The post-Yugoslav Bosnia-Herzegovina is a barely functioning entity that is only nominally a state. Walking the streets of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo I am always amazed at how ethnically unmarked the city has become. The only symbol of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state is a bland flag (blue background with a yellow triangle framed by EU stars) whose symbols have no resonance among the local population since the flag was imposed by the European Union's High Representative due to the inability of the local politicians to agree on a common symbol. Unlike nation-state capitals--whose landscapes are usually peppered with numerous historical monuments that retell the national narrative--Sarajevo has no such prominent monuments. Besides the Communist-era monuments (such as the Eternal Flame commemorating the Partisan liberation of Sarajevo from the Germans) and white gravestones that appear intermittently throughout the city and serve as silent reminders of the recent war, the capital has no imposing monuments that retell a Bosnian national narrative. This is because, there is no Bosnian national narrative, and consequently, no Bosnian nation-state.
49% of Bosnia's territory is taken up by Republika Srpska (trans: Serb Republic), an entity that has almost all the trappings of an independent state: its own police force, parliament and prime minister. The entity is a fossil from the war as it represents the territorial gains (gains forever legitimized by ethnic cleansing) of the Bosnian Serb army during the war. Even though it is nominally participating in the functioning of the Bosnian state, Republika Srpska does not recognize the legitimacy of the Bosnian state, arguing that the referendum for independence of Bosnia in 1992 was boycotted by the Serb population and as such its admission into the UN was illegitimate. The remaining 51% of the territory is composed of the so-called Bosnjak (read: Muslim)/Croat Federation, which, like Republika Srpska, has all the trappings of an independent state, but whose territory is further divided among the Croats and Muslims. Thus, there is a silent agreement among the nationalist politicians that Croat inhabited parts of the Federation (such as Western Herzegovina and the Herzegovinian capital Mostar) are Croat while non-Croats are minorities in these areas. On the other hand, Muslim inhabited parts of Federation (including Sarajevo) are silently accepted as "Muslim." Thus, the administrative division of the country reflects the ethnic division which, rather than being resolved, was fossilized and cemented by the Dayton Peace Accords.
As a results of this ethnic polarization and a lack of any unified national narrative, individuals are reduced daily to their "ethnic identity." Any interaction they have with "the state", their local authorities, or the outside world, reminds them that they are Serb, or Croat or Bosnjak. Their access to the most basic societal resources--such as jobs, pensions, etc--is channeled through their ethnic belonging, whether they voluntarily identify themselves as such or not. In being reminded of their identity, the individuals are also reminded of what the other side has done to them in the recent war. Daily news are full of announcements of events commemorating battles, genocides, massacres, etc. These local monuments and commemorations, all of which narrate mutually exclusive versions of the recent war, make it impossible to have any unified national narrative which would be visible on the streets of Sarajevo.
To understand how these irreconcilable versions of the past strand individuals into narratives from which they cannot escape and which influence their everyday choices, you just need to talk to individuals whose ethnic identity has been deemed "ambiguous" or "abnormal" by the predominance of the three official ethnic identities. My cousin in Mostar is a Croat who was a member of the Croatian army (HVO) battling the Muslims on the East side, but who also, in the midst of the war married a Muslim woman whom he had started seeing before the war. Being from a very Catholic Western Herzegovinian family, my cousin's relationship threatened to sever his ties to his family. His girlfriend's parents, a traditional Muslim family, also protested their "abnormal" relationship. In the midst of the war, my cousin--as an HVO soldier--hid his future father in law from HVO raids on West side of the city, and helped his girlfriend escape to safety of Germany. They are married now and have two wonderful children. It is interesting that as soon as I asked him about his wife, he went on to tell me that he is a mixed marriage, emphasizing that he was one of the few "normal" people left in the city. "I have stayed normal," he told me over coffee leaning over, "it is the city that has become abnormal." This was his response to the overwhelming power of nationalism--as it is entrenched in Bosnia's institutions and daily life--to hush what it sees as different, branding it abnormal, something that needs to be cleansed from the societal body. The hushing power of nationalism became once more evident to me after I asked my cousin to record our interview: "No, I am not sure. I don't know how it will be used," he said, leaning across the table, whispering in my ear.
