Reflections from Sarajevo

Fulbright Scholar, Faculty of Political Science, University of Sarajevo

January 30 to June 17, 2001

Tuesday, January 30th

I arrived in Sarajevo at 1:OO PM on a Lufthansa flight from Munich. Two summers ago I was here, and this time I noticed striking improvements at the Sarajevo airport. They have built covered passenger walkways from planes to the terminal. People from the Cultural Affairs Office of the US Embassy picked me up and brought me to my apartment. I met the landlady. My apartment is cozy; it has three rooms: a bath with a clothes washer, a small kitchen, a living room with a sleeping sofa, and a balcony. There is a small supermarket nearby. I have everything I need: clothes hangers, hairdryer, even shoe polish. My apartment is a thirty minute walk to downtown and a twenty minute walk to the Faculty of Philosophy. This evening I went to dinner at Trattori Ono and had Pizza Margaret (White Pizza), named after the Queen of Italy. It tasted good and reminded me of Perugia, Italy, where I had attended conferences on social thought and phenomenology as a graduate student in the early eighties. Like Italians, Bosnians say "ciao" for good-bye.

Wednesday, January 31st

I walked downtown and bought The Siege of Sarajevo: 1992-1996. It is an fine ethnographic account of the everyday experiences of people in Sarajevo during the long, unconscionable siege. All the people interviewed belie the media notion there was no social order in Sarajevo during the random and endless violence. People, in fact, created practical norms and followed moral sensibilities. This ethnography gives endless examples of how, despite the appearance of unimaginable chaos, a subtle and complex social order was maintained. This is why Sarajevo survived. After buying the book, I went to the Cultural Affairs Office in the UNIS building to register. At the same time, I signed up for internet service at the Bosnian Internet Service Provider, SmartNet. Phone numbers that begin with 2xx xxx rather 4xx xxx are faster connections. My phone number is 4xx xxx, but the connection is good enough for email and some browsing.

Thursday, February 1st

Today I went to a brown bag lunch at the US embassy on anti-fraud. Even if institutions change in their structure, the same people participate. Thus no change occurs. I asked if there were "other players" on the scene, and if they could be counted on to assume genuine responsibility for the new institutions. The speaker said yes but that it was still treacherous for these people to step forth. I also asked how the fact that the indicted war criminals had not been arrested impacted on the work in the Anti-Fraud Department. He said that often during his investigations the war criminals were found to be behind the scenes. After this, I had lunch with Rory, the Fulbright scholar from University of Nebraska, Omaha. He will teach courses on conflict resolution. Since I am nursing a cold, I had soup and tea, juha i caj. (There should be a diacritical mark over the c in tea.)

Friday, February 2nd

Today I walked downtown and bought a book titled Bosnia the Good: Tolerance and Tradition by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic. It was published by Central European Press in 2000. The writing of Mahmutcehajic in Bosnia may be compared to the significance of the writing of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Each writes on the moral conscience of the nation. Each formulates the good of the people stressing the positive content of their collectiveness. Each theorizes so as to mix sociology and theology so that each perspective becomes stronger. Here is one thoughtful passage from Bosnia the Good: "For laws deriving from national membership alone are no longer laws--in that they are no longer components of an integral structure protecting the rights of the weak against the strong." The passage closely resonates with King's thinking.

Saturday, February 3rd

Today I used the washer for the first time. The bent door was not shut completely tight and considerable water leaked onto the bathroom tile floor. I used towels to mop up the puddles.

Sunday, February 4th

I went to communion service at St. Joseph's Church this morning. The church was full, and the people were of different ages. The organ music was gentle and soulful. I at least recognized the order of the service, the different parts of the Eucharist, and a few words like Gospodine (Lord) and, of course, Amen.

Monday, February 5th

The bread here is great, crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. I have been in Sarajevo one week.

Tuesday, February 6th

I went to the American Reference Center on the 10th floor of the UNIS Building at the Office of Public Affairs, Cultural Section, U.S. Embassy. The Center has The New York Review of Books as well as several other American journals and magazines. It also has computer access to on-line databases like Lexis-Nexis and First Search. The Center is an excellent resource for Bosnian students. I read a disturbing passage in NYRB in "Good-by to Yugoslavia" by Tim Judah. Judah interviewed the current President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, the fifty-six-year-old lawyer and "moderate nationalist," who defeated Slobodan Milosevic in the last elections. Here is what Judah writes:

Kostunica says that Karadzic and the other Bosnian Serb leaders "were actually expressing something that was the will of the people." Not only that, he says, but "one should never forget that Karadzic tried to create some democratic institutions during the war, which was not so easy." Compared to Serbia, he continued, there was democracy in the parliament of the wartime Bosnian Republika Srpska.

To anyone who remembers the months and years of murder and ethnic cleansing in the Republika Srpska when Karadzic was in power, this is a deeply shocking statement. But Kostunica says: "I am very close to the opinion of Mr. Henry Kissinger in saying that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a state that never had a chance to exist." Its people were always divided and so the war simply divided them further. His view, he said, was that the institutions of the three parts of Bosnia simply reflected the interests of the people in each of them. (The New York Review of Books, February 8, 2001, p. 44)

Like Karadzic, Kostunica fails to see Bosnia as an organic and historic whole (which is what Bosnia is), and like Karadzic, Kostunica wants the world to see Bosnia through his eyes. He cites Kissinger for authoritative support.

Wednesday, February 7th

I had a lesson in Bosnian. The language is complex. Egg, jaje, has three different declensions according to number: a declension for one egg, another for two eggs, and still another for more than two eggs. Declensions, though, are typically singular or plural. In the singular masculine nouns, the accusative of inanimate objects is different from the accusative of animate beings (human and animal). For instance, the accusative of singular masculine nouns for inanimate objects is the same as the nominative, and the accusative of singular masculine nouns for animate objects is the same as the genitive. The grammar and most of the vocabulary are the same in Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. Susan Kroll makes the following comment in the Foreword to Bosnian-English/English-Bosnian: Dictionary and Phrasebook:

Where there was once one country and one language with many dialects [Serbo-Croat], there is now many languages, of which Bosnian is one. Bosnian is a language in the making. Those who were persecuted by the Serbians want to differentiate their language by using Croatian forms of words, while those harassed by the Croatians prefer the Serbian forms of words.

Thursday, February 8th

Emile Durkheim says that there is never a society without crime. What is interesting is not crime itself, but how society responds to crime. The society's response is a measure of the society's healthiness. Societies with no crime simply do not exist except as a figment of one's imagination. At times it seems, however, as if the observing world expects Balkan countries to be crimeless in order to achieve recognition and acceptance. A better question is how do different Balkan nations respond to the crime within their societies keeping always in mind that no community is without crime. Consider this news report:

A Sarajevo court jailed a former military police chief for 20 years on Monday for a murder last year in a bar in the Bosnian capital, the independent Onasa news agency reported.

Ismet Bajramovic, who headed the city's military police during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces ending in 1995, used his forces as a private army to impose his control over parts of the capital.

He had already been convicted for criminal activities before the 1992-5 Bosnian war, and at one point was held in the same prison as wartime Bosnian political leader Alija Izetbegovic, sentenced by the former communist regime for Islamic activism.

Bajramovic and onlookers in the court-room broke into ironic applause after the judge announced the sentence.

"Shame on you. Even Karadzic would not have received such a high sentence," the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA quoted one of the audience as saying, referring to former Bosnian Serb leader and indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, who is still at large.

Bajramovic's two main accomplices in the murder were sentenced to 22 and 25 years in prison respectively after confessing to carrying out the killing. Two girls were sentenced to one year's jail each for complicity in the crime.

Note in the report how Bosnians measure the response of the observing world to the genocide in their country in the same manner that the observing world measures the response of Bosnians to crime within their community. "Shame on you. Even Karadzic would not have received such a high sentence." At the Cultural Affairs Office I asked someone what was the motive for the murder. She said that the person who was murdered had apparently beaten up Bajramovic when they were together in Germany.

I met today with the Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and the Head of the Sociology Department to discuss teaching assignments and logistics. They made me feel quite welcomed and happy to be here.

Friday, February 9th

This morning I got a haircut. "Samo malo," just a little, I said. The owner and her two brothers were having coffee, and they invited me to join them. They had been refugees in Germany during the war and were forced to return to Bosnia when their visas expired, "zuruck." We spoke German. One man said, "Es gibt viel Arbeit in Bosnia aber kein Geld. Im Deutschland gibt es viel Arbeit und viel Geld." We laughed. In Bosnia, there is a lot of work, but no money. In Germany, there is a lot of work and a lot of money. I got a great haircut and a good cup of coffee. It cost five marks or two dollars and fifty cents.

This evening Rory and I met and went to a Chinese restaurant. The outside of the building had little appeal (it was located on the frontline), but the inside was well decorated and lovely. The mirrors, furniture, and Chinese artwork were as nice as any I have seen in a Chinese restaurant. There is an old Yuglosav partisan film, whose storyline is based in Sarajevo, that people in mainland China frequently saw because it was one of the few films made outside of China that they were allowed to see. Thus, when people from China visit Sarajevo, they ask to see streets that they remember from the film. I had spicy lamb. I wonder if lamb is a typical dish served in Chinese restaurants.

Saturday, February 10th

Walking on a street in old Sarajevo I heard simultaneously a call to prayer from the minaret of a mosque and the ringing bells of a Catholic church. I could not tell if they were consonant or disconsonant. I imagined to myself that the church bells were keeping beat both with and for the Muslim chant. I met with Professor Rusmir Mahmutcehajic at International Forum Bosnia, and we had coffee and a long conversation.

Sunday, February 11th

A phrase in Bosnian from the Eucharist at St. Josephs clicked, "Gospodin s vama," God be with you. I went to a new shopping mall in Sarajevo. There were hundreds of people and a dozen contemporary stores. There was a "Hypermart" instead of a "Walmart." I do not like malls, but this mall was relaxing and thoughtfully designed, albeit an oasis of European modernity within Sarajevo. The mall was built by a company in Slovenia. Beneath the mall there is a large parking garage for cars.

Monday, February 12th

I had a wonderful meeting this morning with Professors Musabegovic, Medjedovic, Zgodic, Mikovic, and Mr. Asim Mujkic and Mr. Senadin Sasric. I shared a list of possible lecture topics and my book, Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice. We discussed together the different classes in which I may give lectures. I am acquainted with Professor Mikovic and Mr. Sasric from conferences that I had attended in Sarajevo, Konjic, Bihac. The start of university has been moved back because of the flu. Here is a news report.

Sarajevo Schools, Universities Closed Due to Flu Epidemic

SARAJEVO, Feb 8, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) All schools and

universities in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo were closed Thursday for a week

due to a flu epidemic, local health authorities said.

The measure was decided since over a quarter of some 80,000 pupils and

students in Sarajevo area have been reported suffering from the disease.

The health ministry of the Muslim-Croat half of Bosnia declared a flu epidemic on

Wednesday, ordering regional education ministries to monitor the situation and

close schools if the number of flu cases among the students exceeded 25 percent.

((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)

Tuesday, February 13th

I have been in Sarajevo two weeks. Sometimes I see people carrying skis. Once I saw a young girl get off a tram near St. Joseph's carrying a snow board and walk home. People go someplace to ski. Downtown there is a store that sells skis and boots. This morning I got the key to my office at the Faculty of Political Science, and I am starting to work there. It works out that I will have an office in the Faculty of Political Science rather than the Faculty of Philosophy. There are sociologists at both Faculties.

Wednesday, February 14th

My toilet seat broke, first, the hood and then, a few days later, the rim. The plastic cracked. Today I bought a new rim and hood and replaced the broken one.

Thursday, February 15th

In Bosnian the spelling of a person's name changes with the case. For instance, Keith sees the city, Keith vidi grad, and then Tom sees Keith, Tom vidi Keitha. If a name is in the dative, it, too, is spelled differently. I must write (to) Tom or ja moram pisati Tomu. The name of a city also changes. Idem u Sarajevo. I am going to Sarajevo. Je sam u Sarajevu. I am in Sarajevo.

This evening at the Law Faculty I heard a lecture by a Norwegian anthropologist at the Nansen Dialogue Center. "Nansen Dialogue Centre Sarajevo is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that aims to contribute to the development of democratic practices and the prevention and resolution of conflict in Sarajevo and throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina by creating dialogue across ethnic and national divides." The lecturer made interesting comparisons between Norway and Bosnia. He observed that people in Norway saw the recent Olympics as a chance to show the world what is essentially Norwegian, a kind of nationalistic impulse. He noted, however, that during the opening ceremony, someone from Finland sang the traditional Sami song, Americans skied the Telemark while playing fiddles (and fiddles cannot be played in cold weather), the Norwegian King is from Denmark (Norwegians never had a king and imported one from Denmark), and the source for the vetter fairy tales is Swedish literature. His topic was identity. It was interesting after having recently taught "Identity, Self, and Society" at Wittenberg University.

The lecturer said that there are things that Bosnians must do now to become a part of Europe. While I am not Bosnian, I imagined that, if I were Bosnian, I would think to myself that I am already a part of Europe, I already identify with Europe. As a Bosnian, I would not see myself as really needing to do anything to become a part of Europe. In view of Europe's inadequate response to the genocide in Bosnia, the question is whether Europe is a part of Europe or whether Europe belongs any longer to Europe.

At the end, the anthropologist suggested a model for the future Europe, one in which everyone will carry one passport, one state in which there are many nations. At first glance, this model is not too different from what ex-Yugoslavia was, one state in which there are many nations. A Sarajevo group called, "Philosophy, Social Science, and Psychoanalysis," sponsored the lecture.

Friday, February 16th

This morning I took an autobus to Vogosca (a few miles outside of Sarajevo where there is a Volkswagen auto factory) and attended a conference titled "Creating the Wider Public Understanding of the Civil Society Idea." This conference was organized by the the Civil Society Promotion Center and Open Society Fund BiH. The morning session was titled "Various Conceptual Approaches to the Civil Society." Bosnia is obviously in transition. If the notion of citizenship in ex-Yugoslavia centered around the principle of "Brotherhood and Unity," what principle of citizenship centers Bosnia-Herzegovina today after years of war and ethnic cleansing? Is it the notion of individualism and no absolutism, which becomes itself a kind of absolutism? Some people attending were from Banja Luka and Belgrade; they were involved in NGO's there. The exchanges between the people from Serbia and the people from the Federation were interesting and difficult to interpret. One could see traces of rhetorical strategies from the communist era, good and bad. One lecture deserves another.

Saturday, February 17th

International Forum Bosnia sponsored a Saturday Forum at Hotel Bosnia at which United States Ambassador Thomas Miller spoke. The title of Miller's presentation was "Continuity and Change in the Articulation of American Foreign Policy." Miller is well liked in Bosnia. Tanya Domi, in a recent essay in IWPR, writes, "Miller is a protégé of Richard Holbrooke, chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and has been likened to him in style, if somewhat less charming and sophisticated." She notes that "Among the Bosnian public, Miller is very popular. He has adopted a direct, informal approach to the thousands of displaced and dispossessed and is renowned for his weekend excursions to help rebuild houses - an act of charity no other Western officials or local political leaders have proffered" (IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 219). For the full article, visit http://www.iwpr.net

Miller stressed that he was a diplomatic practitioner, not a theoretician. Miller, through not fault of his own, could not answer the tacit question in the title of his talk. To what degree will there be policy continuity in Bosnia with the change of US administration? The matter, Miller said, is under scrutiny, and he hinted that he himself might be looking for a job in the private sector in a few months. There was one statement that I wish that Miller had not made, "I don't owe you anything." I think the Ambassador said this out of exasperation and tiredness, and I think that he did not mean it. What exasperates Miller is that Bosnia is a state without a government. At a macro-level, the international community is enabling. At the same time, the Ambassador said that Bosnia has more than enough people with good will, commitment, and qualification with which to establish a government that is responsible to its people.

After the Forum, I went to Kinoteka and saw Jean Luc Godard's "A Bout de Souffle" (Breathless). The French film had Serbo-Croat subtitles; several times I heard/read, "pas mal"/"nije lose." I focused on the non-language aspects of the film, for instance, the way in which Belmondo and Moreau, during the betrayal scene, walk in circles like a revolving record on a turntable, in this case, a record playing clarinet concerto by Mozart. The scene at the noisy Paris airport, in which Moreau interviews a "famous" director, is a tribute to "Le Jette," a short classic. At the airport, the director answers that he works to achieve immortality. In "Le Jette," which dramatizes the hero's mortality as he travels through time, the hero is killed at this airport just as the hero is about to achieve immortality. Students at Truman have pointed out to me that "Twelve Monkeys" is a knockoff of "Le Jette."

Sunday, February 18th

This morning I went to another session of "Creating the Wider Public Understanding of the Civil Society Idea." I saw an article in the Sunday edition of "Oslobodjenje" on Miller's lecture at Bosnia Hotel. (On page one, there was an article on the American bombing in Iraq.) There was a full page article in the middle of the paper. The caption under Miller's picture standing at the podium read, "Ja uvijek u glavi iman viziju," which means "I always have a vision in my head." I was afraid that the caption would be his remark, "I don't owe Bosnia anything." The contrast between my dread of what the caption could have been and the reality of what the caption was says something about Bosnians. Miller stressed repeatedly how he is a practitioner and not a theoretician, and the reporter played up how he was a theoretician. This is sort of funny. The procedure is the opposite of American journalism. American journalists make a political figure look as bad as possible, and Bosnian journalists, at least in this case, made a political figure look as good as possible.

In Vogosca, the session I attended was titled "BiH NGO Sector Consciousness and Public Image." After this, there was a closing plenary. Someone from Hungary made an interesting, "advisory" point. The question, he said, is not how to build a civil society as if there is no civil society here. There is a civil society in Bosnia whether or not it is acknowledged at academic conferences. Even during the war, under the most trying of times, there were always remnants of civil society, I would say, even in the concentration camps. The question is whether institutions, including NGO's, are supporting and meeting the needs of the civil society that exists. It is counterproductive to talk about building a civil society as if none exists when, in fact, one already does exist. During the war, institutions like the Yugoslav People's army and the state media turned destructively against civil society. Civil society, however, survived. Now state institutions are not trusted, and NGO's have stepped into this void and inherited the problems of the former institutions' relation to civil society.

Monday, February 19th

I met with the Project Manager for the Interdisciplinary Centre for Community Mental Health Studies, Sarajevo and Banja Luka. I will make a presentation to her post-graduate course this weekend. I will draw upon my book Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia: Humanistic Reflections and the chapter on rape in Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice. The manager and I have read many of the same authors in the field (Goffman, Foucault, Deleuze, Mead), and we have similar attitudes toward the subject of mental health. This afternoon I had coffee with Professor Mahmutcehajic, and we discussed the colloquia that International Forum Bosnia will sponsor.

Tuesday, February 20th

A weather front came through; it was a beautiful, clear day. Such days had to have been especially hellish in Sarajevo during the siege. You can see perfectly the houses on the hillside where Serb snipers and gunners were. In turn, you can be seen just as perfectly from the hills. I bought a book I find poignant; it is titled Shame On You, Europe by Vehid Gunic. The author is a radio and television journalist in Sarajevo. Tomorrow evening I will visit Eldin's parents. I am looking forward to this.

Wednesday, February 21st

Bosnian is difficult. Intellectually, I can master it. I cannot, though, make my tongue follow what I think I know. Here is something. Three sons. Tri sina. Numbers one to four are followed by nouns in the genitive singular. Sina is a masculine noun in the genitive singular. From five and above, nouns take the genitive plural. Also, one syllable, masculine nouns have a special ending in the plural. Grad (city). Gradovi (cities). So, five sons is pet sinova.

Dinner was wonderful at Eldin’s parents. Despite my objections, Eldin’s father escorted me home in a taxi. He said that his wife, Lala, insisted because she said that, if I were to become sick, he would need to know where to come to.

Thursday, February 22nd

My office partner is Amer Filipovic. He teaches two interesting courses: History of Civilization and Sociology of Culture. I looked at his course outlines. His father is a well-known philosopher in the Faculty of Philosophy. His brother, an Orientalist, studies at University of Princeton. We went for coffee and talked about the Praxis philosophers, the popular, "humanistic," Marxists in Belgrade who supported and promoted Serbian nationalism. Amer showed me two good, "local," cheap restaurants. We ate at one which is also the Chess Club. Four years ago the Sarajevo Chess Club won the World Cup and recently the European Cup. Amer said that during the war, when shells were falling and people were being killed at any time in any place, players often came to the club. It was a refuge, and when people played chess, they felt as if life was normal again. Up until two weeks ago, the bridge club also played here.

Friday, February 23rd

This morning I made notes for some lectures, and this evening I went with three other Fulbrights in Sarajevo to dinner along with Jeff Anderson from the U.S. Embassy. We had a good exchange of experiences. Maureen Taylor is working with the Faculty of Journalism, Terri Day with the Faculty of Criminal Justice, Rory Conces with the Faculty of Philosophy, and myself with the Faculty of Political Science.

Saturday, February 24rd

I have been watching the video documentary "The Siege of Sarajevo: 1992-1996." In the video a bookstore owner says that complex books became the most popular during the war. Hegel, Aristotle, and Kant were the most sought after authors. Their complexity was a good distraction. The bookstore owner said that he had to learn what books to acquire. He had to learn the market so to speak. This evening there was a heavy snow storm, and young couples walked romantically up and down the ancient streets of Sarajevo. The couples liked and cared for each other; they seemed to enjoy each other's company. Courting was abundant. It is then eerie to look up into the hills and see the lights where Serb gunners were positioned during the siege.

Sunday, February 25th

This morning I lectured at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Community Mental Health Studies, Sarajevo and Banja Luka. The two year program for experienced social workers and psychologists is wonderfully designed. In March the twenty or so students go on a three month practicum in either Italy or England. Their understanding of community mental health is progressive, and I can say this after having served on the Mark Twain Community Mental Health Board in Northeast Missouri for many years. The Banja Luka class and the Sarajevo class were hooked up through the internet. There is a camera on the Banja Luka students and a camera on the Sarajevo students. I reviewed and discussed the work of Paulo Freire and his critique of the banking-model of education. I applied this material to how one, as a reader, relates to a text. It was interesting, politically, to consider the following two quotations in this classroom context: "This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well" and then "Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. . . . Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves." To what degree do these quotations bear on the situation in Bosnia? I could tell that people were thinking about it but nobody said anything. Eventually, though, animated discussion between the two classes occurred, and Rea said that such discussion was a first.

During the second part of the class, I reviewed my book, Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia: Humanistic Reflections, which seeks to recover clearly and objectively the variable of the self of the person with schizophrenia and to preserve society's recognition of the person with schizophrenia as a social actor. There were good questions and comments. People had read and knew Lev Vygotsky and Gregory Bateson. We discussed, for instance, whether the inner speech of someone with schizophrenia is or is not comparable to the ego-centric speech of the child. We also discussed how understanding the madness that stems from schizophrenia helps to understand the madness that stems from war. I was tired after the class.

Monday, February 26th

Today I worked in my office. Professor Milanka Mikovic gave me copies of a publication by Circle 99, a group of artists, intellectuals, journalists, and social leaders committed to preserving Bosnia as a legitimate, viable state grounded in its multi-cultural traditions and multi-ethnic character. All the religions and traditions within Bosnia over-lap historically and metaphysically. At noon, I had a conversation with Professor Muhamed Filipovic, from which I learned much and for which I am grateful. During the war, at the request of President Izetbegovic, Professor Filipovic went to Belgrade to talk with President Milosevic. Milosevic balked at Filipovic's suggestiong that they work out a peace agreement independently of the interntional community. Filipovic said that, while Milosevic controlled the army and virtually all the political structures, he did not control the Orthodox Church. Here, Milosevic said, was the reason why he could not accept the proposal that Filipovic brought to him.

Tuesday, February 27th

This morning I went to a Security Briefing at the U.S. Embassy. One part of the presentation was on mines. It is estimated that there are a million mines in Bosnia, 30% of these are marked. Since 1996, 300 people have been killed by mines, usually antipersonnel mines. 1000 people have been wounded. These mines were not imported from the US or China; they were made in Yugoslavia. An army placed a million mines within its own country.

At four o'clock I went to a class on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy taught by Professor Vladimir Premec. I met the teaching assistant, Damir Maric. Damir translated my essay, "'We Had to Jump Over the Moral Bridge': Bosnia and the Pathetic Hegemony of Face-work," which appeared in Dijalog. Damir recently finished his doctoral dissertation on Socrates and the cynics. During the class period a student responded to a paper I had previously shared with Professor Premec. After the student's presentation, we discussed the difference between Socratic theorizing and Marxist intellectualizing. Professor Premec asked me to explain the difference between my use of the terms genocide and "sociocide." I have seen books in Sarajevo that address the urbicide that occurred in Bosnia during the war. I said that the term, "sociocide," a neologism, can help understand how Bosnia, a society, was attacked and in some ways destroyed. Bosnian values based on over-lapping histories and religions were attacked, and it was these values that held Bosnia together as a community. Genocide, a legal term for which countries and people can be prosecuted, occurred in Bosnia and so did sociocide.

Wednesday, February 28th

In Sarajevo I saw three young boys, about ten years old, throwing snow balls at well dressed ladies walking along the street. The ladies, who were cosmopolitan, did not know whether to admonish or to ignore the boys. The boys smiled at their victims' ambivalence.

