Last Updated on Thursday, 03 July 2008 09:31 by Tracy Barnett, MySA.com Tuesday, 13 June 2006 05:00
This evening as the sun goes down, I'm curled up on the sofa in the corner of the Ruta Maya Riverwalk in San Antonio, one of my favorite places to come to read and write and think.
On the most superficial level, it's not so different from the sofa in the cozy café on the Ferhadija in Sarajevo where I sat just a week ago to warm myself from the chill, drink a cappuccino and read the background articles my friends had saved for me.
But superficial doesn't go very far in a country where the pain is still just below the carefully polished surface, just behind the perfect smile of the blonde young woman in the corner boutique, just under the apologetic grin of the blue-eyed Serbian youth serving pastries in the bakery.
I'm finding it impossible to imagine, sitting here in the Alamo City, a place that hasn't seen war since before my grandparents were born, what it must be like to shield your children with your own body when, for some reason, you must pass in front of a window. How it feels to see the mountains and forests of your youthful picnics turned into a multi-barreled source of death. How the roar of the incessant shelling still rings in your mind years after the war has stopped.
How far from my own sheltered reality, and therein lies my inadequacy to write about the former Yugoslavia. Be careful with your words, for everything started from that - honey and blood, too, Eldina Pleho, a journalist from Sarajevo, warned me, referring to the Turkish origin of the word for this region, the Balkans.
Yes, there in the land of blood and honey, where history runs in the Miljacka River, floats on the morning mist, more present than the present moment itself, the sweetness can take on a bitter aftertaste very quickly. So one must be careful there.
Lessons relearned in Bosnia
Hard lessons, lessons underscored by my brief sojourn in the former Yugoslavia, and ones I already thought I knew:
• Not everyone thinks like you do. For an American, calling Bosnia a nation with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder puts things into a compassionate, therapeutic context - at least, I should add, for me. For a Bosnian, it's akin to saying the entire nation is mentally ill.
I repeated an American travel writer's interpretation of the removal of Gavrilo Princip's footprints from the bridge where he assassinated Archbishop Franz Ferdinand in the shot that started World War I. Once considered a revolutionary hero, I wrote, the fact that he was a Bosnian Serb made him persona non grata in the post-war environment of Sarajevo. An innocuous enough statement for an American, but one that grieved and offended Bosnians, Serbian and otherwise, who recall a city known for its multiethnic heritage.
And then there was Merve Gungor, a Turkish high school student I met during my travels, who took me to task in the comment section for referring to my friend and fellow traveler as a Kurdish Turk: "You must be used to saying Chinese American, Mexican American etc. But 'Kurdish Turk'??? If hadn't met you I would think very different things about you ... Please try to be empathetic."
Now, I've always considered myself a highly empathetic person - to a fault, some say - but the limits of human empathy become apparent pretty quickly when one ventures into the murky waters of ethnicity.
• "Nobody is going to read this blog." I started this trip with a handful of friends, fellow travelers and loyal San Antonio blog addicts as my readers, and I imagined it would stay that way. Next thing you know, I was being republished verbatim in the Bosnian Daily and on the Fethullah Gulen movement Web site, read by thousands of Bosnians and Turks.
Not exactly my intended audience, and I cringed to see a few flip comments that only served to reinforce the Ugly American stereotype that I've tried so hard during my travels to dispel.
When you write for the World Wide Web, globalization takes on a new meaning. You are no longer writing for yourself and your friends. You're writing for the whole wide world, quite literally. A point that's been made ad nauseum, but until it happens to you, it's hard to understand the impact.
• It's only travel writing. I admit I was - and still am - intimidated by the though of trying to capture anything of significance about the former Yugoslavia through a four-day stay. Nonetheless, it's my job, and I tried to ease my anxiety by telling myself that it's not a political or historical treatise, it's not an investigative report, it's only a travel piece.
But that's a position that diminishes the craft - a noble tradition that has over the years gone far beyond the chronicles of vacations aboard luxury cruises and explorations of glamorous cities to shed light in dark corners of the world, to put a human face to those forgotten lands that have so much to teach us.
So, what am I to take away from all of this? Does the fact that my audience is global, multiethnic and highly sensitized, and that people can and do take quick offense to my impressions of their countries, mean that I need to soften the words and present a sanitized, postcard-perfect view of the world?
After receiving some rather stinging replies to my blog from my international readers, I wrote back to them and began a dialog. I learned from them, and they learned from me. I don't claim to be doing international diplomacy here, but it is true that each of us, when we leave these shores, becomes a sort of ambassador for our people, and the face I want to present of this country is one of openness, compassion and if not understanding, at least a sincere effort to understand.
As I look back at the Balkans, I'm left with many images. Yes, there are the postcards - the heart-stopping splendor of the landscape, the vibrancy of the modern metropolises, the charm of the ancient Old Towns, the warmth and beauty of the people. There is the honey - but there is also the blood. And I have to speak of both of them. To do otherwise would be a lie.
But I hope to do so in a human context and one that opens, not closes the doors to dialog with my readers throughout the world. I hope to dedicate some of this space to the thoughts and perspectives and stories of those readers. And so I close with the eloquence of Eldina, who I think has forgiven me, and with whom I hope the dialog has just begun:
"In this town everybody is welcome ... as long as they respect Sarajevo and the people in it. As long as they are not ready to make general announcements, and even then, they are welcome - because this brave people will be always ready to prove how wrong they are."
To the reader who wanted to know how to order the "I'm Muslim Don't Panic" T-shirts, you can contact Selma Rahic at selmarahicsa@hotmail.com . She is currently investigating the shipping costs and can give you a full listing of the other items available in her shop.
To the reader who wanted to know more about the Constantine Art Gallery in the Sultanahmet District of Istanbul, owner Emre Icilensu can be reached at (011) (90) 212 518 6697 or at eicilensu@yahoo.de . His store is located about two blocks from the Aya Sofya on Tevkifhane Street, right across from the Four Seasons Hotel. His gallery carries a beautiful and thought-provoking selection of work from contemporary Istanbul-based artists.
You can contact Tracy Barnett at tbarnett@express-news.net . To read her column and to see the extensive multimedia slide shows of her travels go to http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/weblogs/travel/
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