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.