A man dressed in a clean but ill-fitting suit picking through a dumpster, plastic shopping bag in one hand. A 10-year-old boy, indistinguishable from any middle-class boy, approaching me with his hand out, demanding money, while his father looks on, both of us sitting at a café. Dogs, chained, caged, behind fences, barking barking barking, ignored all day and night. A 12-year-old girl and her younger brother and sister, hauling makeshift carts from dumpster to dumpster, sifting through the detritus of thirty households, joined silently by a woman dressed in tidy, clean skirt and blouse. Two 14-year-old boys conferring hastily to check their English, and then calling after me, “Hey! What is your name? What is your name?” Old women in hijabs or headscarves sitting on the curb outside grocery stores, cafes, by bus stops and shops, hand out, muttering a plea for a little change, the words repetitious, the tone blank. Between the cigarette-and-candy kiosks by the bus stop, every day a woman spreads out her wares, assorted items of clothing, underwear, socks, a negligee; a pretty dress, a blouse exhibited on hangers. Every day she is there with the same clothes displayed for sale. A man standing on a pedestrian bridge across the river in the area where tourists congregate, selling individual cigarettes. After dark, a young woman stands in the bushes beside the footpath to the bridge, new pillows in plastic packaging arrayed at her feet.
Sarajevo overwhelms me, its beauty and its survival.
July 2016
