DAY 111 - GORNJE ZIMEJIE TO MOSTAR: 18.2 MILES (36,400 STEPS)

Arrival into Mostar…where ugliness and beauty meet

9 August, 2011

Gornje Zimejie to Mostar

18.2 miles (Total: 1047.9 miles)—36,400 steps (Total: 2,029,091 steps)

“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.” Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom

I make an early start and feel the effects of the previous days walking in my hip and knee joints especially. The view of Mostar in the distance, from high in the mountains of Rujiste (approx 5000ft), is inspiring—it looks as if you could reach and touch it and yet that is the illusion of perspective and in fact it would take six hours of hard walking to reach Mostar.

What did I know of Mostar before I arrived? Not a lot. I just recall those images of the beautiful iconic bridge being destroyed in the war and then rebuilt. For that reason, I had this image of a small ancient town with narrow streets—this is true, but only partly so. To reach the old town, you need to go through the extensive suburbs of sixties style tenement buildings and pass the many burned out or gun fire splattered façades. It is indeed only in the last half mile or so, that the beauty of Mostar is revealed, and what beauty.

Viewed from the grounds of one of the sixteenth century mosques, Mostar is the epitome of  beauty and tranquillity, but as the bridge is approached on foot, you become aware of the thinly covered ugliness and tension which lurks beneath the surface: small stalls of former shells and bullets converted into pens, knives and vases and sold as souvenirs. From the banks of the East of the City, which is Bosnian and Muslim, you can look across to the West.  There the towering cathedral displays the cross and there is a giant cross of the Croatian and Catholic side; even on the mountain overlooking the West side they have erected a giant cross on the top. It’s not subtle. It’s not pretty. It’s not meant to be.  It’s ‘in your face’ religion.

Just before the Old Bridge there is a museum/tourist information office, and inside they were screening the destruction of the Old Bridge. Tourists crowded around the screen in disbelief—like many, I suspect, I thought that the destruction of one of the oldest and most important architectural structures in the world was perhaps the result of a stray shell. It wasn’t. It was pre-meditated. The bridge was a target and it was shelled over a period of weeks until it was finally demolished.  Before that demolition the East side had been ‘ethnically cleansed’ of Bosnians in the most brutal manner—rape, burning and summary executions and the ‘lucky ones’ were sent across the bridge into the East before the route of return was destroyed. Thousands were killed and injured during the eighteen-month siege of the city. It defies belief that this was happening in Europe in 1993 rather than 1943.

I began to see how the very notion of a ‘bridge’ between to two communities becomes a threat—even when it is as beautiful as the Stari Most (Old Bridge)—to those who hate. Far rather erect a wall—as they have done in Belfast or along the West Bank – to keep the two sides apart and the prejudice alive.  But don’t open a bridge because that will allow people to mingle, trade and exchange views and that is dangerous to those whose power is dependent upon the retention of blind prejudice. It requires far less skill and effort to erect a wall, than it does to build a bridge.

Still, even here there is hope because under the umbrella of the international community, the bridge was rebuilt, using some of the old stones and using some of the new, using some craftsmen from the East and some from the West of the divided city.  It was re-opened as a symbol of a new vision of the city in 2004 and it remains a reminder that walls can be brought down and bridges can be rebuilt.