"Here in Mostar the really adventurous part of our journey began."
-Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

History does repeat itself. For it was in Mostar that the really adventurous part of my journey began -- nearly 70 years after Ms. West's travels through pre-WW2 Yugoslavia ended.


A river runs through Mostar. The Neretva River. The stari most is what connects the east and west banks. It was destroyed during the war, and rebuilt, slowly, after the smoke had long been cleared. Looking at a photograph, or scanning the horizon from one of the upscale coffee shop terraces looming above the "new" Old Bridge, it would appear a symbolic structure: Bridges have been mended; the healing in Bosnian society has begun.

But as I have learned in my short time in Bosnia and Hercegovina -- where a man as dark as a Colombian drug dealer can be a Croat, and Hitler's Aryan dream child can be a Muslim --appearances are often deceiving.

In his giant, air-conditioned bus, a tourist leaves Mostar feeling cool under the vents, but warm inside his cocoon of ignorance -- an abstract textile draped around the consciousness by blue skies, smiling waiters and little trinkets for sale all along the romantic cobble stoned paths leading to the Old Town. "Isn't that just wonderful? These Bosnians, who fought a civil war only a decade ago, are able to live amongst one another again in peace. Life is back to normal again. Let's go have another ice cream, honey!"

But a traveler -- the difference being that a traveler attempts to learn about the reality of life, while a tourist attempts to learn about the Lonely Planet version of reality -- does not suffer from this gelatto-induced illusion. A traveler leaves Mostar feeling a deep sense of sadness.


The Serbs were effectively pushed out during the war. Mostar was left to the Croats and the Muslims. A river runs through the city; but if you look deeper, you'll see that what the river really runs through is any notion of a heterogeneous society.

Muslims to the east. Catholics to the west. Sound familiar? They say Mostar's recent history serves as a great case study in the larger Balkan conflict of the 1990's, as it is essentially a microcosm of the entire war. It is also a symbolic microcosm of the divide between East and West in today's world as a whole.


"I don't like Serbs, and I don't like Muslims," Ilija said, the Bosnian-subtitled "Van Buren Boys" episode of "Seinfeld" playing on the television in the corner of his apartment's living room. A orange-haired troll sat atop the monitor. He wore the white collar of a Roman Catholic priest. We were deep in the heart of Mostar's Croat side of town. The Neretva lay 15 minutes away by foot, but Ilija saw it as five centuries away: The border between Christendom and the Turks, between civilization and barbarism. "The Muslims, they are too violent," he continued, apparently not remembering that it was his side that turned on them, once Bosnian Croat forces determined that the Muslims were more of a roadblock than an aid towards the realization of the project for "Greater Croatia."

"So do you ever go to the other side of the Neretva?" I asked.

Ilija smiled. "No, never." His roomate, Tomislav, whose name comes from the first king of the Croats, his reign all the way back in the 10th century, smiled as well. He doesn't speak great English, but Tomislav understood my question.

Of course they wouldn't go to the Muslim part of town. Why would anybody go to the Muslim side of town?

My first night in Mostar, when I had gone for an aimless stroll -- my specialty when visiting any new place -- I hadn't even realized that the divide existed. After all, the sight of a minaret spiking into the air was a common scene all throughout the city -- west and east of the Neretva. And the people walking around the streets, they looked the exact same as Ilija and Tomislav. It wasn't until I began talking to Mostarians that I realized how deep the fault line ran. This is no Sarajevo; the rest of Bosnia has not made nearly as much progress towards reintegrating neighbors-turned-enemies into a multiethnic, tolerant society.

The Old Bridge was rebuilt because it had been the symbol of the city for centuries. It brought tourists back in hordes. But I see it as something else: A courageous first step in a journey towards forgiveness. Catholics and Muslims in Mostar currently view each other as depraved barbarians, "the other" always being the one incapable of mending the divide. But as a new generation of Bosnians comes of age -- kids who know of war only through the stories of their parents and through the bombardment of video/computer games they take in -- the journey to that bridge, and towards forgiveness, may shorten.

From a 500-year walk between civilizations, it may turn into a 15-minute stroll between neighbors.