The story of my cousin is just one of many stories of my unsuccessful attempts to get "mixed" marriage couples to talk to me. Their reactions to my requests--despite my promise to safeguard their anonymity--reveal a fear of being outed as "abnormal" as unacceptable. This realization has been one of the most depressing conclusions of my research as it shows the overwhelming power of nationalism to silence any alternative which it sees as a threat to its proselytizing mission. The white graves that pepper Sarajevo's main promenade, its parks, and its surrounding hills, are reminders that the silencing power of nationalism is often murderous.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Obama's speech on race: Redefining American Nationalism
For anyone who has not had the pleasure of seeing Barack Obama make a magnificent speech on race, yesterday in Philadelphia, leave everything you are doing now, and read/watch his speech, because that was a history-making moment when Barack Obama proved once again, why he is such an amazing and unique candidate.
Being wary of anyone who proclaims himself/herself to be "religious" while running for public office, I was hoping Obama would come out and publicly address the issue of his religion and in the process talk about race, the question which will not go away under the mere facade of political correctness. And, he did just that. In an amazing way.
In answering the questions about his ties to Reverend Wright, Obama issued a manifesto of his own unique brand of nationalism. Standing in front of a backdrop of American flags, across the place where the Constitution was hammered out, Obama embraced America, but not in the same simplistic, idiotic way our current president (and most before him) has done. Recognizing that the very idea of America was based on the "original sin" of slavery, Obama's speech was a candid acceptance of all the contradictions that make America so resistant to any attempt to essentialize it. He admitted that Reverend Wright "has been like family to me" despite the contradictions that are embedded within him. Then he went on to describe the contradictions that are embedded in his own very genetic-make up: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." He admitted that while Americans can be decent and loving people, they are also stranded in the narrative of their own pasts: black Americans still resenting the injustices of racism, white Americans the injustices (as they see them) of affirmative action.
Obama reached into the container of the American collective past, pulled out its diverging and polarizing strands and attempted to mold them into a unified (but still diverse) whole: "For the African-American community, that path [to a more perfect union] means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans...In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds...It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper...."
Reminding us of William Faulkner's lines that "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact it isn't even past," Obama boldly rummaged through our collective pasts and through this process, attempted to redefine who we are today. It is his fluid and endlessly creative view of the past, and by extension of American identity, that is so appealing in Obama's thinking. At a time when the world feels overwhelmed by the damage done by the Bush administration's imperialistic foreign policy, we desperately need a president who will not only mold specific policies, but also reshape the American narrative that will change the very face of American nationalism.
You can find the transcript of the speech at: (The transcript of the speech: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?em&ex=1206072000&en=ee9b37a72e4cff50&ei=5087%0A)
Being wary of anyone who proclaims himself/herself to be "religious" while running for public office, I was hoping Obama would come out and publicly address the issue of his religion and in the process talk about race, the question which will not go away under the mere facade of political correctness. And, he did just that. In an amazing way.
In answering the questions about his ties to Reverend Wright, Obama issued a manifesto of his own unique brand of nationalism. Standing in front of a backdrop of American flags, across the place where the Constitution was hammered out, Obama embraced America, but not in the same simplistic, idiotic way our current president (and most before him) has done. Recognizing that the very idea of America was based on the "original sin" of slavery, Obama's speech was a candid acceptance of all the contradictions that make America so resistant to any attempt to essentialize it. He admitted that Reverend Wright "has been like family to me" despite the contradictions that are embedded within him. Then he went on to describe the contradictions that are embedded in his own very genetic-make up: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." He admitted that while Americans can be decent and loving people, they are also stranded in the narrative of their own pasts: black Americans still resenting the injustices of racism, white Americans the injustices (as they see them) of affirmative action.
