A SHOP FOR THE SOUL

AIM, SPLIT, May 8, 1995

One of the quite futile businesses nowadays is to be a brass-worker in Mostar, and yet, it is one of the most profitable jobs on the left bank of the Neretva river in this city.

• In 15 days it is possible to make ten to fifty German marks - 45-year old Salko Abudagic says. He is the last pre-war and the first post-war active Mostar brass-worker who, despite the war, keeps his shop in the street of brass-workers. Even during the worst months, when he makes 20 marks at the most, he beats his bride eight times with his income.

• The other day she received two and a half marks worth of pension for November - Salko says.

Every day, Salko opens his shop which is starting to resemble an exhibition for the local people. Friends, neighbours gather in it, idler onlookers who can, standing by Salko's shop, remember the rhymes from the song "How nice are the Mostar shops", but for the time being, they can sing it only - in singular.

• I come to the bazaar out of habit, because if I had not opened the shop, it would have remained empty, it would have gaped... I still have some goods here which I exhibit when the weather is nice. It is much nicer to see when something is open. I was the first to open the shop during the first war - even when it rumbled, when the shells were falling. I think I was a comfort to people's souls, because many are glad to see that something is working, that it has not all died... - brass-worker Salko finds justification for his work.

Among ruins of Mostar, a customer or two stops at the shop, recruited among journalists, members of the UNPROFOR or someone from the European administration. Salko offers what he has - the Ancient Bridge on postcards and what he has left of his brass-works. Between the exhibits and between Salko's pre-war and post-war times, there are shells of various missiles and grenades, shell fragments and bullets.

• These I do not sell because they are not mine, they were sent to me by Milosevic and Tudjman, these I give away - Salko says.

While Milosevic was sending him grenades through general Perisic who in 1992 dug himself in on surrounding heights - Hum, Orlovac and Fortica - and prolonged the presence of reserve forces of the JNA in Mostar "in a different way", Salko had the opportunity to return some change to him in the form of "small-calibre bullets" from his Kalashnikov he was defending the right Mostar bank with. Then, after a short peace in Mostar, during which the Ancient Bridge was enveloped with truck tyres, as if it was already getting ready for a long journey, and planks which reminded of a tool he uses in brass-works but not allowed to knock on the brass any more, this brass-worker was forbidden to keep peace in his city and the already demolished street of the brass-workers with his rifle. He was imprisoned for six months with other Muslims in a Croat detention camp Doberkovic near Siroki Brijeg. And that is where not just Salko's bitter experience begins, but also the latest history of the city whose name's root (the bridge) is on the bottom of the Neretva river, and that which is left above the Neretva, demolished and undemolished, is divided.

The road between the left and the right bank of the Neretva river leads over the newly constructed temporary Tito's bridge under the patronage of the European Union, which, not only by its name, reminds of the past times.

• When we did not go to Europe, Europe came to us, that is what Mostar is - Salko remarks bitterly. He can cross the bridge, but he cannot go much further. That is where Muslim-Croat-European control points are, and Salko cannot cross them because he is still a conscript.

• Maybe in fifteen years, I will be able to go to the "right side" - Salko says with a sour smile.

And he has left the "right side" after he was liberated from the camp, "when people were forced to go to the 'third' countries, to Sweden, Danemark, Norway, among the penguins".

• They did not like men who wished to go to the "left side". I had problems because of that. They intimidated the people, told them there was no electric power supply, no water, no food... There was no life over there. And I said - I was born in Mostar, in Mostar I shall die. Hopefully, after Mostar comes to life again.

More than a thousand Muslim thombstones, a Catholic or an Orthodox cross here and there, in Mostar parks, remind the living of the blind luck thanks to which they are still walking down the streets of their city. But, nowadays, on the Eastern bank of the Neretva, conditions are not exactly for dying. The apartments are somehow reconstructed, there is enough food, electric power for the households, and drinking water. Cafes and stores are being opened. The ruins have been removed. Of course, scars are deep and indelible, but life within the ruins has not been destroyed - both Mostar wars began in spring, both times peace came to Mostar in spring, and this spring something more than peace is felt in the air.

Salko also knows only too well that for him, considering his trade, but for Mostar in general, as well, there will be no life, until a crowd of people starts flowing in up the Neretva river.

• Once all this stops for a while, the old downtown will be renewed again. I heard there is money for it, and as for the Ancient Bridge I am not so sure, a lot of money and skill and time will be needed to build "an older and nicer" one - this citizen of Mostar thinks, paraphrasing the words of a truck driver from the neighbourhood to the East of Mostar, but the deed of a dramatist from the Western neighbourhood, as well.

It is true, though, that this summer, there will be diving from the "Ancient Bridge" - from a specially built platform for the purpose. Of all Mostar traditions, the easiest to revive is diving into an abyss. Football Club "Velez" will also be revived, after its forcible division into the "Western" - "Zrinski" and the "Eastern" "Velez" - they even played a game with "Sarajevo" - but, the onlookers around Salko's shop will say, it is far from "what we used to be". The special status Mostar football players had can still be seen - instead of the celebrated team from the seventies, new "playing" positions are listed: Enver Maric is in Germany, Dusko Bajevic in Greece, Franjo Vladic on the right bank...

They bear a grudge against the right wing of the celebrated "Velez" - Jadranko Topic who is the President of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) on the Western bank, a representative of the "hard-core faction". They loved him too much to forgive him quickly. In the vicinity of the Ancient Bridge, someone has written the words "Don't forget", but the "Mostar rains" (by the way, they say, the poet Pero Zubac, who became a celebrity because of the poem he had written with this title, has never uttered a word in protection of Mostar) will wash away, sooner or later, the word "Don't". Citizens of Mostar from the left, Eastern bank, try to point out to citizens of Mostar of Croat nationality who are in favour of the united city. For people gathered around Salko's shop, Predrag Matvejevic is "law", and Salko himself keeps a clipping from Zagreb journal "Vecernji list" in which Josip Cilic, president of the Homeland Community "Mostar" in Zagreb, says: "Mostar cannot be Croat, Mostar must be Mostar, and only when it becomes its own, it will be Croat".

• I will sign every word he says - Salko says, surrounded by his people, like a living Mostar monument to the crushed city and its oldest and most lively artery - the street of the brass-workers destroyed.

As Salko says, he believes in renovation of Mostar architecture, but it will be more difficult to restore life. Many have departed, many have been killed, against many there is a grudge, and many have come. Nowadays, out of the 50 thousand inhabitants on the Eastern bank, more than a half are refugees. A great many of them are refugees in their own city. When they return home, maybe the "rest of the world" will come back to Salko's street. Salko will then quickly distribute the remainders of the destructive ammunition, and the tough Mostar city tissue will hopefully overcome the cancer which is eroding it for almost four years - since the JNA reserve forces drove over the Ancient Bridge in their "Pintzgauer" vehicles until the Neretva swallowed it. Salko's shop, in the shadow of hairsplitting over the "political status of Mostar", is something like a cytostatic drug: it does not cure, but prolongs life.

GORAN VEZIC