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Nevesinje teens gather to see class photos.
And then, as my eyes wandered to the curiously overgrown ruined building across the
street, I noticed bricked-up, pointed Islamic arches…and realized it was once a mosque.
As if surveying a horrible crime scene, I had to walk through its backyard. It was a
no-man's land of broken concrete and glass. A single half-knocked-over, turban-shaped
tombstone still managed to stand. The prayer niche inside, where no one prays anymore,
faced a vacant lot.
The idea that there had recently been a bloody war in this country is abstract until you
actually come here. Walking these streets, I talked with locals about the cruel quirkiness
of this war. The towns that got off relatively easy were the ones with huge majorities of
one or the other faction. Towns with the most bloodshed and destruction were the most di-
verse—where no single ethnic group dominated. Because Nevesinje was a predominantly
Orthodox town, the Serbs killed or forced out the Muslims and destroyed their mosque.
Surviving Muslim refugees reportedly had to walk for a week over a mountain pass to
safety in Mostar—where, Serbs like to say, “They found better living conditions anyway.”
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