Saturday afternoon, Sarajevo

Only 5pm but it's already been dark for what feels like hours. Winter has arrived: this week it snowed, wet damp sleet that only stuck around on the hills around the city. All of a sudden it feels a little alpine. When not snowing, the weather has that bone-chilling dampness that endures for months, unshakable and ancestral. I've realised this week my winter boots are not water proof. Some readjustment of plans for the months ahead may be necessary.

As always happens when you move to a new place, after an initial couple of slow-burning weeks of introduction, all of a sudden I've been very busy, and I have no real idea of how or when this started. One day I'm spending the evenings at home alone - using them to get through all the novels I brought with me - and the next, I haven't been home in a week. I've never really understood how this process happens, but it's been the same almost down to the day and the hour in every place I've lived so far.

Anyway, you'll all be relieved (!) to hear that I've found myself a social life. In trying to describe the big picture and the big thoughts that I have about it, I forget to fill you in - dear reader, whomsoever you may be - on the starting details. The Organisation is a very sociable place to work. The majority of my colleagues - i.e. within my own office - are young and good humoured, and within the Organisation itself there must be about 15 interns in addition to a collection of junior officers and temporary consultants. Of this group, most haven't been here longer than a year, mostly they socialise together, and in terms of demographics all are like myself: young, unattached (legally speaking, at least) and not taking anything too seriously other than the mythical quest in search of a permanent contract. The long and short of it was that when I arrived I was handed a ready-made group of friends, all of whom are more or less on the same page as myself.

So the dramatic reduction in blogging the last week or two has been more or less thanks to a resumption of social duties. I suppose I never could have kept that initial frantic pace sustainable. I give you the last week, as an example.

Last weekend I spent away in Korčula, an island on the Croatian coast, on a road trip with as many people as we could fit in one rental car. It's not really the best time of year to spend on the coast, but two nights of open fires, heaving team-effort meals, playing cards, hot drinks, big woolly socks, blankets on the sofa, walks on the beach, buying wine direct from the vineyard, jumping on and off ferries, and proving myself adept at driving on the right hand side of the road were just what the doctor ordered.

Monday evening I had language classes and didn't get home until nearly 8pm. Tuesday night I went in search of the mythical Mercator supermarket and was so excited to find the biggest range of everything I've seen since I was last in Tesco that I spent hours wandering around and planning what to buy and cook and invest in for my apartment, then trying to figure out how on earth I'd carry it all home (oh yes, I'm learning the hard way how used I'd got to having a car). Shopping was followed by the cinema - gotta love BiH, where seeing a move costs less than €3 (I highly recommend The Social Network, by the way).

Wednesday we finished work at 3pm and I spent a pleasant afternoon making guacamole, punch and mulled wine before throwing a housewarming party that evening. I am a domestic goddess: I even got a housewarming gift of a garlic crusher - this means I am officially an adult! I declared the evening a success: my little apartment has been cosier than ever since. Nine bottles of mulled wine later, we had a guitar and a singsong, as is compulsory at an Irish party, of course. Many ridiculous photos involved.

Thursday was National Day here in BiH, so a public holiday. By coincidence, it was also Thanksgiving so an ex-patriate friend invited me to her family's house for dinner. I'd never been to Thanksgiving before so it was really pleasant, and they were great hosts. I really don't know why we don't adopt some kind of equivalent back on the auld sod. A day set aside with no other agenda than eating and drinking (no mass! no presents! no political stress) - a day which means you have two Christmas dinners accompanied by consummate booze within a month can only be deemed a good thing in my book. Came home at 9.30, put on my pjs and lay in a horizontal position while I tried to digest. Super.

Friday - yesterday - I went for one drink after work with some of the other Irish working at the Organisation. Guess how that ended up. When they kicked us out of the café at the office, there was time and money for dinner in a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, then off to a friend's house to try and work our way through the supplies of wine we'd brought back from Korčula. Then off to the horribly named Cheers bar, which comes complete with a red phone box outside and Guinness memorabilia on the walls, but which is redeemed by great live music at night. There was a move towards a nightclub later but I pulled a disappearing act and vanished mysteriously into the night and into bed.