Thursday, March 1st

Today is a national holiday. The Faculty of Political Science and many stores are closed. It is sad. Bosnians in the Republic Srpska and also parts of Bosnia controlled by nationalist Croats do not celebrate the holiday. The holiday recognizes Bosnia's independence following the results of the national referendum taken on February 29th in 1992. The referendum was requested by the international community. Here were the results of the referendum: "The majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizens, regardless of the boycott skillfully organized by the SDS [Radovan Karadzic's party was subsequently responsible for ethnic cleansing] have voted for an independent, sovereign, and integral Bosnia and Herzegovina within its existing borders. Of 3,199,031 voters with the right to vote, 1,997,644 or 63.4% turned out, and of these 92.68% voted for an integral Bosnia and Herzegovina." "On the day of the election, SDS appealed to the Serbs not to vote in the referendum. That same day the Assembly of the Serb Republic adopted its own constitution and laws on the government, defense, and finances . . . . " (Vehid Gunic in Shame on You, Europe)

Friday, March 2nd

There is disturbing news from Western Bosnia. Here is a report.

Bosnian Croat nationalists meeting this weekend in Mostar could announce the

creation of a separate Croat entity, just days after the establishment of

moderate governments at Federation and state level.

On March 1, Ante Jelavic, the Bosnian Croat representative on the Bosnian

tripartite presidency, denounced the current Federation authorities as

"illegal". He was speaking at a rally in Busovaca in support of Dario

Kordic, a Bosnian Croat war-time leader recently jailed for 25 years by The

Hague war crimes tribunal.

"It's high time to say clearly that we cannot participate in this [Dayton

peace] process any more," Jelavic told the crowd. "From today the Federation

is a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) national entity, without Croats. These

authorities in Bosnia are illegal, illegitimate.

"We will neither participate in them nor shall we recognize their decisions.

I invite you all to Mostar on Saturday to make this historic decision."

Jelavic, who is leader of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, did not make

clear what the "decision" would be, but there are strong indications that he

will call for the incorporation of the Croat-populated areas into a separate

Bosnian entity. International officials in Bosnia have dismissed his

comments as "extremist nonsense".

IWPR's Balkan Crises Report, No. 223 (part one) http://www.iwpr.net

I have been asked to give a lecture to the Faculty of Political Science. They asked me to lecture from a chapter in my book titled, "Feminism and Rape as a Transgression of Species-Being." Erimina, my Bosnian tutor, has already translated the chapter. Today she asked me if she could make copies for her Social Work class. I appreciated her request. Several of her classmates are from Eastern Bosnia.

Saturday, March 3rd

Jeff Anderson invited the Fulbrights to a concert at Mostar sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Office.We left at noon and had a lamb lunch on the drive to Mostar. The Neretva River, which runs swiftly through steep mountains, is beautiful. Its majesty reminded me of the Columbia river along the Oregon border. Before the concert we walked around Old Mostar and saw the empty gap above the river where the old bridge had been. We also saw the recovered, white stones on a platform below. It is worth quoting at length at this point from Laura Silber and Allan Little's book, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation.

As the Neretva River enters the once beautiful city of Mostar, its broad flat banks steepen and rise until it cuts a narrow rocky canyon through the heart of the medieval Turkish town. At the narrowest part of the river, in 1566, the Turkish sultan had ordered the building of a bridge -- a single broad span of shining white cobalt. "It is one of the most beautiful bridges in the world," the novelist Rebecca West wrote. "A slender arch between two round towers, its parapets bent in a shallow angle at the center. I know of no country -- not even Italy or Spain -- that shows such invariable taste and such pleasing results."

The keepers of the bridge became known as the Mostari -- the Serbo-Croat word for bridge is most. From them, the town that grew up around the bridge took its name. The bridge -- and Mostar itself -- came to symbolize the very idea of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a place where Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim peoples lived distinctively, but together and in mutual tolerance. It was despised by many Croat nationalists for whom it represented a lasting reminder of Turkish influence in what they viewed as their Christian land. It survived the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It survived two World Wars. But on November 9, 1993 (four years to the day after the tearing down of the Berlin Wall) under a sustained artillery battering by Bosnian Croat forces, its beautiful arch collapsed into the deep-blue river pool below . . . . The Bosnian government declared a day of mourning. (page 291)

The concert in East Mostar started at 7:00 in the newly built Pavarotti Center. "Variations on America" was performed by Ira Spaulding, baritone, and John Ferguson, piano. They performed a variety of American music: folk songs, African-American spirituals, Broadway songs, and selections from "Porgy and Bess." Ana Babic, a Bosnian opera singer, performed "Summertime." There was tension in the concert hall because of the recent political action of the Bosnian national Croats. The last piece involved twenty-five young girls from Mostar, East and West Mostar. East Mostar is now generally where Bosniacs live. West Mostar is where Bosnian Croats live. It was not this way before the war. Mostar had a high degree of intermarriage not only between Croats and Muslims, but also Serbs. The young girls sang "It Ain't Necessarily So" with Ira Spaulding. They enjoyed themselves immensely and blushed at the audience's loud applause. The girls had practiced for two days with the visiting American musicians. During the concert I became homesick in a good way; my own daughters performed in a musical the same night in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

After the concert, we had a late dinner. We talked. One person compared Banja Luka, where he performed last year, to Sarajevo. Sarajevo is vibrant. The people of Sarajevo and their city were not destroyed, despite every attempt to do so, but the people of Banja Luka, some of whom attempted to destroy Sarajevo, may have destroyed themselves. The war criminals must be arrested if only so that the people who lived under them, some by choice and some not, may start to come to terms with their own ten years of horror. People in Banja Luka were very edgy.

Sunday, March 4th

At the Bristol Hotel in Mostar gun shots woke me up Sunday morning at 7:00 AM. Sometimes, at the start of Bajram, people shoot guns, some to celebrate, some to show disrespect. When I returned to my apartment in Sarajevo this afternoon, my neighbor had left cake and sweets on my kitchen table.

Monday, March 5th

Sarajevo may be one of the safer cities in the world. Women, young and old, walk home late at night with no fear. Why? I think that what Emile Durkheim would call the collective sentiment of the city now takes strong offense to crime and violence. After the war, to attack another is perhaps thinkable but not doable. The presence of police and police cars merely reinforces this collective cognition that exists. I may be idealizing, but it is an idealizing that Durkheim does. May this situation last for generations.

Tuesday, March 6th

The Bosnian language, I fear, is beyond my reach. Gore, for example, can mean three different things depending on how you pronounce the four letters, which in each case retain the same sound. Gore with the stress on the "o" means upstairs. It is an adverb. Gore with the stress on the "e" means hills, where gora is hill in the singular. Gore with the stress on both the "o" and the "e" means worse, and it is an adverb. There are also political issues. When I have asked for a loaf of bread with the word hleb, I could see that it bothers people. People winced. I learned this word from a travel phrase book published in 1975. I asked about this. Hleb is the "Serbian" word for bread. Bosnians in the Federation instead use hljeb or kruh. My problem is that these two words are harder to say. When I say kruh, it sounds like krug, which means circle. While I can put the h in front of a word, hvala for thanks, I have trouble putting the h at the end of a word such as kruh. Hljeb is difficult to say because of the lj. A solution, which I can seem to handle, is pronounce the lj as e.

Wednesday, March 7th

This evening I went to a piano concert, downtown by the river, at the Dom Armije. The concert was part of the Sarajevo Winter Festival, 2001. Arsen Carkic played two pieces by Franc List and one by Sergej Rahmanjinov. After the concert, two students said hello. I spoke Bosnian to one, and she was pleased, very pleased, that I was making the effort. She egged me on. She said that a visiting professor had been there a year and had not bothered to learn more than four words in Bosnian. This clearly bothered her. She laughed at the jokes I attempted in Bosnian.

Thursday, March 8th

This morning I met with the author and translator Mrs. Saba Risaluddin. We had comparable understandings of Europe's response to the war in Bosnia. There was a categorical imperative, a real one, which Europe ignored. Now it sounds hollow when international politicians speak in categorical imperatives to the people of Bosnia. She gave me a copy of her article, "Hoodwinked by Words," which I asked after. At the Faculty of Political Science, Amer Filipovic also gave me materials I asked after.

Friday, March 9th

The Fulbrights met again for dinner. Maureen had a friend visiting from the States. Tomorrow Terri, Maureen, and Melissa will celebrate Purim with the Jewish community in Sarajevo. One unaddressed flaw in the Dayton Peace Accords is that only a Bosnian Croat, a Bosnian Serb, and a Bosnian Muslim may assume a position in the Bosnian presidency. A Bosnian Jew is unqualified as written by the Dayton Peace Accords. This is a shame. Jakob Finci, an important leader of the Jewish community and Bosnia, would make (from what I can see) an excellent president. Finic was chairman of the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo years ago, and he did much to help people, all people, during the siege.

Saturday, March 10th

The easiest thing about learning Bosnian is imbedded in the following notion: what you read is exactly what you pronounce and what you hear is exactly what you write. The alphabet consists of thirty phonemes: one letter for each sound, and the pronunciation of the letters is constant, not varying with its position in a word. Also, each letter is always pronounced. In Bosnia there is no such thing as spelling bees. Everyone would win. With English, the ear (phonetics), the eye (the text), and the mind (semantics) may work independently of each other according to distinct rules. I have trouble re-plugging the ear, the eye, and the mind back together.

Sunday, March 11th

This morning I went to a communion service at St. Anthony's. The mosiac murals and modern wooden artwork in the church are beautiful. Sunlight came into the church during the service. Unlike St. Joseph's there was no music, but the priest said the service slowly and clearly.

Monday, March 12th

I note this news reported in the New York Times on March 6th -- "Night raids throughout Bosnia by 500 local police, coordinated with United Nations police monitors, migration officials and NATO-led peacekeepers, freed 177 women who had been forced to work as prostitutes in nightclubs across Bosnia." The women were kidnapped or tricked and came from poor areas in Eastern Europe, not Bosnia itself. The men running the brothels were apparently also war criminals.

Tuesday, March 13th

A professor from University of Dayton came to Sarajevo yesterday. He is doing a series of lectures at the University of Sarajevo. He brought me a packet from home, some pictures and Starbuck coffee. He invited me to join him for dinner last night. Oddly enough, the hostess recognized me because we had met briefly when I visited Sarajevo four years ago. At the time, I had brought a package for her from David Berman, a Professor at University of Pittsburgh. At the dinner were a graduate student at University of Pittsburgh studying the attitudes of Bosnians toward mines, the hostess' husband, who is a journalist, and Charles' host, who just completed a book on Persian culture. During the conversation, I learned that there are four high schools or gymnasija in Sarajevo. The "first" gymnazija, located near the river, claims two Nobel Peace Prize Winners: Ivo Andric in Literature and Milan Prelog in Chemistry. I wonder how many high schools can make such a claim.Of course, people in Sarajevo love to point out this fact to visitors.

I spend the day at the Cultural Affairs Office. Four of us, a local professor, a professor from the States, a State Department Officer, and myself, interviewed ten Bosnian students applying to a program to study at a U.S. University for one year. The process is rigorous, and I felt sorry for the young adults interviewed for thirty minutes. They were all articulate and keen. They have experienced and learned many things during the war. Each student was morally precocious and psychologically sophisticated, but each was also a young adult. It was difficult, if not impossible, to rank them.

Wednesday, March 14

Last night I went out to dinner again. My hostess, Mrs. Mahmutcehajic, said that I took small portions. My host, Professor Mahmutcehajic, gave me a beautiful gift, a special-edition copy of The Sarajevo Haggadah, which was dramatically saved from the Nazis during World War II and then again during the recent war. The Sarajevo Haggadah comes with a text by Eugen Werber on the historical and theological significance of the priceless manuscript. Haggadah means story in Hebrew; the illustrated manuscript from medieval Spain is kept in the State Museum in Sarajevo. There are wine stains on the leather pages from when it was read during Passover.

Here is an interesting report.

Bosnia's Two Armies Held First Ever Joint War Game

BANJA LUKA, Mar 15, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Bosnian Serb and

Muslim-Croat armies -- bitter enemies during the 1992-95 war -- held a joint

war game for the first time on Wednesday, Bosnian Serb TV reported.

Soldiers grouped in 17 teams competed at a Bosnian Serb artillery range on the

northwestern mountain of Manjaca in a 12 kilometer (seven mile) march

carrying 16 kilograms (35 pounds) heavy military equipment. They also took

part in a shooting competition.

The NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) also participated in the war game

with six teams. Seven teams were from Muslim-Croat army, while four were

from the Republika Srpska army, the Bosnian Serb entity).

The Muslim-Croat army came in first, which won three first places.

Mario Bradara, a general with the Muslim-Croat army, said he was satisfied

with the day, adding that "teams which came were indeed very well equipped,

trained and prepared".

Bosnia's two semi-independent entities -- Serb-run Republika Srpska and the

Muslim-Croat Federation -- each have their own army and police force. The

Muslim-Croat Federation army is divided into a Croatian and a Muslim

component under a joint command. ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)

Thursday, March 15

Last night I went out for dinner again! The editor of a newspaper said that, if he had enough money, he would send everyone to Washington, DC in order for them to see the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. We also talked about the status and the name "Republika Srpska" within Bosnia Herzegovina. He said that it simply rewarded genocide and the aggression against Bosnia. The purpose of ethnic cleansing was to create a "Republika Srpska." If the purpose is achieved and granted by the international community, does it not also justify the means? When a part of a nation is allowed to take the name republic, it eventually, someone pointed out, succeeds. What now will stop "Republika Srpska" from succeeding from Bosnia? Taking the name away may be the only way to stop a succession. Someone pointed out that, just as I said that I have cried when I visited the Vietnam Memorial, she cries when she sees the name "Republika Srpska." This name, "Republika Srpska," is something that Milosevic fought hard for at the Dayton Peace Accord negotiations, and Richard Holbrooke, after pressuring the Bosnian delegation to acquiesce, gave it to Milosevic. The editor of a newspaper also pointed out that the Dayton Peace Accord has the status of dogma; nobody is allowed to question it. It was only after leaving the dinner that I realized what a powerful conversation this was.

Friday, March 16

Last night I again went out. An assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Science and her friend invited me for a drink. She said that I looked lonely. I thought that this was kind. In her work, she reads Husserl, Plato, and Aristotle. She asked me if I had ever experienced war. Her friend works at BH Television. Both asked what I thought of Sarajevo; they couldn't quite believe me when I said that I thought Sarajevo was beautiful. They asked me why, and I pointed to the Miljaska river. This afternoon Amer and I had a conversation. We talked about phenomenology and the war. During the war, he said, everything, for instance, who people were (who they really were) became perfectly clear. The water was transparent. That is, it was a good time to be a phenomenologist especially if one wanted to understand anything. Phenomenology, though, is now the least appreciated and understood intellectual tradition in the academy. Who reads Husserl, Gadamer? People reading this diary may not know what I mean by phenomenology, and I do not sure if I want to say. Phenomenology has the reputation for being an esoteric philosophy, but of all the philosophies it is really the most exoteric. Phenomenology directly studies what is, that is, the appearance in and of itself. It does not engage in experimentation or comparison. Amer and I discussed my lecture tomorrow. He said that during the war he would put bodies left at cemeteries into graves. Funerals were often shelled during the siege.

Saturday, March 17th

The lecture sponsored by International Forum Bosnia at 11:00 AM in Hotel Bosnia went well. I kept the lecture short, thirty minutes, and there was discussion afterwards. People seemed to like the lecture, titled "The Ethical Requirement of Burial and its Transgression during the Genocide against Bosnia." As I said in the lecture, I turned to the discipline of anthropology to research the talk, and I learned to appreciate and respect anthropology. Classical anthropologists have a better understanding of the funeral and its significance than sociologists. Today is St. Patrick's Day, and the Fulbrights are meeting at an Irish Pub near the train station.

Sunday, March 18th

This week I was happy that a sociology major at Wittenberg University used the Question and Conversation link on my Home Page. She is the first, and now I actually see that the idea is a good one, both for me and for people reading the diary. The sociology major asked about the collective behavior of the city given some comments I had made. Her query moved me to think of and say more things that I might not have. Here is my response also posted on the Questions and Conversation link:

At night the collective behavior downtown in the old city is convivial and free-spirited. Young people have fun meeting up with friends and being gregarious. When they see a friend, they greet each other with a cheek to cheek kiss. On the trolley, when girlfriends see each other heading downtown, they laugh, make room for each other, and converse. Young people go downtown to see and to be seen. It is like a low-key carnival, quite gay but nonthreatening. In relation to strangers, it is not like a small town. People look at me and neither smile nor say hello if there is eye contact. Sometimes I say dobar dan, and they nod or reply. In my neighborhood, where I shop, people do smile and say hello when they see me. Sarajevo is a small city that has a strong gemeinshaft, something Ferdinand Toennies would call an oxymoron.

Today I found a Eucharist Service in English in the Franciscan monastery at St. Anthony's, a well-known Catholic Church in Sarajevo. There were a few US military people, some British couples, and two State Department people at the service. The singing without an organ was impressive. On the second verse everyone started singing harmony except me. It was as if nobody else was singing the melody, and I could not hold it given the strength of the others singing harmony. Perhaps here is a good image of the postmodern situation; everyone is signing harmony and nobody is singing melody and so one wonders if there is one and, if so, what it is. A Navy chaplain presided over communion. Before the service started, people picked out the hymns they wanted to sing.

Monday, March 19th

I had coffee with Asim and Damir, two assistant professors at University of Sarajevo. Asim has written a book on Richard Rorty. Damir just finished his doctoral dissertation on Socrates and the cynics. One thing we talked about was Ronald Dworkin and his understanding of how individual rights may "trump" collective rights. Asim and Daric pointed out that there is no notion of individual rights in Bosnia. Only a notion of collective rights governs political and government decisions. Asim also said that in a way the Dayton Peace Accord helped trigger the fighting in Macedonia. Every group now wants its entity. If the Serbs can have an entity in Bosnia, why cannot the Croats have their entity in Bosnia? Why can the Albanians not have their entity in Macedonia? The Dayton Peace Accords, he said, set a bad precedent. I gave Damir Jacob Klein's Trilogy, a book on Plato. A TV camera was at the lecture Saturday, and someone said they saw me on television.

Tuesday, March 20th

This morning Norman Cigar called. He is in Sarajevo doing some research. He has written two or three important books on Bosnia; one is Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of "Ethnic Cleansing" We arranged to have dinner together, and we met near the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral where men play chess in the public square. Each chess piece is about three or four feet tall (hollow plastic), and twenty or so people watch the game. We had dinner at a restaurant that also serves as a chess and bridge club. Norman reminded me of Richard Johnson's paper titled "Pinstripe Diplomacy," a paper by a former State Department officer on how the State Department in 1991 and 1992 avoided using the word genocide to describe the ethnic cleaning in Bosnia even though this word was appropriate and accurate for describing the situation.

Wednesday, March 21st

Today I visited and taught a class. A chapter from my book, "Rape as a Transgression of Species-Being," was translated and handed out the week before to students. The chapter develops a sociology of rape using Karl Marx's notion of species-being. Ermina, who tutors me in Bosnia, was my translator. I talked for a few minutes in Bosnian. Then, Ermina translated for me. I noted the difficulty of writing the paper and discussed how the paper came about following a conversation with Beverly Allen, author of Rape Warfare. Then we had an open discussion, and I learned a lot. One person questioned the link between the feminism of Donna Haraway and the analysis in the paper. It made me realize, as someone later said to me after the lecture, feminism may not be so active in Bosnia. This made me realize that the feminism that I was discussing in my chapter was postmodern or bourgeois feminism, which does not relate well to Bosnia. During the communist era, there was a socialist feminism, but now the situation is in limbo. Neither bourgeois nor socialist feminism seem to apply. Feminism seems dormant both politically and intellectually. Another person talked about the life of the rapist now. Can the rapist live with or be intimate with his wife without thinking of the women he raped in a rape camp? Can a mother look at her son knowing that he raped women during the war? Can a son look at his mother looking at him knowing that she knows that he raped women? The assumption of the students was that the aggressors were just animals with no conscience. The victims, they said, were worse off. Our religions, though, say that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong although no one would choose to suffer wrong and everyone would avoid suffering wrong. Still, if the choice is between suffering wrong and doing wrong, the moral choice is to suffer wrong. Students found this argument strange, that is, foreign to their conception of the aggressors during the war. Still, I said that the aggressors were worse off because they had chosen to do wrong, which is a worse situation than suffering wrong. We also talked about whether it is good to think of the rapists as just aggressors, that is, behaving like animals, rather than as people who made a choice, a choice to act in an unjust or inhuman way. To say that the rapists were just behaving like animals in a way lets them off the hook in terms of social and moral responsibility. Another student asked about the current trials at the Hague for the rapes in Foca. He asked if the sentences were just or fair. We also discussed the need to arrest the indicted war criminals. Students thought that it was strange if not laughable to think that the people who participated in genocide and ethnic cleansing need a chance or opportunity to say that they were wrong and that they are sorry for what they did. The students said that the aggressors would never say that "we are sorry" or that "we were wrong." Bosnians feel disappointed by the world's neglect and so betrayed that they ask what can they really say now that would make a difference. I learned that, if I were a Bosnian, I would likely feel the same way. After class, one girl came up and asked me if I really thought that the victimizers were suffering more than their victims. I had to say yes. She laughed, but she agreed that maybe everyday people feel bad, but she said that the political leaders do not and never will. Much was said during class, and I am not sure how to understand it all. Two faculty, who came to the class, gave me a ride home.

Thursday, March 22nd

This evening the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy gave a lecture at the Faculty of Philosophy. He spoke french clearly and slowly, and I could understand a little, but just a little more than the translation in Bosnian. This shows how well I am progressing with Bosnian. It was fun to watch people ask questions and watch him respond. There were one hundred people there. After seeing Nancy and hearing about him, I am motivated to read his books on identity in these times. He is a well appreciated philosopher in Sarajevo. Here is how UgoVlaisavljevic, a professor of philosopher at University of Sarajevo, uses Nancy in his paper titled "The South Slav Identity and the Ultimate War-Reality."

War is an event (cf. Nancy 1995) because it is not just a military clash but a cultural deprivation as well. It is this deprivation experienced by the defeated ethnie that opens up a gap in its symbolic universe, a wound in its spiritual body. After an intrusion of the Real, the small ethnie begins to be exposed to an irresistible symbolic intrusion, and this happens during a time when it is in a most fragile condition requiring all its symbolic tools to be recovered, i.e., to elaborate the first intrusion. War is an event because it describes a point of transgression between two cultural patterns, a lacuna that will attract an intensive symbolization within at least one of them.

Friday, March 23rd

Today is my sister's birthday, and her first name is Nancy. I sent her an email birthday card. This afternoon I had coffee with with friends. We talked about Nancy, the philosopher, who had a book signing this morning.

We also talked about learning Bosnian. There are three introductory textbooks that I know of. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, I think, one should learn Bosnian from all three simultaneously. I am not saying that there are three languages; I am saying that for both cultural and political reasons it is good to study from and benefit from each textbook. The three textbooks that I know of are: Colloquial Serbo-Croat by Celia Hawkesworth, Bosanski Jezik, Bosnian Language by Fatima Pelesic-Muminovic, and Serbo-Croat: A Complete Course for Beginners by David F. Norris. There is also a dictionary and phrase book titled Bosnian-English/English-Bosnian, Dictionary and Phrasebook by Susan Kroll. It is interesting to compare the pedagogy of the grammar books. Hawkesworth's is the most literary and fluent. Her love and mastery of the language is challenging. She is a well-known translator of literature. At the same time, the material in her lessons can be odd in terms of gender relations. For example, "Tko je ta lijepa dama?" "To nije nikakva dama, to je moja zena." Pelesic-Muminovic's is based in Sarajevo and oriented to young adults from a global perspective. Many words and names are contemporary, local, and Sarajevo based. "Robert i Tarik sjede u Holiday Innu" or "hurmasica," a Bosnian pastry. The grammar is presented easily, almost too easily. Norris's book is between the first two in terms of challenging the student. The language is Croatian based, for instance, "Sto radite" rather than "Sta radite" or "Tko ste vi" rather than "Ko ste vi." Also, Bosnians, I am told, would not say, "Da li volite zivjeti u Londonu?" The problem with the phrase book, which has some discussion of grammar, is that it gives the infinitive of a verb but not the present, first person conjugation of the verb, which you need in order to conjugate the verb. Of course, if one learned any of these books completely, one could speak understandably; it is simply that one may not be using the words and grammar that the people with whom you are speaking use. It is interesting, therefore, to consider the three books together, their differences and similarities. One reviews by repeating the same thing in another book, and one sees how language is indeed based in a social and political context.

Saturday, March 24th

More than one Bosnian has said to me that the Bosnians who are Catholic are not Croat. They are Bosnians. Bosnia is their country. For many, the notion that "if you are Catholic and live in Bosnia you are a Croat" lacks common sense and historical sense. Politicians are playing with people's identity. Consider the story of Bosnia's queen, Queen Katarina, who fled to Rome after the Turkish invasion of Bosnia, an invasion that took several years to complete.

“The sad fate of Queen Katarina is variously given by various historians and differently again by pseudo-historians. But even after we have ignored all the fictions and legends that have accrued round her name in a dramatic and moving way she was the embodiment of a personal and collective tragedy - the bizarre situation of Bosnia in the second half of the fifteenth century.

