Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Surviving companies have no money. h e Bank of Yugoslavia, which held
the mortgages, is now gone. No one will invest until it's clear who owns the
buildings.” I had never considered the i nancial confusion that follows the
breakup of a country, and how it could stunt a society's redevelopment.
We walked to a small cemetery congested with more than a hundred
white-marble Muslim tombstones. Alen pointed out the dates: Everyone
died in 1993, 1994, or 1995. Before 1993, this was a park. When the war
heated up, snipers were a constant concern—they'd pick of anyone they saw
walking down the street. Because of the ongoing danger, bodies were left
for weeks, rotting on the main boulevard, which had become the front line.
Mostar's cemeteries were too exposed to be used, but this tree-i lled park
was relatively safe from snipers. People buried their neighbors here...under
the cover of darkness.
Weaving slowly through the tombstones, Alen explained, “In those years,
night was the time when we lived. We didn't walk...we ran. And we dressed
in black. h ere was no electricity. If the Croats didn't kill us with their bul-
lets, they killed us with their music.” h at politically charged, rabble-rousing
Croatian pop music, used—apparently ef ectively—as a kind of psychological
torture, was blasting constantly from the Croat side of town.
On Mostar's main square, children of former combatants embrace life...and are ready
to party.
