ljubavi

she/her, 23

[mojadusa]

📍 bosna, 2022

[lilium--bosniacum]

Little Palestine; Diary of a Siege (2021) dir. Abdallah al Khatib 

[gazanarchive]

"In today's world, no one is innocent, no one is neutral. A person is either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressors. A person who is not interested in politics approves of the dominant order of the ruling classes and exploitative forces."

_ George Habash, founder of the Marxist Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

[mojadusa]

📍najljepša zemlja na svijetu

[lilium--bosniacum]

In both field and mountain  The white lilies have bloomed So in field and mountain the lily seems to speak  In mount and dale every lily  Seems to blaze And when so pensive among the blooming flowers  You silently  Pass Maybe like me you think of those  Who passed silently by here  Before you Among the blooming white flowers Wondering just as you do  What are these white  Lilies Are they someone’s rejoicings  Or  Wailings The signs of those who once passed  In these pathless regions and  Hopelessly  Trod  In search of white flowers   

Mak Dizdar, Lilies Translated from Bosnian by Omer Hadžiselimović

[nosebleedclub]

Will it begin in peace or violence?

[mojadusa]

it begins, as it always does, with a sip of rakija. it eases you into the violence. you submerge yourself into it and hope it's enough to kickstart the memories. there is no such thing as peace when you have grown up knowing war: it begins with the grenades and ends with them. at first it's just windows; you sweep away the glass and wipe away the tears on your sister's faces. you hang up rags where windows used to be. but then it's your shoulder. your house. it's your neighbor in her garden on a sunny day. it's your friends brother, then your brother. it's in your bones and flesh and you can't dig it out of your skin, no matter how much you claw and dig. you step foot in another country with it accompanying you; you pass it on to your children and wait for it to go off. the rakija reminds you of it, of the violence that shaped you. better to remember the bite of war than to grow complacent in its absence. you wonder when the grenade is going to blow, if you can stop it. you have another sip. and another. peace feels so far away, a forgotten memory. you were meant to raise them with peace. it was meant to be different.

[mailovelivelife]

“Ya Allah, give me eyes that see the best in people, a heart that forgives the worst, a mind that forgets the bad, and a soul that never loses faith.”

—

[mindofserenity]

— Surah al-Ma'un (Small Kindnesses), 107th surah of the Holy Quran

[punkysdilemma-blog]

Inela Nogić was 17 when she became world-famous during the Siege of Sarajevo when she won the 1993 Miss Besieged Sarajevo,[1] which was held in a basement in an effort to avoid the barrage of sniper attacks from Serb militias. Nogić and the other contestants held up a banner that read “Don’t let them kill us”. The pageant was documented by an amateur filmmaker, whose footage director Bill Carter then used in his documentary Miss Sarajevo. The documentary was broadcast internationally, provoking a viewer response that added to the international pressure to end the siege.

[zarzava]

“The lake was artificial, and so was the parking lot, and so was the grass, and so were the waitress’s nails when she brought our coffee and kindly asked Lejla to get her feet off the chair. It seemed like someone had stretched foil across the surface of the water, as if an unexpected stone would rip the whole view like a photograph. Each grass stalk looked the same size, like a hair-removal salon had taken care of the lawn, not a gardener. And the green was so different from our green—it had the same uniform hue whenever I looked: at the trees, the hedges, the grass… It reminded me of that little Microsoft bucket you click on to fill up a shape with one even color. Birds sounded the same in their synchronized harmony, delivering as if on cue perfect thirds and fifths, so I thought we must have been listening to a CD instead of real beaks. I remember how I used to appreciate such things: streets without litter, evenly cut hedges, clean benches, and the overall orderliness of the world abroad. I couldn’t stand it now. Not because Bosnia and its carelessness were any better. I have never been one of those people who are proud of signs of their own failure as if these are proof that us locals are more heartwarming then them foreigners. But in that moment, with the disappointed Lejla looking at the perfect square lake and shouting, ‘Oh, fuck me!’ when she read the price of two coffees, Austria irritated me. I felt wrong compared to its immaculate grass—my edges were rough, my skin uneven, my thoughts colored over the lines.” 

— Lana Bastašić, “Catch the Rabbit”

[deactivateddddddd1-deactivated2]

"Sometimes when I find the strength in the late hours after a long time, to talk with memories and my father's letters." - Ahmed E. Hrustanović

July in Srebrenica, 27 years after.

[lilium--bosniacum]

Quest for Identity is a visual archive of thousands of personal belongings exhumed from mass graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina following the 1992-1995 war. Items are collected, identified and cataloged by the International Commission on Missing Persons and photographed by Ziyah Gafić. [read more] 

[nosebleedclub]

What will next year be like?

[mojadusa]

Vengeful, I hope. Every year has been the same: I drown deep within myself, tumbling over waves I have created and find myself dragged by the current, into the hopeless depths of my mind. Every year I crawl back out, coaxed by the smell of the Earth after rain falls and the promise it all holds. Like some sort of rebirth, a chance to start anew. But instead I dig my heels into the sand and let the current wash over me, as forgiving as it was last year. Maybe next year I will learn to bare my claws. Fight. How does the poem go? Do not go gentle into the good night? Yes, maybe I will carve a place for my rage instead, sink my teeth into its flesh and become someone to fear. All of the gentleness has been ripped away from me, swept away by the wrath of the ocean simmering inside my ribcage. There is no room for your rage, I have been told, over and over again. I will make room, pour my ocean of rage into all the crevices and spaces it was not allowed. Next year will be different. I need it to be different. How tiring it is to bury my anger, to drown in the same ocean every year and be spit back out when it grows weary of me. Come back when you are worthy. How tiring to be reborn into a body that never changes. I long to rage, to fight the current I dream up every year and to re-learn what it means to be gentle. I long to be worthy, but I already know what next year holds in store for me: I will crawl my way out of the ocean, dragging my feet through sand and weary to the bone. I'll wait for the first fall of rain, feel the way it slides against my skin. I'll find the first signs of rebirth in the wildflowers and watch them from afar, too angry to touch and too sorrowful to change anything. One way or another, I'll go back. I will unlearn my rage and give in to the current, and spend another year drowning, quietly and miserably. I will forget what vengeance tastes like. It will be stolen from me, like many things.

Welcome back, the ocean whispers. I forgive you.

[typewriter-worries]

Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself? 

In Place Of The Mirror is a Portrait of You, @lilllium |  Home Is Not a Country, Safia Elhillo | Myself Time, Ron Hicks | Sweet the Sound, Clementine von Radics | Memory of Forgetfulness, Mahmoud Darwish | Looking in the Mirror, Ron Hicks | Dressing Room, Ron Hicks, | Diaries of Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka | Rilke’s Book of Hours, Rainer Maria Rilke

[8372516474829287483j342938-deac]

Mahmoud Darwish

[sapphopilled]

work song by hozier / mahmoud darwish

[dvadesetivek]

When Milan Mladenović said “Vremena se menjaju, kako da ne. Ali, za sada se menjaju najgore!” and when Atomsko Sklonište said “Moramo zamoliti prolaznike, da ne gaze onaj dio grada u kojem se nekada voljelo, a sad se eto strada.” and when Zabranjeno Pušenje said “Danas svako zna pred kim pasti na koljena.”

[dvadesetivek]

Also, when Miladin Šobić said “Sve mi ovo liči na otkačeni vagon / Ne znam dali će po nas ikad doći iko.” and when Riblja Čorba said “Moju zaradu drugi troše / Vreme bez promene, uglavnom loše.”