REC: The Bulletin 8/1: Trees for Sarajevo after the war

B O S N I A  A N D  H E R Z E G O V I N A

Trees for Sarajevo after the war

by Kemal Kurspahic

SARAJEVAN UNABLE TO HANG HIMSELF - wartime cartoon dramatizes the city's loss of its trees.

In November 1992 I found myself at a literary conference in Strasbourg, France, speaking on a subject I knew only too well - culture under siege. As editor-in-chief of Bosnia's largest newspaper Oslobodjenje, and still on crutches (because of an accident in a speeding car in Sarajevo trying to escape Serb snipers), I ended up at a gala dinner seated next to Strasbourg Mayor Catherine Trotman, now a minister in the French government, who asked me, "What can we - Europe, the West - do for Sarajevo?"

"Do whatever you can to stop the killing, to bring about peace, and then bring us trees," I said. "There aren't any left in Sarajevo. All city trees, all parks, have been cut for wood to give some warmth to people freezing in a city with no windows, no gas, no electricity."

I returned to Sarajevo that December, still on crutches, to find the siege - and the desperation - continuing. During the three-and-a-half years that the Bosnian capitol lay under Serbian attack, trees became our most precious commodity. People would risk sniper fire and shelling to cut any tree left in their neighbourhood, although police and soldiers would sometimes confiscate wood "for cooking and heating for the city's defence forces."

When all the trees and most of Sarajevo's once-beautiful parks were finally gone, people dug up the tree stumps. In the summer of 1993, families from my neighbourhood took their children and searched for stumps whenever there was a respite in shelling. An entire day of cutting and digging would yield a few bags of wood for cooking and winter heating.

With no gas or electricity, people in neighbourhoods like Hrasno, where I lived, shared whatever they could. Neighbours in our eight-story apartment building found an old-fashioned stove abandoned at a nearby construction site and placed it in what had been a trash collection room by our building's entrance. We all contributed anything that could make fire - old papers, books, apartment floors and doors, drawers and chairs, night stands and cupboards, bookcases, and raw wood. Then we waited in line to heat our soup or beans, or the rice and macaroni handed out as part of the humanitarian aid effort.

Just how important trees became to Sarajevans during the war and the sense of desperation felt by a city under siege were brilliantly captured in two cartoons by one of Bosnia's finest cartoonists, Bozo Stefanovic, published in my newspaper.

One depicted a desperate Sarajevan trying to hang himself in a former city park but unable to find a tree on which to do the deed. Another shows Jesus Christ carrying his cross while around him Sarajevans carry trees up a hill.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Help Green Sarajevo If you'd like to help in the international effort to re-green Sarajevo, you can do so through American Forests. Each $10 donation to the Global ReLeaf-Sarajevo effort will plant one large urban tree in that war-torn city. American Forests, in partnership with the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs from the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows of New York, is also planting trees in a Global ReLeaf project at the Sunrise Fire pine barren restoration site on Long Island. The forest is being planted in memory of the 1,600 children who perished during the siege. Offers of support have come from several of Global ReLeaf's partners, including Germany's Prima Klima, Hungary's Independent Ecological Center, Global ReLeaf Slovakia, and the National Ecological Center of Ukraine. Send contributions of USD10 or more to Global ReLeaf-Sarajevo, P.O. Box 2000, Washington, D.C. 20013, or call Chrystia Sonevytsky at (1-202) 995-4500, ext. 231.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Help Green Sarajevo

If you'd like to help in the international effort to re-green Sarajevo, you can do so through American Forests. Each $10 donation to the Global ReLeaf-Sarajevo effort will plant one large urban tree in that war-torn city. American Forests, in partnership with the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs from the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows of New York, is also planting trees in a Global ReLeaf project at the Sunrise Fire pine barren restoration site on Long Island. The forest is being planted in memory of the 1,600 children who perished during the siege. Offers of support have come from several of Global ReLeaf's partners, including Germany's Prima Klima, Hungary's Independent Ecological Center, Global ReLeaf Slovakia, and the National Ecological Center of Ukraine. Send contributions of USD10 or more to Global ReLeaf-Sarajevo, P.O. Box 2000, Washington, D.C. 20013, or call Chrystia Sonevytsky at (1-202) 995-4500, ext. 231.

One of the ironies of war-time Sarajevo was that some of the places we loved the most in our pre-war years became the most threatening. Sarajevo was built in a valley around the tiny Muiljacka River, surrounded first by hills and then mountains on all sides. After centuries of development - with cultural, religious, and architectural influences from the Turkish Ottoman Empire, then the Austro-Hungarian empire, and decades of socialists' imitation of "European standards" - the city spread to the surrounding hills in narrow steep streets, called sokak, dotted with small white houses and slim minarets.

There was nothing so exciting in pre-war years as my returns to Sarajevo by the night train from Zagreb or Belgrade. City lights would spread from the valley high up the hills, seeming to touch the stars, mingling with them as far as I could see.

At the beginning of the siege, all those hills and mountains - Trebevic, Jahorina, Bjelasnica - became artillery positions. That clear view of the city was no longer a source of joy; it was used to target, kill, and destroy centuries-old tradition and a culture of tolerance.

I was deeply moved by American Forests' pledge - initiated by American Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt, who was involved in many humanitarian efforts to help Bosnia - to plant 1,600 trees in Sarajevo, one for each child killed during those terrible days. I hope my reflections generate further support for this effort. It has been more than five years since that dinner in Strasbourg when I defined Sarajevo's priorities in only two words: peace and trees. It still rings true today.

Kemal Kurspahic is former editor-in-chief for the Bosnian independent daily "Oslobodjenje" in Sarajevo. The World Press Review named him International Editor of the Year in 1993 for publishing under fire in wartime Sarajevo. His memoirs, "As Long as Sarajevo Exists," were published in 1997 by Pamphleteer's Press. This story is reprinted from "American Forests" magazine, Spring 1998.

REC * PUBLICATIONS * THE BULLETIN * SPRING 1998