Katarina was the daughter of Herceg Stjepan Vukcic Kosaca and Jelena daughter of the Zeta nobleman Balso III. In 1466 she married King Stjepan Tomas and became queen of Bosnia. She had nobility of both blood and nature, and under the influence of her chaplains who were ardent Franciscans she became a devout Catholic and spread around her an atmosphere of goodness . . . .

By the Francisians Katarina is honored as a third-order Francisan and as blessed. In the surroundings of Bobovac and Kraljeva Stujeska October 25, the day she died, is still commemorated and Catholic women still wear a black scarf in memory of ‘their queen.’” From Inner Land: A Short Survey of the Cultural History of Bosnia Hercegovina by Ivan Lovrenovic.

This morning I felt a tension in the crowds downtown given the recent events in Western Bosnia. The tension, of course, may have only been within me. Still, what is happening in Mostar and Western Bosnia is ominous given the recent history of ethnic cleansing that started just over ten years ago. The memory is fresh in people's minds. Here is a recent post from IWPR.

CROAT TROOPS MUTINY

Tension mounts in Bosnia as Croat officers leave the Federation army

Bosnian Croat nationalists raised the stakes this week in their campaign to

set-up a separate mini-state in Bosnia.

Officers from the First Guard Corps, an exclusively Croat unit in the

Federation's military forces, VF, based in Mostar, refused to recognize the

army's joint command and the Bosnian ministry of defense.

The move heralds the formation of a separate Bosnian Croat army following

the March 3 threat to create a new mini-state by the Croatian National

Assembly.

The new force is estimated to number between 7,000 and 11,000 soldiers.

Ministry of defense documents, which would have provided more accurate

figures, disappeared on the day the Federation's minister of defense,

Miroslav Prce, left office.

The creation of an independent Bosnian Croat army has coincided with a

scaling-down of the United State's presence in the country. Washington is to

withdraw 800 troops from Bosnia in the near future.

Despite the rising tension, the international Stabilisation Force, S-For,

has so far failed to take any concrete steps to counter the Croat move.

The Croatian National Assembly is seeking to set up self-rule in two Croat

dominated cantons in Herzegovina and three majority-Croat cantons elsewhere

in Bosnia. The assembly has asked for customs revenue to be redirected to

fund the mini-state.

The High Representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, responded to the March 3

declaration by dismissing Ante Jelavic from the leadership of the

nationalist Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and the tripartite presidency.

He and three other HDZ officials were also banned from any future political

activity.

The HDZ is furious at the election of a moderate government in the

Federation and at Bosnian state level. The Federation's new government took

over on March 13, despite a four-month-long boycott by the HDZ.

Made up of the ten-party Alliance for Change, no representatives from the

HDZ or the Bosniak nationalist Party for Democratic Action are included in

the new administration.

On March 5, Jelavic warned, "I'll never allow the HVO [Croatian Defence

Force] to fall under the command of the Alliance." That day, the then

Federation minister of defense, Miroslav Prce, announced HVO units were to

disband, thereby ending their subordination to the military's joint command.

Prce ordered units to remove Federation insignia from their uniforms.

On taking over at the defense ministry, Anic immediately canceled Prce's

orders and asked soldiers to remain in their units. S-For deputy commander,

British Major General Robert Dannatt, congratulated Anic and promised the

international force would prevent "any attempt on part of Croatian National

Assembly to draw the Croat component of Federation Army into the political

arena".

Nevertheless, VF deputy commander Dragan Curcic and seven other Croat

officers resigned. Curcic was replaced by Ivo Lozancic, vice-president of

New Croat Initiative party and a member of the Alliance for Change

coalition. This prompted a further 15 Croat officers to announce they would

not recognize Lozancic as their commander. The next day the First Guard

Corps mutinied.

It appears the HDZ has planned developments well. So far it has kept one

step ahead of the international community and the Federation authorities.

The First Guard Corps has all the necessary components for an army. It is

made up of four professional brigades - based in Drvar, Jasenica, Vitez and

Orasje. Each brigade has army reserves and coordinates activity outside the

VF.

On March 20, the commander of the First Guard Corps, Zlatan Mijo Jelic, said

the entire force was in support of the Croatian National Assembly and would

no longer obey VF joint command orders. Jelic showed the supporting

signatures of 51 of the corps' officers.

"So far 80 to 90 per cent of Croatian officers have left the VF joint

command and the ministry of defence, and I now call upon others to do the

same," Jelic said.

Jelic added, however, that the force would continue to cooperate with

international organizations and S-For, although he failed to explain how

this would be possible given his officers were in breach of the Dayton

agreement, which S-For is in Bosnia to maintain.

On March 22, Dannatt said, "A Bosnian Croat armed force outside the

Federation structure is not permitted under Dayton. I...strongly urge anyone

considering any form of anti-Dayton military activity to abandon it

immediately."

Lozancic admitted on March 20 that he had lost control over troops in the

south of the country. Anic issued a five-day deadline for officers to return

to work or lose their jobs. By Thursday, Anic said the situation was

improving with some officers returning to work.

In an effort to pre-empt similar problems with the police, the Federation's

new interior minister, Muhamed Besic, and the chief of the international

police force, UN-IPTF, Vincent Courderoy, sent letters to cantonal police

chiefs on March 15 giving precise instructions as to what action to take

against anti-constitutional activity.

Police officers were reminded they are under oath and that any evidence of

political activity would result in immediate dismissal.

Nevertheless, on March 21 Croat police officers in Bosniak-majority

municipalities received letters calling on them to leave their jobs. Besic

said few responded to the call and police work was continuing undisrupted.

But unofficial sources claim senior Croats at the Federation ministry of

interior will be the first to walk out and that a parallel police force is

being set up.

On March 16, in Sarajevo a small force of 50 guards in black uniforms, armed

with light weapons, escorted Jelavic and other HDZ officials at a memorial

mass for Jozo Leutar, the former Federation minister of interior murdered

last year. Several "stewards" were also bussed from Herzegovina for the

event.

A large contingent of Sarajevo police officers were sent to the church, but

the event passed off without incident.

Nonetheless, the appearance of an unofficial armed "police" force and the

insubordination of the First Guard Corps bring back worrying memories of

1991, when the Serbian Democratic Party engineered a split in the country's

security forces along national lines. War came soon after.

Ten years on, and the situation differs in one important respect - there are

22,000 S-For troops stationed in Bosnia. Dannatt said the international

force was monitoring developments closely, especially in specific VF arms

dumps.

"Everyone knows that should anyone make any unauthorized step towards these

warehouses, we shall be very quick to react," Dannett said.

The Peace Implementation Council lent its full support to Petritsch for his

swift action against Croat officials and army officers. The Council

condemned any move to set up Croat self-rule.

But concrete steps need to be taken at once to prevent the situation

deteriorating further. Petritsch is likely to block an HDZ bank account held

at Hercegovacka Banka in Mostar . It's thought to contain 54 million German

marks.

Petritsch said in a newspaper interview that he thought the Croat move had

been planned over several months - and that money had been deposited in the

account to pay the wages of officials, army and police officers in the first

months of the new "entity".

Events are unfolding fast and tension is high. Not since the signing of the

Dayton Peace Accord has Bosnia been so shaken. All eyes are on the

international community.

Amra Kebo is a regular IWPR contributor.

Again, there is this dependency on the promises and the responsibility of the "international community," and there is also the vulnerability of being dependent upon these promises. It is disturbing and disheartening that, after Bosnia finally established a non-nationalistic government just a week or so ago, these events would be allowed to unfold. But Bosnians won't throw in the towel.

Sunday, March 25th

I did not realize that there was a Day Light Savings Time change today, and I arrived at the Eucharist Service at St. Anthony's an hour late, that is, at the end of the Service. Somebody else did the same thing. This afternoon Amer and I had coffee. Amer and I talked about the movie "Children of Paradise," a famous French film made during WW II. I had not realized that a French poet, Jacques Prevert, had written the script. It is a great film, maybe the best film ever made. Amer said that he saw it and other films on the Bosnian public TV station, which always showed classic films. This evening I watched "Blue in the Face," a "mockdocumentary" about the diversity and special sociability of life in Brooklyn, a great film for the city of Sarajevo because their collective consciousness seems similar. Also, the attitude of the characters toward smoking in "Blue in the Face" seems similar to the attitude of people in Sarajevo.

Monday, March 26

I am beginning to put sentences together in Bosnian. The problem, of course, is when I hear the response I do not comprehend. Pravo is an interesting word or rather interesting three words. Pravo with a short accent on both vowels means straight ahead. Idemo pravo; we are going straight ahead. Pravo with a long accent on each vowel means right. Imate pravo; you are right. Pravo with a short accent on "a" and a long accent on "o" means law. Vazno je pravo; law is important.

Tuesday, March 27th

I spoke again in Professor Premec's philosophy class at the Faculty of Philosophy. A student made a presentation on an article I wrote, "The Critique of Utilitarianism in Structure and Gorgias," which was published in the Austrian Journal of Sociology. The paper compares Talcott Parsons' critique of utilitarianism in The Structure of Social Action with Plato's critique of sophistry in Gorgias. The students are reading Plato. After the presentation, I was asked to make some comments. I noted some background issues and said why I wanted to write the paper. I said that just as theology studies the sacred or jurisprudence studies justice, sociology studies action. What, then, is action and what is the strongest way to explain action? I contrasted the concept of behavior with the concept of action, the latter including the role of choice and normative elements. The class went from 4 to 6. At 6, when I thought the class would end, a student asked a question. Then, another student asked a question. Then, another student asked a question. We stayed until past 7 where the students themselves sustained the discussion with wise, perceptive comments. This was a wonderful experience. The students asked: Why was I interested in Bosnia?, What do I know about Bosnians and their lives in the US? What do I, as an outsider, think caused the war?, Do I think that there is a chance that life will return to normal in Bosnia? They shared their own opinions as they asked the questions.

Wednesday, March 28th

After working in the office in the Faculty of Political Science, I had coffee with people.

Thursday, March 29th

Today was a busy day. In January (before I came to Bosnia) the teacher of my youngest daughter asked if I could make a link to a school in Sarajevo so that a teacher in Sarajevo and she could set up a pen pal exchange between students. I have been talking to the Cultural Affairs Office, and they recommended a school in the part of Sarajevo that is in the Serb entity, "Serb Sarajevo." This morning we drove to the school to meet the school mistress, Mrs. Ranka Mandic, and her students. Jeff Anderson, who works at the Cultural Affairs Office, gave a talk on the American school system. We had coffee and I gave Mrs. Mandic the email address of Mrs. Poortinga and the Webpage URL of the Mills Lawn Elementary School. I also took pictures of the class and sent them to Mrs. Poortinga over the internet. The name of the school is "Jovan Ducic," after the famous Serbian poet, who was buried in the United States in the 1940's and recently reburied in Trebinje, also in Republic of Srpska in Bosnia Herzegovina. Here is the school's mission statement.

Our current School Development plan has, as its major aim, the introduction and development of closer links with parents and the local community. Therefore, we have hopes of making the school accessible to all, not only a building where young people are educated, but a thriving community center. We are determined to achieve this major aim for our school and, with help of all concerned, will endeavor through every means possible to raise money for this focal point of our vision of the school as the living heart and center of education, culture, and civil society in our area. "Jovan Ducic" will become an important resource in the community, providing facilities for teaching and learning, for meetings, leisure activities, fund raising endeavors, sports, and cultural activities.

This afternoon I meet with Craig Zelizer, who is the Program Director at the Alliance for Conflict Transformation, and his friend MJ Kittredge, who is a graduate student in International Peace and Law at American University. Craig called and asked to meet. We had coffee and talked about what we were all doing in Sarajevo. They asked about my book, which they had bought. Our interests overlapped.

This evening I went to a reception at the Holiday Inn for participants of the Third International Philosophical Colloquium, "Universalism and Belonging." Faculty from Verona and Paris attended and presented at the Colloquium. Adam Seligman, author of a book on trust and, more recently, Modernity's Wager, also came from Boston College. At the reception, I talked to someone standing next to me. First, we talked about Hannah Arendt. I made some comment about Hannah Arendt inflating the significance of Kant's philosophy and deflating the significance of Hegel's philosophy. She said she agreed. Then, we talked about Mikhail Bakhtin, and she said that she also found his work compelling. Then, she asked me my opinion of the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. I said that one way to understand his philosophizing was to note its anti-Platonic character. She nodded. Then, we talked about Judith Butler and her theorizing on identity from a postmodern perspective. She then told me that she was a close friend of Judith Butler and that she was a Hannah Arendt scholar who taught every fourth semester at New York City University. At this point, I asked who she was, and she said her name was Adriana Cavarero. She is the author of several well received books in feminist philosophy, Relating Narratives and In Spite of Plato: Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. Only in Sarajevo! When my daughters are older, I will tell them that I talked with Adriana Cavarero. And my daughters will reply, "Daddddd...."

Friday, March 30th

I attended the morning and afternoon sessions of "Universalism and Belonging." Professor Premic gave the opening address. Since most of the outside professors were Italian, there was simultaneous translation only for Italians. People were kind. When her Italian colleague spoke, Adriana Cavarero volunteered to translate for me. When a French professor spoke, a Bosnian graduate student volunteered to translate for me. Milena, who was the translator for my lecture at Hotel Bosnia, was also there, and she translated for me when a Bosnian scholar spoke. I was one of the few monoglots there, and I cursed my limitation. An Italian scholar spoke on the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I had studied intensely as an undergraduate student in an upper-level seminar at Dickinson College. After the morning session, Ugo Vlaisavljevic invited me to join him with a friend, who had been in Sarajevo with him during the war for nine months. She is an anthropologist from the Netherlands. Ugo said that she wanted to meet me. Ugo gave me a copy of his book, Writing/Pismo, produced in collaboration with a graphic and photographic artist, Nusret Pasic and Mehmed Aksamija. The three authors together bear witness.

Saturday, March 31st

I talked with someone who studied Italian in Perugia. We compared Perugia and Sarajevo; when I was a graduate student, I had attended conferences there in phenomenology. I said that Perugia and Sarajevo were alike. They were small and seemingly self-sufficient cities. Both were like worlds unto themselves. Perugia is isolated on a hill surrounded by old Etruscan walls; Sarajevo is nested in the crevice of a valley surrounded tightly by mountains. Milena pointed out that the natives of Perugia are closed to outsiders. I, too, had had the same experience. Foreign students come and go, and the natives of Perugia seem to have no interaction or interest in them. A significant social barrier exists between visitors to Perugia and natives of Perugia. Sarajevo is different. Sarajevo is open to outsiders. The natives of Sarajevo include people and engage them openly. During the war and over the last five years, a lot of people, however, visited Sarajevo and were blessed with its tradition of hospitality. We began to wonder if people in Sarajevo would burn out given the high turnover of visitors to Sarajevo. Would people in Sarajevo become like people in Perugia? On the one hand, it would only be human nature if this were to happen. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the people of Sarajevo becoming as closed as the people of Perugia.

Ugo gave an interesting talk on language. Bosnians are practically trilingual by default. They can speak Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. But all three are practically one language. Their differences are lexical. There is a Croatian dictionary, a Serbian dictionary, and a Bosnian dictionary. While many words are the same, different dictionaries highlight the different words in different regions. Ugo compared it to the idea of a butcher, a baker, and a banker having distinct languages. The butcher does not understand the words the banker uses, and the banker does not understand the words the butcher uses. But they speak the same language. Language, though, has become a political matter. To create a homogeneous nation-state, it is also necessary to create a distinct language. Language is thus used in social interaction to identify people with certain groups. Through language people enjoy being a member of one's own group and also enjoy being a non-member of another group. There are now strict norms regarding the words one uses and does not use in specific groups.

I spoke in the last session of the Colloquium on "Politics, Ideology, and Religion." People were drawing upon their traditions and experiences to address the subject of universalism and belonging. I wondered what tradition I would draw upon. As an American and non-European, what resources do I have? My answer to the question was the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King speaks eloquently to universalism and belonging. I said that if it were not for King, America would not be America. If it were not for King, I am not sure that I would want to be an American. I noted that it was enlightening as well as disturbing to consider King's thoughts in the context of Bosnia. It is enlightening because King's thoughts are as poignant and pressing in Bosnia today as they were in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. It is disturbing because King's love of truth and knowledge of justice seem to be at even greater odds with our times. King was a master of speaking to human beings who did not recognize their humanity and who did not recognize his humanity. I, then, read a few passages from King's speeches, for instance, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," "Justice too long delayed is justice denied," or "We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right." I think that the Europeans were interested. Before I was quite finished, they clapped and I decided to stop while I was ahead.

I came back to my apartment tired. Ugo invited me to speak to his third year philosophy class on Monday.

Sunday, April 1st

At the Communion service at St. Anthony's someone picked the hymn "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded." After the service, I walked downtown and bought a newspaper in a store. The radio was giving news on the arrest of Milosevic. I asked the person there, with whom I had talked before, what has happened. She said that she did not know and did not care. She said, though, that the people on the radio knew. Is my question like asking for a baseball score? I wondered if she thought that I was too familiar. I, in fact, was hoping that Milosevic had not been killed during his arrest. It is imperative for Milosevic to be taken to the Hague, if only so that the people who lived under his power may start to recognize, acknowledge, speak about, and take responsibility for happened under his rule and during their deference to his rule. It may be too late for the arrest of Milosevic to be meaningful for his victims, especially given the ambiguous reasons that Serbs provide for the arrest. The loss of human life, the pain, the suffering, the horror, the betrayal, and the bad faith are too immense to measure. Over a thousand mosques throughout Bosnia were destroyed during the ethnic cleansing. When I asked my question, I felt as if the girl glared at me.

Monday, April 2nd

I saw that the police are giving tickets to cars parked illegally and men are more frequently checking for passes and tickets on the tram. I wonder if it has something to do with the new, non-nationalistic government in Bosnia. I also saw an interesting commercial for the police force on TV, something like, Vase police su na vama, your police are for you. This afternoon I visited Professor Ugo Vlaisavljevic's psychology class in the Faculty of Philosophy. I talked from my book, Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia, focusing on the notion of self and comparing competing interpretations of what schizophrenia is. Students are reading theoretical works in psychology and the philosophy of science. One student raised her hand and said that she already knew that there is a difference between the brain and the self. I then read the quotation from Nancy Andreason on the handout I had given: "The brain is the source of everything that we are. It is the source of everything that makes us human, humane, and unique. It is the source of our ability to speak, to write, to think, to create, to love, to laugh, to despair, and to hate." I noted that Andreason is a leading medical researcher on schizophrenia not only in the US, but also in the world and that Andreason's perspective is indeed different than the student's and mine. We had more discussion, and the students laughed at my Bosnian. During the second half of the class, I talked about Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, for instance, Freire's notion that the oppressed are called upon to liberate not only themselves but also their oppressor. Are feminists, then, called upon to liberate not only oppressed women but also oppressive men? The discussion was animated. Whenever I give a talk here, I am always asked a question about the weakest link in the presentation. That is, I am asked a question about the part of the paper that still needs to be developed, even when I think that the lecture or remarks are fairly well developed. People do this not to refute, but to learn more. If I myself did not want to learn, I might resent these questions. But these questions show how carefully people listen. The questions simply ask you to do more work. In Bosnia, intelligence is a cultural value. Being clever or thinking well are social values and something pleasurable in public discourse. The last thing that Bosnians are is anti-intellectual. I made comparable remarks in the class. Ugo and the students nodded their heads, and we ended class. After class four or five students came and asked some more questions. I had mentioned briefly that in the fifties, when psychoanalysts would treat schizophrenia and when they saw schizophrenia as the result of a double-bind situation in the family, they would fight fire with fire. In their treatment they would respond to one illogical or unreal statement from a psychotic patient with an equally illogical or unreal statement. I believe that it was called a therapeutic double-bind. One student asked for the reference to this discussion. I was amazed. Other students asked if they could borrow and copy the books I mentioned. Students are desperate for books and more materials. They have a passion to learn, and they devour whatever they get their hands on. I also gave Ugo a copy of the anthology I use to teach social theory, Charles Lemert's Social Theory: The Classical and Multicultural Readings.

Tuesday, April 3rd

I am starting to get ready for a class that I will teach in the Faculty of Political Science on Saturday and for a conference that I will attend in Dubrovnik. To learn a language it is important to practice everyday. The conference last weekend knocked me out of whatever discipline I had. People recommend simply reading a text or grammar book following carefully the letters. This skips a few steps, but I have Dizdar Mak's book of poetry, Stone Sleeper, translated by Francis R. Jones with an introductory essay by Professor Rusmir Mahmutcehajic. As a national poet, Mak is to Bosnia what Robert Frost and Walt Witman combined are to the United States. Here is something from "Putovi," (Roads). "Ti ne snas da put od tebe do mene, Nije isto sto i put od mene, do tebe." (You do not know that the road from you to me is not the same as the road from me to you.) "Ti ne znas nista o mojoj mapi putova." (You do not know about this road to me. [You know nothing about this road-map of mine, Francis R. Jones]). It is interesting to compare the Bosnian with the English translation. It is not easy to translate poetry from one language into another. The poem dramatizes the ineffable character of the self in relation to others who think and act like barbarians. The poem is prophetic and important to Bosnians who suffered ethnic cleansing. The poem addresses what could not be destroyed by any amount of violence. "Ali nikako da nades istinski put, Do mene." (But no where do you find the real road to me [But no where will you find the real road to me, Frances R. Jones]).

Wednesday, April 4th

Professor Milanka Mikovic showed me her book proposal for her study on suicide in Sarajevo before and after the war. It is deep and scientific research. I hope that she finds a publisher. Amer and I had an interesting conversation about the state of scholarship. Amer pointed out that one can do a search on art and postmodernism and find innumerable references. How, then, will ten people be able to have a dialogue if ten people have not read the same articles or books on the subject? It is hard to discriminate which articles are significant and which are not. Before one could master an area or the body of literature. Now this is impossible. On the one hand, this means scholars need to be responsible because no one can really control the direction of one's work or another's work. On the other hand, there is no common ground or shared materials from which scholars can engage each other collectively. It made me think of Hegel's phrase, "Absolute freedom, absolute terror." There are a group of young academics in Bosnia who are quite analytical and astute. Even if one would want to say that the university system is dysfunctional, one can only commend the results of the dysfunctional system. Young people overcome the system and surpass others from better systems.

Thursday, April 5th

Today I met and had lunch with a former Truman State University student. Jason is traveling around Europe, and he came to Sarajevo. He plans to stay a week or so and do volunteer work with an NGO. History was his major, and he spent a semester in Budapest during his undergraduate studies. I never actually had him in class. I told Jason where British Council and the US Cultural Affairs Office were. I also invited him to join the Fulbrights at their weekly Friday evening dinner.

Here is another difficult aspect of Bosnian. In English, we have the words aunt and uncle for the sisters and brothers of our mothers and fathers. It is more complicated in Bosnian. Stric is the word for the brother of our father. Ujak is the word for the brother of our mother. Thus there are then two words in Bosnian for uncle: one for your father's brother and another for your mother's brother. Strinca is the word of the wife of your father's brother. And ujma is the word for the wife of your mother's brother. Then tetka is the word for the sister of either your father or your mother. While it matters whether the brother is a brother of your mother or father, it matters less whether the sister is a sister of your mother or father. And tetak is the name for the husband of either your father or mother's sister. Thus there are actually three words in Bosnian for uncle. Uncle Paul, my father's brother, would be my stric. Uncle Richard, the husband of my mother's sister, would be my tetak. Uncle Don, the husband of my father's sister, would also be my tetak. Since my mother does not have a brother, I would not have a ujak. These names are generic to the Serbo-Croatian language. In the Bosniac community they have also comparable Turkish names which function in the same fashion. My Bosnian tutor said that I would have trouble pronouncing the Turkish names, and she notes that she is sometimes questioned when she does not use the Turkish names herself. Language reflects a sociology of the family that is culturally distinctive. People's place or position is more clearly defined or named with these terms. This could be good or bad. In America, your relation to your strinca, the wife of your father's brother, may be different from your relation to your tetka, the sister of your father or your mother. One is an aunt through marriage and the other is an aunt because she is the sibling of your father or your mother. In America, though, the difference is not named. In Bosnia, language describes the complexity of family relations more fully.

Friday, April 6th

This afternoon I had coffee with a person who has been in Bosnia more than three years. She has worked with different NGO's and speaks Bosnian well. She keeps finding new jobs because she likes staying in Sarajevo. We had comparable thoughts on different grammar books for learning Bosnian. She is working on a master's degree and wants to draw upon her experiences to write an ethnography for her master's paper. She wants to study the attitudes of Bosnians toward outsiders and the attitudes of outsiders toward Bosnians. She wants to factor in issues like pay disparity as well as language disparity. She is looking for "how-to" books on ethnography and qualitative research. I recommended the Sage Publisher's series and lent her a textbook in social psychology that takes a multi-cultural perspective.

This Sunday I was planing to take a bus from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik to attend a conference on Praxis philosophy and present a paper, but now I am not able to because of the travel restriction in light of recent events in Mostar. Jeff at the embassy told me when we met for dinner this evening. He was sorry. Here is the travel restriction.

American Citizens are advised to avoid travel to or through Mostar and

Herzegovina until further notice. There have been an number of incidents

involving crowds, destruction of property, and violence or threats of

violence against the International Community in Mostar, Tomislavgrad,

Posusje, Medjugorje, Grude, Siroki Brijeg and Livno as result of actions

taken in by OHR to gain control of records and documents in the branches of

the Hercegovacka Bank. The Herzegovina area is not safe for travel at this

time.

