Sarajevo Without Emily

Continuing with our walk, we passed the park, and the modern city center, heading further into the Austro-Hungarian section, built after the area came under Hapsburg rule beginning in 1878. My favorite part, not surprisingly, lay beyond that section, when the ornate European-style buildings give way to smaller, wooden structures with steep roofs, and to mosques; these are the old Ottoman buildings, many of which have been restored. In this part, local Bosnians mingle among tourists and international peacekeepers (now directed by an EU-led peacekeeping force, Eufor, which took over from the NATO-led mission in 2004), although the city looked quiet enough to me. However, as Emily explained to me, there is essentially no rule of law in the country, and after the Dayton Peace Accords (which Clinton helped to draft in '95) the country does not really have full autonomy (something the Bosnian flag - which not all Bosnians accept - reminds everyone of in a blatant way, bearing the yellow stars and blue backdrop which resemble the EU flag). There are still mines in the countryside, for example, and she warned me that if I was going to take any trips to neighboring villages, I should do so with a guide and someone who knew the landscape well. However, knowing all this still did not change the impression I got of a quiet city, where the ruins and scarred buildings faded into the backdrop of misty green hills or rows of multy-storied apartments, depending on where I found myself at a given moment.

After this initial initiation to the city, terrible news arrived: Emily learned that her father had died suddenly. It was awful: I was there with her when she found out, and it was unimaginably difficult, but we were both very grateful that I could at least be there with her. She was so far from home and had to take care of so many things in order to get back to the States as soon as possible, that I did what I could in that regard. So we packed up her life there (she decided to cut her trip short, as it was almost over anyway), changed her ticket for the next morning, and made sure everything was arranged for her dog to come with her. (Her husband had bought her a dog to keep her company while she was living in Sarajevo). Her friends from her year there began coming over once they heard, and we all sat around with her and helped her pack, listening to her and smoking (save the three Americans there, me, Emily and her friend Paul, who is a professor in the States). We stuffed her life in three suitcases, divided up the items she wasn't taking with her, and got her to the airport at 5:30 the next morning. Emily, amazing soul that she is, made sure before she left to remind me of the appointments she had made for me at local archives, assuring also that her friends there knew they were to take care of me.

They did, although from all the traveling, stress, lack of sleep, and probably a dose of bad luck, I got a really bad cold, and a cough which I am sure was compounded the thick cloud of cigarette smoke that you're bound to come under (supposedly, again according to Emily, something like 96% of Bosnians smoke). After a long nap, the following day I met two of her friends, sisters, Indira, 26, and Irfana, 21, at their place, and they cooked me Bosnian food and played some Bosnian music for me, some of which I managed to take with me before I left.