Sarajevo Under Siege. Ivana Macek

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Figure 7. “Maybe Airlines,” check-in desk for UN flights from Sarajevo. Sarajevo, October 1995. Photo by author.

      In their daily lives, people did all they could to take verbal revenge on those whom they saw as the cause of a particular disruption. The twenty-year-old biscuit that was sent as humanitarian aid from the United States was called a “Vietnam cookie,” implying that the United States was getting rid of leftovers from the Vietnam War. The out-of-date powdered eggs were called “Truman’s eggs,” as they had been in the aftermath of the Second World War; in local language, the same word means both “eggs” and “testicles.”

      In jokes snipers were made into fools, as in the joke where Mujo killed Suljo with his sniper rifle. The astonished people asked, “Mujo! Why on earth did you kill your brother [in the Muslim faith], Suljo?”“Well, you never know these days,” answered Mujo. “I saw Suljo and when I looked through the sniperscope I saw a big cross on his forehead. So I fired.” The cross was in the rifle sight, but Mujo thought that it was on Suljo’s forehead, which would mean that Suljo had become Christian and gone over to the enemy. Another joke that ridicules snipers was about an old man rocking in his rocking chair by the river where the snipers were continuously shooting. A passerby asked him what he was doing. “Teasing the sniper,” answered the old man.

      Even the UN soldiers stationed in Sarajevo adopted the same sense of humor: they called their air bridge to Sarajevo “Maybe Airlines,” insinuating that anything could happen and nothing could be counted on. The last time I was at the Sarajevo airport a little advertisement was hanging at the check-in desk (see fig. 7). It was possible to hang up the advertisement after the resignation of Yasushi Akashi, the UN’s highest civilian commander of the operation in the former Yugoslavia, who had prohibited the joke about the UN air bridge in 1993. In 1994 a UN officer complained to me that it was a bad sign if the highest authority for the whole operation did not have a sense of humor. To me, it seems that Akashi did not have the Sarajevan sense of humor, which implies that he did not have the same life-references that the civilian population and UN soldiers did. From this perspective, it is not surprising that the UN operation did not do much for the people of Sarajevo. Akashi acted in the “soldier” mode of relating to the war, rather than perceiving war as those with firsthand experience did. Sarajevans and UN soldiers serving in Sarajevo had more critical distance on the war, and their war-specific sense of humor often articulated the “deserter” mode of understanding.

      Artistic Life

      The determination to resist the omnipresence of war, the impulse to deny or forget it, the desire to feel some continuity with prewar life, the drive to express and share experiences, and the need to feel connected with others beyond the limits of the besieged town, the aspiration toward a sense of pan-human belonging—all resulted in an amazingly active artistic life in Sarajevo.

      Under the circumstances in which the new was not death but continuing to live, when one was forced to accept the despair as a normal human condition, arts became the fount of the life-force. It gave back life to people, gave birth anew to optimism and strength, and gave meaning in a time when it looked as if life had lost all meaning. In surroundings where all was dead and threatened by death, this old human—and in these circumstances new—companion gave permanency and existence to a threatened and degraded life and showed the indestructibility and the beauty of the spiritual life. (F. Trtak 1996:31, my translation)

      A coordinator of arts and entertainment in Sarajevo throughout his professional life, Fahrija Trtak gathered materials about the many cultural events taking place during the war and generously donated them to me.

      Individual musicians, artists, writers, and other cultural workers performing alone or together, … anonymous individuals who organized soirées in their residence quarters, cellars, apartments, and backyards, … various types of amateur companies…. Many a foreign artist and cultural worker participated in the cultural life of Sarajevo. All of them came to help. They were there with completed programs, they directed plays, prepared and organized exhibitions, played music, filmed, started collaborations, planned aid and guest performances, and also taught. Over eighty performances by Sarajevan theatres were staged in fifty-nine European cities; painters and sculptors from Sarajevo exhibited in thirty-four countries; musicians performed in all important European centers. Films made in Sarajevo were shown in fifty-two international festivals [during the period from April 1992 until April 1995]…. The cultural activities had the scale and content resembling those of peacetime…. The cultural life of besieged Sarajevo refutes the Latin proverb Inter armas musae silent, “While weapons talk Muses become silent.” In Sarajevo Muses did not become silent. (Trtak 1996:30, my translation)

      In the situation of extreme existential danger, people needed the creative force that the arts provide. By performing internationally to the extent that they did, Sarajevan artists were able to call world attention to the plight of Sarajevo. At the same time it also gave them an opportunity to come out of the siege and reconnect to the normal world, which everybody longed for. Some probably used this opportunity to seek asylum and stay abroad.

      In the town, Sarajevans performed and attended performances against all odds, and every performance was a victory of civilian life over the war. Lest the city’s surprisingly vibrant cultural life convey the misimpression that Sarajevans engaged daily in the production and consumption of art, however, we must note that the significance of these artistic events lay mostly in the fact that they were happening at all and that it was possible once in a while to attend them. A secularized Muslim woman explained: “We used to go to the concerts, to the theater…. I could not go very often because most of them were at twelve or at one o’clock, when I was at school…. It was because of the electricity. They could not give a performance in the evening without electricity, so they performed during the daylight.”