Obama reached into the container of the American collective past, pulled out its diverging and polarizing strands and attempted to mold them into a unified (but still diverse) whole: "For the African-American community, that path [to a more perfect union] means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans...In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds...It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper...."
Reminding us of William Faulkner's lines that "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact it isn't even past," Obama boldly rummaged through our collective pasts and through this process, attempted to redefine who we are today. It is his fluid and endlessly creative view of the past, and by extension of American identity, that is so appealing in Obama's thinking. At a time when the world feels overwhelmed by the damage done by the Bush administration's imperialistic foreign policy, we desperately need a president who will not only mold specific policies, but also reshape the American narrative that will change the very face of American nationalism.
You can find the transcript of the speech at: (The transcript of the speech: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?em&ex=1206072000&en=ee9b37a72e4cff50&ei=5087%0A)
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Hillary's Disloyalty to the Party
To all of you Obamans out there!
I was inspired and reminded by a good friend of mine that is time for us to write to super-delegates--this eclectic, shady, and indecisive group of Democratic Party veterans who seem to hold the result of this nomination fight in their hands--and urge them to support Barack Obama. Besides writing about the inspiration that his candidacy and his personal background inject into the everyday American life and the image of the US abroad, we should all emphasize one important aspect of Hillary Clinton that all super-delegates who support her now, should consider: Hillary's consistent and blatant disloyalty to the Democratic Party and her disregard for the interests of the Party. Let me provide just a few most explicit examples:
1) In emphasizing Obama's inexperience in foreign affairs and her own supposed experience, Hillary Clinton consistently asserts that both she and Senator McCain are qualified to be commander-in-chief on day one. By this logic, if the election was held today, and the voters should choose between McCain and Obama, they should vote for McCain. This is a blatant and rude violation of party ethics since it disregards the possibility that Obama indeed might be the candidate when the Republican attack machine will have a field day with a clip of Clinton saying that voters should prefer McCain over Obama. As NYTimes op-ed columnist Bob Herbert said in his column today: "This is a low thing for a Democratic Presidential candidate to do to a rival in a party primary. Can you imagine Jon McCain saying that Rudy Gulliani or Mitt Romney or even the guitar-strumming Mike Huckabee might be less qualified than Hillary Clinton to be commander-in-chief. It couldn't happen."
2) What especially made my blood boil was Hillary's cynical recycling of the right-wing rumors that Obama might be Muslim. When she was asked by 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft if she believed Obama was a Muslim, she replied: Not, as far as I know. She knows extremely well that Obama is not a Muslim and that these are bigoted lies churned out by the right-wing attack machine and as such are an insult to millions of Muslim Americans and Muslims around the world. However, knowing very well that these kinds of attacks work with the average American voter, she cynically exploited the rumor and wanted to get as much mileage out of it as possible. Again, completely disregarding the possibility that he might be the Democratic nominee.
3) Despite the Democratic Party ban on candidates campaigning in Florida and Michigan in the run-up to the states' primaries--due to the states' violation of Party rules--she campaigned from afar by promising that she would fight tooth and nail to seat their delegates at the Party convention in August no matter what the Democratic Party rules say. And now, she is trying to get those delegates seated based on the results of the primary which was never recognized by the Party (to remind everyone: Obama was NOT on the Michigan ballot and she prides herself of having won that state!). Once again, in her obsession to win, Hillary Clinton put her own interests ahead of the Democratic Party.
These are the three examples that come to my mind, but I am sure you can easily find more. Since the super-delegates have to vote with the interests of the Party in mind, we need to remind them that Hillary has consistently tarnished the Party's image and diminished its chances of winning back the White House in November.
So to all of you Obamans out there, write to the super-delegates, or even call them. To help you, here is a link to a form that you can fill out and submit to Obama campaign and then it will be forwarded to super-delegates:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/superdelstory
Considering these kinds of tactics, it is really hard for me to imagine a joint Obama-Hillary (or the other way around) ticket.