The point of all this is the spontaneity: it makes the best of most situations. I also think all of this outweighs the possible isolation of living alone. The goings-on and the going-out is great, most especially because its there if and when I want it, but isn't compulsory and is escapable. I don't know why, but lately there comes a point in the night when I've had enough, and whereas previously (in Ireland, surprise surprise) I would have pushed through and felt obliged to stay, here I am more inclined to sod off when I feel like it.

I've always had a partly anti-social side, in that within moderation I really like spending time alone. Today for example, I've yet to leave the house. I'm much too comfortable here pottering around and reading and working on some photos by myself. Very likely living alone is accentuating this side to me; it encourages me to embrace the solitude and indulge in being selfish with my own time. The months that intervened between Uganda and Bosnia in many ways were very difficult; it wasn't a good or an easy time for me, for a whole range of reasons which I won't be going into here. Living alone since then, I think, has been good in terms of letting me retreat when I need to and letting me tell the world to go sod off when I feel like it. Moving to a new country isn't easy and there have been bad days so far - anyone who would ever think of getting into this line of work should be told about the personal costs and the difficulties - but at the moment I think what I needed was to be able to be selfish for a while in a way which I never could back home.

Don't fear - I don't need too much arm-twisting to tempt me out from under my duvet! And I have two friends coming to stay next week who will no doubt keep me social. But for now, somehow, a bit of selfishness seems to be what this underpaid intern needs.

Korčula, Croatia

Have just returned from a weekend staying in a friend's holiday house on the Croatian coast. Spent two days or so of driving along winding Bosnian, Herzegovinian and Croatian roads, tasting wine, playing cards, cuddling up in front of open fires, cooking and tucking into heaving group meals. It was all idyllic, until I came back home last night only to spend 24 hours more or less continually glued to the internet and watching in fascinated horror as Ireland dramatically and spectacularly imploded. Today was the equivalent of watching a landslide happen in slow motion, albeit one that's been foreseen and predicted far in advance. A landslide that people have argued and fought and in-fought about so frantically for so long that in the end, no one actually noticed when it started.

I'm quite exhausted from the whole thing. So in lieu of writing about how lovely Korčula is, here are some photos to simply show you instead. Because that means - yes! - I have a new camera. Nikon is back! And as a friend aptly put it to me the other day, I'm glad I have my security blanket back :)

How to hide a winery...

pomegranates

Aung San Suu Kyi and Ali

As anyone who knows anything at all about me might imagine, I spent much of this weekend following the news of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. For those of you who might have spent the last few days on Mars, yesterday Aung San Suu Kyi was finally freed unconditionally after spending the last seven years under house arrest. She has since called for reconciliation in Burma in recommencing her political work. Her release has been met with near-universal praise from world leaders and Nobel prize winners, while the world media has briefly flocked back to Burma to report on this good news.

It goes without saying that this news is hopeful, that I am uplifted and encouraged by reports of Burmese shedding tears of joy in the streets of Rangoon, for once unmolested by the police and security agents. Of course I believe that Aung San Suu Kyi is a deeply inspiring figure, probably the Nelson Mandela of our generation in terms of visibility, charisma and popular sympathy. Actually, I think not enough is made of her role as a woman in world politics, of the particular struggles and sacrifices made by women confronting and wielding power.

I also wonder how long she'll be allowed to remain free: previous releases in 1995 and 2000 were followed by rearrest on the flimsiest of pretexts. I cannot see that this release, coming a week after fraudulent elections were 'successfully' concluded, really constitutes the beginning of anything given the strength with which the Burmese junta is willing to enforce its position of authority.

For me a larger issue is no matter how euphoric or cautious, much of the media reporting about Aung San Suu Kyi's release has failed to draw adequate attention to the 2,100 other political prisoners who remain in Burmese jails, many of them detained for taking part in the 2007 protests. Most of them are nameless, faceless and outside of human rights circles, forgotten.