U.S. citizens are also strongly encouraged to assess the security situation

before traveling to sensitive areas such as the Posavina Corridor, Travnik,

Jajce, Vitez and Kiseljak.

Saturday, April 7th

This morning I gave a lecture in a graduate class in sociology. I talked about sociology drawing upon Talcott Parsons's action frame of reference and discussed how sociology can make a distinctive contribution to understanding events in Bosnia as well as the world's response to these events. The students had received translated copies of my writing. The questions from the students were excellent. In America, students typically (of course, there are exceptions) ask questions as if they did not hear what you said. Thus they ask you to repeat what you said. It is almost as if you are a jukebox and re-asked to re-sing the song. In Bosnia, students typically (of course, there are exceptions) ask questions that show they heard what the professor said. Rather than ask the professor to re-sing the song, students ask the professor to write the song or write a harmony for the song that you sang. One student asked why there has been so little attention given to Bosnia by North American sociologists. In other words, he asked after a sociology of sociology, where the practice of sociology would be a course of action subject to study. Another student asked me to explain the difference between normative orientations and values. Another asked me if history played a role in Parsons' action frame of reference. And the questions kept getting better. Two professors attended the class and also three people from the Cultural Affairs Office. There is a chance that I may give a comparable lecture in Banja Luka, and the class was an opportunity for people at the Cultural Affairs Office to hear what my lecture would be. After class, I had coffee with the two professors who came to the class, and we shared our thoughts on what started the war in Bosnia and our perspectives on different events. I learned a lot (ucim mnego).

Here is a report from the CNN Web page on what happened in Mostar and other towns yesterday. My colleagues thought that it was wise for the embassy to advise me not to travel to Dubrovnik given that the bus goes through Mostar.

Weapons Seized After Bosnia Riot

April 7, 2001

Web posted at: 7:34 AM EDT (1134 GMT)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina --

NATO-led peacekeepers have seized

weapons from garrisons in Bosnia over

fears they will fall into the hands of

Bosnian Croat separatists.

The move by Dutch peacekeepers

follows riots on Friday which came after

U.N. police and NATO forces took

control of a bank linked to Bosnian

Croats who are demanding self-rule in

the ethnically fragmented country.

Early on Saturday, the Dutch troops entered garrisons in the central towns of

Vitez and Busovaca and took weapons without resistance from Bosnian Croat

war veterans who seized the installations this week.

In northern Bosnia, the U.S. military command said peacekeepers had increased

their presence around weapons storage sites "to maintain a safe and secure

environment."

The takeover of the bank, Hercegovacka Banka, on Friday triggered riots in

Mostar and other towns of southwestern Bosnia.

Twenty-one peacekeepers were slightly injured, while officials from international

organisations were stoned, beaten and taken hostage before order was restored.

Wolfgang Petritsch, High Representative in Bosnia, said one official was

threatened with execution during the incident.

"These thugs threatened and beat federation officials and my staff at the bank in

Mostar yesterday," he said.

"One of my staff was hiding in a bathroom with a mob outside trying to break

the door down. Her colleague, a federation investigator, was badly injured by

flying glass when shots were fired."

He said the situation was worse in the town of Grude, where gunmen had taken

several federation and international personnel hostage in the local branch of the

bank.

"Forced confessions were extracted from some of the hostages in which they

were made to say on camera that they had been forced by the international

community to audit these banks," Petritsch said, adding that this was a lie.

"One investigator was taken outside and threatened with execution."

The Bosnian Croat separatists are challenging the central government's authority

after last month's declaration by the Bosnian Croat hard-line party, the Croatian

Democratic Union, that it would break off its alliance with the country's Muslims

and set up a Croat government in Croat-dominated parts of the country.

Under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war, the country

was divided into a Serb-run mini-state and a Muslim-Croat Federation.

But some Croats, smallest of the three ethnic groups, feel they are

under-represented in the division of power.

The Croatian Democratic Union, known by its Croatian initials HDZ, maintained

parallel government institutions in southwestern Bosnia after the war over the

objections of international administrators.

Sunday, April 8th

At the church service, I met two young Americans who happened to be in Mostar Saturday. They were traveling through and stopped because they were curious. When they heard gunshots, they left. Also, one person with them could only speak Bosnian, which made the person vulnerable. I am nursing a cold. I made chicken soup and drank tea. I called Dubrovnik and canceled my hotel reservation, and I left a message with the conference organizer at his hotel. I was planning to give a paper on Mihailo Markovic, a Serbian philosopher well known for his writing on humanistic Marxism, to a conference of people who already knew him. Markovic was one of the authors of the infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, which helped kick-start Serbian nationalism which led to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. During the war, Markovic was Vice-President of Slobodan Milosevic's political party. Recently, he has been interviewed in German, leftist magazines. The interviews are on the Web, and they can be translated using Babelfish. (Believe it or not.) I am surprised that the New York Times, in the email listing of articles, had nothing on events in Mostar this Friday either in ther Saturday or on Sunday editions. These events in Mostar threatened the Dayton Peace Accord. Bosnia was defeated, but it was not divided. Now other means than war are being employed to divide Bosnia. Will the international community allow it to happen? Will those Bosnians, who passionately do not want their country to be divided, be able to stop it?

Monday, April 9th

Today I nursed my cold. I rented three Bosnian videos to watch in my apartment, "Balkan Express II," "White Suite," and a Partisan movie about the airforce during World War II. In the Partisan movie, they said "drugovi" a lot and "ramzumijem" to commanders. Partisan movies were quite popular at one time. "White Suite," made recently in Belgrade, was like a Fellini film, perhaps an allegory seeking to represent Serbia's recent history, courting, it seemed, international sympathy. In one scene, the man in the white suite said "I love you" in twenty or so languages, and it was meant to be charming. He said "majko" repeatedly when visiting his mother, which means mother in the vocative. The white dog in the movie seemed to represent the only heroic action in the movie, an act of loyalty. In another scene, the man said "treba" (it should be) and the woman said "ne treba" (it should not be). A familiar dialogue. I was too tired to watch "Balkan Express II."

Tuesday, March 27th

I spoke again in Professor Premec's philosophy class at the Faculty of Philosophy. A student made a presentation on an article I wrote, "The Critique of Utilitarianism in Structure and Gorgias," which was published in the Austrian Journal of Sociology. The paper compares Talcott Parsons' critique of utilitarianism in The Structure of Social Action with Plato's critique of sophistry in Gorgias. The students are reading Plato. After the presentation, I was asked to make some comments. I noted some background issues and said why I wanted to write the paper. I said that just as theology studies the sacred or jurisprudence studies justice, sociology studies action. What, then, is action and what is the strongest way to explain action? I contrasted the concept of behavior with the concept of action, the latter including the role of choice and normative elements. The class went from 4 to 6. At 6, when I thought the class would end, a student asked a question. Then, another student asked a question. Then, another student asked a question. We stayed until past 7 where the students themselves sustained the discussion with wise, perceptive comments. This was a wonderful experience. The students asked: Why was I interested in Bosnia?, What do I know about Bosnians and their lives in the US? What do I, as an outsider, think caused the war?, Do I think that there is a chance that life will return to normal in Bosnia? They shared their own opinions as they asked the questions.

Wednesday, March 28th

After working in the office in the Faculty of Political Science, I had coffee with people.

Thursday, March 29th

Today was a busy day. In January (before I came to Bosnia) the teacher of my youngest daughter asked if I could make a link to a school in Sarajevo so that a teacher in Sarajevo and she could set up a pen pal exchange between students. I have been talking to the Cultural Affairs Office, and they recommended a school in the part of Sarajevo that is in the Serb entity, "Serb Sarajevo." This morning we drove to the school to meet the school mistress, Mrs. Ranka Mandic, and her students. Jeff Anderson, who works at the Cultural Affairs Office, gave a talk on the American school system. We had coffee and I gave Mrs. Mandic the email address of Mrs. Poortinga and the Webpage URL of the Mills Lawn Elementary School. I also took pictures of the class and sent them to Mrs. Poortinga over the internet. The name of the school is "Jovan Ducic," after the famous Serbian poet, who was buried in the United States in the 1940's and recently reburied in Trebinje, also in Republic of Srpska in Bosnia Herzegovina. Here is the school's mission statement.

Our current School Development plan has, as its major aim, the introduction and development of closer links with parents and the local community. Therefore, we have hopes of making the school accessible to all, not only a building where young people are educated, but a thriving community center. We are determined to achieve this major aim for our school and, with help of all concerned, will endeavor through every means possible to raise money for this focal point of our vision of the school as the living heart and center of education, culture, and civil society in our area. "Jovan Ducic" will become an important resource in the community, providing facilities for teaching and learning, for meetings, leisure activities, fund raising endeavors, sports, and cultural activities.

This afternoon I meet with Craig Zelizer, who is the Program Director at the Alliance for Conflict Transformation, and his friend MJ Kittredge, who is a graduate student in International Peace and Law at American University. Craig called and asked to meet. We had coffee and talked about what we were all doing in Sarajevo. They asked about my book, which they had bought. Our interests overlapped.

This evening I went to a reception at the Holiday Inn for participants of the Third International Philosophical Colloquium, "Universalism and Belonging." Faculty from Verona and Paris attended and presented at the Colloquium. Adam Seligman, author of a book on trust and, more recently, Modernity's Wager, also came from Boston College. At the reception, I talked to someone standing next to me. First, we talked about Hannah Arendt. I made some comment about Hannah Arendt inflating the significance of Kant's philosophy and deflating the significance of Hegel's philosophy. She said she agreed. Then, we talked about Mikhail Bakhtin, and she said that she also found his work compelling. Then, she asked me my opinion of the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. I said that one way to understand his philosophizing was to note its anti-Platonic character. She nodded. Then, we talked about Judith Butler and her theorizing on identity from a postmodern perspective. She then told me that she was a close friend of Judith Butler and that she was a Hannah Arendt scholar who taught every fourth semester at New York City University. At this point, I asked who she was, and she said her name was Adriana Cavarero. She is the author of several well received books in feminist philosophy, Relating Narratives and In Spite of Plato: Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. Only in Sarajevo! When my daughters are older, I will tell them that I talked with Adriana Cavarero. And my daughters will reply, "Daddddd...."

Friday, March 30th

I attended the morning and afternoon sessions of "Universalism and Belonging." Professor Premic gave the opening address. Since most of the outside professors were Italian, there was simultaneous translation only for Italians. People were kind. When her Italian colleague spoke, Adriana Cavarero volunteered to translate for me. When a French professor spoke, a Bosnian graduate student volunteered to translate for me. Milena, who was the translator for my lecture at Hotel Bosnia, was also there, and she translated for me when a Bosnian scholar spoke. I was one of the few monoglots there, and I cursed my limitation. An Italian scholar spoke on the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I had studied intensely as an undergraduate student in an upper-level seminar at Dickinson College. After the morning session, Ugo Vlaisavljevic invited me to join him with a friend, who had been in Sarajevo with him during the war for nine months. She is an anthropologist from the Netherlands. Ugo said that she wanted to meet me. Ugo gave me a copy of his book, Writing/Pismo, produced in collaboration with a graphic and photographic artist, Nusret Pasic and Mehmed Aksamija. The three authors together bear witness.

Saturday, March 31st

I talked with someone who studied Italian in Perugia. We compared Perugia and Sarajevo; when I was a graduate student, I had attended conferences there in phenomenology. I said that Perugia and Sarajevo were alike. They were small and seemingly self-sufficient cities. Both were like worlds unto themselves. Perugia is isolated on a hill surrounded by old Etruscan walls; Sarajevo is nested in the crevice of a valley surrounded tightly by mountains. Milena pointed out that the natives of Perugia are closed to outsiders. I, too, had had the same experience. Foreign students come and go, and the natives of Perugia seem to have no interaction or interest in them. A significant social barrier exists between visitors to Perugia and natives of Perugia. Sarajevo is different. Sarajevo is open to outsiders. The natives of Sarajevo include people and engage them openly. During the war and over the last five years, a lot of people, however, visited Sarajevo and were blessed with its tradition of hospitality. We began to wonder if people in Sarajevo would burn out given the high turnover of visitors to Sarajevo. Would people in Sarajevo become like people in Perugia? On the one hand, it would only be human nature if this were to happen. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the people of Sarajevo becoming as closed as the people of Perugia.

Ugo gave an interesting talk on language. Bosnians are practically trilingual by default. They can speak Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian. But all three are practically one language. Their differences are lexical. There is a Croatian dictionary, a Serbian dictionary, and a Bosnian dictionary. While many words are the same, different dictionaries highlight the different words in different regions. Ugo compared it to the idea of a butcher, a baker, and a banker having distinct languages. The butcher does not understand the words the banker uses, and the banker does not understand the words the butcher uses. But they speak the same language. Language, though, has become a political matter. To create a homogeneous nation-state, it is also necessary to create a distinct language. Language is thus used in social interaction to identify people with certain groups. Through language people enjoy being a member of one's own group and also enjoy being a non-member of another group. There are now strict norms regarding the words one uses and does not use in specific groups.

I spoke in the last session of the Colloquium on "Politics, Ideology, and Religion." People were drawing upon their traditions and experiences to address the subject of universalism and belonging. I wondered what tradition I would draw upon. As an American and non-European, what resources do I have? My answer to the question was the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King speaks eloquently to universalism and belonging. I said that if it were not for King, America would not be America. If it were not for King, I am not sure that I would want to be an American. I noted that it was enlightening as well as disturbing to consider King's thoughts in the context of Bosnia. It is enlightening because King's thoughts are as poignant and pressing in Bosnia today as they were in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. It is disturbing because King's love of truth and knowledge of justice seem to be at even greater odds with our times. King was a master of speaking to human beings who did not recognize their humanity and who did not recognize his humanity. I, then, read a few passages from King's speeches, for instance, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," "Justice too long delayed is justice denied," or "We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right." I think that the Europeans were interested. Before I was quite finished, they clapped and I decided to stop while I was ahead.

I came back to my apartment tired. Ugo invited me to speak to his third year philosophy class on Monday.

Sunday, April 1st

At the Communion service at St. Anthony's someone picked the hymn "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded." After the service, I walked downtown and bought a newspaper in a store. The radio was giving news on the arrest of Milosevic. I asked the person there, with whom I had talked before, what has happened. She said that she did not know and did not care. She said, though, that the people on the radio knew. Is my question like asking for a baseball score? I wondered if she thought that I was too familiar. I, in fact, was hoping that Milosevic had not been killed during his arrest. It is imperative for Milosevic to be taken to the Hague, if only so that the people who lived under his power may start to recognize, acknowledge, speak about, and take responsibility for happened under his rule and during their deference to his rule. It may be too late for the arrest of Milosevic to be meaningful for his victims, especially given the ambiguous reasons that Serbs provide for the arrest. The loss of human life, the pain, the suffering, the horror, the betrayal, and the bad faith are too immense to measure. Over a thousand mosques throughout Bosnia were destroyed during the ethnic cleansing. When I asked my question, I felt as if the girl glared at me.

Monday, April 2nd

I saw that the police are giving tickets to cars parked illegally and men are more frequently checking for passes and tickets on the tram. I wonder if it has something to do with the new, non-nationalistic government in Bosnia. I also saw an interesting commercial for the police force on TV, something like, Vase police su na vama, your police are for you. This afternoon I visited Professor Ugo Vlaisavljevic's psychology class in the Faculty of Philosophy. I talked from my book, Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia, focusing on the notion of self and comparing competing interpretations of what schizophrenia is. Students are reading theoretical works in psychology and the philosophy of science. One student raised her hand and said that she already knew that there is a difference between the brain and the self. I then read the quotation from Nancy Andreason on the handout I had given: "The brain is the source of everything that we are. It is the source of everything that makes us human, humane, and unique. It is the source of our ability to speak, to write, to think, to create, to love, to laugh, to despair, and to hate." I noted that Andreason is a leading medical researcher on schizophrenia not only in the US, but also in the world and that Andreason's perspective is indeed different than the student's and mine. We had more discussion, and the students laughed at my Bosnian. During the second half of the class, I talked about Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, for instance, Freire's notion that the oppressed are called upon to liberate not only themselves but also their oppressor. Are feminists, then, called upon to liberate not only oppressed women but also oppressive men? The discussion was animated. Whenever I give a talk here, I am always asked a question about the weakest link in the presentation. That is, I am asked a question about the part of the paper that still needs to be developed, even when I think that the lecture or remarks are fairly well developed. People do this not to refute, but to learn more. If I myself did not want to learn, I might resent these questions. But these questions show how carefully people listen. The questions simply ask you to do more work. In Bosnia, intelligence is a cultural value. Being clever or thinking well are social values and something pleasurable in public discourse. The last thing that Bosnians are is anti-intellectual. I made comparable remarks in the class. Ugo and the students nodded their heads, and we ended class. After class four or five students came and asked some more questions. I had mentioned briefly that in the fifties, when psychoanalysts would treat schizophrenia and when they saw schizophrenia as the result of a double-bind situation in the family, they would fight fire with fire. In their treatment they would respond to one illogical or unreal statement from a psychotic patient with an equally illogical or unreal statement. I believe that it was called a therapeutic double-bind. One student asked for the reference to this discussion. I was amazed. Other students asked if they could borrow and copy the books I mentioned. Students are desperate for books and more materials. They have a passion to learn, and they devour whatever they get their hands on. I also gave Ugo a copy of the anthology I use to teach social theory, Charles Lemert's Social Theory: The Classical and Multicultural Readings.

Tuesday, April 3rd

I am starting to get ready for a class that I will teach in the Faculty of Political Science on Saturday and for a conference that I will attend in Dubrovnik. To learn a language it is important to practice everyday. The conference last weekend knocked me out of whatever discipline I had. People recommend simply reading a text or grammar book following carefully the letters. This skips a few steps, but I have Dizdar Mak's book of poetry, Stone Sleeper, translated by Francis R. Jones with an introductory essay by Professor Rusmir Mahmutcehajic. As a national poet, Mak is to Bosnia what Robert Frost and Walt Witman combined are to the United States. Here is something from "Putovi," (Roads). "Ti ne snas da put od tebe do mene, Nije isto sto i put od mene, do tebe." (You do not know that the road from you to me is not the same as the road from me to you.) "Ti ne znas nista o mojoj mapi putova." (You do not know about this road to me. [You know nothing about this road-map of mine, Francis R. Jones]). It is interesting to compare the Bosnian with the English translation. It is not easy to translate poetry from one language into another. The poem dramatizes the ineffable character of the self in relation to others who think and act like barbarians. The poem is prophetic and important to Bosnians who suffered ethnic cleansing. The poem addresses what could not be destroyed by any amount of violence. "Ali nikako da nades istinski put, Do mene." (But no where do you find the real road to me [But no where will you find the real road to me, Frances R. Jones]).

Wednesday, April 4th

Professor Milanka Mikovic showed me her book proposal for her study on suicide in Sarajevo before and after the war. It is deep and scientific research. I hope that she finds a publisher. Amer and I had an interesting conversation about the state of scholarship. Amer pointed out that one can do a search on art and postmodernism and find innumerable references. How, then, will ten people be able to have a dialogue if ten people have not read the same articles or books on the subject? It is hard to discriminate which articles are significant and which are not. Before one could master an area or the body of literature. Now this is impossible. On the one hand, this means scholars need to be responsible because no one can really control the direction of one's work or another's work. On the other hand, there is no common ground or shared materials from which scholars can engage each other collectively. It made me think of Hegel's phrase, "Absolute freedom, absolute terror." There are a group of young academics in Bosnia who are quite analytical and astute. Even if one would want to say that the university system is dysfunctional, one can only commend the results of the dysfunctional system. Young people overcome the system and surpass others from better systems.

Thursday, April 5th

Today I met and had lunch with a former Truman State University student. Jason is traveling around Europe, and he came to Sarajevo. He plans to stay a week or so and do volunteer work with an NGO. History was his major, and he spent a semester in Budapest during his undergraduate studies. I never actually had him in class. I told Jason where British Council and the US Cultural Affairs Office were. I also invited him to join the Fulbrights at their weekly Friday evening dinner.

Here is another difficult aspect of Bosnian. In English, we have the words aunt and uncle for the sisters and brothers of our mothers and fathers. It is more complicated in Bosnian. Stric is the word for the brother of our father. Ujak is the word for the brother of our mother. Thus there are then two words in Bosnian for uncle: one for your father's brother and another for your mother's brother. Strinca is the word of the wife of your father's brother. And ujma is the word for the wife of your mother's brother. Then tetka is the word for the sister of either your father or your mother. While it matters whether the brother is a brother of your mother or father, it matters less whether the sister is a sister of your mother or father. And tetak is the name for the husband of either your father or mother's sister. Thus there are actually three words in Bosnian for uncle. Uncle Paul, my father's brother, would be my stric. Uncle Richard, the husband of my mother's sister, would be my tetak. Uncle Don, the husband of my father's sister, would also be my tetak. Since my mother does not have a brother, I would not have a ujak. These names are generic to the Serbo-Croatian language. In the Bosniac community they have also comparable Turkish names which function in the same fashion. My Bosnian tutor said that I would have trouble pronouncing the Turkish names, and she notes that she is sometimes questioned when she does not use the Turkish names herself. Language reflects a sociology of the family that is culturally distinctive. People's place or position is more clearly defined or named with these terms. This could be good or bad. In America, your relation to your strinca, the wife of your father's brother, may be different from your relation to your tetka, the sister of your father or your mother. One is an aunt through marriage and the other is an aunt because she is the sibling of your father or your mother. In America, though, the difference is not named. In Bosnia, language describes the complexity of family relations more fully.

Friday, April 6th

This afternoon I had coffee with a person who has been in Bosnia more than three years. She has worked with different NGO's and speaks Bosnian well. She keeps finding new jobs because she likes staying in Sarajevo. We had comparable thoughts on different grammar books for learning Bosnian. She is working on a master's degree and wants to draw upon her experiences to write an ethnography for her master's paper. She wants to study the attitudes of Bosnians toward outsiders and the attitudes of outsiders toward Bosnians. She wants to factor in issues like pay disparity as well as language disparity. She is looking for "how-to" books on ethnography and qualitative research. I recommended the Sage Publisher's series and lent her a textbook in social psychology that takes a multi-cultural perspective.

This Sunday I was planing to take a bus from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik to attend a conference on Praxis philosophy and present a paper, but now I am not able to because of the travel restriction in light of recent events in Mostar. Jeff at the embassy told me when we met for dinner this evening. He was sorry. Here is the travel restriction.

American Citizens are advised to avoid travel to or through Mostar and

Herzegovina until further notice. There have been an number of incidents

involving crowds, destruction of property, and violence or threats of

violence against the International Community in Mostar, Tomislavgrad,

Posusje, Medjugorje, Grude, Siroki Brijeg and Livno as result of actions

taken in by OHR to gain control of records and documents in the branches of

the Hercegovacka Bank. The Herzegovina area is not safe for travel at this

time.

U.S. citizens are also strongly encouraged to assess the security situation

before traveling to sensitive areas such as the Posavina Corridor, Travnik,

Jajce, Vitez and Kiseljak.

Saturday, April 7th

This morning I gave a lecture in a graduate class in sociology. I talked about sociology drawing upon Talcott Parsons's action frame of reference and discussed how sociology can make a distinctive contribution to understanding events in Bosnia as well as the world's response to these events. The students had received translated copies of my writing. The questions from the students were excellent. In America, students typically (of course, there are exceptions) ask questions as if they did not hear what you said. Thus they ask you to repeat what you said. It is almost as if you are a jukebox and re-asked to re-sing the song. In Bosnia, students typically (of course, there are exceptions) ask questions that show they heard what the professor said. Rather than ask the professor to re-sing the song, students ask the professor to write the song or write a harmony for the song that you sang. One student asked why there has been so little attention given to Bosnia by North American sociologists. In other words, he asked after a sociology of sociology, where the practice of sociology would be a course of action subject to study. Another student asked me to explain the difference between normative orientations and values. Another asked me if history played a role in Parsons' action frame of reference. And the questions kept getting better. Two professors attended the class and also three people from the Cultural Affairs Office. There is a chance that I may give a comparable lecture in Banja Luka, and the class was an opportunity for people at the Cultural Affairs Office to hear what my lecture would be. After class, I had coffee with the two professors who came to the class, and we shared our thoughts on what started the war in Bosnia and our perspectives on different events. I learned a lot (ucim mnego).

Here is a report from the CNN Web page on what happened in Mostar and other towns yesterday. My colleagues thought that it was wise for the embassy to advise me not to travel to Dubrovnik given that the bus goes through Mostar.

Weapons Seized After Bosnia Riot

April 7, 2001

Web posted at: 7:34 AM EDT (1134 GMT)

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina --

NATO-led peacekeepers have seized

weapons from garrisons in Bosnia over

fears they will fall into the hands of

Bosnian Croat separatists.

The move by Dutch peacekeepers

follows riots on Friday which came after

U.N. police and NATO forces took

control of a bank linked to Bosnian

Croats who are demanding self-rule in

the ethnically fragmented country.

Early on Saturday, the Dutch troops entered garrisons in the central towns of

Vitez and Busovaca and took weapons without resistance from Bosnian Croat

war veterans who seized the installations this week.

In northern Bosnia, the U.S. military command said peacekeepers had increased

their presence around weapons storage sites "to maintain a safe and secure

environment."

The takeover of the bank, Hercegovacka Banka, on Friday triggered riots in

Mostar and other towns of southwestern Bosnia.

