Niall Griffiths
There are some cities that get inside you, somehow; that sing with personal affinities and concatenations.
They set up camp inside your soul and beckon you back. You feel mysteriously at home in them (despite having no familial or ethnic connections to them whatsoever).
Mostar is one such; I first visited nine years or so ago and returning to it after so long felt like a great relief. You might know of it through the famous bridge (off which, and for money, young guys dive into the river below with astonishing grace and bravery), and you might – and probably do – know of it through the ’90s war (which saw the first attempted genocide on European soil since WW2), but let’s not talk about that.
The foul festival of cruelty that war is never fully retreats into history but let’s, here and in this format, talk about the buzz of Bosnia and Herzegovina as encapsulated in this pulsing and magnetic city; let’s talk about drinking into the early hours in the Coco Loco Bar in the shadows of the sniper tower. Let’s talk about the bluest of skies and the thrum of the surrounding mountains from which the Serbs launched hurricanes of shells onto the innocents below and let’s talk about other things.
There is the Old Town, all cobbled ginnels and teems of tourists. Here, in Balkantina, you’ll find Mirna, who will tell you everything you need to know about Bosnian viniculture in a fascinating, gendered way; she’ll talk about the queen and princess of grape varieties and their corresponding characteristics. She’ll mention that there are three unkillable elements of Herzegovinian culture: wine, figs, and tobacco.
There is the Bruce Lee statue, built as an effort at reconciliation between warring sides, the thinking behind it being an exercise in de Bono-esque lateral thinking; here is a thing totally unrelated to the conflict around which people can gather, a place completely outside politics.
Fulfilling the same function is the Mepas shopping centre; here is a place in which consumerism can override everything else. Why kill when you can buy? Capitalism can unify, as it can put asunder. Better a designer label on a glittery jacket than a camouflage one.
There is the Mary Mother church, the only cathedral in the former Yugoslavia designed by a woman. There is Arslan, the kilt-wearing owner of the craft beer garden, outside of which you sit one night with ’80s punk in one ear and the muezzin in the other and the smell of cevap in your nostrils – a uniquely Bosnian experience. Slinky jazz in cobbled alleyways. Dogs that stand in the doorways of bars like friendly, furry bouncers. There is Nino, the bookshop owner, who loves LFC, literature, wine and The Clash. I need nothing more.
There are the towering murals on the blocks of Santic Street, in the prison district; huge and astonishingly skilled renderings of people, animals, abstract shapes. Standing amongst them is like having an audience with secular gods (as is being in Shankly’s Bar, with its images of LFC heroes past and present).
Mugging
And let’s talk about the most inept attempted mugging I’ve ever experienced. One night, drunk and alone and lost (it’s a labyrinthine city in many ways), I was approached by two young guys who offered to help. I gave them the name of my hotel and they said they’d take me there and then steered me towards a Bankomat ATM and demanded my card PIN. I told them no and said that, if we were to fight, I’d probably lose, there being two of them and one of me and the tallest of them being the size of a giraffe, but I still wouldn’t give up my PIN and they must be prepared to lose a finger or an eye or an ear (pure bravado, you understand; I’ve learnt to adopt this role in such situations, despite having a profound abhorrence for the negative intimacy of physical violence).
At this, they actually apologised and chaperoned me home, whereupon I felt sorry for them and gave them 20 marks (about eight quid), for which they were effusively grateful. Preposterous.
And let’s talk about a country with an unemployment rate of 40% in which the surface vibe is nonetheless one of contentment, of slow beers and coffees and talk (my, how the Bosnians like to talk) across afternoons and under skies of such unbroken blue that if you were to put your hand up and rub your fingers together, they’d come away blue.
Sexy
Of course, there are all the deprivations concomitant with poverty seething beneath that surface sheen, but to the outsider it is one of the most effortlessly sexy cities on earth. There is a general sensation of a willingness to meet the challenges of being alive in this place and at this time with a defiant and resilient bounce, a kind of determined and learned elasticity.
It’s a place of historic – and seismic – clashes which has produced this kind of undying will, this attitude of ‘yes, we will not just survive but thrive, if only to spite you fuckers’.
The visitor – even the curious and inquisitive and politically engaged one – sees little of the daily grind, of course, but Mostar has a sense of openness and welcome and inclusivity that few other cities have.
And let’s talk about Mirko Bozic, poet, cultural commentator, tour guide, Poligon festival organiser, and all-round fine man, Balkan gemstone, fountain of wisdom and information. Hvala, Mirko. I’ll be back.
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