A female voice from Sarajevo

A view of Grbavica in Sarajevo. Photo: Milan Suvajac (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Three women voices

Today things are different. Today, the story sent to us from Sarajevo comes in a female voice. This is a voice that probably existed before and has no monopoly over other voices. Yet, given the fact that we live at a time of a new culture war with the old harms still present, it is not an accident that it is women who are first on the frontline.

Marina Trumić is no longer with us. She was a poet and translator. After the war she returned from Warsaw to Sarajevo, a city where she spent most of her life. There she resisted the discontent and misogyny which is so common for those living in post-conflict zones. I wish we could sit again inside a café (I can even hear her complaining that there are fewer places to have a cigarette these days) and wonder who she would invite to join the conversation. My guess would be another poet and writer – Ferida Duraković. That is for sure. Actually these two women were engaged in a poetic dialogue and that is why Duraković is an easy guess. But who else?

 I would assume she would like us to be joined by the film director, Jasmila Žbanić, and poet Lejla Kalamujić. In fact, it was thanks to Marina that I first learned their names. Today, I can say, with certainty, that Duraković, Žbanić and Kalamujić are the three women from Sarajevo (out of many others) worth listening to. Duraković’s poetry has been translated into other languages and published throughout Europe and the United States, and she has become an important witness of her time. Žbanić’s film Grbavica was called the best European film of 2006, while last year’s production, Quo vadis, Aida?, nearly received the Academy Award. Kalamujić’s collection of works was nominated for the European Literary Award.

Certainly these three women knew quite a bit about death, which can be overcome so that life can continue. They all stayed in Sarajevo, against all odds. They all travelled into the wider world, but always returned home.  Yet, the aim of their patient endurance was not moral superiority or an attempt to judge those who have left. Nor is it to deprive anyone of their right to choose their place of residence. Their aim was very different. It resembles the rhythm of a very long run, not afraid of darkness, harm and suffering, and which can build something and establish its essence.

Their faithfulness is not limited to those like them. It is rather expressed in the overcoming of their limitations. In this way, they spoke the language of old Sarajevo, the city of utopia. Its memory, tragic and full of love, encouraged them in the fight against new groups of fanatics.

“Das ist Walter,” Yugoslav kids would say when they were finishing to play war. These were the words of a German dispatch who, in Hajrudin Krvavc’s well-known 1972 film Walter Defends Sarajevo (Valter brani Sarajevo), declared in the last scene that he finally realised who was the legendary leader of the anti-fascist underground with the pseudonym Walter, the person he was trying to catch throughout the years of occupation. In vain. He uttered these words standing near the military barracks at Jajačka Street pointing to the city spreading below.

Kalamujić spent her childhood years, which overlapped with the Balkan war, near these barracks. She called them a “black oozing wound” while Sarajevo was Walter. Just like for Duraković, “the war destroyed everything, which was later augmented by hatred”. For this reason, she had to stay in her hometown.

“Then I understood that Sarajevo was my place on earth and that it has always been and will be my homeland,” she wrote. Thus, she resembles Žbanić, whose film Grbavica, a story about a mother and daughter born of rape, mercilessly exposing the dark parts of life in the post-war city, ends with a famous 1976 song, Sarajevo, ljubavi moja (Sarajevo, my love). Every person who lives in the city knows its lyrics.

Tell us about the war

All three women I write about, and who Marina Trumić knew well, are distant to the nationalistic narrative which discredits both the idea of uniting the Western Balkan nations and the heritage of the multi-ethnic state that was built after the Second World War. Far from idealisation, resistant to the sentiment of Yugonostalgia, they do not want to be deprived of the good memories of Sarajevo’s cosmopolitan tissue. For this reason they support initiatives like the 2017 Declaration of the Common Language – an outcome of co-operation between intellectuals and civic organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia – which recognises their language as shared. This manifestation cannot get closed in the framework of pure linguistics; it makes an important step towards the revival of a cultural community which, in their view, has become divided by artificial borders of nation states.