Twenty-one peacekeepers were slightly injured, while officials from international

organisations were stoned, beaten and taken hostage before order was restored.

Wolfgang Petritsch, High Representative in Bosnia, said one official was

threatened with execution during the incident.

"These thugs threatened and beat federation officials and my staff at the bank in

Mostar yesterday," he said.

"One of my staff was hiding in a bathroom with a mob outside trying to break

the door down. Her colleague, a federation investigator, was badly injured by

flying glass when shots were fired."

He said the situation was worse in the town of Grude, where gunmen had taken

several federation and international personnel hostage in the local branch of the

bank.

"Forced confessions were extracted from some of the hostages in which they

were made to say on camera that they had been forced by the international

community to audit these banks," Petritsch said, adding that this was a lie.

"One investigator was taken outside and threatened with execution."

The Bosnian Croat separatists are challenging the central government's authority

after last month's declaration by the Bosnian Croat hard-line party, the Croatian

Democratic Union, that it would break off its alliance with the country's Muslims

and set up a Croat government in Croat-dominated parts of the country.

Under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war, the country

was divided into a Serb-run mini-state and a Muslim-Croat Federation.

But some Croats, smallest of the three ethnic groups, feel they are

under-represented in the division of power.

The Croatian Democratic Union, known by its Croatian initials HDZ, maintained

parallel government institutions in southwestern Bosnia after the war over the

objections of international administrators.

Sunday, April 8th

At the church service, I met two young Americans who happened to be in Mostar Saturday. They were traveling through and stopped because they were curious. When they heard gunshots, they left. Also, one person with them could only speak Bosnian, which made the person vulnerable. I am nursing a cold. I made chicken soup and drank tea. I called Dubrovnik and canceled my hotel reservation, and I left a message with the conference organizer at his hotel. I was planning to give a paper on Mihailo Markovic, a Serbian philosopher well known for his writing on humanistic Marxism, to a conference of people who already knew him. Markovic was one of the authors of the infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, which helped kick-start Serbian nationalism which led to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. During the war, Markovic was Vice-President of Slobodan Milosevic's political party. Recently, he has been interviewed in German, leftist magazines. The interviews are on the Web, and they can be translated using Babelfish. (Believe it or not.) I am surprised that the New York Times, in the email listing of articles, had nothing on events in Mostar this Friday either in ther Saturday or on Sunday editions. These events in Mostar threatened the Dayton Peace Accord. Bosnia was defeated, but it was not divided. Now other means than war are being employed to divide Bosnia. Will the international community allow it to happen? Will those Bosnians, who passionately do not want their country to be divided, be able to stop it?

Monday, April 9th

Today I nursed my cold. I rented three Bosnian videos to watch in my apartment, "Balkan Express II," "White Suite," and a Partisan movie about the airforce during World War II. In the Partisan movie, they said "drugovi" a lot and "ramzumijem" to commanders. Partisan movies were quite popular at one time. "White Suite," made recently in Belgrade, was like a Fellini film, perhaps an allegory seeking to represent Serbia's recent history, courting, it seemed, international sympathy. In one scene, the man in the white suite said "I love you" in twenty or so languages, and it was meant to be charming. He said "majko" repeatedly when visiting his mother, which means mother in the vocative. The white dog in the movie seemed to represent the only heroic action in the movie, an act of loyalty. In another scene, the man said "treba" (it should be) and the woman said "ne treba" (it should not be). A familiar dialogue. I was too tired to watch "Balkan Express II."

Tuesday, April 10th

Today I had lunch with friends. They assumed that I had gone to Dubrovnik but said that it was wise for my embassy to advise against it. They invited me to play soccer (fudbal) Wednesday evenings. We discussed how popular the sport was in the States. I said that my daughters played, and someone said that his friend's daughter in the States played "left wing," which is interesting. In Bosnia, girls do not play soccer, at least not in an organized way. My trolley goes by a soccer camp, and only young boys are practicing in the morning and during the day. Senadin said that this may change in the future.

Here is some news on Radovan Karadzic. It does not take much imagination to wonder if Karadzic is working in collusion with the nationalist Bosnian Croats (HDZ), as he did during the war. A lot of good will, positive energy, and generous money are being wasted by allowing the indicted war criminals to remain free to sabotage efforts to unite and rebuild Bosnia.

Wartime Serb Leader Karadzic Eyes Nobel Prize

SARAJEVO, Apr 9, 2001 -- (Reuters) Radovan Karadzic, the wartime

Bosnian Serb leader wanted on war crimes charges, vowed never to go to

prison and predicted he would be nominated for a Nobel prize in a rare

interview published at the weekend.

The Mostar-based Danas weekly said Karadzic, indicted twice by the UN war

crimes tribunal in The Hague along with his wartime military chief Ratko Mladic,

invited its reporter to interview him in a Serb-controlled village in the southern

Herzegovina region.

The reporter was brought to the interview blindfolded but Karadzic said he was

not in hiding.

"I am not in hiding at all, my people are hiding me. You can ask any Serb if he

would betray Radovan Karadzic...I walk around normally, go to baptism

ceremonies, associate with my friends and my soldiers, I have recently been

even in Sarajevo," he said.

"I will not fall into their hands alive," he added, in what appeared to be his first

public comments since he was forced to resign from politics in July 1996 under

international pressure.

"Although if I knew my surrender would benefit the Serb people and their

interests, I would do it immediately," he said.

"But it would be absurd to surrender to those who have killed Serb children and

the elderly. And it would be even more stupid to believe that tribunal would be

unbiased."

NOBEL PRIZE

During a visit to Bosnia last week, the chief prosecutor of the war crimes

tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, said she wanted the arrest of all 38 people publicly

indicted and still at large. Karadzic was a priority, she said.

"Del Ponte said the other day that a search for Karadzic was a mere cipher.

Please let her know it will remain so," Karadzic told the newspaper.

Danas said Karadzic was finishing an autobiography called "Radovan and

Serbia" to be published by a Western publisher later this year.

"The book will become a bestseller, and I'm sure even be proposed for the

Nobel prize," he said.

The book may shed new light on the role of Yugoslavia's ex-president

Slobodan Milosevic, who backed Bosnian Serbs in their fight to carve out an

ethnically pure Serb state but then distanced himself from them in 1995,

Karadzic said.

"My book will explain many things and it will cast a dark shadow over

Slobodan Milosevic. I will never forgive him, and neither will the Serb people,

for the fact that he set up borders between Serbia and Bosnian Serbs," he said.

The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information

leading to the arrests of Karadzic and Mladic.

"Don't even dare to try and use this interview to earn these millions offered by

those international fools," he warned the reporter in his farewell remarks.

(C)2001 Copyright Reuters Limited.

Wednesday, April 11th

This morning David Berman from University of Pittsburgh at the Department of Education visited me in my office. Dave recently arrived in Sarajevo, and he has a research Fulbright for four months. I was having my lesson in Bosnian, and we arranged to meet for coffee. We walked downtown, and he showed me where he had stayed during the war. He noted how exhausting the war was for people, physically, psychologically, and morally and that people now just want to live. People have a clear sense of what is important. David wrote a book on the "Third Highschool" during the war in Sarajevo; it is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and titled The Heroes of Treæa Gimnazija: A War School in Sarajevo, 1992-1995. He tells the story of this Sarajevo high school during the war, how it kept holding classes and sustained itself (instruction, proms, books, and so on) despite the most formidable and unconscionable circumstances. The teachers as well as the students represented a form of resistance. After coffee, we walked along the river and then by the high school, which had been on the front-line.

Events in Western Bosnia are following a painfully familiar pattern. The Bosnian Croats, who want a unified Bosnia and are resisting the radical nationalists within the Bosnian Croat community, are being attacked. The situation is most disheartening. I was scheduled to give a lecture in Mostar in May and Trebinje in April through International Forum Bosnia. The travel restriction for people at the US embassy prevents me from going to these towns. When these lectures were planned in early February, the situation in Bosnia was different. The rapidity of events is disturbing. Is the international community sufficiently committed to preserving a united Bosnia? On the one hand, the Dayton Peace Accord recognizes the Bosnian Serb entity, Republic Srpksa, which divides Bosnia. On the other hand, the Dayton Peace Accord respects Bosnia as one nation and a united whole.

Bomb Damages Home of Moderate Bosnia Croat Official

MOSTAR, Apr 11, 2001 -- (Reuters) A moderate Bosnian Croat government

minister said on Tuesday his house had been badly damaged in a car bomb

attack which he blamed on nationalists seeking Croat self-rule.

The incident follows attacks on international and local officials on Friday as they

tried to take over Hercegovacka bank in Mostar, believed to be the financial

lifeline of the separatists, whose month-old campaign threatens the country's

fragile peace.

The car belonging to a company run by the minister, Mladen Ivankovic and his

brother Jerko, a member of parliament, blew up on Tuesday morning in front of

their family house in the southern town of Siroki Brijeg, the regional interior

ministry said. There was no mention of any injuries.

The brothers, whose Lijanovici meat processing company is the most successful

in Bosnia and whose support for the new government was a major blow to the

nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), alleged the party was behind the

attack.

"We sincerely regret that the Croatian Democratic Union, after obvious and

long-term media attacks on us...has now resorted to terrorism against our home

and our family members," the Ivankovics said in a separate statement, faxed to

Reuters.

The HDZ, which spearheaded the declaration of Croat self-rule last month after

being excluded from a new coalition government formed following elections in

November, condemned the attack and said it had nothing to do with it.

HDZ spokesman Zoran Tomic told Reuters his party used only political means

to achieve its goals.

"The accusations by Lijanovici at our expense tell more about their political style

because the investigation still has to determine who is responsible for the

attack," Tomic said.

Wolfgang Petritsch, the top international overseer of the peace agreement that

ended Bosnia's 1992-5 war, condemned the attack, saying it was lucky no one

was hurt.

"The international community will not tolerate criminal actions such as the car

bombing against the Ivankovic brothers or the violence used by organized thugs

last Friday in Mostar and other places in Herzegovina," he said in a statement.

"It will do everything in its power to bring the people who planted this bomb to

justice."

UN spokesman Douglas Coffman said earlier that the international authorities

would take measures against Croat police officers found to have been involved

in violence in Mostar on Friday in which two dozen international peacekeepers

and other officials were injured by a rioting mob.

"We call upon the appropriate authorities to quickly identify and prosecute

those persons responsible," he said.

Thursday, April 12th

I worked on an essay "An Examination of the Double-Voiced Discourse of Indicted War Criminals in the Media." A colleague gave me some good suggestions, noting the work of Claude Levi-Strauss and Ferdinand de Saussure. We also thought that it would be interesting to revisit the work of Martin Heidegger on the philosophy of language. Here is the abstract.

Well-known documentaries, global news reports, and world newspapers recorded and transmitted the verbal utterances of perpetrators of crimes against humanity. When speaking in an interview with a news reporter, Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic were aware of their global audience and reflectively anticipated how this audience would perceive them. Their eerie self-consciousness influenced what they said and how they said it. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on double-voiced discourse, in particular the double-voiced discourse of the underground man in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, provides insightful ways to examine the linguistical patterns of these utterances so as to critique their sociological and moral significance.

I feel weak from the flu, and Amer saw how fatigued I was after walking up four floors. He said that I might as well start smoking.

Friday, April 13th

This morning I visited the Human Rights Center associated with the University of Sarajevo located near the Marshal Tito barracks. The Center's library is impressive. It is online, and researchers can make requests over the internet. Dino gave me a CD about the Human Rights Center, which contains a Report on Activities in 1998/99 and 1999/2000. I am working with some scholars to try to bring Professor Ronald Dworkin to Sarajevo to give some seminars. There is great interest in Professor Dworkin's work on jurisprudence, human rights, and equality, and Dino and I discussed this possibility. Several years ago I published an article on Dworkin's work and social theory. Although sociologists did not seem to like the article, Professor Dworkin himself appreciated it. Dino and I also talked about Noam Chomsky's recent remarks against taking Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague for trial, where Milosevic is indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide.

This afternoon I went to the Chess Club with colleagues. As always, the conversation was interesting. For instance, when we discussed how there were three names for uncle in Bosnian and how this was interesting for a sociology of family, Amer pointed out that Claude Levi-Strauss had written on this subject. While I have taught sociology of family twice using different American textbooks each time, neither textbook mentions this work. It is as if sociology in the US and in Europe is taught out of two different traditions. My graduate work in Canada gives me the advantage of having some overlap. I mentioned that I was watching old Partisan movies; Professor Musabegovic noted that Tito loved Western movies, and the Partisan movies have similar structures and themes to American cowboy films. We also talked about Tone Bringa's work, Being Muslim The Bosnian Way, and how it picked up from the anthropological work of William Lockwood. Amer remembers Lockwood staying in Sarajevo; as a child Amer was amazed at how big Lockwood's feet were. The video "We Are All Neighbors," by Bringa, made during the war, demonstrates how the gemeinshaft of a Bosnian village was destroyed. Muslims and Catholics, who lived together for centuries, were separated by outsiders within a day or two. People throughout the world talk about multiculturalism as an ideal, a utopia. The ideal of multiculturalism, however, was a reality in Bosnia. Multiculturalism was already achieved in the traditions and lifestyles of Bosnians. Ethnic cleansing was nothing but an attack on this reality. I sometimes wonder if outsiders who sought to destroy Bosnia resented the multicultural reality of Bosnia because it was only an ideal in other places. Could outsiders not tolerate that the ideal of multiculturalism had been already achieved in reality? The genocide in Bosnia was the effort to destroy what Bosnia symbolized, a social order that was inherently and genuinely multicultural and a social order that remains only a verbal utopia for many today.

This evening the Fulbrights (Terri, Rory, Maureen, Dave, and myself) met and had dinner at the Texas restaurant. Jason, who was with us last week, is traveling in Slovenia. We were happy to have Dave with us. An invasion, as my Bosnian tutor would say. I took Dave's picture so as to include it on the Web page. After dinner, we went to Terri's apartment and drank a bottle of wine. Terri lives on a hillside high above Sarajevo with a beautiful view of the city . At dinner someone said that the US embassy had pulled its personnel out of Mostar. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Sarajevo today. While he was visiting political leaders at the Holiday Inn, policemen were on street corners throughout the city. Some of the Fulbrights wondered why Powell didn't ask to speak with us.

Saturday, April 14th

Several Bosnian friends have wished me Happy Easter. It is snowing hard today. I heard that in Sarajevo it can snow in August. Summers, though, are typically hot, 40 C. This evening I watched a film made in Belgrade in 1992, Tamna je Noc, Dark is the Night. It was about two middle class families in Belgrade, and one son who became a soldier and who returned from the war crippled. The film ended with the young man's girlfriend holding him up with her back bent over while the two of them danced and the parents watched. I, of course, wished that I had understood more of the language.

Sunday, April 15th

There were about eight people at the Easter service at St. Anthony's monastery. A Navy chaplain presided over communion. After the service, four of us went for coffee. While cold, the day was clear and bright.

Monday, April 16th

This morning I talked to Asim. During the ethnic cleansing n Brcko, the nationalist Serb army put non-Serbs together in groups of twenty to forty in different areas of the city and then took them collectively to the Serb concentration camp of Luka. Asim was a reporter at the time and took testimonies from survivors. He noted that the criminal elements within the Serb community first started this work and then after the pattern was established, the criminal elements were either squeezed out or eliminated by the Serbian political leaders. Republika Srpska was created with premeditated and systematic genocide. The very idea of having to live next to such an entity established in such this manner sickens Bosniacs, many of whom were driven from their former homes in Republika Srpska and many of whom had family members murdered there. More and more now Republika Srpska is becoming its own state.

In the beginning of May 1992, the city of Brcko was attacked by the Yugoslav National Army and the Serb paramilitary units. The attack was supported with heavy artillery and armed vehicles. The Muslims and the Croats were ethnically cleansed, murdered, or kept captive in the Serb concentration camp of Luka. In 1991 the city of Brcko has a population of 41,106 (22,994 Muslims, 8,253 Serbs, 2,894 Croats, 5,211 Yugoslavs, and 2,054 of others). The Serbs have used the river of Sava to throw away the bodies of the civilians murdered in the camps beside the river. Several thousands of civilians were killed on the streets and inside their homes. All the mosques were destroyed by August 17, 1992, among others the 200 years-old Bijela mosque, 250 years-old Stik mosque, and the more than 100 year-old Stara mosque. On the site of Bijela mosque the Serbs have erected a park and on the site of Savska a parking place while they used the rubbles from others to close off the mass graves. Today there are only 3% of Bosniaks and Croats still living in the area. From The Siege of Sarajevo, 1992-1995, FAMA.

I have seen a striking picture of one Serb ethnic-cleanser in Brcko, a young, attractive, child-like woman named Monica, in a work published by Institute for Research on War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity on the ethnic cleansing in this city. She was called the "child-monster" because she used broken beer bottles to cut her victims. Asim said that he had heard of her and that she had married the commander of the concentration camp of Luka, who has been arrested and taken to the Hague. Asim said that the young woman's mother was a prostitute in Brcko and had been stigmatized within the community. There is a story on every side of the war.

Tuesday, April 17th

I visited Rory at the Faculty of Philosophy this afternoon. He is going to a retreat on conflict resolution this weekend with a group of young people. I also saw students from the philosophy class I visited two weeks ago. They were waiting for a class. They asked when I was coming back again, which I thought was kind. One asked what I was doing with my Mihailo Markovic paper. Another asked about the possibility of studying in the US. We also compared the curricula for sociology and philosophy. One student talked about a movie that I had not heard about. It is titled “Savior” with Dennis Quaid, and it is directed by Peter Antonijevic. It is about an American whose wife and children are killed someplace by "Muslim" terrorists. He joins the Foreign Legion and then goes to Bosnia to fight with Serbian paramilitary forces. The film shows him killing Muslims in a mosque. The act is depicted as motivated by revenge. The movie is a kind of propaganda, the student said, promoting the nationalist Serb perspective. The movie is an attempt to rationalize and to normalize the conduct of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to the world. The student lamented that the Bosnian government was unable to fund a comparable film with big name actors like Dennis Quaid; a film that would tell the Bosnian story. An effort had been started, the student said, but in the end there had been enough money to finance the movie. Below is a review of Savior from www.eonline.com. I looked it up after talking to the student. The movie, if you will, had its effect on this articulate philosophy student at the University of Sarajevo, and it was disheartening.

Our Review (from Eonline.com)

It's hard to believe that this astonishingly

inept film ever got made, and yet here it is,

reducing complex political and social

problems to pabulum, turning harrowing events

into TV-movie-like clichés. Guy (an appallingly

stiff Quaid) is a happily married husband and

father, until a terrorist bomb kills his family

and he goes postal in a mosque. With no

other options, he and best buddy Dominic

(Skarsgard) join the Foreign Legion (yes,

really), where they kill innocent civilians with

unfeeling dispatch. Eventually, they wind up in

the Bosnian war, and Guy begins his

drawn-out return to the human community,

belatedly comprehending that senseless

violence is a bad thing once he hooks up with

the sultry Vera (newcomer Ninkovic) and her

newborn. Were this ham-fisted movie not

concerned with important issues, it would be

laughable. As it is, it deserves the deepest

sort of scorn.

Wednesday, April 18th

I saw Dave Berman leaving Treæa Gimnazija as I was walking to my office along the river. The trees are turning green. We had coffee. Afterwards I attempted to find the Institute for Research into War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, but I could not. Norman Cigar had pointed to where it is when we were walking together, but I still could not find it.

I am finding that I can chit-chat more with people when I shop. I can ask questions and more or less understand the response. The uncontinuous and continuous verbs are challenging. Izgubiti (to lose) is uncontinuous. Gubiti (to lose) is in continuous. I do not want to lose the key is "Ne zelim izgubiti kljuc." Here is an uncontinuous action; one would lose the key once. I do not want to be losing keys is "Ne zelim gubiti kljucevi." It is continuous. "Izgubio sam nerve" is I lost my nerves, that is, I lost them once. It is uncontinuous. "Gubim nerve" is I am losing my nerves, a continuous action. One typically uses izgubiti in the past or future because in these tenses it is completed. Izgubio je novac; he lost money. But one can use gubiti in the past when referring, say, to gambling. Gubio je novac. He has been losing money continuously (as in, he gambles).

Now that spring is here, they are selling ice-cream outside. A Bosniac joke regarding the mad cow situation is, "Better a mad cow than a clever pig."

Thursday April 19th

I joined the library at the British Council at 4 Obala Kulina Bana. It cost 70 marks, which permits one to check out videos for two weeks as well as books. The library has an excellent collection on Bosnia; I own or have seen most of them, but there were a few that are new to me. The library also has a good collection of British literature and history. The library has as well a number of video documentaries. Some I have seen, but there is one titled "Warriors," on the UN's peacekeeping role in Bosnia during the war, that has been recommended to me. This library and the library at the Human Rights Centre are both excellent resources.

Young Bosnians come to the British Council for its English programs. For better or worse, learning English is a pragmatic investment of one's time and energies. It is seen as a practical way of getting ahead. It is seen as necessary for career advancement. The problem, however, for those who speak English is that there is less incentive to learn other languages given that it is expected that others "will" speak English. "Hvala," "Dobar dan," and "Drago mi je" are three phrases that work well in many situtations in Bosnia.

Reflective verbs are important to note in Bosnian. "Mi se smijemo danas" is We are smiling today. But "Ne smijemo ici tamo" is We dare not go there. The verb to smile, smijati, has the same present tense of the verb, to dare, whose infinitive is different from the infinitive for to smile, smijati. Thus se is needed to distinguish between "Mi se smijeo" (we are smiling) and "Mi smijeo" (we dare).

Friday April 20th

Ermina, my Bosnian tutor, came back from a two-day trip to Tuzla. She was happy because of her successful talk at a conference she attended on the social needs and the human rights of people with disabilities in Bosnia. She had practiced her speech with me. She said that her speech was well received and that a lot of young people wanted to talk with her afterwards. She was rightfully proud, and I was very happy for her.

During our lesson, we practiced vocabulary cards. We are starting with the instrumental case, one of the cases that does not exist in Latin or Greek, except perhaps as the "catch-all" ablative case. Bosnian is a logical language, which is why I think that Bosnians do well with math and collectively enjoy logical and analytical thinking. When young people court each other, the strategy they use is to test the other's intelligence or to show their intelligence. This is done with challenging jokes or semantic language puzzles. I asked Ermina if this was the case. She smiled and said, "Of course, you don't want friend who is boring or stupid."

After the lesson, I had coffee with an older student who worked as a journalist during the war. He is Belgian and his wife is Bosnian. He studies sociology. We talked about cities. He said that Banja Luka is more like Zagrab and Sarajevo more like Belgrade. This was interesting and caught me by surprise. He said that it is partly because of proximity. Sarajevo, we noted, is paradoxical. On the one hand, for people who move here it is difficult to become fully accepted. People get labeled according to where they live in the city or according to how long they have lived in the city. Everyone seems to know the history of each other's family. On the other hand, the city does not seem to be the least bit xenophobic, which is what makes the city sophisticated. The student said that Belgrade is the same way. This surprised me, to be honest. Still, during the war many Bosniacs fled to Belgrade. Before the war, Bosnian Muslims went to Belgrade to get their degrees. The Bosnian Muslims were not treated differently from other students. During the violence in Kosovo, some Albanians went to Belgrade for refugee, and no questions were asked. The people who the Serbs in Belgrade do not accept are the Serbs who fled either Croatia or Bosnia and became refugees in Serbia. The Serbs in Belgrade see them as rustic and wish that they would return.

I had lunch with a Swedish sociology student. He has his masters degree from a university in Sweden, and he is getting a diploma from its Eastern European program. We talked for more than two hours at lunch. We talked about the recent films made in Belgrade and how they reflected the collective conscience of the Serbian community. Daniel mentioned watching Savior in Belgrade and how strange it was. The audience, Daniel said, started cheering when Dennis Quaid killed Bosnian Muslims in a mosque. What does it mean for this movie, Savior, to cast a charismatic American actor in this role? Indeed, why is the movie titled Savior? Clearly, it is co-opting a Christian metaphor to cloak the evil of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. For his research Daniel wants to employ Max Weber's theory of state to explain the issues involved in the reconstruction of Bosnia in a manner comparable to the way I employed Weber's theory of bureaucracy to explain the actions of the UN during the war and Weber's theory of ethics to the decisions of political leaders in response to Bosnia. We also talked about Chomsky and his arguments for fairness at the expense of justice. Chomsky's intellectualizing and political critiques are popular in Belgrade.

The Fulbrights had their weekly dinner. We thought that we would go to a curry restaurant, but one was closed and the other had changed to an Italian restaurant. We went instead to a lovely small Bosnian restaurant, and I had a delicious veal and cheese dish. The restaurant is called Dveri 12, Prote Bakovica in Bascarsija. Terri and Rory were out of town at workshops, but Jason, who is doing volunteer work in Sarajevo, Daniel, the Swedish sociologist, and Jeff at the Cultural Affairs Office also joined us. Maureen mentioned how much Bosnian parents in Sarajevo seem to care for and adore their children, for instance, at a football game she attended fathers hugged their sons a lot. She said that she remembered nothing comparable in the community where she grew up. Jeff said that Ambassador Miller returned from Washington after conferring with Secretary of State Colin Powell. The speculation is that he was told to "stick to Dayton." There is also worry that HDZ may engage in terrorist actions (it already has), and the US policy is not to be influenced by these methods. At the same time Jeff has said that, according to the Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia is now "two entities," which I take to be the State Department's position. Ethnic cleansing and genocide, however, were used to create one of these entities, and HDZ now wants the ethnic cleansing that its soldiers and politicians employed in Western Bosnia to result in yet a third entity. It was raining hard when Dave, Maureen, and I walked out of the city. The younger people stayed in town and went to a jazz club. I liked the live-music played in the restaurant Dveri, a highly skilled accordion player and a guitarist.