I think one of the things I most admired about Front Line, before and after I worked there, was it's focus on 'the little guy'. Sometimes we used to jokingly refer to the human rights 'rock stars', to the Aung San Suu Kyis, Shirin Ebadis, Liu Xiaobos and Balthazar Garzóns of the this world, along with many others whose names might not be known internationally but who can at least count on support from civil society within their own countries: the Yuri Melinis, Nabeel Rajabs Oleg Orlovs and Emad Baghis. No one can disparage the difficulties they face or the sacrifices they make; take Shirin Ebadi's ongoing exile or Liu Xiaobo's ongoing prison sentence if you want a case in point. It doesn't always translate to protection, but there are immense wells of support for those activists in crisis: the media will report with outrage, students will sign petitions, NGOs are interested and the diplomatic community becomes available.

But for every rock star and for all the applause, there are thousands who run equal risks and pay equal costs without the protection, support and fame which 'fame', of its kind, can bring. With every respect to Aung San Suu Kyi, in the eyes of the world media it helps immensely to be beautiful, elegant, eloquent and tragic. She's everyone's favourite romantic heroine.

I found myself wondering this weekend about the 2,100 other prisoners and whether they had even heard about her release, or whether it meant much. And for some reason, probably because it feels so much closer to home, I found myself thinking about Ali.

Some of you have heard Ali's story already. Ali Abdulemam is - was - the director of one of Bahrain's only independent online news websites, and within online and activist communities was known internationally for his work on freedom of expression and media issues. He spent several months with Front Line in Dublin on a fellowship, working with us in the office, staying in the organisation's apartment a few doors down the street. He ate lunch with us interns, told us stories about Bahrain, promised to bring us Middle Eastern food. He won a staff pitch and putt tournament and we teased him that he'd only won because he had the best golfing fashion sense. By the open fire in the pub he played around with my camera and took pictures of all of us which managed to survive the robbery of my camera and laptop a few weeks later.

On 4 September, a few weeks after his return to Bahrain, Ali was arrested along with about 28 other activists, writers, politicians and clerics. All were accused of taking part in a "terrorist plot" to execute a "campaign of violence, intimidation and subversion in Bahrain". We knew that he was being held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer or his family. We knew that he was most likely being tortured. He and 10 others are currently subject to an unfair trial whose date is continually deferred (from the 28 October, then to 11 November, now until the 25 November), most likely in what I see as an attempt to deter trial monitors from attending and to frustrate defence counsel from adequately representing their clients.

The deferred trial hearings did at least serve the purpose of finally allowing Ali and the other detainees to describe their experiences in detention over the past two months. Ali stated that:

“I was subjected to torture, beatings, insults and verbal abuse. They threatened to dismiss my wife and other family members from their jobs. I was interrogated in the prosecution without a lawyer, and the officer there who appeared to be from the National Security dismissed my denials to the allegations put against me. He never allowed me to respond to the questions he was asking, but rather answering them himself whilst I was stood behind the door as I was not permitted to sit during the investigation".

A blog run by Ali's supporters has in addition reported that he was hung from the ceiling, blindfolded, beaten, cursed and insulted.

If and when Ali and his fellow prisoners of conscience are released, the world media will not report on it. If previous patterns of arrests, tortures and trials are anything to go by, this entire process can be considered a form of punishment for their activities so far, as intimidation against continuing with such actions or activities in future, and of course as a warning to others not to step out of line. Ali he has a wife and young children and extended family at home, and when it comes to personal cost his actions and activism and bravery - to them, very understandably - might or might not seem so clear-cut and worthy of applause. It is perhaps easier to be the one applauded than to be the one left behind.

Aung San Suu Kyi has not been tortured like this, at least not physically in an interrogation cell (on the other hand, she was preventing from seeing her dying husband before he passed away, for instance). I know that one cannot compare different forms of suffering, nor try to quantify the effects of physical 'versus' emotional or mental torture. But does the release of one Aung San Suu Kyi only serve to distract from the very many others?

I suppose that all I want to say is that this weekend I congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese people, but that I have spent the past couple of days thinking about those who are not congratulated. For myself, I thought about Bety Cariño and Georges Kanuma (both of whom I wrote about before), and I thought about Ali. And I only want to ask you to do the same.

"Welcome Back to Sarajevo"

More or less by accident this afternoon, I came across this article summing up the sights around Sarajevo ten years after the author's previous postwar visit to the city, which I recommend having a look at if you have any time or interest.

