Sarajevo
It was as if I had never left Sarajevo, as if I wanted to stay in my rediscovered homeland, as if I were frightened of the return flight.
At the airport I realised that I didn't have my mobile, the very hinge and crux of my journey. I couldn't travel without the phone.
I phoned Slivo, a taxi driver I had befriended in Sarajevo. Slivo had come through the war unscathed. His wife and two daughters, too, had survived the four-year siege of Sarajevo. "Only" his house had been destroyed. At the end of the war he had hoped for freedom and better economic times to come. Three years after the peace treaty, he had rebuilt his house. He was happy. Both his daughters were going to university, his wife was working again - and he had a job, and he had friends. Slivo always had a smile on his face. He drove to my host in the city, who found the mobile in the kitchen. Shortly before take-off Slivo got to the airport and handed me my mobile, and a cake to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
I could fly back to Zurich.