Saturday, April 21st

This morning I took a cab to the airport to go to the airline office. I am moving up my return date since the semester ends much earlier than I realized. Going to and returning from the airport I was able to chit-chat with the cab driver. Da li igrate fudbal? Do you play soccer? This afternoon it was a beautiful for walking along the river and into the city.

Sunday, April 22nd

Someone at the church service lent me a book by Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. The work is influenced by the writing of René Girard. Here is one blurb, "The most accessible work of profound cultural criticism from a Christian standpoint that I have read in many years," James G. Williams. I am starting the book, but I do not think that I like its title. Like popular culture, Violence Unveiled "implicitly" links violence with sexuality as if violence is somehow sensuous. I wonder if the book's narrative will rescue it from my first impression.

This evening there was a reception to honor Fulbright Scholars hosted by the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of the United States of America, Mr. Christopher J. Hoh. Chris attends the Sunday morning service at St. Anthony's. There were about eighty people at the reception. The Deans, Department Chair (Professor Musabegovic), and colleagues of Fulbrights were invited. Also, Bosnian scholars who had been Fulbrights previously in the US were invited. Chris mentioned the six Bosnians professors who were now teaching in the US. It was fun to talk to people. I met the Director of the National Library. He talked about his collection, which is now in Marshall Tito Barracks, and he invited me to come join him for coffee. We agreed that it would be good if a Fulbright, whose specialty was library science, came to Sarajevo.

After the reception, I went for supper. I learned more clearly that it is easy for outsiders to idealize Sarajevo. Life was not easy for the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats who remained in Sarajevo. The fear of being associated with a "Fifty Column" haunted Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs staying in Sarajevo. One could easily be falsely accused, and false evidence implicating people in such a way could be contrived by nationalist Serbs or Croats.

Monday, April 23rd

Today is my birthday. Ermina had asked when my birthday was. Today she gave me a birthday present, Murder Out of Tune, by Simon Shaw. Ermina read crime novels to learn to read English because she likes them. This book was winner of the Crime Writers' Association Last Laugh Award for the funniest crime novel of the year. It was very nice for Ermina to give me a present. This morning I read some email birthday cards from my wife and daughters. They will call tonight.

I had coffee again with the Belgian journalist. He became friends with Roy Gutman and Tim Judah during the war. We discussed one of the documentaries I had checked out from the British Council, “Slobo and Mira,” about Slobodan Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, who, by the way, has a doctoral degree in sociology. I said that the movie seemed chauvinistic in that it demonized Milosevic's wife. The men more or less blame her for all the problems as if she were herself the cause of the evil. Call it male scapegoating. When Milosevic was in Dayton, he called Mirjana six or seven times a day for advice and support. The Belgian journalist said that he met Mirjana Markovic and she seemed crazy. He said that, if you would say anything critical of her husband, she would act as if she wanted to kill you. This, in fact, happened to two of the informants in the video, a Serbian publisher, who had even been a confidant of Mirjana Markovic, and Ivan Stambolic, who had been Milosevic's friend, mentor, and benefactor. The video has a soap-opera angle.

Tuesday, April 24th

Last night I joined an informal group of five people who get together and practice Bosnian. We met at their teacher's apartment. Everyone attempted to do their best, but when subjects got interesting or complex, we lapsed into English. I would say a sentence or two, but I could only guess at what is being said in return. At the end we had cake and coffee. The Bosnian teacher, who is a great teacher, said that her mother was a Partisan during World War II. Given the socialist structure of former Yugoslavia, women had equitable status in the public realm and had a significant, i.e., non-token, presence in many professions. Women in former-Yugoslavia had it better than women in the United States in certain ways. Socialist feminism was not needed. When communism dissolved, patriarchy, however, reappeared with a vengeance in Eastern European countries, noted someone working with OHR on gender issues. The situation in Bosnia is paradoxical. Bourgeoisie feminism, which dominates the United States, and postmodern feminism, which dominates American universities, seem out of place in Bosnia, given the less advanced economic and academic structures. Still, feminism is needed in many ways; to note one way, semiological critiques of sexism and gender roles in the media are needed.

This afternoon I visited the Institute for Research into War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. I met with Professor Cekic, the Director, and he gave me a copy of a book which the Institute recently published. An Assistant at the Institute invited me to coffee. She said that people remembered and talked about the paper which I gave in Bihac, which was kind of her. She said that, while the paper was not as scientific as the others, it raised issues that people had not expected. She made a suggestion for learning Bosnian. She said that Mesa Selimovic's novel, The Fortress, is written in simple but eloquent prose. She recommended trying to read it in Bosnian. This would be impossible for me in Bosnian, but it might be worthwhile and interesting to read the novel in Bosnian along with or next to the English translation. Call it cheating, but it keeps one's nose out of the dictionary.

This evening I had dinner with the alumnus from Truman State University. We had cevabcici (grilled ground and spiced meat) in old Sarajevo. He enjoys his volunteer work with World Peace. He goes to a refugee camp and does art recreation with children. Soon he will travel to Italy and then back to the States. He mentioned reading Rebecca West's travelog, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia. West has a reputation for being sympathetic toward the Serbian view of the area, and it would be interesting to revisit her account of Bosnia and her reflections on the history of Muslims in Sarajevo. He told me where the Modern Art Gallery is and commended it. I walk past it often, but there is no sign to tell you that it is the Modern Art Gallery. Sometimes you need visitors to tell you where the action is. The Modern Art Gallery is near the Holiday Inn.

Wednesday, April 25th

This evening there was a farewell reception for Ambassador Robert L. Barry and Mrs. Barry in Dom Armije. The Ambassador gave a speech in English and repeated it in Bosnian. Then Mrs. Barry gave a speech in Bosnian and repeated it in English. Mrs. Barry has done a lot of work with women and helped start support groups. I am not even sure of everything that she has done. Bosnians laughed at the jokes in her speech.

Thursday, April 26th

Today I drove to Vrelo Bosne (Bosnian Well) outside of Ilidza. A massive amount of water flows right up out of the bottom of Mountain Igman from eight different locations to create a fast-flowing stream. Swans paddled around in the calm lagoons. The area is a popular picnic spot and packed on weekends. A popular restaurant built above the water was burned during the war. Across the road from Vrelo Bosne there were signs warning of mines for anyone who might think of walking up the steep mountain side. Young boys stood on a bridge and retrieved money that SFOR soldiers threw into the water. When one boy jumped into the water and realized how cold it was, he quickly got out. I commented "On gubi nerve" (He is losing his nerves [a continuous verb]). A friend laughed. Then she said to me, smiling, "But Bosnians no longer have any nerves to lose."

Last night I watched another video documentary which I borrowed from the British Council. It is titled "Serbian Epics" and was shown on Bookmark at BBC. Why is the documentary titled "Serbian Epics"? The documentary showcases Radovan Karadzic during the war and provides him a stage from which to confuse his global audience with respect to the Serbian point of view. We watch Karadzic play the gusle, a traditional one-string instrument, and sing a ballad. We watch an afternoon picnic of Serbian soldiers with women and children frolicking on the hillside. Then the camera pans over to a panoramic view of buildings burning in Sarajevo. We listen to Karadzic talk about the war while visiting his mother in Montenegro. Then, we watch Karadzic host the Russian writer Eduard Limonov. Karadzic tells Limonov how his own poetry, twenty years ago, predicted the war, and Karadzic snickers when he observes how scary that is. Then we see perhaps the most obscene event ever filmed. A soldier shows the Russian writer Limonov how to hold a sniper rifle, and then we watch Limonov take aim and fire intently into the city of Sarajevo. I could recognize St. Anthony's tall red steeple a very short distance underneath the hill. Afterwards, we listen to Limonov tell Karadzic how brave his Serbian soldiers are, and we observe young boys watching the banquet and playing on tanks as if the tanks were playground equipment.

Friday, April 27th

This morning I visited Professor Cekic. He talked to me about the Institute's research projects and I shared two recent papers. This morning I got my sunglasses fixed. The frames broke, and I bought new frames for the prescription lenses I already had. During my Bosnian lesson, we practiced flashcards, which is quite useful. This way I learn the grammar I need and also the grammar I don't know. Grudi (lungs) is always feminine plural. One says, "Bole me grudi," my lungs hurt. "Boli me noga" would mean my leg hurts.

This afternoon a psychology student returned two books I lent her . We talked about psychology, Freud, education, and feminism. Afterwards I picked up a package from my family. In the package were home-baked biscotti. It is hard to eat just one. This evening the Fulbrights met for dinner; we ate at Jez, which has the reputation for being one of the better restaurants in Sarajevo. Dave had eaten there during the war. Jason, Jeff, and Craig joined us. We talked about the recent events in Dubrinja, the suburb next to the Sarajevo airport which now is part of the Federation. Dave's apartment is near there, and he has been visiting an elementary school in the neighborhood. During the war it was difficult for people in this besieged neighborhood to cross a small river that flows through the area because snipers targeted the bridges from the steeple of a Serbian Orthodox Church nearby in Serb Sarajevo. Here is a recent story on the dispute.

Muslim-Croat Police Keep Low Profile in Disputed Suburb

SARAJEVO, Apr 26, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Muslim-Croat

Federation police started patrolling a Sarajevo suburb Wednesday which had

been previously been under the administration of Bosnia's other post-war entity,

the Serb-run Republika Srpska, a UN spokesman said.

But the officers in the Dobrinja suburb were keeping an extremely low profile, in

a sign of ongoing tension over the control of the area, which contains 800

apartments.

"I can confirm that they are not patrolling on foot but in unmarked vehicles.

They drive in to take a look and then come out again," UN spokesman Douglas

Coffman told AFP.

An official for the international community overseeing Bosnia's peace on

Tuesday ruled that the suburb belonged to the Muslim-Croat Federation,

sparking heated protests from the Republika Srpska.

Under the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, the

two entities run Bosnia in a 51-49 percent split that is marked by uneasy

cohabitation.

Coffman explained that the Bosnian Serb and Muslim-Croat police were

cooperating, but that the situation still was not "normal" as Bosnian Serb

refugees living in the suburb were gathering on street corners to observe the

situation.

Serbs from the neighborhood had demonstrated on Tuesday, and the police

force had initially held back from moving in to Dobrinja when the formal

switch-over took place, at midnight on Tuesday.

"It is obvious that this is not going to be a completely normal situation for a

while... but Federal police were right to select a low-key manner in order to

prevent incidents," Coffman said.

Bosnian Serb President Mirko Sarovic said that the ruling "represents a

violation of Republika Srpska's sovereignty" and undermined his entity's claim to

49 percent of Bosnia.

It added that this decision could become a factor of destabilization in the whole

of Bosnia.

Under the Dayton peace accords the Balkan country was split into two entities,

each with its own government and legislation. Parts of the country's capital

Sarajevo were in the Republika Srpska. ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)

Saturday, April 28th

There was a big soccer game today in Sarajevo. The game was between the two rival clubs in the city, and both clubs are at the top of their league. Since there is no drinking at soccer games, there is less risk for violence or mob behavior. This evening I went to the ballet at National Theater. It was titled "Jabuka," which means apple. The music was from Britten, Verdi, and Rachmaninov. The choreography by Edina Papo was wonderful. The variations in the movement of dancers as a group, both their patterns and their exceptions, were fascinating. The stage was like a easel upon which a living picture was being constantly painted and then repainted with various colors and combinations that the dancers represented. The ballet was something like language with many clever combinations and unexpected variations but always within an overarching frame and consistent structure.

Sunday, April 29th

There is a new minister from SFOR who presided at the church service. She is a reservist from Indianapolis. A part of her still seemed to be with her congregation in Indiana. In the afternoon I went to a book exhibit in Skenderija. This is the place where the indoor games were held during the Winter Olympics in 1984. It is now a shopping mall as well as a sports center where they hold occasional concerts. The Skenderija is at the bottom of a steep hill from which during the war snipers shot. People would risk their lives and race across the street in order to enter Skenderija and play tennis or have an indoor soccer game. There were a lot of interesting books at the exhibit, but they were expensive. I bought Michael Ignatieff's Virtual War: Kosovo and beyond.

Monday, April 30th

I went to the theater this evening.. The play, written by Abdulah Sidran, was about the war and titled "U Zvorniku ja sam ostavio svoje scre," which means "I left my heart in Zvornik." It dramatizes how a music salesman from Sarajevo was visiting Zvornik as the war started and how he and others are turned into scapegoats by chetniks. It dramatizes as well how the man is not a scapegoat, at least no more than the society itself from within which he comes. The representation of violence in the play (gunshots, beatings, knifings) was painful for the people in the audience. (The theater was full.) At the curtain call the young man who played a chetnik seemed almost afraid to step forward and take a bow before the audience. The audience's applause died down when he came to the front of the stage. An older actor put his arm around the young man to give him support. The audience had trouble separating the actor from the role he played.

Tuesday, May 1st

Today and tomorrow are national holidays It is interesting that May 1st, International Worker's Day, is not celebrated in the US. Croatia, I was told, has also started not to take a holiday on May 1st, a jolting experience, no doubt, for former Yugoslavs in Croatia. This evening, though, I gave a lecture to a social work class at the Faculty of Political Science. I was asked to talk about trauma and collective memory. First, I drew upon an article by Alan Blum and addressed different relations to suffering according to different social types: the victim, the patient, the client, and the pariah. Then, to talk about trauma and collective memory, I introduced the scapegoat mechanism as discussed by Kenneth Burke and others in various interdisciplinary literature. It seemed to work. The students also had translated copies of two papers: One titled "Rape as a Transgression of Species-Being" and the other "The Ethical Requirement of Burial and its Transgression during the War." Since I am visiting the class only once, I perhaps come in with too much. The discussion was good. One student noted how Israelis were now scapegoating Palestinians even though Jews were turned into scapegoats in Germany. We discussed the need to critique the notion of the scapegoat so that it does not seem like an automatic self-understanding for a group of people and to show how it needs to be otherwise.

If there is a "Balkan" mentality, perhaps it is a heavy use of the scapegoat mechanism to explain history and relations between groups. Milosevic came into power through turning various individuals (Azem Vllasi or Ivan Stambolic) and groups into scapegoats. It seems to me, however, that the tradition and culture of Bosnia itself, as something that has existed since the early Bosnian Church, shuns the notion of turning another who is different into a sacrifice that purifies oneself. One of the painful tragedies of the war in Bosnia is that both Bosnia's enemies and the international community kept expecting Bosnians to assume a scapegoat role, even though the notion was alien to the people themselves and even though Bosnians consistently and persuasively refused to take this role.

Wednesday, May 2nd

The leaves on the tall trees on Wilson Boulevard, which winds along the Miljaska River, are now out and green. This walk was the front-line between Grbavica (a part of the city held by Serb nationalists in which there was vicious ethnic cleansing) and the main part of Sarajevo. This walk is also "lover's lane" where young couples sit on park benches. People of all ages walk by and ignore the young couples passionately kissing. It is a public area in which oblivious passion is permissible.

Last week I saw a so so video from the British Council titled "Sobo and Mira." It is about Slobodan Milosevic, his wife, Mirjana Markovic, and their relations. It focused on their biographies, for instance, that Milosevic's mother, father, and uncle committed suicide and that Mirjana Markovic's mother, who was a Partisan, was yet killed by Partisans for giving up names while being tortured by Germans. Various Serbian intellectual and political figures focus mainly on Mirjana Markovic, who, by the way, has a doctoral degree in sociology. They noted how at Dayton Milosevic called his wife seven times a day and so on, how she heavily influenced him. Something was wrong, though, although I could not figure it out until later. They were demonizing her. Blaming her, just her, for what happened under Milosevic's rule. More strongly, they were scape-goating her in the way that Milosevic scape-goated various people and groups on his way to power. We may call this male chauvinism. And feminism shows that, when men scape-goat women, it is not good for either women or men.

Thursday, May 3rd

At noon I went to a lecture at the Faculty of Philosophy by Professor James W. Morris, who is Chair of Islamic Studies at University of Exeter. He is a scholar in Islamic philosophy, and a book of his lectures in English and Bosnian was published.

Here is how young Bosnians express great approval, for instance, when walking into a disco. "To je haos (after chaos)." Then "To je mrak." This is dark. Or, "To je grom." This is a storm. All these phrases are like saying "This is fantastic" or "This is super," which is what my generation would say. So I often say "To je super" where I should imagine two or three s's in front of super. "To je ssssuper."

Friday, May 4th

I went to a second lecture by Professor Morris. It was titled "Ostad Elahi and the Task of Spiritual Intelligence" and was given in the amphitheater of Ghazi Husrav-bey's Madrasah (the Muslim highschool for boys). Professor Morris gave me a copy of his book, Orientations: Islamic Thought in a World Civilization and signed it for me. I talked as well to his translator. She translated an essay I had written. It feels strange to meet someone who has translated your writing. At the start of the lecture a young man chanted "Ezan," a call to prayer. His voice was beautiful, and it was like the recorded chant one hears from mosques five times a day. Before going to University of Exeter, Professor Morris taught at Oberlin College.

Here is an unpleasant report.

Bosnia's Small Businesses Refuse to Serve Foreigns Fearing Nationalists

SARAJEVO, May 3, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Owners of some small

businesses in Croat-dominated parts of Bosnia are refusing to serve

international staff members to avoid reprisals by Bosnian Croat nationalists, the

UN mission here said Thursday.

Croat nationalists, striving for autonomy in Bosnia, were reported last week to

have targeted large Croat private companies for extortion, with extremists

warning those who refused to pay a "tax" for the self-rule movement that

accidents could happen to them or their families.

"Unfortunately the intimidation now also effect small businesses including shops,

restaurants, even hair saloons some of which now refuse to serve members of

the international community fearing reprisals from the extremists," UN

spokesman Douglas Coffman told journalists.

Under the Dayton peace accords, that ended 1992-95 war in Bosnia, the

country is divided into the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb-run

Republika Srpska (RS). They are linked by what is considered to be a weak

central government.

Bosnian Croat nationalists voted early in March for "temporary Croat

autonomy" in Bosnia saying they did not recognize the newly-elected moderate

government.

Following strong opposition by international representatives in Bosnia to

self-rule, foreign officials were threatened by nationalists in leaflets and posters

recently distributed in several Croat-dominated Bosnian cities.

The UN called for moderate Croats not to give in to "criminal bullies",

condemning the practice of intimidation and inviting those responsible to "come

to their senses and stop it." ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)

Saturday, May 5th

I met with a colleague at Mercator. We had coffee, and we shopped for food. There is a relation between cafe life and oral culture. There may not be much cafe life in the United States because there is not much of an oral culture, except perhaps in small towns. In graduate school, I remember reading an essay on oral culture and written culture.

The Fulbrights met for dinner on Saturday rather than Friday this week. Two people joined us: one, who is doing research on the attitudes of Bosnians toward mine safety, and another, who is working with different NGO's and helping organize people who were tortured in concentration camps during the war. People shared notes, and we got to know each other.

Sunday, May 6th

People were sad for several reasons at the Church service this morning. An American man, whose wife works with the Norwegian embassy, died this week after a car accident. I had seen him at the services, although I could not say that I knew him. Second, the congregation's new minister went went to Trebinje yesterday and had a bad experience. She was there representing SFOR for the rebuilding of a new mosque. During the disturbances, she heard gun shots, and she feared for her life as well as her translator's. The Spanish marines insisted that she leave although a part of her wanted to stay to show solidarity with the Islamic religious leaders in Trebinje. Here is a report from BBC Radio on what happened. I saw no news report in The New York Times. It is as if The New York Times is taking the same attitude toward the world and Europe that George W. Bush is.

Serb nationalists in Bosnia-Hercegovina have

blocked an attempt to start rebuilding a

mosque destroyed during the civil war.

Hundreds of Serbs carrying black flags and

shouting nationalist slogans attacked

delegates gathering to lay a foundation stone

in the town of Trebinje, more than 100

kilometres (60 miles) south of the capital

Sarajevo.

Several people were

injured, including a

representative of the

international

administration, although

no one was seriously

hurt.

Representatives of the

international community

in Bosnia have

condemned the

violence. An investigation into the apparent

failure of the local police to intervene is now

under way.

The Bosnian Serb authorities have expressed

regret over the incident, saying they

supported religious tolerance.

Reconstruction

The Osman Pasa mosque was one of hundreds

destroyed in the Bosnian war between 1992

and 1995. Only a handful have so far been

rebuilt.

Reconstruction work was to begin on

Saturday, with the symbolic laying of the

cornerstone which had been personally brought

from the Spanish city of Zaragoza by the city's

mayor Jose Altarez.

But what had been

intended as a

reaffirmation of

Bosnia's multi-ethnic

tradition descended

into violence, as

hundreds of Serb

nationalist

demonstrators hurled

stones and chanted

abuse.

The protests are a

reminder of the

strength of nationalist

feelings.

Ceremony postponed

Eventually, the visitors were forced to

abandon the ceremony, taking refuge in the

offices of the local Islamic community.

The head of the Islamic community in Bosnia,

Mustafa Ceric, has promised to reschedule the

ceremony at the earliest opportunity.

"This is a clear case of violation of basic

human rights, but despite everything the

mosque will be rebuilt," Mr Ceric said in

Trebinje.

On Monday, a similar ceremony is due to take

place in the northern city of Banja Luka, where

one of Bosnia's most famous and

architecturally distinguished mosques is to be

rebuilt.

The caption underneath the picture of the Serb agitators in Trebinje was "The protests are a reminder of the strength of nationalist feelings." It is discouraging for many reasons. I was going to give a lecture in Trebinje with International Forum Bosnia, but it was cancelled. The news agencies in Sarajevo cannot use words like facists or chetniks to describe such agitators, although the agitators themselves dress as if they were chetniks from WWII and also refer to themselves in this way. Nor are the local schools allowed to use the word genocide in order to describe contemporary events in Bosnia. So often it looks as if the international community is colluding with the perpetrators of genocide.

Monday, May 7th

This afternoon I was sitting in the cafe in the basement of the Faculty of Political Science as the radio reported events in Banja Luka. Someone translated some of the report for me. I, of course, listened to the English of the OHR spokesperson in the background. He kept saying, with a voice not unlike my own, that the international community would hold people responsible for the riot and disturbances. I kept thinking, "Does this mean Karadzic?" living someplace in southwest Bosnia. Here is one report of the events.

Rioting Bosnian Serbs Stone Officials at Mosque Site

BANJA LUKA, May 8, 2001 -- (Reuters) Bosnian Serb police evacuated

nearly 300 people including top Western diplomats to safety on Monday after

they were trapped in a building by rioting Serb nationalists, UN officials said.

"This is a sad day for the Serb republic," Jacques Klein, head of the UN mission

in post-war Bosnia who was among the stranded officials, told Reuters by

telephone. "What is the bravery of Serb men...to stone old Muslim women?"

Klein and other officials were trapped by Serb protesters who pelted Muslim

refugees and officials with teargas grenades, stones and eggs to prevent them

inaugurating the reconstruction of a renowned medieval mosque in Banja Luka,

heartland of the Bosnian Serb republic.

The 16th-century Ferhadija mosque was destroyed in 1993 during the Bosnian

war.

At the end of a tense day, two top security officials -- Banja Luka Police Chief

Vladimir Tutus and Bosnian Serb Interior Minister Pero Bundalo -- offered their

resignations.

Tutus told Bosnian Serb television that 30 people, including 18 Muslims, had

been admitted to the communal hospital for treatment to injuries sustained

during the disorder.

Five buses that brought Muslims to the ceremony were set ablaze. Others were

stoned and damaged.

The crowd of more than 2,000 Serbs in front of the Islamic community building

in Banja Luka had dispersed by early evening.

"The evacuation of all people has been successfully completed," UN spokesman

Douglas Coffman told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller, who was also in Banja Luka on Monday but

not among the trapped diplomats, condemned the riots and called on Bosnian

Serb officials to put an end to lawlessness and arrest the perpetrators.

"The planned ceremony, which should have been a symbol of peace and

reconciliation, has been destroyed by actions of a violent and unruly crowd.

Such acts cannot and must not go unpunished," Miller said in a statement.

Mustafa Efendi Ceric, the top Islamic cleric in Bosnia, said the protests had

clearly been organized in advance.

"Those who organized today's incident are the same ones who destroyed

Ferhadija mosque (in 1993)," Ceric told a news conference in Sarajevo, the

Bosnian capital.

The 16th-century mosque was blown up during a campaign by Serbs to erase

symbols of Muslim culture and religion. The Serbs went to war and overran

about two-thirds of Bosnia after Muslims and Croats voted for independence

from Yugoslavia.

Banja Luka is the heartland of the Bosnian Serb republic, territory from which

most Muslim and Croat residents were expelled in violent wartime ethnic

cleansing campaigns.

Tuesday, May 8th

Last night I did not go to sleep until 5:00 AM. I wonder if it was because of watching on the Bosnian evening news busses burning and people being stoned in Banja Luka. Most of the stone throwers were young, male teenagers. Jacques Klein made a comment in the press, "Who raised these youths?" This morning, a young Bosnian man, said to me that it was painful to watch because the riots made it seem as if the centuries in which Bosnians had lived together were just an illusion. The nationalists in Bosnia work to produce the illusion that Bosnians cannot live together. That is, the nationalists seek to make the illusion that Bosnians cannot live together a reality, and the international community frequently defers to this. The fact is that Bosnians lived together for centuries and they still can live together. This is who they are!