More or less it saves me the trouble of writing a succient summary of the city: also it has some good photos attached. I climed up to the Kovaci cemetary the week before last to enjoy the view, I pass by the mosque pictured most days, and there is a photo of a certain skyscraper which might sound familiar.

And she's right on recommending Zeljo as having some of the best čevapi in town :)

The Heavy One

I suppose I have to address it sooner or later. The reality is that in most of the rest of the world, Sarajevo is remembered only for one thing. I was a young child during the siege, but I remember Bosnia as a constant drone in the background, much like the Troubles in the North: an endless succession of grey images on the evening news, of broken windows and concrete and lowcast skies.

I don't like 'promoting' this view of the city. I have a particular distaste for the voyeurism of suffering - car-crash fascination translated into tourism - that attracts one's attention to the locations of atrocities. My first few days here I was impressed by the city - full of beautiful youth, busy nightlife, lots of culture, and a quirky twisted old town, all charm and neighbourly energy, so much at odds with my half-remembered dreams of Sarajevo as a city of devastated tower blocks and snipers. I felt good vibes as I wandered around my first weekend: things were busy, people were going places, and the young seemed to be moving everything forward.

Unfortunately that impression didn't last long. Within days I began to see that the city is so young because it's youth are so disaffected and have nowhere to go but to the cafes and street corners. There is significant begging - you can write them all off as the gypsies if you're so inclined, but they are still poor people sitting on the street. The elderly especially look worn out by a lifetime's troubles: they trudge with shopping bags, wearing headscarves and old overcoats, their faces lined so that I have no way of telling if this is really middle or old age.

Want an idea of what to see in Sarajevo? I live approximately 25 minutes walk from my office and on my way to and from work each day I pass a memorial to the media workers killed in the conflict, an eternal flame for those killed in World War II, and most difficult, the Monument to Murdered Children. I skip over at least three Sarajevo Roses, splatters of red paint across the pavement which fill in broken concrete shattered by falling shells, many of them representing the place where someone was killed. I pass by the Markale, the open air fruit and vegetable market which was the site of two massacres during the siege. 68 people queuing for food were killed in the first instance, and 37 in the second. It was this second attack which finally spurred the NATO intervention which very quickly ended the war.

Some buildings are still bombed although most of the city centre has been rebuilt. Many more buildings are still-bullet scarred: no one has got around to replastering yet. On the day I moved into my apartment I noticed that the wall of the house next to mine, which faces my living room window and is not more than five feet away, is pock marked and scarred. My house faces the hills; it's to be expected. I presume that they've simply repaired my building.

The strange thing is that this already seem pretty commonplace. I don't wander around gaping at bomb-marks. But it's an ever present reminder that bad things happened here very recently, and that I don't have to live with the memories of those bad things like almost everyone else here has to.

Smoke gets in your eyes

... and in your hair, and in your clothes, and in your coat, and in your food.

Everyone smokes in Sarajevo. Constantly. In all places, at all times. I sometimes feel like I'm living in an episode of Mad Men, (for those of you unfamiliar, this fabulous Mad Smoke video should explain everything).

Actually, at odds with Sterling Cooper, our office is literally the only place where people don't smoke and I know for a fact that this is only because I work for an international organisation. No doubt the nationals working in the Mission would say the Organisation simply lacks a sense of humour. But this is a policy of the Organisation and not the building: there's smoking on every floor of our tower unoccupied by Organisation I work for. Even the toiletpaper holders in the ladies' room have an ashtray built into the top. Smoking on the loo: now there's a pleasant mental image.

I don't smoke. I've never smoked. I don't even find myself tempted on nights out when all my friends have suddenly revealed their inner social addiction or when I've spent the whole evening outside in a smoking area chatting, because everyone knows its the best place in an Irish pub for flirting. I tried it once or twice but never liked it. I never really got the point (prior to the addiction setting in, at least). But at the same time I'm not particularly anti-smoking. I've got better things to do than give a lecture about suicide to the unsuspecting devotee who has the bad luck to light up alongside me at a bus stop. I don't sigh and cough and insist on changing my seat if someone sitting alongside outside a cafe waves her marlborough around nonchalently. And I am fully aware of the fact that Western Europe is one of the only parts of the world where the majority of people share my aversion to le fag, not to mention having got around to legislating for it. More importantly, I believe quite strongly that now that I've left my own country it's up to me to get on with it and assimilate, and to accept that some things are socially acceptable here rather than elsewhere.

