By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
Long ago, there was a strange land, an “in-between land”, caught between East and West, at the very heart of southeastern Europe. This small heart-shaped land has a long name for a country that measures just over 50,000 km2. It is a place covered with pristine natural beauty and a vast network of rivers and tributaries flowing from all corners, serving as the arteries that connect this heart shaped place to its tapestried history. It's no surprise why this land’s name is derived from 'bosana', an old Indo-European word meaning river or water. The name of this peculiar land is Bosnia & Herzegovina. There’s more to Bosnia-Herzegovina than war, even if its past is anything but a fairytale with a happy ending. Sometimes when one feels most lost in this world, going back to the roots of it all, to settle down with a cup of strong Bosnian coffee with relatives in the old town or village you were born in, to ruminate on what you’ve learnt so far in life, is the compass you need to find your way again. Every time I return to Kevljani, a small village that has existed since the 14th century, I do not see two houses that look the same to my 21st century eyes. This eclectic physical landscape tells the story of the reclaiming of lost space by returnees, where the inescapable past dots the landscape in the form of ruined houses without new houses to replace them. In a way, the ruined houses memorialize what stood there before, and those who lived, loved, and died there as well. A family trip three years ago unexpectedly became the first step in the journey of reconciling not only Bosnia’s past, but my own past within it. I began questioning and examining my role in delineating remembrance and memorialization from solely representing victimhood. It is an overwhelming feeling to have - simultaneously not really being a local, but not entirely unconnected from this “in-between” place either. The older I get, the more I find both connected and disconnected, perhaps a predestined symptom of being in exile. In this “in-between place” within this “in-between land”, there were many firsts for me – from visiting the Trnopolje camp for the first time after having spent time there as a child, or seeing the Omarska mine for the first time after hearing horrifying stories from my uncles who survived the camp, or even walking the streets of Prijedor, where I was born yet largely unfamiliar with. People I would have not otherwise met or had an interaction with became friends in this “in-between” that I explored – like a Serb, about my age, from the local area that shared a similar sense of humour, with whom I laughed with and incessantly asked about what life was like for him in the “in-between”. I only realized a few days later, that he was the first Serb I had ever talked to in all the times I have been in Kevljani, and had also been the first Serb I had hugged goodbye and was sad to see go at the end of my trip. The compass that led me along this accidental journey has forever changed my life and activism in both my adoptive country of the United States and in Kevljani for a long time to come. It was a starting point for me to reclaim many things I had lost in Kevljani as a child, and begin to explain and build on them as an adult in an effort to better my own understanding of the fabled land I come from, but left too early. And that is the most beautiful thing about home, as ‘home is where one starts from,’ in the words of T.S. Eliot. For all the beauty the enchanting realm of Bosnia & Herzegovina holds, happily ever after might finally be within grasp.