Alija Izetbegovic

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   Nah, still sadness I think. I remember the footage of refugees
returning from Turkey in 1996 - and even with Sarajevo burried in
Bosnian flags and the city free from the siege, they still were
devastated.

There was a documentary by a Norwiegan filmmaker and he followed a
Bosnian Serb family returning to Sarajevo from Belgrade after the war.
They were on the bus and once they got close enough in the finished
film he stopped narrating and just had subtitles of what was being
said. And the mother of the family saw the city and kept saying, "Heart
of Jesus, heart of Jesus, oh my God, oh my God, heart of Jesus, heart
of Jesus..." and crying. And he just kept that footage unedited for at
least 10 minutes. At the end she stopped saying heart of jesus and
started saying oh my city, oh my city, oh my city, oh my city -
completely hysterical.

It felt like 10 years just watching it.

There was a photography book by Roger Richards...or Richard Rogers, I
can't remember - called Impressions and it was photographs of refugees
taking a walk downtown for the first time on their return.

He divided them not my people, but by reaction. It was really nice. So
the first one was five people, five different pictures, with their
hands over their mouths and watering eyes. Then different progressions
for the following sets, and the last ones were four or five different
people kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk and crying. One Catholic
woman had her hands over her face but from cry-praying, not just crying
- she had those beads in her hands. And there was an old guy who prayed
the Muslim way, with his head down, etc.

Really good piece of history recorded by these things. This was still
back when the refugees were hated for having left at all, and welcomed
back the same way you'd welcome a traitor.