But.

Really I can honestly say - as I struggle to hack up the phlegm clogging my throat - that I have never experienced smoke as dense as I have here. And I've lived and worked in Spain for chrissakes. When I say "dense" smoke I really mean literally that; I had forgotten what it was like to be unable to see the other side of the room through the cloud. BiH is a country where hourly breaks from work to pop out for cigarettes are not just permitted but seen as a basic human necessity. Friends from the hostel who have bussed around the Former Yugoslavia recounted how on 10-hour bus trips (to Belgrade, for example) the coaches generally stop every hour or so. For toilet breaks? I asked. How they smiled at my innocence.

I had forgotten, for example, the hazards of dancing in nightclubs where cigarettes are lit up on the dancefloor and people's wildly waving arms shower all those shorter than them (i.e. me) with sparks. During my week in the hostel, every single item in my suitcase stank of stale tobacco because I unthinkingly tossed a t-shirt onto the top of the case after coming home one night. Passing a beauty parlour the other evening, I saw a girl having a manicure done at a table inside the window, one hand being given over to the beautican while smoke twirled from the other, presumably while she left her nails to dry.

I went out one evening last week and didn't bother to wash my hair the next morning, simply tying it up and running out the door to work. I spent the whole day at my desk sitting in a little invisible cloud of dirty ashtray, following me wherever I went, wafting from my steeping, reeking hair.

Perhaps my favourite is in the restaurants. Silly me, being a little startled by the staff behind the counter making my veliko espresso with a cigarette clamped stubbornly between their lips, putting it down only briefly to come and deliver me my coffee. I wasn't so startled one evening last week, having dinner in a little cave of a restaurant down an alleyway in the Ottoman part of town. We were the only customers and were seated only a few feet from the kitchen door, the entire place comprising no more than a small room. As the door swung open and closed, I could glimpse a professionally-fitted kitchen and the chef wearing regulation apron and whites, furiously puffing as he cooked our food. The kitchen was not full of steam, dear friends, but of smoke. That was something new.

Am I fussy? Am I unnecessarily disturbed by this public health issue? Am I going to turn into one of those people who lectures smokers at bus stops? Hopefully not. But I think I will be importing industrial size bottles of Febreeze when I come back after Christmas.

Contradictions

Sarajevo is a funny little city. A few contradictions in terms which I’ve noticed this week:

The place is buzzing. The main street is continually thronged with neighbours wandering up and down, spotting the talent and gossiping. Its bars and cafés are packed all day, every day. On weekday afternoons you can’t get a seat beside a window anywhere on the main streets. This seems to me entirely at odds with Bosnia’s poverty stricken economic situation: why does the nation look so leisured? Why aren’t they all out there somewhere ‘struggling’? The reason: the 46% unemployment rate. Almost a full half of the working population literally seem to have nowhere else to go and nothing better to do all day, every day. At least they seem to spend their time sociably.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has a 46% unemployment rate and is still struggling to overcome the economic and industrial destruction of the war. What seems a curiosity to me however is the certainty of this magic number: how can they calculate an exact unemployment rate, when there has been no census carried out since before the war. The authorities have very little idea of exactly how many people are in the country, where in the country they are (a highly significant issue in this federally divided state), what ethnicity they belong to, or which of the many governments they vote for.

As for the government, don't get me started. I refuse to even begin describing it here, but BiH is divded into state, federal republic, cantonal and local governments, all of which I suppose are a source of that all-important employment. You thought Belgium had it bad? Try a country smaller than Ireland which has 162 ministries. The political arrangements are so complicated that frequently there is no clearly defined hierarchy between ministries, governments, civil service departments or even the courts. And similar to the census, it seems to be more convenient for the sake of many interests not to have to clarify things.

