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desirability, twinkling stars…and no war…your family's income and your country's GDP
hardly matter. Today's 18-year-old Mostarians have no memory of the war that shaped
their parents' lives. Looking at these kids and their dried-apple grandparents clad in dusty
black, warming benches on the “Place for Prayer” square, I imagined that there must be
quite a generation gap.
On Mostar's main square, children of former combatants embrace life…and are ready to
party.
I was swirling in a snow globe of teenagers, and through the commotion, a thirtyso-
mething local came at me with a huge smile: Alen from Orlando. Actually, he's from
Mostar, but fled to Florida during the war and now spends summers with his family here.
A fan of my public television series, he immediately offered to show me around his ho-
metown.
Alen's local perspective gave Mostar meaning. He pointed to a fig tree growing out
of a small minaret. Seeming to speak as much about Mostar's people as its vegetation,
Alen said, “It's a strange thing in nature…figs can grow with almost no soil.” There were
blackened ruins from the war everywhere. When I asked why—after two decades—the
ruins had not been touched, Alen explained, “There's confusion about who owns what.
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