Today we visited the cemetery for the Bosnian Muslims who were killed in the genocide of the 1992-1995 war, with most of the victims coming from the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia, a Muslim enclave in the territory controlled by the Serbian army. The site reminded me of Arlington National Cemetery, but then I remembered that these graves were filled with civilians, and all in a short three year period. The site has a mosque as well as a small museum, with photos of the ethnic cleansing and genocide as well as stories of some of the victims.
After the Bosnian cemetery, we balanced the day out with a visit to a Serb cemetery a few miles away. When we returned to Sarajevo, we lifted our spirits by wandering around, eating and shopping. One of my friends here, Curtis, has also studied Arabic, and we were both looking forward to trying it out a bit in the old Muslim neighborhood where we are staying. We asked one merchant if it is widely used here. He relayed to us a story: he welcomed one customer with a standard greeting in Bosnian. The customer then asked if he was Muslim, and upon learning that the merchant was Muslim, asked why he didn’t use the standard Arabic greeting “salaam al-Aykuum.” The merchant responded that he considered himself a Bosnian first and a Muslim (Bosniak) second. Why should he use a language brought from the Turks when he could greet someone in his native tongue. Seeing someone who identifies as Bosnian is rare, and ultimately special, as it puts them seemingly apart from the conflict of the region, an embrace of civic, rather than ethnic, nationalism.
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