sarajevo, kanton sarajevo.

some days before the trip, the internet told me quite scary things about sarajevo. it said that there are still lots of landmines and unexploded explosive left from the war, mostly on the suburbs. there were warnings not to go into damaged buildings, not to walk on unpaved surface and to avoid grassy hills. there's also a warning which was super scary to me about 20.000 strayed dogs around the city who could be aggressive. the article suggested to shout back if they bark, with the risk that it may actually backfire. duh.

we arrived at sarajevo at 2am in the morning to a foggy and chilly city at what felt like a deserted old bus/train station. from the station climbing the hilly street to our hostel (which was actually an old hotel, with no other guest at all except us), there were sounds of dogs barking from i didn't know where. i swear it was probably the most horrifying experience i've ever had when i travel. there were no one on the streets and when there was one, he would look very scary with his hoody on and i couldn't see him clearly because of the fog. i felt like i was on a scary movie i didn't know what would jump at us at any moment, dogs or bad guys or ghosts.

aside from the terrifying experience around the hostel which happened to be situated at what seemed to be a stage for horror movies on the winter, and another mortifying experience trying to find a cemetery at night, sarajevo has got to be one of my favorite places i have ever been to. although at some place i felt as if people weren't that used to tourists from the way they stared at me, i have to say i met some of the kindest people. i enjoyed bosnian food, and of course the cultural variety where church and synagoge and mosque could be located just meters away.

we found the exhibition of srebrenica by accident and it was very heartbreaking seeing the photos and watching the movies. it bothered me the fact that it happened not so long ago when i was already a teenager. it felt so close to our life these days and yet it happened.

sarajevo is that city which i couldn't get out of my head even weeks after i left the place. never in my life i think i thought about a place i've travelled to for such a long time with such melancholy. i had such big eager to read and to dig more about its story, about its history.

universal moral law

I had been avoiding The Zone of Interest because I didn't feel like watching yet another film about the nazi holocaust, especially when there is an ongoing genocide happening right now. There have been so many medias on the nazi holocaust that many people especially in the west have an impression that it is a singular most horrific atrocities ever committed to humankind. It isn't. 

But the director Jonathan Glazer's speech at the Oscar ceremony got me really curious and I found his approach to the film to be very interesting. He shared the perspective of Primo Levi on how the nazi in cinema were often portrayed as "mythologically evil". Levi wrote, "Monster exist. But they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." He also drew from philosopher Gillian Rose who envisioned a film "that could make us feel 'unsafe', by showing how we're emotionally and politically closer to the perpetrator culture than we'd like to think" and a film seen through the "dry eyes of grief" that is unsentimental and "forensic".

It is unsettling how eerily close to the present the feeling is when watching the film. Very recently a close friend for almost twenty years said that genocide, mass killing, rape, kidnapping, murder, were just parts of our dark history and were necessary "price to pay" (quoted verbatim) for political stability and power. She also talked about a particular murder of an alleged dissent with such glee like it's just a usual and necessary procedure to do within the military. She believes that she's immune and isn't in the slightest worry that all those atrocities could happen to her because a certain family member was a high rank in the military. 

I have been questioning since what exactly "morality" is when people don't seem to have the same code of standards to uphold. It is disturbing that I can't see the difference between her living in the present day among us with the SS commandant's wife living by the wall of Auschwitz. 

C.S. Lewis on his book 'Mere Christianity' defended the existence of God because there is a universal moral law, we know what is good and what is bad. But is there really? 

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auschwitz i & auschwitz ii-birkenau.

back when i was in high school, i was obsessed with the stories of world war ii. it all started when my teacher asked us to make a short biography book (not like a book, but something longer than just an essay) and somehow i chose to write about hitler. from there i went crazy. back then the internet wasn't as advance as today. so i would read all the books i could find about the war in my school library. i remember i made copies of elie wiesel's books borrowed from the library because i couldn't find them in any bookstore. i went to read at the bookstore about all the conspiracy theories, not just about the war, but about the jewish, about israel, about the zionis movement, about palestine, and even until the wars in lebanon, i don't know how. i watched too many movies and tv series about the war. i even had an email named after the russian aircraft used during the war (yeah, it was when it's not cool to have your name as your email address, duh).

years and years later, who would have guess that i was here at one of the major nazi concentration and extermination camps. it surprised me though in a sense that i didn't feel as disturb as i expected i would be. probably because we didn't manage to join any tour provided and we had no audio guide so all i can sensed from is just the place and the stories i knew from years before. it felt quite the contrary with what i experienced in sarajevo when i was very disturbed after visiting a small exhibition about srebenica massacre and it really bothered me even until weeks later i still tried to read and find out about what actually happened because it's just too recent to be true and all the story i knew about it was the fainted memory about bosnia as a conflicted country when i was still a kid.

however, it did feel really surreal standing here, i can't even describe it now. and i was there on january in the middle of snowing winter so it felt even more harrowing. specially when it was getting darker and darker in the evening, it terrified me to even peek into one of the camp buildings.