The claim most often repeated by Karadzic - that people of different nationalities couldn't live together in Bosnia - was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: people of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed. Semezdin Mehemedinovic in "A Small Map of the World"

The stone throwers are barbarians, but perhaps they know one thing. How can the international community really support the rebuilding of a destroyed mosque when the people who destroyed the mosque are not punished and if the need to punish the people who destroyed the mosque is not acknowledged? The international community is skipping a crucial step, the step of justice. Socrates said that the cruelest punishment for someone who deserves punishment is simply not to punish the one who deserves punishment. Children know this. Children lose it when the parent ignores them rather than deal with their misbehavior. Here is why, as Klein says, the society is sick. In a way, the stone throwers were showing the consequence of their ideology and their individual members not being punished. They experience a kind of cruelty from the international community when it ignores the crime of genocide and the crimes against humanity that happened in the name of creating a Greater Serbia. There, in fact, were sixteen mosques that were destroyed in Banja Luka, not just one. And Banja Luka, moreover, was over one hundred kilometers from the frontline during the entire war. There were almost 700 mosques in RS that were destroyed, and there has been no effort to rebuild any of them. Another friend said to me that the positive side of this event in Banja Luka is that it makes transparent who the Serbs are.

Perhaps I ought to conclude these comments with a citation from Rebecca West's famous book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia:

Trebinye

We saw the town suddenly in a parting between showers, handsome and couchant, and like all Turkish towns green with trees and refined by the minarets of many mosques. These are among the most pleasing architectural gestures ever made by urbanity. They do not publicly declare the relationship of man to God like a Christian tower or spire. They raise a white finger and say only, "This is a community of human beings and, look you, we are not beasts of the field."

While it may reflect a Serbian bias, for which West is reputed, to label a town with mosques a Turkish town (it is a Bosnian town), West's formulation of the significance of the minaret throughout all of Bosnia for all Bosnians is compelling and timely.

This afternoon I visited the National Art Gallery and saw a photography exhibit by Werner Bischof. The lighting of the photographs was remarkable, like paintbushes on a canvas. Bischof worked all over the world, Zurick, Europe, India, Japan, China, Hong Kong, South America, and the United States, and in his photographs the people were real and exposed.

Wednesday, May 9th

Yesterday I met with and talked with Nebojsa Savija-Valha at the Nansen Dialogue Centre. He is doing his master's degree at a university in Slovenia, and he is taking an ethnomethodological approach. This was exciting to me because I studied with Alan Blum and Peter McHugh at York University in Toronto, two names that he had heard of. Nebojsa does not have many primary materials from Harold Garfinkel and the school of ethnomethodology. I said that I would bring the materials that I have with me and try to get more.

I still think about how Sarajevo reminds me of Perugia. Both cities have the gemeinshaft feeling that you would find in a small town. Like Perugia, Sarajevo is self-contained, a system unto itself that does not really seem to need the world. Both cities seem self-sufficient. Perugia on top of a hill, Sarajevo in a narrow valley. At night the buildings do not overshadow the people, something Perugia and Sarajevo share. That is, the people walking on the streets are as immense as the ancient buildings, some from the Ottoman period and some from the Austrio-Hungarian period. The Tito buildings are on the outlying areas. Unlike Perugia, where I thought that the people were circling in one of the higher circles of Dante's Inferno, people in Sarajevo seem one notch or two below heaven. They live with themselves. It is hard to describe. They are morally relaxed. Guilt is a foreign concept to them. They cannot even be bothered to lay guilt trips on the world. What is the point?

Thursday, May 10th

I heard that in Banja Luka Serbian rioters against other Bosnians and the international community released a pig and let it run on the ground where the mosque is to be rebuilt. The point of this activity is nothing else than to insult the Muslim community. Then, I read in another report that the head of the pig was cut off and left on the site of the former mosque. The issue here is not just the individuals who engage in these actions. The issue is the ideology that the individuals represent and the relation of the Serbian community, both in Bosnia and in Serbia, to this ideology. Is this how the Serbian community wants to define itself, according to a racist hatred toward people of the Muslim faith, Bosnians who are not Orthodox Christians? People within the Serbian community need to speak out against this tempting interpretation. People in the Serbian community need to differentiate themselves from these barbarians in Banja Luka and their community because these barbarians are winning the battle for the soul of the Serbian community. Of course, the Serbs in Banja Luka who are as disgusted by these events as anyone (and I assume that there are such Serbs in Banja Luka) are not able to speak out as long as Karadzic remains unarrested.

I made copies of articles from Harold Garfinkel for Nebojsa and dropped them off. Nebojsa and I talked about Sarajevo. There is a longstanding tension or social stratification between natives, raja, and people who move in from small towns, papci. Anthropologically it is interesting. In fact, at the start of the war, people in Sarajevo did not see the conflict not in ethnic terms. The raja of Sarajevo saw the people in the hills firing on their beautiful city as papci, people from villages who simply like to kill.

Friday, May 11th

People have said events in Banja Luka reminded them of the start of the war in 1992. A man on the street just started talking to me after I said I understand some German. He said that people are people and nationalists ignore what people need. I did not understand it all. At a macro-level, what can one do? It is discouraging. At a micro-level, one can always do something. Today, I had several good conversations with individuals: Someone said a fine thing to me. After I said that I worry whether President Bush may say or do something to undermine the positive attitude of Bosnians toward the United States, he said that Bosnians will always keep their positive attitude no matter who happens to be President of the United States.

Another trip foiled. Wednesday I was going to go with Asim and Damir to a philosophy conference in Pecs, Hungary. The conference was on Richard Rorty's work, and Asim knows Rorty because Rorty visited Sarajevo last year at Asim's invitation. Asim's wife, however, had to go into the hospital, and Asim is now a father. The embassy had given approval for the drive through Brcko up to Hungary.

With some nouns there may be two genders, for instance, minut or minuta, for minute. The matter is up for grabs. For instance, it gets tricky when you say two minutes. You could say dva minuta or dvje minute. A noun after a number takes the genitive singular from numbers two to four and the genitive plural from five up. If minute is masculine, it is jedan minut, dva minuta, tri minuta, cetiri minuta, and then pet minuta, where in the last example, minuta is the genitive masculine plural. If minute is feminine, it is jedna minuta, dvje minute, tri minute, cetiri minute, and then pet minuta, where dvije minute is the genitive feminine singular and then, both like and unlike the first example, pet minuta is the genitive feminine plural. That is, minuta is the feminine genitive plural as well as the masculine genitive plural; they have the same declension. I like Bosnian, that is, I like the logical character to its variations. I have heard some people say that they use the masculine for minute and others the feminine.

Saturday, May 12th

This afternoon, I heard a swing band from Dayton, Ohio at the US embassy. Dayton, Ohio and Sarajevo are sister cities. The name of the band was "Top Brass," and one of the players teaches at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, where my family lives. Another lives in Centerville. They are doing music programs with the schools in Sarajevo. This evening, I went to the opening of the American Film Preservation Showcase at the Meeting Point, a nice movie theater. The opening film was Casablanca. On the one hand, I had not seen the film for ten years. On the other hand, I had seen it ten times. It is interesting how after ten years some scenes mean more to you and some less. During the war, Sarajevo was like Casablanca during World War II. Everyone was trying somehow to escape. They were trapped in Casablanca and had to deal with corrupt officials in order to buy themselves out. At the same time, there were great love stories. This week there is a series of American films playing. It is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State. Before the film showing Ambassador Miller made a few opening remarks. Rory, Maureen, and I walked home together after the reception following the film.

Sunday, May 13th

There was a large number of people at the church service this morning. Two British officers. A couple from Germany. Two men from Albania. Three or four younger adults from the US working with NGO's. During the discussion, someone raised the question of the fragility of the congregation given its transient census.

This evening I went to another performance of "Top Brass." They arranged a song and dedicated it to Sarajevo. It is the band's photographer who lives in Yellow Springs, and I did not get a chance to meet her. During the intermission, I talked to some people I knew.

Monday, May 14th

I got ready for a TV interview on Wednesday and a sociology class on Thursday. There is an easy way to show possession in Bosnian. Kcerke su mi dobro, which literally means daughters are to me fine or my daughters are fine. This seems easier and better than Moje kcerke su dobro. To give another example, otac mu je tamo. Father to him is there or his father is there where mu is him in the dative or to him. Sestra nam ce ici kuci. Sister to us will go home or our sister will go home. This use of the dative is common in everyday life.

Tuesday, May 15th

After working in the office I went to see a movie at Meeting Point. It was "Carmen Jones." I think that this movie is a great adaptation of a classic opera. The adaptation makes the original better, stronger. I have never seen a more thoughtful portrayal of Carmen. This film makes Carmen a sensitive and tragic human being. Her character breaks through the femme fatale stereotype in most productions without undercutting the original character. Here is a review of the movie from Retro Reviews by Lisa Grable.

"Carmen Jones" moves Bizet's story of Carmen, from a cigarette

factory in Spain to a parachute factory in the southern United States.

Otto Preminger directed the all-black cast, with Bizet's music and

lyrics arranged by Oscar Hammerstein II.

The film begins in a dusty southern town. Cindy Lou (Olga James)

arrives at the gates of a military base to visit her boyfriend, Joe

(Harry Belafonte). Joe is about to leave for officers' flying school.

He takes Cindy Lou to the mess hall for a goodbye visit. Carmen

(Dorothy Dandridge) enters the mess hall and mesmerizes the

parachute workers and the soldiers with her double-loop dangling

earrings, low-cut peasant blouse, tight red skirt, and very high heels.

Carrying a red rose, she sings "Love's a Baby That Grows Up

Wild." Carmen could have her pick of any man in the room, but she

sets her sights on Joe, despite his love for Cindy Lou.

Carmen gets into a terrible brawl with Frankie (Pearl Bailey). The

sargeant orders Carmen to civilian jail and he commands Joe to take

her there. Joe unwillingly puts her in a jeep for the trip to the nearest

town. At the first train crossing she escapes, jumping out of the jeep

and onto the passing train.

Joe chases the train and captures Carmen. She's like a wild bird that

can't stand to be locked up. He has to tie her down to control her.

They proceed to their destination, Masonville, more than fifty miles

away. Carmen convinces Joe that she knows a shortcut, but not

even his jeep can handle the rough back country. Abandoning the

vehicle, Carmen and Joe hike to her nearby hometown to wait for a

train to Masonville.

Carmen cooks supper for Joe at her grandmother's house. She

seduces him, then runs away while he sleeps. This seduction ends

Joe's hopes for flight school. He was under orders to get Carmen to

jail, and her escape lands him in the stockade. A very sad and

confused Joe sings of his new-found love for Carmen.

The next time we see Carmen she is wearing a pink princess-line

dress with a deep flounce. She's on her way to Billy Pastor's Cafe,

her favorite nightspot, a roadhouse tucked away in the woods.

Frankie and the other girls from the parachute factory are there

having a high time. Frankie leads the partying by singing "Beat Out

That Rhythm on the Drum."

Husky Miller (Joe Adams), the famous boxer, arrives at Billy's in a

very nice car. The crowd runs out to see him as he sings "Stand Up

and Fight Until You Hear the Bell." Carmen catches Husky's fancy

and he makes a play for her. He tells his manager to send Carmen

to Chicago to be with him, but she gives up this chance for the high

life to wait for Joe.

Joe gets out of the stockade and heads straight to the cafe to meet

Carmen. She's thrilled to see him but he has news: He's once again

been given the chance to go to flight school. Carmen can never

delay gratification. She convinces him to go AWOL, joining her

friends for fun in Chicago.

Joe and Carmen end up living in a dingy flat right next to the El. The

heat between Joe and Carmen is still strong. She paints her toenails

then gives her foot to Joe to blow dry, revealing some very beautiful

gams. The lovers have run out of money so Carmen goes to Husky's

gym to see if she can borrow some. She finds her old friends

Frankie and Myr (Diahann Carroll) eating well and wearing

gorgeous clothes and jewels. She finds that Husky has been waiting

for her, so she decides to throw her lot with the fighter's crowd. She

wants those new clothes and the nice hotel Husky has promised.

Carmen's lack of patience and restraint doom her and anyone who

is attracted by this beautiful, poisonous butterfly of a woman. The

story gets added drama from this steamy setting and the contrast

between Carmen's life in the South and the riches of Chicago.

Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte are a beautiful couple and

their scenes sizzle. It's hard not to feel melancholy about Dorothy

Dandridge while watching her vibrant performances. But instead,

let's celebrate that we can still watch her and admire her artistry.

http://www.retroactive.com/mar98/carmenjones.html

Wednesday, May 16th

Today I did my "first" talk show. Alija Behram interviewed me for Mostar TV, and we had a dialogue for fifty minutes in front of the camera. Since I am not able to travel to Mostar at this time, the camera crew came to Sarajevo and we had the interview in an office. The conversation was wide-ranging, and I was asked about a recent paper I wrote on the utterances of indicted war criminals on the global media. After the interview, Alija Behram said that we hit it off and that he thought that the audience would be receptive to what we said. Asim translated and afterwards we went for ice cream.

This evening Rory, Maureen, Terri, and I met at a Tratoria Ono, which is nearby, and we looked at Rory's pictures. We ordered reprints, which Rory will get for us.

Thursday, May 17th

This morning I visited Dr. Enes Kujundzic, the Director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had seen and talked with him on two different occasions, and he had invited me to join him for coffee. We talked about the need to publish works by Bosnian scholars and why it is difficult. Then I had a brief tour of the library. It is hard to understand why the National Library was destroyed in the war. Imagine an army attacking Washington, DC, and during the first stage of its siege destroying with incendiary bombs the Library of Congress with almost all of its books and manuscripts. Then imagine that some of the commanders and political leaders of this army had studied and learned at this library that they destroyed. Then imagine that some of the commanders and political leaders had sent their students to this library to learn. Now the National and University Library are in the renovated Tito barracks, where the aggression against Sarajevo more or less started.

This afternoon I lectured to a second year sociology class at the Faculty of Political Science. Students had read a translated copy of my essay, "On the Latent Function of Ethnic Cleansing." After a general discussion of sociology, they asked a lot of questions. We also reflected on how Robert K. Merton's sociological theory bears on the recent riots in Trebyne and Banja Luka. Obviously the manifest function of the riots was to stop the rebuilding of a destroyed mosque. But what was the latent function of the riots? For one thing, the riots showed that the communities in Trebyne and Banja Luka are ruled by charismatic authority rather than legal authority or rational authority. The international community makes a mistake if it thinks that the crowd was unruled. The crowd was ruled. It was ruled by Karadzic's charismatic authority. Although Karadzic was not concretely in the crowd, he was symbolically. The latent function of the riots was to show the international community this fact. Before rebuilding the mosque, the people who deserve to be punished for destroying the mosque first need to be punished. The international community was trying to skip an essential step, the step of justice, and the riots would not let the international community take a short cut.

Friday, May 18th

Ugo called me this morning, and we talked about getting together. He picked me up and gave me a ride to the Faculty of Political Science. He also gave me copies of two books, one by the philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy, and another on multiculturalism, which Ugo thinks is very good. This afternoon I returned Rebecca West's travelog to the British Council. I think that this book might be something that I will enjoy reading upon my return to the States. It felt strange to read it while I was here.

This evening I went to "Raging Bull," the last film in the American film series. I felt uncomfortable watching this film with its graphic violence and watching it with people from Sarajevo. Frankly, it was the pits. Why was this film selected for this series in Sarajevo? I think that one consequence of the war in Sarajevo is that that part of the self which takes things personally does not exist in a public way for people in Sarajevo. It is submerged because showing it can be harmful or self-destructive. A person could not take the war with its constant shelling and murders personally and survive it without going mad. Or taking the war personally eventually destroyed or totally exhausted that part of the self which takes things personally. The horrible thing about this film, "Raging Bull," was that this main character could only take things personally, which led to his violent actions against others, his wife, and his brother. Not in one scene did he not take things personally, whatever this means (forgive the double-negative). He mouthed the words "why" at the end of the film, but the words did not reveal any light. To my mind, this part of American culture does not need to be imported. If anything, this part of American culture has already been imported. The film could stand as a case study of a war criminal in Bosnia and I am sure that everyone in the audience saw that. I went to the film because I had never seen it and because a reviewer had called it the best film of the decade.

Saturday, May 19th

Today I went to give a lecture in Zenica with International Forum Bosnia, Saturday Forum. Zenica is about an hour drive north of Sarajevo in the center of Bosnia. It is known for its steel factories as well as its prison during the repression of Communist authorities in former-Yugoslavia. When people would say, I have been to Zenica, it was like saying, I have been to prison. During the war, only a few shells fell on Zenica. They were shot by the nationalist Croat army. During the war, it was perhaps the safest or least traumatized place. Zenica was built after World War II and none of the buildings reflect previous historical periods. Smaller places, like Visoko, seem more urban given their long histories as cities.

The lecture, "On the Latent Function of Ethnic Cleaning," went well. I kept it short, thirty minutes, and used some ideas that came out of this week's class. I wrote this essay in 1993, and it was disturbing to see how contemporary it remains. The essay was posted in 1994 on Michael Sell's Web Site on Bosnia. http://www.students.haverford.edu/vfilipov/home2.html. The discussion after the presentation was for me wonderful and truly satisfying. The conversation lasted almost two hours. Some hard hitting and pointed comments were made. Someone asked why does DelPonte keep saying that Karadzic will be arrested day after day, and it is never done. Does this not empower Karadzic? It undermines her authority and integrity. Again, many crucial or weak points wre reviewed and re-interpreted. There were about forty people there and some reporters. Driving back, Kristo, a Bosnian Serb, said that he wished that the lecture could be given in Banja Luka. I found that writing in this diary helped prepare me for several of the questions I was asked.

Sunday, May 20th

Last night I went to a party at Craig's. It was interesting to meet various people working in different international organizations. Their histories are intriguing; many have been abroad for years. I also met a psychiatrist who works in Sarajevo with people with schizophrenia. We had similar views regarding the self in relation to madness and regarding the language of people with schizophrenia. The conversation was interesting because my relation is academic and his clinical and our views merged.

After the church service people went for coffee. After a heavy meal, I took a walk to the goat's bridge outside the city. On the path, I ran into Francine Friedman, author of The Bosnian Muslims. A friend of hers was taking her picture next to a herd of goats, and he then offered to take a picture of me as well with my camera. Ivo Banac, author of The National Question in Yugoslavia, is also in town, and I will see him Tuesday night at a dinner. I heard that Beverly Allen, author of Rape Warfare, is here as well. This week Sarajevo is the place to be.

Monday, May 21st

This afternoon I visited the primary school "Isak Samokovlija" and talked to two English teachers about the possibility of setting up a penpal exchange with my daughters' elementary school, Mills Lawn Elementary in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The students in the classes I visited were enthusiastic. When I spoke Bosnian (I belted it out and dragged out the vowels, which is what beginners ought to do), the students laughed. The teacher said that they laughed because it sounded like a song. He said to his students, "Now you hear how you sound when you speak English." After hearing me speak Bosnian, there was no shyness for the students who wanted to speak English.

Tuesday, May 22nd

This evening I was invited for dinner at Professor Rusmir Mahmutcehajic's. Ambassadors from Portugal and Japan were there. Professor Ivo Banac as well was a guest.

Wednesday, May 23rd

I visited a colleague and friend in a Kosovo hospital. Taking flowers is governed by certain, formalized customs. The man selling roses advised us.

This evening I had an early dinner at the Jez with Francine Friedman and Barbara Soros, who is a psychotherapist and working with people victimized in concentration camps. During the war there were about five hundred Serbian concentration camps, thirty Croatian concentration camps, and three Bosniac concentrations camps. Francine said that she received this information from Ambassador Miller.

It is difficult for people who visit Bosnia for a short time. It is hard for them to see everyone they want to and do everything they want to.

Thursday, May 24th

I think that the skills of a cultural anthropologist rather than a sociologist are needed in Bosnia. When I construct sentences (to practice the locative declension), I say, "The cat is on you (him, her, us, them, and so on)." My Bosnian tutor, Ermina, winces when I say this. She insists that I use another word. Domestic pets are not typical. When Bosnians have pets, they keep them outside. In the Muslim household, it is said that, if a dog is in the house, angels will not visit the home. In the States, with animal rights, pets can become members of the household. It was natural for me to want to say, "The cat is on her." It, however, is unnatural to someone from Bosnia.

Early this evening I met with Beverly Allen and her friend, Susan Schwartz Senstad, author of Music for the Third Ear. They will have a book-signing next week at Buybooks, which is quite a nice book store. Again, both are incredibly busy during their visit. Bosnians are much more relaxed and less anxious than visitors. I am somewhere in-between Bosnians and visitors.

Friday, May 25th

Today I drove to Tuzla. It is less than three hours, 120 kilometers. The roads are winding and narrow. It was interesting to see the large, well fortified SFOR base camp as we drove into Tuzla.

Six years ago a shell was fired into the Tuzla town square at nine in the evening. A lot of young people were there, in part because it was Tito's birthday, which was once a holiday. This one shell killed seventy-one people, mostly if not all under eighteen, and injured two hundred people. The shell was shot from forty kilometers away. It broke the spirits of many parents and the heart of the community. Because UN soldiers were being held hostages at this time by Serbian nationalist forces, the massacre received little world press coverage. This evening there was a public concert to remember the tragedy and commemorate the victims. People with sad faces and tears in their eyes were on the street. A German musician performed and dedicated the evening's performance to the memory of these young people. As people were walking up and down the street, it was raining steadily, but softy, perhaps tears from God.

Saturday, May 26th

Hotel Tuzla is a large, modern hotel. Before my lecture I was interviewed by Radio Tuzla and then TV Tuzla. Both asked about the lecture on Mihailo Markovic and then my impressions of Bosnia. The interviewer from TV Tuzla was keen. She asked me to discuss the change between my two books, Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia, and Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo. How could I explain the move from one to the other? I said that, much as people with schizophrenia suffer the madness of psychosis, people in Bosnia suffered the madness of war. I also said that, much as people with schizophrenia suffer society's misunderstanding and neglect, people in Bosnian suffered the world's misunderstanding and neglect. The latter is a sociological subject.

The lecture went much like the lecture in Zenica. I spoke for thirty minutes and there was discussion for up to two hours. The questions were keen and kept coming.. For instance, why just Markovic? I said that Markovic was not really the point. The point is to formulate the ideal type that he represents. Another person asked how I thought that this paper would be received if I gave it in Belgrade. The group of about thirty or so people, many professors, said that they were glad that they had come. Several drove from places far away. Like Zenica, the conversation was truly satisfying for me. Here is the abstract for the paper. It is the first time that I have presented it, and I was glad that I did it here.

This study first revisits the popular work of Mihailo Markovic in the sixties and seventies on the theoretical foundations of socialist humanism and then recounts his ignoble political activities in the eighties and nineties as a highly placed official within the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosovic. Markovic's writing on alienation as a leading member of the Praxis group in former–Yugoslavia is revisited, in particular Markovic's re-articulation of Karl Marx's concept of species-being qua praxis. One reason Markovic's theorizing is praised by notable intellectuals like Eric Fromm and Richard Bernstein is because Markovic promotes an empirical epistemology that evades the requirements of dialectical reasoning and its transcendental consequences. The involvement of Markovic in promoting the Greater Serbian ideology is then discussed. The dichotomy between Markovic's notable scholarly success and Markovic's unconscionable conduct on behalf of Serbian nationalism is addressed. It is argued that the particular version of critical theory that Markovic promotes is not independent of his actions as a public intellectual. The subject here is not the life of this person per se but the antimony that this life represents. The objective is to examine the antimony with respect to the capacity of critical theory to develop morally principled knowledge that is socially and politically consequential.

I arrived back in Sarajevo at five o'clock; I was exhausted. As we left Tuzla, I asked how one shell shot from forty kilometers could have landed so precisely in the city square among a group of youths so as to kill such a large number. Perhaps the shell could not be shot so precisely. Perhaps there was a degree of fate in the shelling. Does this degree of probability (whether stated accurately or not) then hinder an account that just demonizes? Did the person who shot the shell anticipate that these consequences and the killing of so many teenagers?

Sunday, May 27th

After church service, I talked to a person who directs the Interreligious Service, Face to Face, an interfaith choir. Three years ago it was difficult, she said, to persuade youth to sing songs from different traditions. The Bosnian Serbs did not want to sing music from the Islamic tradition, and Bosniacs did not want to sing music from the Orthodox tradition. Now they do it and enjoy it, and the choir gives packed concerts in Sarajevo. Soon the choir will go to Belgrade and Novi Sad to perform. They have not performed yet in Banja Luka. I am so impressed by this work; it does reconciliation rather than talk about reconciliation.

Monday, May 28th

Today was my eldest daughter's birthday; she turned eleven. It is hard for me to say that she is eleven since I have not seen it with my eyes.

About a month ago, a newspaper, Bosnia Daily, started publishing in Sarajevo. It provided international readers with local news and political commentary. Articles from leading Sarajevo newspapers were translated. They listed local cultural events and movies. I would buy the paper three or four times a week. A week ago, I read the following disheartening announcement.

