I awoke. I was in Sarajevo. Had I been at home in Switzerland, this day would be Christmas for me. But I could not conjure up any Christmas spirit this particular Christmas, 1997.
Mountains fence in this city. On this 'Christmas Day', Sarajevo also had a roof over its head - the clouds hung low, and it was raining. I felt as if trapped in a well. How frightening it must have been for my neighbours during the four years of war.
In the twenty months just past, I have lived between life and death. Not in the actual, but in spirit. Many, many people have shared with me their personal tragedies of this tragic time. Listening, I tried to picture the atrocities, acute suffering and pain of war, and the desperate 'joie de vivre' despite hopelessness. Life and death thus became my neighbours.
Throughout my time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I have been most acutely aware of the proximity of life and death within Sarajevo. Cemeteries are everywhere in this city, and indeed everywhere else, they border on kitchens and gardens, in parks and markets.
Amidst the gloom and sadness of this 'Christmas Day', I walked through the cemeteries in and around Sarajevo with Sophie, of the Centre Andre Malraux, and Dragan, my Bosnian friend. A cemetery walk. Our journey also took us near the Jewish Cemetery at Kovacici, but Dragan reminded us that we dare not enter, as it was very heavily mined. We were confronted with the fragility of our own lives. We saw graves of people of our own age, killed during the war. We thought of ourselves, "How long do we still have to live?" and asked ourselves, "Why did all these people have to die? Could many have been saved if the international community had intervened earlier and more resolutely?"
Our helplessness made us still. We remained still and silent. We moved amongst hundreds of graves without making any noise, glancing at the names and the years of birth and death. We were on the move the entire day, and in the evening we were exhausted from the very weight of all we had seen on our pilgrimage - the suffering and wounds of this war seared deep within us.
On this 'Christmas Day', each of us went home, alone.
Wolfgang A. Brülhart
Sarajevo