At a certain point in the conversation, Marina (as it was her habit) would disappear. Possibly Duraković and Žbanić wanted to discuss something on their own, or maybe draw my attention to the youngest of them. The one who is shy, but whose quiet voice unexpectedly moved the hearts in all poetic kingdoms of the Balkans. Thus, I am moving to sit closer to Kalamujić, especially as I want to share her collection of short stories beautifully translated into Polish by Magdalena Petryńska with her.

“Now listen about the war,” my elementary teacher would say when she wanted to silence us and introduce the veterans of the Wielkopolskie Uprising. I do not remember what they talked about, but I will never forget their grey moustaches and the medals on their uniforms. Just like the ones I knew from The Nutcracker. The garden of Kalamujić’s grandparents (she lived with them in Sarajevo) was often visited by an old teacher telling them stories about the war as well. The Second World War, of course.

Today, Kalamujić receives invitations from different places across Europe to do the same. “Tell us about the war,” she hears from the organisers. Yet her story is different from what we hear from others. For her, the war did not end with the Dayton Peace Accords, which put an end to the military conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later, there was still war in Kosovo – one that has turned into a permanent political, cultural and social crisis. The war that brought an end to Yugoslavia entered Kalamujić’s home when she was only 12. After that, came peace: “A terrible trickster. Elegant, polished, full of words and smiles. And it doesn’t pay the rent. Maybe only tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a few days…”

A war is a collapse of a house. Kalamujić’s house in Sarajevo was never homogenous. It was inhabited by God, Tito, Islam and socialist guerrillas. Before the war, her family was a typical Yugoslav family. Nobody was surprised by her Serbian mother and Bosnian-Muslim father. The war sharpened the borders and inflicted pain. Thus, in the preface to Kalamujić’s collection of short stories, both the author and translator explain the language of division that is necessary to understand the world of the narrator whose many experiences are evidently of the author. We read that “baka” is the mother’s mom, while “nana” is the mother of the father. In the same way, there is “deda” and “dedo”, grandma’s pita and nanina sarma. There are also different parts of the city: a Serbian one and a Bosnian one. During the war they were divided by a frontline that for many became a kind of lifeline.

A Yugoslav and a socialist

When I was listening to Kalamujić, I tried to imagine her childhood. She was raised in Vratnik, the old district in Sarajevo. During the Ottoman period this area served as a gate (vrata) to the East, towards Istanbul. After her mother’s death, from an unexpected heart attack at the young age of 22, Kalamujić (aged two) moved to her father’s place where he lived with his parents. Whenever she heard her mother’s name it was accompanied (thanks to her father) with a smell of booze.

Every Saturday Kalamujić would visit her mother’s parents who lived in Grbavica, a district on the other side of Miljacka river. They would take her to clean her mother’s grave at the Bare cemetery, which was a shared graveyard for all Yugoslavs, regardless of their nationalities or denominations. Atheists are buried there as well. She had to cross the river to return to her father’s house. On her way back, she would pass the Ali Pasha mosque, a hilly Roma settlement in Gorica and the 1984 Olympic stadium. However when war broke out, her father decided she was safer at her grandparents’ house in Grbavica. Though even there, lives were at risk. Thus they had to escape further – to their family house in Shtime.

After the war broke out, Kalamujić, together with her mother’s parents, moved to stay with their family in Vojvodina. They returned to Sarajevo after the armistice. However, the end of the war turned out to be an illusion. In fact, it took them weeks to get from the Serbian side to the Bosnian side of the city. Each excursion brought farewells and the need to make a choice. This, in turn, brought a sense of betrayal and guilt. The former, which Kalamujić experienced as a young girl, became a life necessity for her. As we continued talking, we started to understand that ceasing military activities was not sufficient to bring an end to this strange war. And this conclusion is only one of the many rings of the drama that make up Kalamujić’s story.