The popular perception of BiH as a conservative Islamic society. Reports of the war, the atrocities carried out here, the post-conflict rebuilding efforts and the war crimes trials all described the effect of the conflict upon a particularly enclosed, modest, traditionalist community: of ostracisim and stigma and shame. Yet this simply doesn't seem bourne out once you're here. Take the female victims of the conflict for example, hundreds of whom have been exceptionally brave in testifying to the courts about their experiences without suffering rejection or shame. I can’t speak for rural areas, but in Sarajevo at least there is no such thing as conservatism: couples kiss on streets, beer and the rakia (plum brandy, local moonshine) are flowing, the nightlife goes on for six rather than two nights a week, and hem lines are short. Really short. Shorter than I would ever wear… certainly shorter than I’d wear in conjunction with the fake tan and the FMBs and the blond highlights. The style on a night out here is something quite shocking. Conservative, moi?

And last but not least: the contradiction of the beautiful women. They're stunning. On my first afternoon here, wandering around the streets while I tried to find a lonely traveller’s supper, the sheer beauty of the girls was startling. The heels, the hair, the dresses. The eyes. Those cheekbones could kill a man. And the contradiction? The women are so beautiful, and the men, well, are… not. I won’t offend any Balkan male sensibilities by going any further. But one-sidedness this marked is a contradiction. And going by the reactions of the (predominantly male) backpackers in the hostel, Sarajevo is a good place to be a guy.

Vaulting myself back up onto the blogging horse

I am writing this with my laptop on my knee, in the centre of my sofa, surveying my new apartment. On Friday I moved into an attic almost nearly in the old Ottoman Quarter, Baščaršija. I urge you all to come visit – I’m so delighted with this beautiful perch up on the third floor that I’m fidgeting for someone to come visit so I can show the place off. I have a sweet little loft with a spare bed and two magnificent sofas long enough to accommodate even the fussiest of tall sleepers. The big news: I’m living alone – this is all belong just to me! Obviously this must be viewed as an important scientific and social experiment: if my open invitations to come visit turn into polite requests, and then pleading, and later into desperate cries for help and company, we’ll know whether this was a dreadful mistake. Does living alone meaning you’re turning into a grown up? We’ll have to see.

From my perch under the eaves, past the mosques and the minarets, past the Sebil fountain which promises a lifetime in Sarajevo for those who drink its waters, I look out on the hills ringing the city, which at this hour after dark twinkle in the distance. Sarajevo is a neat little city tucked into a tight valley, its gabled houses spreading up the hillsides like mould speckled on a bathtub. The Centar is long, narrow and pointed, probably no more than 500 or 600 metres wide, so that at most moments as you move through the city you can see a steep hillside beginning close by on both left and right sides. On cold mornings the city is a bowlful of mist and fog lit through by sunshine. On clear nights, lights twinkle on either side like pierced cloths have been strung across the sky. And when it rains – as it did for two days without pause last week – it felt like we lay in the bottom of a cistern.

Thanks to my friend Sven from whom I shamelessly robbed this photo without his knowledge.

Sunset on Sunday 31 October 2010

From my office on the 14th floor of one of the city’s only skyscrapers, I have yet to get tired of the view, one of the strangest mixes of a vista I think I’ve ever seen. Tapering up to the hills which begin only 200 metres away and which are dusted with the year’s first fall of snow, I can see the minarets of Turkish mosques, Austrian-style red gabled houses, socialist tower blocks, gracefully engineered mountain-side roads, a Croatian supermarket chain, a Chinese restaurant, an empty new shopping mall and the improbably smooth and gleaming Parliament building, rebuilt only in the last few years after being burnt during the war. My own skyscraper was shelled early on during the siege. I try to imagine it at as I listen to the hum of central heating and printers and the jingle of new emails, looking down at some of the bullet-scarred buildings below. The tower must have projected its 21 storeys of desolation over the low-lying city like some kind of spectre of the nightmare.

Sarajevo reminds me in lots of ways of Cork. It’s probably about the same size: 300,000 people, with a tiny, twisted centre and a sprawl of suburbs. It seems full only of young people, packed with old bars to which you need directions, little families running closet-sized cafes. They even have a jazz festival starting this week and of course, the locals speak a tongue-twisting lingo which defies all attempts of translation!

