the older generation tries to forget a painful past that the young can barely remember.
Certain members of the community, particularly the filmmakers, argue that regaining old memories is part of moving on. More frequently it seems that people would rather forget. Others, however, are tired of new narratives being anchored in an old identity.
“I have mixed feelings,” said Medunjanin-Ismajli. “It’s such a horrible tragedy that shouldn’t be forgotten, but can we make a movie other than a war movie?”
As time passes, generations take their place on either side of the river Neretva, connected by a bridge between the past and the present, passable only by rendering the difference between memory and forgetting.