Dear Readers

Our newspaper will stop publishing because financial reasons have forced us to. We did not receive enough subscribers, and we did not get satisfactory revenues from marketing. The publisher does not have any more money to continue publishing the paper. We do not want to present justifications for our business failure. We lost our own money and our own opportunity. But we want to say that when we started our project we had no idea that the OHR would only order one copy, the OSCE two, the UNHCR three, and the UNMBiH four copies of Bosnia Daily. SFOR did not subscribe at all. It is a signal to us that the majority of foreigners living and working in Sarajevo do not need a paper like this...

Amra Zimic, Director

I am happy to say, though, that the paper bounced back. Call it resilience. There is now an online version, which you can subscribe to at bdaily@bih.net.ba

Tuesday, May 29th

I sent the penpal letters from the Bosnian students at Isak Samokovlija in Sarajevo to Mills Lawn Elementary School in Yellow Springs. The letters were lovely: printed flowers, large hearts, and passionate declarations. My youngest daughter's teacher, will get the letters and fax back the children's return letters to the Cultural Affairs Office. Since school is almost over both here and there, there will be only one exchange. Perhaps next fall an exchange could be repeated or something set up on a school Web page.

Wednesday, May 30th

The most profitable industry in Bosnia, someone told me, is prostitution. Who, though, supports it? It is not as if Bosnians have the money. Bosnia has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe. It is the international community, SFOR soldiers, and international police. I suspect that the criminal class in Bosnia does not really want the international community to leave because the international community supports its most profitable although illegal business. After prostitution, it may be drugs or before prostitution it may be drugs. I suppose that empirical research is called for.

There was once over one hundred mosques in Belgrade. Now there is one, small mosque in Belgrade, and requests to expand the mosque are constantly denied by the government. The hundred or so mosques in Belgrade were destroyed in the 1850's. Before the war in Bosnia, there were close to seven hundred mosques in now Serb controlled part of Bosnia, RS. Now there are none, and none are being rebuilt. One reason why the RS may want to break from Bosnia and join with Serbia is so that they do not have to rebuild any mosques. If the nationalist Serb army had seized Sarajevo, would they have destroyed all the mosques in the city? How can anyone say that they would not have? What, then, would the international community have done? Would it have simply asked the nationalist Serbs to promise not to?

Thursday, May 31st

The presence of the international community is oppressive in paradoxical ways. On the one hand, during the war Bosnian youths, boys and girls, were prostituted to UNPROFOR troops. It is also known that UNPROFOR troops visited Serbian rape camps. On the other hand, the international community stopped the war and genocide albeit after much was already over. Bosnia needs to become an autonomous state. While the presence of the international community encourages this development, it also discourages it. Sometimes it seems that the international community is micro-managing the lives of Bosnians and their government.

In Sarajevo, there is a special language called satrovaca jezik. It is a playful, game-like language that people in this city use, especially young people when flirting. Sta ima means what is up. It is changed to Je sta mai. Novo (which means new) is changed to vono. Basically, the middle letter of a word is moved to the front along with its following syllable. Nema nista, which means nothing is up, becomes mane (inverted, nema) stani (inverted nista). Imagine sustaining a conversation in this manner. While one could do it in any language, it may be easier in Bosnian because of the language's phonetic consistency. Young boys had to be clever to attract the interest of young girls.

Sadly, a friend feels that the spirit of Sarajevo has been destroyed. Only its shell exists, he says. The true Sarajevians, he says, were killed or have left. Before the war, Sarajevo, he noted, produced the best films and comedies in former-Yugoslavia, perhaps because of the community's playful sense of language and sociability. He is thinking about leaving Sarajevo. He is thirty and single.

Today I visited a Refugee and Asylum Seekers Camp outside Sarajevo. The trip was organized by the Cultural Affairs Office. At this camp, Smrekovica, most people are Roma, many from Kosovo and some from Serbia. It is not as if the Roma necessarily speak Roma together. See the fine book, Bury Me Standing. The Roma from Serbia speak Serbian and the Roma from Kosovo speak Albanian. There is an elementary school and health services in the camp. I chatted in Bosnian with some children. They laughed. Given the difficult work and situation, I think that the people and the camp's organizers are doing as well as may be expected. This, of course, is my surface impression.

Friday, June 1st

This morning I had coffee with different people at the Faculty of Political Science. I am starting to say "good-bye." This evening I introduced Beverly and Susan at their booksigning.

Saturday, June 2nd

My sister works in Chicago, and a colleague has family in Sarajevo. Today I visited the family. I brought my digital camera in order to take pictures and send them to my sister for her friend. We spent four or five hours together, that is, four or five hours with no translator. They were excited to have their pictures taken and sent to their daughter and son. We could communicate at a basic level; the situation forced me to use what language I knew and then some. They would not let me say bosanski jezik. They insisted on either srpsko-hrvatski or hrvatsko-srpski. It was a great pleasure for me to try to have some sort of dialogue. At this point, I need to speak with people who do not speak English.

Sunday, June 3rd

This afternoon I briefly visited with a friend who lost a close relative.

Monday, June 4th

I was invited to visit the second high school in Sarajevo. This particular class is a gifted college-level class taught only in English. The class is on theory of knowledge and at this point making the transition from the epistemology of the natural sciences to the epistemology of the social sciences. I made copies of Weber's text "The Methodological Foundations of Sociology," and I had a set of focus questions for the reading. To begin, I asked the students to speculate and imagine how Weber would answer the focus questions. They were remarkable. Their comments quickly got into the difficult issues and problems that Weber addresses. Can sociology, with an interpretative methodology, arrive at causal explanations? What is it to know another? understand another? Is there a difference? Is an adequately meaningful level of explanation necessarily hypothetical and so irrelevant insofar as it is not a causal level of explanation? What is action and how is it different from behavior? After the break, we then read the text together and saw how Weber actually answered the questions. The students also discussed Weber's epistemology in light of their recent study of Descartes. At the end of class I asked the students if there were any questions that they wanted to ask of me and they responded by asking if there were any questions that I wanted to ask of them. What a class!

I want to say that the teacher's lounge (restaurant with nice piano, tables with white cloths and napkins) reminded me of a faculty club at an ivy-league university. I imagine that this is where education is at its best in Sarajevo.

Tuesday, June 5th

I went to the ballet this evening. The company performed Carmen and Bolero. The interchangeable variations of the ensemble's performance of Bolero was dramatic, as dramatic as the music. One or two male dancers were older and reminded me somewhat of myself, balding with bellies that were not that much smaller than mine. You could see these men smiling to themselves as they performed the difficult moves and sought to keep up with the younger dancers. The female dancers were exceptional, especially the lead roles. One ballerina seemed to me to be a world-class performer.

Wednesday, June 6th

I am in the habit of having pita for lunch. One can get burek (meat filled pastry), sirnica (cheese filled), zeljanica (spinach and cheese filled), or krompirusa (potato filled pastry). I often have yogurt with pita rather than a drink. I often get one burek and one zeljanica, and it costs two marks or one dollar. Luncheon shops are all over Sarajevo.

Young people are more and more disenchanted and want to leave Sarajevo and Bosnia. There are not only economic reasons for this disenchantment. They wonder what will stop another war from happening and they do they want to be here if it does happen. Bosnian Serbs living in RS have virtually no interactions with Bosnian Croats or Bosniacs and they are living within a racist ideology that governs their social structures. Also, while Bosnian Serbs are re-settling in the Federation, few Bosnian Croats and Bosniacs are re-settling in RS. This trend only makes the Bosnian Serbs in RS even more radical. Karadzic is fifty-five years old. He could easily be active another fifteen years. If the situation continues, it seems likely that war may occur again. This generation born fifteen or so years after WWII feels disenfranchised because they had no direct relation to WWII. They had been raised on the principle of "Brotherhood and Unity."

Thursday, June 7th

This evening I gave a talk sponsored by the Atelier community (an interdisciplinary group of scholars in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and social science) and the Nasen Dialogue Center. The lecture was held at the Center for Human Rights and about thirty people came. The title of the talk was "Revisiting Danilo Kis and the Nationalist's Self." Kis is a well-known Yugoslav writer. In a famous essay, he compares the self of the nationalist in Yugoslavia with the self of the anti-Semite in France as developed in Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew. It is a classic essay published first in 1973; it has appeared in two anthologies on Bosnia, Why Bosnia? and Scar on the Stone. Kis says that the self of the nationalist has no individual consciousness. During the discussion Dino, Director of the Human Rights Center, asked the very question that the lecture deserved. If the self of the nationalist is as other-directed as Kis and Sartre together suggest, then what mirror, what moral mirror, needs to be held up such that the self of the nationalist will see and judge itself? The self of the nationalist, Kis and Sartre state, is incapable of knowing its self except through seeing its feared reflection in another. Political scientists may find Kis's argument reductionistic. From a social psychological point of view, however, Kis's understanding is as good as it gets. It is also interesting to juxtapose Kis's argument against David Reisman's notion of the other-directed social character in The Lonely Crowd, a classic study of the American social character, and Mark Snyder's concept of self-monitoring in psychology.

Friday, June 8th

This evening the Fulbrights met for dinner at an Indian restaurant. It will be our last. Leon, Barbara, Daniel, two of his friends, and Terri's daughter joined us. Several of us took pictures, and this undercut the ambiance of the restaurant.

Saturday, June 9th

I had lunch with friends.

In the evening I had dinner with two people. Both work for international groups; it is where the brightest and most articulate Bosnians find the best jobs with which they support their extended family. There is always the problem, however, that an international group may leave suddenly. It is a precarious situation. One person was wounded twice during the war. He is now a single parent. A year ago he lost his wife to cancer. His daughter is three. He told how he did everything he could for his wife. He kept her at home and would not let her go into the hospital. Nurses and doctors came to his home instead. He also took her to Vienna in a wheelchair for treatment, and she came back able to walk, although he knew it was only for a short time. I felt sad. I wondered if I would do as well by my wife if she were dying of cancer. Tears came to my eyes and his as he told his story with much dignity. He talked about how his daughter does not understand what death is.

Sunday, June 10th

I gave a lecture to Circle 99, an association of independent intellectuals, at 11:00 this morning. The group meets at the Faculty of Economics. Bill Frech, a Fulbright scholar last spring, has also spoken to the group. Here is a statement from their journal, Review of Free Thought: "We hope that you will be interested in the idea of our multinational, multi religious, and multicultural association of people, who demonstrate, both in their private lives and through public actions: the common life in this country is the only possible one. We wish to contribute to the development of civil society in peace and freedom." Jakob Finci was the moderator. There were about forty people in the room and some news reporters. The people there were some of the leading civic and intellectual leaders in Sarajevo and Bosnia. One person was a former ambassador to the United States for ex-Yugoslavia. Two older men had been generals in the Yugoslav People's Army and had both fought with Tito. One man was director of the National Theater. One was a psychiatrist. Several were Deans at different faculties. One was a notable artist. I spoke for thirty minutes, and people made comments afterwards. It was a great honor to have a dialogue with this exceptional group of people. The comments after the lecture strongly encouraged me to share my talk with others; several made points that deepened the argument that I was attempting to make. Here is the text of my lecture.

Amerikanac u Sarajevu

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Circle 99 and its esteemed members today. I have been reading the articles in your journal and feel honored to be able to speak to this influential and exemplary group in Bosnia. Since January I have been living and working in Sarajevo as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sarajevo. This is my fifth visit to Bosnia; my first being in 1996. I am the author of the book titled “Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice.” Some of the chapters in this book have been translated and published in Bosnia.

I would like briefly to share my reflections on four interrelated subjects-language, education, social order, and moral understanding-based on my thoughts and experiences the last five months. I hope that these observations from a friendly visitor are interesting and maybe even useful to you.

Language

I have been trying to learn your language, whether we wish to call the language Bosnian or Serbo-Croatian. Although I am far from mastering your language, I am learning to love your language. I studied Greek and Latin in college. What for many strangers is hard about your language is not the hardest thing for me. I enjoy the systematic character of your language’s syntax. It is logical and this is pleasurable. The hardest thing for me about your language is the easiest thing for you. As has been said to me many times, write the words as you hear them and say them as you read them. This is a wonderful principle. With English the ear, the eye, and the tongue seem to work according to different rules. The beautiful thing about your language is that the ear, the eye, and the tongue work together according to one uniting rule. In trying to learn your language, I feel as if I am trying to repair the damage that my own mother tongue has done to me. Learning your language is an opportunity to reconnect the ear, the eye, and the tongue, and for this opportunity I am grateful, although I admit that the damage after forty-seven years has been great. This trust that the mind has with your language’s consistent phonetics may make your language superior to other modern languages. The ability to take for granted this aspect of language seems to allow the mind to relax and focus on other perhaps more pressing matters such as syntax and semantics. Here is why I love your language.

Education

I would like to share a few reflections on students in Bosnia. In American universities after a lecture, students typically ask questions as if they did not hear what you said. Thus they ask you to repeat what you said. It is almost as if the professor is a jukebox and is asked to replay the song. In Bosnia, it is different. Students ask questions to show that they heard what the professor said. Rather than ask the professor to re-sing the song, students ask the professor to write a harmony for the song or compose another movement.

I am always asked a question about the weakest link in the presentation. That is, I am asked a question about the part of the paper that still needs to be developed, even when I think that the lecture or remarks are fairly well developed. People do this not to refute, but to learn more. In Bosnia intelligence is a cultural value. Being clever or thinking well are social values and something pleasurable in public discourse. The last thing that Bosnians are is anti-intellectual. Students are very analytical and you should be very proud of your youth. Your students expect thinking to be systematic and logical, perhaps because of your language. They are your greatest resource. Do not export it to the benefit of other countries and to the detriment of your own.

I would like to try to identity what I see as a crucial issue for the education of young adults in Bosnia. I learned that the assumption of many Bosnian students is that the aggressors during the war were just animals, that the aggressors were animals with no conscience. Students have said that the aggressors who destroyed Bosnia and did such damage to the lives and homes of so many are shameless. These aggressors were incapable of feeling shame. The aggressors, in fact, feel proud about what they did, the students say. It is difficult to argue with this opinion. But if the aggressors are indeed shameless, then what is the point? Why talk with them or deal with them? The students laughed at my suggestion that the aggressors could be made to feel shame if a mirror, a moral mirror, were held up to their faces and if the aggressors were made to look at themselves in this moral mirror. It is true, the aggressors want their victims and the world to accept that they are barbarians, but I think that to accept this self-understanding of the aggressors makes it much too easy for the aggressors. It takes them off the hook, so to speak. It is a mistake to allow the aggressors to make their victims and the world think that they are incapable of shame. I think that we need to try to show young Bosnians why this is a mistake.

Social Order

This need to recognize that the aggressors have the capacity to feel shame is crucial to reconciliation in Bosnia. I believe that there is a civil society in Bosnia whether or not it is acknowledged at academic conferences. Even during the war, under the most trying of times, there were always remnants of civil society, I would say, even in the concentration camps. The question is whether institutions, including NGO's, are supporting and meeting the needs of the civil society that exists. It is counterproductive to talk about building a civil society as if none exists when, in fact, one already does exist. During the war, institutions like the Yugoslav People's Army and the state media turned destructively against civil society. Civil society, however, survived.

Sarajevo may be one of the safer cities in the world. Women walk home at night with no fear. Why? I think that what Emile Durkheim would call the collective sentiment of the city now takes strong offense to crime and violence. There is corruption here, but after the war, to attack another person is unthinkable. The situation was the same in Europe after WW II. The presence of police and police cars merely reinforces this collective cognition that exists. I may be idealizing, but it is an idealizing that Durkheim does. May this situation last for generations.

At night the collective behavior downtown in the old city is convivial and free-spirited. Young people go downtown to see and to be seen. It is like a low-key carnival, quite gay but non-threatening. Sarajevo is a small city that has a strong gemeinshaft, something the sociologist Ferdinand Toennies would call an oxymoron. Youth of your city could not find a better social life anyplace in the world.

I think that the city of Perugia in Italy and Sarajevo are alike. They are small and seemingly self-sufficient cities. Both are like worlds unto themselves. Perugia is isolated on a hill surrounded by old Etruscan walls; Sarajevo is nested in the crevice of a valley surrounded tightly by mountains. When people walk on the streets, they are as immense as the buildings themselves. Perugia and Sarajevo, however, are also different. The citizens of Perugia are closed to outsiders. Foreign students come and go, and the citizens of Perugia seem to have no interaction or interest in them. A significant barrier exists between visitors to Perugia and citizens of Perugia. Sarajevo is different. Sarajevo is open to outsiders. The citizens of Sarajevo include people and engage them openly. Sarajevo is not xenophobic. During the war and over the last five years, a lot of people have visited Sarajevo and they were blessed with Sarajevo’s tradition of hospitality. I wonder if people in Sarajevo may burn out given the high turnover of visitors to Sarajevo. Will the people of Sarajevo become like the people of Perugia? On the one hand, it would only be human nature if this were to happen. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the people of Sarajevo becoming as closed as the people of Perugia.

Moral Understanding

In February I attended a lecture that Ambassador Miller gave in Sarajevo at Hotel Bosnia. For many good reasons, Ambassador Miller is a popular and respected person in Bosnia. There was one statement, however, that I wish that Ambassador Miller had not made. He said, "I don't owe you anything." I think the Ambassador said this out of exasperation and tiredness, and I think that he did not mean it. I think that Ambassador Miller and I do owe Bosnia something, although I cannot articulate exactly what this is. At a macro-level, the international community is enabling Bosnia. It is micro-mangaging the affairs of Bosnia. At the same time, the Ambassador observed that Bosnia has many people with good will, commitment, and qualification with which to establish a government that is responsible to its people. Many of these people, I believe, are in Circle 99.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates argues that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. The sophists and utilitarians disagree. No one would choose to suffer wrong and everyone avoids suffering wrong as best as possible. Still, if the choice is between suffering wrong and doing wrong, the better choice is to suffer wrong. Socrates is convinced of this truth. I fear that the world no longer recognizes or understands this truth, this truth which is the backbone of all our religions. During the war it seemed as if the people in Sarajevo were the only people who understand this moral truth. Today people in Sarajevo can live with themselves because they do understand that, if the choice is between doing wrong and suffering wrong, it is worse to do wrong. The people doing wrong are in a worse situation simply by virtue of the fact that they are doing wrong. People living in the RS are living in a moral hell. They are living in moral hell because no one is able to say what they all know, namely, this moral truth that it is worse to do wrong than it is to suffer wrong. Unconsciously, people in RS envy people in Sarajevo. They know that people in Sarajevo have a better social life because it is a social life based on a moral principle.

The recent events in Trebinje and Banja Luka demonstrate the truth of this point. The stone throwers perhaps know one thing. How can the international community really support the rebuilding of a destroyed mosque when the people who destroyed the mosque are not punished and if the need to punish the people who destroyed the mosque is not acted upon? The international community is skipping a crucial step, the step of justice. Socrates said that the cruelest punishment for someone who deserves punishment is not to punish the one who deserves punishment. In a way, the stone throwers are showing the consequence of not being punished. They experience a kind of cruelty from the international community when it ignores the crime of genocide and the crimes against humanity. There may be a positive side to the riots in Trebinje and Banja Luka. It confirms the truth that just as in nature life needs light, in society people need justice. They need justice in order to be people.

Here were some of the responses. One person deepened the moral argument in a way that took me aback. He said (asked) whether it is better to be the mother of a son who was murdered or the mother of a son who murders. Would the mother whose son was murdered say that her situation was better than the mother whose son murdered? Would the mother whose son was a murdered say that her situation was worse than the mother whose son was murdered? The example takes Socrates' argument to its limit. Another person noted how harvesting forests was a major industry of Bosnia but now the forests are mined. Another person said that the youth are becoming more and more influenced by the presence of the international community in Sarajevo. He noted as well that Sarajevo is not the whole of Bosnia. Discussion lasted for close to an hour. Afterwards the former Ambassador to the United States from ex-Yugoslavia came up to me and talked. He commended the presentation and said that I represented America well. I could not have asked for a nicer comment.

With hindsight, I wish that I had not made the comment that I did about Ambassador Miller. It can be misinterpreted. During his lecture Ambassador Miller said what he did in a specific situation. His actions as US Ambassador to Bosnia have always shown that he knows what he owes Bosnia, unlike many Western diplomats here. Bosnians swear by Ambassador Miller. Many say that he is the best politician in Bosnia. This week it was announced that Ambassador Miller will be taking a post elsewhere. The decision on his replacement will be a critical one; in some ways he is irreplaceable.

Monday, June 11th

I am finding it difficult to sleep. The weather is warmer. I bought some gifts this morning. At the Faculty of Political Science several older professors said that they heard the news commentaries regarding my talk at Circle 99. They said congratulations. To a degree, I was representing the Faculty of Political Science. One colleague commented that every city in ex-Yugoslavia, Zagreb, Belgrade, Tuzla, Mostar, is beautiful. The generosity of his comment captures the spirit of Sarajevo. I wonder how many people in Belgrade would say that Sarajevo is beautiful. There are a few.

I had coffee in the cafe at Buybook and talked with some acquaintances. A Bosnian poet joined us; he was a little drunk. We talked about Mesa Selimovic's Death and the Dervish. I said that when I read the novel I thought that the Dervish is a comic figure for Selimovic, in other words, that Selimovic's relation to the main character is ironic. Bosnians said that I was reading the novel wrong and there must be a problem with the translation.

Tuesday, June 12th

This evening I went to a choral concert at St. Anthony's, the Franciscan monastery. Here is a description of Pontanima from their bulletin. The concert was marvelous and the church was packed.

Choir Pontanima was founded by people with a love of music and a belief in the mission of music in relieving the pain of Sarajevo and of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The music of the choir communicates the highest forms of spirituality with the aim of overcoming the narrowness in which the people of BiH were held captive. The greater part of the choir's work consists in dialogue and ecumenical living, which is a way to reverse the trend towards division. From its inception, therefore, the choir has been open to every spiritual heritage and it welcomes all who are secure in their own spirituality but wish to avoid insularity. The choir is becoming a microcosm of BiH and a witness to diversity and openness in building a community where all value one another. The choir chooses the best of Western Christian music, but also has in its repertoire Jewish, Orthodox, and Muslim songs, as well as songs from the Far East religions.

Wednesday, June 13th

Three colleagues at the Faculty of Political Science took me to lunch. We drove north of Sarajevo and ate in a garden restaurant that overlooked the Bosnian river. The restaurant was called Diana. I will miss these colleagues. We talked about the Bosnian Church before the Ottoman Empire. Scholarship on the Bosnian Church is sparse and sometimes represents either a Zagreb or Belgrade bias. Was the Bosnian Church primitive Catholicism or Orthodox heresy? The early Bosnian Christians worshipped in their homes, and their churches were build of wood, by choice. The congregation of the Bosnian Church sounds like first-generation Christians, and it is interesting to think of second and third generation Christians trying to co-opt them in the name of Christianity. After lunch we drove to a hill over Sarajevo, at where the last scene to the Partisan film, "Valter Brani Sarajevo" (Valter Saves Sarajevo), is shot. The Yugoslav actor who plays the hero in this movie became a nationalist in the Serbian Parliament during the recent war. This actor has recently appeared in several Belgrade films, for instance, "White Suit" and "Balkan Cabaret." If I was a journalist, I would interview this actor and ask about the role he played in "Valter Brani Sarajevo" and then about his recent political choices.

Thursday, June 14th

This morning I dropped off the letters from students at Mills Lawn Elementary School in Yellow Springs to their penpals in Sarajevo. The letters were faxed through the Cultural Affairs Office. The letters between the young people, second and third graders, were nifty.

This evening two members of Pontanima Choir, Karin and John Wall, Fr. Ivo Markovic, and I met at the Meeting House of the Bosnian Franciscans, the home for the Face to Face Interreligious Service. We talked about the choir and Fr. Markovic's work. We talked about Bosnia and the situation in RS. On the Web there is a collection of Fr. Markovic's essays and thoughts on nationalism, faith, and ethnicity. Here is the URL, http://www.pontanima.ba/pontanima.html John gave me a copy of one of the choir's CD's, "Bosnian Te Deum."

Friday, June 15th

Aida Merhemic lives in Yellow Springs, and her daughter and my daughter are friends. In Sarajevo there is a square, Merhemic Trg, named after her family. At her request I went to this square and took pictures when the sun overlooked its plaza. After this "shooting," I had coffee with a Bosnian student at the Faculty of Philosophy, which has a new cafe. She studies French and is from Visegrad. She told me about a documentary film in which someone tells of a woman sniper in Sarajevo who received 500 marks for each person she murdered. After coffee I went by the Cultural Affairs Office to say good-by to Elizabeta and Doug. At my apartment I finished packing. Amer called to say good-by.

Saturday, June 16th

Jasmin picked me up at my apartment and drove me to the airport at ten. My bags filled his car. I bought too many books. Later, before my plane left, Eldin's parents came to the airport to see me off. I will spend the night in Munich on the way to the States. I will soon bring this journal to a close. As has been said before, a diary plays the role of a friend, and it is sad to let a friend go. Keeping a journal turns loneliness into companionship.

In Munich I felt as if I could understand German better than before. I wonder if this is a spill over from trying to learn Bosnian. In my hotel I worked on my Fulbright final report and this diary.

Sunday, June 17th

My plane from Munich to Washington was delayed about three hours. I had a middle aisle seat but I also had two good novels to read. Despite the delay I was able to catch another airline to Dayton, where Susan, Danielle, and Aprile picked me up. Now I am home and my daughters are happy to hold my hand.