Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As I drove through the streets of Sarajevo, I realized that it was the first city I had been
to that had seen a war during my lifetime. As I passed the infamous Holiday Inn hotel,
which sits directly on the street known as “sniper alley,” I could still feel the fear that so
many must have felt while crouching down in the guest rooms as shells slammed into the
yellow facade of the hotel. I could sense the terror that the locals must have experienced
walking down the main road, hearing the sound of sniper's bullets whistling past their ears,
or even worse, striking. And here I was, only twenty years later, driving down that same
street on a yellow motorbike of kindness. And despite the permanence of things, time does
indeed change us—sometimes for the worse, and yes, sometimes, if we allow it, for the
better.
I had heard of a local museum that told more of the story of the Bosnian War, but this
was no ordinary museum. It actually used to be a house, the site of an underground tunnel
that served a critical role during the siege of Sarajevo.
And in that house was its former inhabitant Edis, a Bosnian not far from my own age,
who explained how the eight-hundred-meter tunnel had been built to give the city's inhab-
itants a lifeline during the siege, a lifeline during a time when humanity had turned against
itself.
“So who owns the house now?” I asked Edis, who had grown up in the war, even serving
as a soldier for a time.
“The government, actually. Although this was my family's house before the war,” he
explained. “We were here at that time, you know, when they came to build the tunnel. My
father agreed to give the house and land and everything we had at that time for the army,
for the tunnel.”
It's not every day you meet a hero. Edis's family had risked their lives for their fellow
neighbors, handing over everything they had to the army so that others might be able to get
out of the city safely, and all the while, they had to pretend that they were living a normal
life, in a normal house. They had to hold up the ultimate mask that everything was fine,
even though they were playing a pivotal role in the middle of a major war. They had offered
people a way out, but more than that, they showed them that the bonds of love and trust
could not be destroyed by warfare. They were more permanent than anything else.
“So how does it feel to know that your house and your family helped to save the city of
Sarajevo?” I asked.
“An incredible feeling,” Edis replied. I could feel his pride. As much as I always looked
at home as something that held me back, I could see that for Edis, it was what held him to-
