Home > Author > Semezdin Mehmedinović
21 " The war has made me suspicious of any metaphors (and not only because poets turned into murderers). I put even less faith in metaphors derived from religious mythology: things belonging to “that” world, a world that can only be reached by passing through death, no longer concern the living. Thus, all responsibility for the commission of evil can be abdicated. If you follow through on this metaphor—and that is why it always made me uncomfortable—then you can remove any trace of responsibility from Karadžić’s hellish acts. That is how, to put it mildly, lies emerged victorious—and were measured out in drums of “non-Serbian” blood. Lies were the only political means in which Radovan Karadžić had absolute faith. Since everything he did in the name of racial “cleanliness” created a fact, so to speak—he was creating a reality to fit his lies—all he had left to do was keep repeating the lies until his accumulated acts made his lies seem irrefutable. Maybe that’s why it became so easy for so many of our “neighbors” to put stockings over their heads. The claim most often repeated by Karadžić—that people of different nationalities couldn’t live together in Bosnia—was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: peoples of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed. "
― Semezdin Mehmedinović , Sarajevo Blues
22 " It was right during the period when Karadžić was the most vocal champion of absolute separation along “cultural border-lines” that I happened to thumb through the 1991/92 Sarajevo phonebook. Under the family name Karadžić, I found twenty-one entries. In addition to the aforementioned poet, the rest of the entries could be fit under the following ethnic rubrics: 10 Muslims, 9 Serbs and 1 Croat. The most curious aspect of these lisings is the fact that the only Croat, Mate Karadžić, carried the same first name as the leader of the Croatian nationalist party, Mate Boban. And amongst the Muslims, I found Ale Karadžić, Ale being a term of endearment for Alija, the first name of the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović. "
23 " I want to believe that her memory will soon come back, because we don’t have the strength to fight against forgetting. "
― Semezdin Mehmedinović , My Heart
24 " The claim most often repeated by Karadzic - that people of different nationalities couldn't live together in Bosnia - was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: peoples of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed. "