I was inspired and reminded by a good friend of mine that is time for us to write to super-delegates--this eclectic, shady, and indecisive group of Democratic Party veterans who seem to hold the result of this nomination fight in their hands--and urge them to support Barack Obama. Besides writing about the inspiration that his candidacy and his personal background inject into the everyday American life and the image of the US abroad, we should all emphasize one important aspect of Hillary Clinton that all super-delegates who support her now, should consider: Hillary's consistent and blatant disloyalty to the Democratic Party and her disregard for the interests of the Party. Let me provide just a few most explicit examples:
1) In emphasizing Obama's inexperience in foreign affairs and her own supposed experience, Hillary Clinton consistently asserts that both she and Senator McCain are qualified to be commander-in-chief on day one. By this logic, if the election was held today, and the voters should choose between McCain and Obama, they should vote for McCain. This is a blatant and rude violation of party ethics since it disregards the possibility that Obama indeed might be the candidate when the Republican attack machine will have a field day with a clip of Clinton saying that voters should prefer McCain over Obama. As NYTimes op-ed columnist Bob Herbert said in his column today: "This is a low thing for a Democratic Presidential candidate to do to a rival in a party primary. Can you imagine Jon McCain saying that Rudy Gulliani or Mitt Romney or even the guitar-strumming Mike Huckabee might be less qualified than Hillary Clinton to be commander-in-chief. It couldn't happen."
2) What especially made my blood boil was Hillary's cynical recycling of the right-wing rumors that Obama might be Muslim. When she was asked by 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft if she believed Obama was a Muslim, she replied: Not, as far as I know. She knows extremely well that Obama is not a Muslim and that these are bigoted lies churned out by the right-wing attack machine and as such are an insult to millions of Muslim Americans and Muslims around the world. However, knowing very well that these kinds of attacks work with the average American voter, she cynically exploited the rumor and wanted to get as much mileage out of it as possible. Again, completely disregarding the possibility that he might be the Democratic nominee.
3) Despite the Democratic Party ban on candidates campaigning in Florida and Michigan in the run-up to the states' primaries--due to the states' violation of Party rules--she campaigned from afar by promising that she would fight tooth and nail to seat their delegates at the Party convention in August no matter what the Democratic Party rules say. And now, she is trying to get those delegates seated based on the results of the primary which was never recognized by the Party (to remind everyone: Obama was NOT on the Michigan ballot and she prides herself of having won that state!). Once again, in her obsession to win, Hillary Clinton put her own interests ahead of the Democratic Party.
These are the three examples that come to my mind, but I am sure you can easily find more. Since the super-delegates have to vote with the interests of the Party in mind, we need to remind them that Hillary has consistently tarnished the Party's image and diminished its chances of winning back the White House in November.
So to all of you Obamans out there, write to the super-delegates, or even call them. To help you, here is a link to a form that you can fill out and submit to Obama campaign and then it will be forwarded to super-delegates:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/superdelstory
Considering these kinds of tactics, it is really hard for me to imagine a joint Obama-Hillary (or the other way around) ticket.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Primaries' Results: A Bad Night for the Party
After staying up until 3:30am and watching the primary results seep into Wolf Blitzer's distractingly multi-colored and gadget-obsessed "war room," (I actually started counting how many times Blitzer will say "the best political team on television" but I lost count in my sleepy early morning daze) I am exhausted and depressed by the results. I hoped Obama would take at least Ohio or Texas (I never really thought there was a chance for him to take Ohio, but Texas looked like a real possibility based on exit polling) wrap up his nomination and the Party could go on and coalesce around him (especially those annoying super delegates). However, I gotta give it to Hillary, she won, and more importantly, won by comfortable margins, especially in Ohio.
