SARAJEVO-1995 Peace Project.

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M I N U T E S T O WA R : Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo tale…I keeping I thinking the Brothers Grim or Goldie Locks is going to skip down the slate path towards me… The house, where she lives with her aged wrinkled parents, her two brothers and their children live, has been recently rebuilt after being burnt down. This abode is serene and tucked away. We occasionally listen to the radio and the news to monitor what is happening in Sarajevo. We have rung on a few occasions the UNPROFOR in Zagreb to discover if conditions on the ground are hostile or not. Currently there is a limited cease-fire between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims, which may allow us to safely travel across the demilitarised zone (DMZ) to reach the city of Sarajevo. A news report has flashed across CNN today, which is good. It reads: (CNN) -- The United Nations hopes opening the main road into Sarajevo will help life return to normal in Bosnia. Sunday, civilian buses, escorted by peacekeepers, made the first trip out of Sarajevo through Serb territory in more than three years. Only a fearless few turned up for the test ride. “I’m nervous. A little tense,” said one young woman, Emina. There were a dozen passengers and a dozen U.N. escort vehicles. Security was tight. Everyone was searched before boarding, and U.N. soldiers checked their strategy one last time before they left along the main road, straight through the Serb checkpoint. Darja’s idea is that we should visit the Embassy of Bosnia-Herzegovina tomorrow, which has been recently established in Ljubljana and sits in the southern sector of the city of Ljubljana. We also hope to travel there to be interviewed by the director of a gallery in Sarajevo, ‘Collegium Artisticum’ to see whether the gallery might be interested in exhibiting the billboard. Monday, 30th October, <strong>1995</strong>, Ljubljana, Slovenia Bosnia-Herzegovina is now a new but separate nation-state with its representatives burrowed officiously here in this makeshift office Embassy in Ljubljana with bureaucrats zig-zagging across corridors holding sheaves of paper. The half light of the twisted shadows of the gnarled oak tree branches cast looming figures as oblique diagonals across the wide ebony desk in the Embassy Bosnia- Herzegovina as I rolled out the small image of the billboard to show the director of a museum in Sarajevo, Fuad Hadjhalovic. The Director of the
M I N U T E S T O WA R : Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo ‘Collegium Artisticum’ is a round-faced fatherly man, with big glinting eyes that are kind, and embracing. It is wonderful when someone can be inspired by a message that you bring. It is not something that they see in terms of financial gain or economic viability. It is just simply the spirit of a message and they are taken up by that wave and they wish to surf it. In this era such events are so rare and I honour the people who can balance both the economics of their lives with courage and the pursuit of truth, justice, and love of the good. He is a thickset, burly man aged around of 55, but his appearance seems closer to the late sixties after the effects of a three-year siege and malnourishment—still ongoing in his hometown. Our spontaneous meeting as the result of a chance encounter with a mutual friend of Darja in the boulevard seemed fortuitous. Our meeting has occurred today at 3.36pm in the Bosnian Embassy in Ljubljana. Fuad likes the project immensely and with his bearish grin beams across the room at me. A smile is language enough that the project has been accepted. I manage to spread out the rolled up laminated image that is 20 centimetres across, as well as letters of introduction, as I explain the idea of bringing the forty-two by eleven foot image of war and peace entitled Millennium to Sarajevo. The words across it say: ‘We Have All Suffered Enough’. Also texts are in Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian and Russian. The director said: ‘Yes, Dominic, I like it, it appeals to my sensibilities, but my only concern is that words in Croatian and Serbian have to be excluded.’ I am at a loss but this is one condition that I realise has to be accepted. My dilemma is whether nothing is to be done or something? My original concept is to bring the humanitarian message into the middle of the DMZ between the two sides, the Serbians and Bosnians. But what the people at the Embassy are saying now is: ‘No.’ I realise they don’t want it there. It must come from their side and this is their message. As Fuad says: ‘We are the ones who have suffered enough.’ We left the meeting and now we must decide. In light of what is currently happening I agree but again I keep musing to myself—‘the message is neutral and its purpose is served by speaking to both sides.’ It is something akin to a neutral Red Cross message— humanitarian and speaks for the innocent on both sides of this conflict. But when people have suffered and
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