A Letter from Sarajevo

War, Heroes, Hope

I am in the Jerusalem of Europe and there are “Free Palestine” signs everywhere I look. 

Sarajevo has been called a “European Jerusalem” because, in the town centre, you will see Orthodox and Catholic churches, mosques and synagogues, all side by side. Until the Second World War, 20 per cent of Sarajevo’s population were Sephardic Jews. People of all religions lived here peacefully alongside each other for years. Indeed, during the Bosnian war and the brutal siege of Sarajevo, many inhabitants still worked together, even though this was an ethnic conflict.  

Is this why I am here? To think about war? Not consciously. 

 

This is a place I have always wanted to visit. The very name Sarajevo is beautiful to me. I am thinking about what I remember of it from the war in the early 90s that I experienced through British TV news , through having friends from there who could no longer return to their home, and through working with war reporters at the time.  

War reporters are a special breed that thrives on cortisol, black coffee and dark, dark humour. They are never fazed. Yet the Bosnian war fazed them, even the old-timers who had been in Vietnam. Two hours from London, in the former Yugoslavia where Brits used to holiday, people were slaughtering each other. There were rape camps.