We expect our newspapers and political journals to enlighten us about important events occurring in different parts of the world. The Press may or may not come up to our expectations. What, however, is more important is that there are some events, which in view of their human significance, ask for more than journalistic treatment. What is happening in Bosnia is no doubt an event of this nature. We are faced here with a situation which poses a challenge to our moral sense. Mere political analysis of it will not be enough. The situation is too big to be explained away purely by political analysis. With its human dimensions, it demands comprehension on the level of feeling. This calls for the involvement of a writer. Such a commitment, may be in a better position to grasp the tragic aspect of the human drama and express it graphically. One may regret that our literary world at present is not alive to contemporary human situations the way it was during struggles in Algeria and Vietnam. Of course we are off and on a poem, a short story or a piece of impressionistic writing about Bosnia published in a literary journal. But there seems to be no anxiety betraying a lack of Pakistani writers’ involvement in the Bosnian tragedy. Seen in this background, the present issue of Aaj, Karachi, appears to me an event worth noticing. This literary journal has come out with a special issue of sizable volume devoted to the study of what is happening at present in Bosnia. The issue has been presented as a tribute to Sarajevo paid by Karachi, a city which has a tale of its own to tell. The editor, Ajmal Kamal, has pointed at a few significant similarities between the sufferings of the two cities. This tempts me to take the special issue as a dialogue between two unfortunate cities. One living in terror and violence emerging from within the other, now a devastated metropolis, groaning under ferocious attacks from the outside. The story of Bosnia as presented here opens with a survey of the happenings in that part of the world beginning with 1500 and ending at what we are seeing today. The two articles, which go to make this survey, are in fact extracts from the works of V.P. Gangan and Noel Malcolm, the two authorities engaged in the study of the history of Bosnia and Yugoslavia as a whole. The survey helps us to see the real situation, which has been confused by the pre-hash propaganda machinery harping on the slogan of Islamic fundamentalism. But there is no counter attempt to entertain us with emotional accounts about the sufferings of Bosnian Muslims. Nor are we offered political analyses of the situation. What this study aims at is quite different from such efforts. It seems directed at presenting a portrait of a ravaged city with its inhabitants trying hard to live in a normal way in the face of the intolerable conditions created by the shellings and sniper firing of the enemy. Here we listen to the groans of the wounded city and at the same time see men, women and children talking and angling, while engaged in collecting fire-wood in a ruin, making, in groups, to the theatre. Their determination to live a normal life amidst death and destruction speaks of their courage and fortitude. The portrayals here concern people belonging to the different nationalities and ethnic groups of this land as well as those coming from distant countries. They all appear to have identified themselves with the sufferings of Sarajevo and have recorded feelingly and honestly what they observed and felt while living here. ‘Here is a young girl, Zlata, whose hobby it is to write a diary, which during wartime proves to be her most intimate companion. Zlata has her own innocent involvements betraying her zest for instance her love for her cat. She records in a very normal way the destructions wrought by the shelling and the deaths caused by the snipery along with her mother’s anxiety that a rat has entered their home like a thief. Amidst the death and destruction going on intermittently around her, she bursts into tears only when her cat dies. Then there is a group of journalists, who are determined to see that, whatever the conditions, their paper should appear daily without fail. The editor of the paper, Kemal Kurspahic describes the fire: the building housing the paper caught fire ‘the night of June 27, 1992’. “The whole building was in the grip of flames. At six, the news editor informed me on the phone that the fire had been quenched. After five minutes, he again phoned me and said that the Press had been saved. The devoted team succeeded in bringing out the paper on time.” And there is a drama artist, Haris Paschovitch, who in the very thick of shelling by Serbs managed to hold an international festival of folk and theater in war-torn Sarajevo. It was during these fateful days of July 1993, that the American writer Susan Sontag went to Sarajevo with the intention to stage Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. That so many people wanted to leave the city appeared to her something very normal under those conditions. What astonished her was the fact that at the same time there were so many, who were determined to stay, “to save the city”. Ms. Sontag felt, “how can I afford to live under these conditions for the whole of my life?”. And there was no artist there. At the National Theatre, the manager of the theatre, “She said, ‘I can get you living. She did for a hundred years.'” The attempt to stage Waiting for Godot is thus crucial these days had appeared to be a stage for surrealist absurdities, an attempt to divert peoples’ attention from the hard realities of those times. But when presented, it turned out to be the most relevant play in its ability to reflect the situation in Bosnia. The Bosnians too were waiting for a Godot. Someone wanted to cut the play Waiting for Clinton.’ But Godot kept them waiting with no intention to come to their help. Vladimir: You have a message from Mr. Godot? Boy: Yes, Sir. Vladimir: He won’t come this evening? Boy: No, Sir. Vladimir: But he will come tomorrow? Boy: Yes, Sir. Silence. And Sontag tells us that as this dialogue was spoken, the whole audience was in the grip of a dead silence, which was disturbed only by the noise coming from outside, that of the firing of UN military jeeps on the road. And do you know, who is now the most hated man in Sarajevo? He is But-Ghali, the unconcerned Secretary-General of the United Nations.