It still seems that there is very little mathematical possibility of her catching up to Obama in delegate numbers since he is bound to scoop up a hefty proportion of those (he still might win the delegate fight in Texas despite her winning the popular vote), but this result is really bad for the Party. And here is why, I think.
This showed that Clinton's negative hammering of Obama (and every viable candidate has to go through this of course), works. Her accusations were based on fear-mongering (the stupid and childish 'red telephone' ad) and were also breathtaking in their hypocrisy (her emphasis on Obama's ties to Rezko given her own involvement in Whitewater). But this campaign tactic obviously works and the Hillary-Obama fight is bound to get worse.
Hillary will work feverishly to convince the superdelegates to stop leaving her pack and going over to Obama since she can claim now that she won big states. She is also once again pulling out the Michigan/Florida card and hoping that the Democratic National Committee (which tilts in her favor) might actually count these delegates. So this is bound to go probably beyond Pennsylvania in April and into the summer. We know that the Clintons will use any weapon they have in their arsenal to win, and I am afraid that the fight for the nomination will eventually move beyond closed doors into the smoke-filled rooms (well I know no one smokes anymore) of the Democratic National Committee. Whichever way the superdelegates swing and no matter which way Dean decides to end this, it will be bruising for the other side.
A knockout punch from Obama last night would have been so much healthier, and oh, so much sweeter. But what do I know? I am just cranky that my candidate lost.
It still seems that there is very little mathematical possibility of her catching up to Obama in delegate numbers since he is bound to scoop up a hefty proportion of those (he still might win the delegate fight in Texas despite her winning the popular vote), but this result is really bad for the Party. And here is why, I think.
This showed that Clinton's negative hammering of Obama (and every viable candidate has to go through this of course), works. Her accusations were based on fear-mongering (the stupid and childish 'red telephone' ad) and were also breathtaking in their hypocrisy (her emphasis on Obama's ties to Rezko given her own involvement in Whitewater). But this campaign tactic obviously works and the Hillary-Obama fight is bound to get worse.
Hillary will work feverishly to convince the superdelegates to stop leaving her pack and going over to Obama since she can claim now that she won big states. She is also once again pulling out the Michigan/Florida card and hoping that the Democratic National Committee (which tilts in her favor) might actually count these delegates. So this is bound to go probably beyond Pennsylvania in April and into the summer. We know that the Clintons will use any weapon they have in their arsenal to win, and I am afraid that the fight for the nomination will eventually move beyond closed doors into the smoke-filled rooms (well I know no one smokes anymore) of the Democratic National Committee. Whichever way the superdelegates swing and no matter which way Dean decides to end this, it will be bruising for the other side.
A knockout punch from Obama last night would have been so much healthier, and oh, so much sweeter. But what do I know? I am just cranky that my candidate lost.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Experiencing Mixedness, Being out of sync
I just returned from my hometown of Mostar where I attended a Catholic mass my aunt organized to commemorate one year anniversary of my grandfather's death. My grandfather and I were extremely close. We were best friends, colleagues who often talked about politics, philosophy, and current events. He was someone who really knew me, and I felt like I could share anything with him. This is why the Catholic mass came as a surprise to me. My grandfather, as far as I knew, was never religious. He was born in Croatia while it was in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and grew up in the small Serbian town of Uzice. While Catholic Croat by his background his father was a strict disciplinarian and a member of the Yugoslav gendarme (probably the most pro-King section of the society). After World War II, he was a card carrying member of Tito's Communist Party and a proud atheist who married a secular Zagreb woman who was one of the few who attended a university (of meteorology) after WWII. Consequently, my mother grew up feeling Yugoslav and has never (to this day) entered a Catholic Church. She married my father, a man from a Muslim (although secular) family who has never entered a mosque, and whose father was a Partisan courier during the bloody days of World War II and who to the very last day remained an unwavering Titoist. His father (my father's grandfather) was a village hodza (a Muslim priest) and a devoted believer.
