Despite the darkness of the streets that are lost in the hills, Sarajevo shines in the valley. The steep slopes of the woods lead all to the Miljacka river, that flows slowly under those bridges destroyed and then rebuilt. Bridges that have become the symbol of a war, one of the most senseless of our recent past.
I walk among the heavy trees, under the sky gray as concrete. Was there a sniper here? I don't know. Now there are no snipers, only trees that draw their shadows over the white tombs. In this dense vegetation there is a house made entirely of wood, still under construction. The signs on the beams, the doors, the windows, are human.
An hammock swings at the center of the room, hanging from two huge trunks that reach the ceiling.
The wood is warm and smells good. It gives intimacy and confort to this place still ruled by inaccuracy; in order to recompose something that broke in a million pieces, you need all the time in the world.
The floor is only partially completed. A sofa and two big armchairs indicate that over there, in one corner, you can find the living room. On the opposite side, a very long table with many chairs. The windows are enormous, without any curtain. The kitchen has the necessary items, nothing more.
Oliver is building this gem on his own, with his hands.
When I arrive, there are other guests, a french couple and two young german girls, traveling all around the former Yugoslavia.
Oliver, with his hair clearly too black for his age, speaks fluent english. In two days we spoke a lot, but there were two things he really wanted to talk about. First, that he worked with Brian Eno, years ago. The other is that he had a club in the center, the only club that kept running even during the siege. When I ask him something about those time, he really doesn't say much. Just that the music in his club was cool and they had no respect for anything or anyone, not even women and children. "They" were the Bosnian soldiers.
He offers me a glass of rakija, bitter as cyanide, while he prefers to drink beer. He starts to speak in Bosnian while looking at me firmly in the eyes. He's trying to prove a point: he's absolutely convinced that despite people speak different languages, they are able to understand each other. Clearly I don't get a thing of what he's saying in Bosnian, I find the thing a bit ridiculous and I smile. He smiles too, he has a strange but lively irony.
Four clumsy puppies are playing on the patio, I look at them and then I look at Oliver to say something obvious about how sweet they are. He's somewhere else for a brief moment. In the darkness of his eyes I think I see the insanity of his recent past and at the same time the irrepressible instinct, almost hysterical, to overcome it, survive to it and bury it. But it's just a glimpse, it's already gone.
The radio is always on. Rock music, mostly. I look again at the cute puppies, but they went away.
On the window of the patio there is a metal plate that's twenty years old. Under the feral grin of a skull it says "Opasnos od mina", "Beware of mines".
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