I may be starting Bosnian classes next week – another intern from the office is organising a teacher so I have decided I may as well embrace the opportunity, if only to manage ordering food, taking taxis and getting a coffee that actually corresponds to what I wanted in the first place. Bosnian is called Serbian in Serbia, Croatian in Croatia, and Slovenian in Slovenia, but it’s also almost the same as Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian and Polish. The touristy cafes in Bascharciza have waiters who can snarl “Pancake? Mixed grill? Soup?” at you when they see you looking confused, and the taxi drivers who claim not to speak English mysteriously know how to explain their charges, but in general it’s more difficult than I had anticipated to muddle by without the language.

Take Mr Brano, the caretaker of my apartment. I found the place through an agent, who handles all contact regarding the apartment in lieu of the landlord, who lives abroad. The agent, poor thing, is also my personal translator as Mr Brano does not speak a word of English. And I do mean literally, not a word. ‘Please’, ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ mean nothing to him. I suppose he must be in his 60s, wearing frayed trousers with a few faint streaks of paint and sturdy winter boots. On Friday he was waiting at the apartment to meet me when I arrived, three friends (i.e. helpful bag-carriers) in tow, huffing and puffing and rushing in with suitcases. We had to wait half an hour for the agent to arrive and sign off on everything.

While waiting, Mr Brano carefully and thoroughly walked me around the apartment, showing me with the delight of a skilled craftsman how each individual switch, plug and fitting in the place worked. All of it was accompanied by a stream of detailed description in darkest, densest Bosnian – it was entirely irrelevant to him that I – and my three friends - didn’t understand a single word. He revealed how each individual light fitting, table lamp and spot light turned on and off. He demonstrated how to light the gas stove. He opened the fridge and gestured to show me it was cold. He opened and closed the windows, he slid the venetian blinds back and forth, he turned the shower off and on. He gave a thorough and complex demonstration of the sliding doors of the fitted wardrobe in the bedroom. He showed me the blankets in the closet and the drawers built in for storage under the sofas. He indicated the television and showed us the channels, but he reserved particular attention for the thermostat for the central heating. 20 degrees would be about normal, but because the place hadn’t been heated in months it was turned up to 30 for the afternoon. This required a tremendous explanation on his part; never mind that it was entirely unintelligible – he gave me the most thorough convincing of the merits of turning the temperature down to 10 or 15 while I was out during the day, before putting it back up higher at night. 30 was too high! 30 was only for today!

“Super, super,” I nodded, knowing no other word to express my anticipated pleasure with all of this. He seemed delighted – I think he sensed my profound appreciation of the marvellous system of switches and lighting in the apartment! I know that I certainly had a profound appreciation of the agent when she finally arrived and could reassure Mr Brano that I had understood everything. He went home for the weekend, happy with what seemed to be the gratification of a well-satisfied craftsman.

Mr Brano is probably one of the reasons I want to learn a little Bosnian. I want to be able to say thank you, or make small talk. But I also want to be able to say something to sweeten the old ladies who frown at you sceptically as you walk down an uneven street of patched concrete houses. I want to be able to get bartenders to take me seriously and bother to serve me rather than pass me over for the beautiful – no, strike that – stunning, all the women here are absolutely stunning – girl next to me at the bar. On my third day it took at least four minutes of wild gesturing and pointing and pulling faces to get the man at the deli to cut me some cheese. I want to be able to order coffee and get it right. I’d like not to get jostled on the tram.

For all that, I make it sound hostile and defensive here, and yet for all that, somehow it’s not. Mr Brano smiled and patted my arm before leaving, after all. After a day or two the man at the deli began to smile and greet me with “ciao ciao!” when he saw me coming. Smiling at the old ladies helps a lot – in truth I think they’re just not used to seeing people with blue eyes. And yesterday, a five year old came up to me in a park and said hello, before telling me that she didn’t learn to speak English in Sarajevo, because she learnt it in Tokyo. Yes!

I think it’s just that the Bosnians are tough, and I don’t think anyone would hold that against them, all considered.