from our correspondent
SARAJEVO — Dov’ Smail? The sunset on the first day of Ramadan, they waited for him at the cannon. for a quarter of a century that at eight in the evening Smail Krivic covers his head with an Ottoman fez, goes up to the Yellow Fortress above Sarajevo, loads the cannon with blanks and boom, plugs your ears, because he always opens the month of fasting. Where is Smail? This time, the first time since the end of the war, he didn’t show up. The virus spread it. And Sidran? Do you remember Abdulah Sidran? It is useless to call him: the Oscar-winning screenwriter in the hospital answers with a tired faint voice, the other night they were showing his masterpiece on TV Do you remember Dolly Bell?, but he just couldn’t look at it. And Mirza Nodic? He’s been selling shoes behind the cathedral for a lifetime, it never closed even when the Serbs threw grenades, for today s: he pulled down the claire and took the whole family to Serbia to get vaccinated.
Bosnians are cannon fodder. And we, bombarded as we are by pandemic anxieties, do not have the time to think about their tragedy. And the latest numbers from Covid-19, worse than those of the ’92 war: in Sarajevo, on average, more people die every day from the epidemic (18.5) than those who died from snipers (3.8). After Hungary, Bosnia is second in the world in the percentage of deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants. And if the coronavirus siege lasted four years, as long as Milosevic’s, there would be another ethnic cleansing at this rate. With the paradox that it is mainly the Serbs who save Bosnia today: donate the vaccines and let the enemies of yesteryear go to Belgrade, to syringe with Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
Missing Sarajevo. The curfew starts at nine in the evening, like in the 90s, and the caravanserai of the Bascarsija the void full of nothing that could be seen when the shots above were for us. Of course, even better than last year’s total lockdown: now some mosques are open and in this Ramadan one can also gather as a family for iftar, the night meal. For it seems to me that I have rewound a film and go back to the initial scene, the mask is lowered Slobodan Kacuca, 66, who was the director of the Holyday Inn in the snajper’s sights throughout the war: I didn’t think I was seeing the streets again. deserted and people queuing for bread. Those who have a home in the mountains have already fled.
E if we Europeans cannot afford comparisons with real war, whom we do not know, the Sarajevesi s: I was 40 years old under the bombs and a completely different way of dealing with the situation – remembers Marko Vesovic, the poet -. Dante said that in warfare man knows how to adapt to all circumstances and in fact I went out of the house anyway. Now I can’t even go to the cemetery to bring my wife flowers. I don’t give a damn about Covid, I’m used to taking death into account. But I understand how a young man feels. You do not hide from the infection, it looks a bit like a grenade: if it touches you, it touches you…. On the bridges of the Miljacka, a banner incites: Let’s fight for life !. But nobody really fights. There is no resistance.
The last country in the Balkans for the number of vaccinations. There is no health minister, because the Dayton ’95 peace does not provide for it. Since 2018 there is no real government, because Muslims, Serbs and Croats do not agree. In refugee camps, infections between Syrians and Afghans are out of control. Contested in the square every week, Prime Minister Fadil Novalic on trial for a story of one hundred fake respirators, overpaid 50 million euros to the Chinese, who would have killed many inmates: accused the bad hospital network, managed by the powerful wife of the Muslim leader Izetbegovic, as well as a cumbersome decentralized health system in ten cantons.
The hospital wards are arranging: in the enclave of Republika Srpska, the vaccines are made by doctor Karadzic, the daughter of the war criminal; in Srebrenica, widows receive gift doses from Turkey. Social media boil with rage, especially if they look at the vaccination miracle of neighboring Serbia, the humiliation of asking for help from someone like Aleksandar Vucic, the premier of Belgrade who acted as spokesperson for Milosevic. We live on alms – explains Zlatko Dzidzarevic, heard columnist and diplomat -. Covid has promoted an ambitious ruling class that decides our life, without being up to it. Politicians have vaccinated themselves with the few doses available, while the old are queuing up: I am still waiting. And do you know who they bought the famous Chinese respirators from? From a company specializing in the import of raspberries !.
This is a government of incapable ones, according to Pero Sudar, the bishop: There is no emergency planning. Monsignor was already there during the siege, and he has seen some. He doesn’t seem to have much faith in the new advancing either: Benjamina Karic, 30, the first woman mayor of the capital, immediately honored by her Roman colleague Virginia Raggi. I do not know her. But I know it comes from a palace game…. Benjamina is already an exhibited butterfly, immobilized by the pin: They chose her in order not to elect someone like Bogic Bogicevic. What a Serbian, brave and during the war he knew how to oppose Milosevic. He, yes, would have been a novelty …. Ok to the vaccine donated by the Serbs. But giving the mayor in exchange, no.
April 20, 2021 (change April 20, 2021 | 17:33)
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