Her 2015 book, Call me Esteban, is described as a collection of short stories, which is a bit misleading. It would be more accurate to say it is a story of 19 images, where each is an autonomous story. They are linked together by the author’s voice (Kalamujić herself). These stories developed their own internal dynamics, related to the whole in such a way as a colour or a piece of glass are related to the whole mosaic. Additionally, this book is an open story. One that Kalamujić completes by adding new parts. For example, the Polish edition had three new stories added compared to the original edition. Kalamujić’s 2019 play, which she wrote for the Zenica Theatre, had many elements from the book transferred to the stage; it can be considered a sequel to her book. The only difference is that while one work emphasises an intimate family drama, the other focuses more on society and the country.

The book’s structure is not only a formal issue. Its openness, constant exploration of new perspectives and maturity that comes with the subsequent stages of life’s journey not only frees this work from the burden of providing ready answers but prepares the reader for a long march that is just at the beginning of the road. This determines the heroines’ existence. A Bosnian woman whose fate we follow is faced with emptiness, despair and often extreme pessimism. At the same time, she has the ability not to succumb to them. She achieves this not by discovering truth, but the grace of hope. Nor by returning to the system that ensures stability, but by opening herself to a transgression. Kalamujić’s writing triggers the need to overcome borders which exclude us from a community. The military war in Sarajevo came to an end, but the fight over the city that is free from hatred and stigmatisation continues to take place.

When Kalamujić reached 22 she experienced trauma. She had a nervous breakdown and a series of anxiety attacks. As a result, she could not leave her house for an entire year. At that time, she lived in Vratnik with her grandparents. Writing turned out to be her therapy. She had some traumatic experiences in the psychiatric ward. A dramatic testimony of these moments is included in her first essay collection, The Anatomy of a Smile, published in 2009. At that time, she fell in love with Naida, her life partner. They are both open about their sexual orientation, even though it is still not easy in Sarajevo. Such things are still hidden there – as much as the death and war wounds are. In a conversation with blogger Stephan Wable, she confessed: “People expect you to hide your homosexuality. They are shocked when you do not … I am neither Bosnian, nor Serb, nor Croatian. I am against nationalism. I am still a Yugoslav and a socialist.”

A new Walter

The spirit of former Yugoslavia is still an important reference point for sarajlia, which is the name for residents who still care about the ethos of a civic, multicultural state. Their life has its underground, hiding places but also frontlines. In post-war Sarajevo a war is waged to win the future of the city, which was taken away by the living ghosts of the past. The frontlines are nonetheless changing and now different people are pushed to the underground, stigmatised and treated as if they do not belong to the community. The ethnic and religious war has been replaced by a new culture war. Its line of division is marked by human rights, women’s rights, sexual identity, social exclusion, corruption and plutocracy. On the pages of Call me Esteban, you can read how, every now and then, this new phase of the fight is through the ruins and the remains of the previous war.

The twilight descends over the bridges of the Miljacka River. We have said a lot to each other during our conversation at the café. I was planning to say goodbye to the three women, thanking Marina with my thoughts for this meeting. And yet I felt that Kalamujić wanted to tell me something more: “Forgive me. I know I needed too much time. But I want to tell you much more.” With her most delicate voice, and almost not touching the subject with her words, she started to tell me the story about a Sarajevo actress named Bella.

Bella was her neighbour who loved another woman. As a small child, Kalamujić could feel her presence next door. She suffered when people laughed at her. “Bella, no matter how silent you were, they knew.” Out of the dark corners of heroic Sarajevo, a figure of a forgotten woman, who died from cancer at an early age, started to emerge unexpectedly. Apart from Kalamujić, nobody saw her as a heroine. Yet, it was thanks to Bella, who only Kalamujić knew by sight, that she got the courage to be herself. She engaged with her in silent conversations, which readers of her book will find out. This conversation announced a new Walter fighting for Sarajevo.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Krzysztof Czyżewski is a Polish intellectual and essayist. He is the founder and director of the Borderland of Arts, Cultures, and Nations Centre in Sejny (Poland).e

Art, Culture, Grbavica, poetry, Sarajevo, short stories, War