While sitting in the Cathedral in the West side of Mostar on a cold but beautiful Tuesday morning, I was struck how much this recent war made my family mixed. It was after the war that I found out that my grandfather (my mother's father) actually served in the regular military (the so called domobrani) of the Independent State of Croatia during WWII (run by the fanatical Ustashe leader Pavelic), and was forced to flee the country as the angry Partisans liberated the country in 1945. He was a witness to the controversial and a bloody event known as the Blaiburg massacre. This massacre happened in 1945 when the British authorities occupying Austria returned thousands of fleeing Ustashe, Chetniks, and other former Axis allies to the Partisans forces who went on to slaughter many of them. The event became a symbolic memory for the virulent Croatian nationalism that swept Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s. My grandfather revealed to me only in 2000 that he was in this column of refugees and was interned by the Partisans, questioned and went through a thorough background check before he was released and allowed to join the party. The Croatian authorities in Mostar confirmed his story by awarding him a pension and a status of a political prisoner, a vague term that referred to those Croats who had been persecuted by the Communists.
After the ceremony my grandfather's sister-in-law also revealed to me that while he might have been an atheist, his mother secretly registered all of her children and grandchildren (including my mother) with the Catholic priest so that their names would be in Catholic birth registers. My aunt also revealed to me that on his bed, one of the last things he asked, right after he asked to see the picture of his family, was to see a priest.
Also, while sitting in that church I was completely out of sync with the rest of my relatives (who are church going Catholics): when they went on their knees to pray, I would just stand there, when they uttered prayers, I would be silent, when they got up to, I would sit down. This reflected the extent to which as a child from a secular mixed marriage, I am completely out of sync in the ethnically divided Mostar and by extension, Bosnia. The war has pushed my family into scratching the surface of our previous lives and has revealed a whole new layer of past previously hidden, or irrelevant.
It is this new past that continues to haunt me every time I walk the streets of Mostar, feeling like a complete stranger in a place that I often referred to as "my hometown."
While sitting in the Cathedral in the West side of Mostar on a cold but beautiful Tuesday morning, I was struck how much this recent war made my family mixed. It was after the war that I found out that my grandfather (my mother's father) actually served in the regular military (the so called domobrani) of the Independent State of Croatia during WWII (run by the fanatical Ustashe leader Pavelic), and was forced to flee the country as the angry Partisans liberated the country in 1945. He was a witness to the controversial and a bloody event known as the Blaiburg massacre. This massacre happened in 1945 when the British authorities occupying Austria returned thousands of fleeing Ustashe, Chetniks, and other former Axis allies to the Partisans forces who went on to slaughter many of them. The event became a symbolic memory for the virulent Croatian nationalism that swept Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s. My grandfather revealed to me only in 2000 that he was in this column of refugees and was interned by the Partisans, questioned and went through a thorough background check before he was released and allowed to join the party. The Croatian authorities in Mostar confirmed his story by awarding him a pension and a status of a political prisoner, a vague term that referred to those Croats who had been persecuted by the Communists.
After the ceremony my grandfather's sister-in-law also revealed to me that while he might have been an atheist, his mother secretly registered all of her children and grandchildren (including my mother) with the Catholic priest so that their names would be in Catholic birth registers. My aunt also revealed to me that on his bed, one of the last things he asked, right after he asked to see the picture of his family, was to see a priest.
Also, while sitting in that church I was completely out of sync with the rest of my relatives (who are church going Catholics): when they went on their knees to pray, I would just stand there, when they uttered prayers, I would be silent, when they got up to, I would sit down. This reflected the extent to which as a child from a secular mixed marriage, I am completely out of sync in the ethnically divided Mostar and by extension, Bosnia. The war has pushed my family into scratching the surface of our previous lives and has revealed a whole new layer of past previously hidden, or irrelevant.
It is this new past that continues to haunt me every time I walk the streets of Mostar, feeling like a complete stranger in a place that I often referred to as "my hometown."
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