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SEVDALİNKA
Bosnia... As you walk through every square centimeter of Bosnia, your throats knotted with the mass graves whose silent screams ring in your ears, as you pass by a historical fountain, you feel the unstoppable pain of the sudden murder of a young female doctor on its walls, where blood and its fragments still cling to the walls, and you feel the tears flowing down your face in shame. While flowers were blooming all over the world, while the universes were at peace, while turtles were going from the Atlantic Ocean to the Cayman Islands to lay their eggs, in Bosnia souls were struggling in agony. The rich snobs of Europe were going on hunting parties in the Bosnian mountains, randomly shooting and knocking down Bosnian women, children, old people, young people, innocent people, counting them head to head. While people were fleeing in the streets, they were laughing and having fun from behind the trees and rocks where they were hiding, discussing who was killing more. More than 50,000 young girls and women were raped 30-40 times a day and forced to give birth to children they could not abort. The elderly had their limbs cut off and were thrown alive into mass graves. Bosnia, in the middle of the mountains surrounded on all four sides, was left to hunger, thirst and loneliness in the brutality of the war.
Even though I felt Bosnia in every living cell with my guide Mirza, whom I call my "Bosniak Prince", who grew up in the brutality and cruelty of the war, whose traces and despair you can feel in every cell on his face, in every timbre in his voice, who you can feel in every cell on his face, in every timbre in his voice, in the lands that Bosnians call "30 years of blood, 30 years of roses", with his hands tied, at the bottom of despair, in between nations, in between people, in the brutality and cruelty of the war, it is impossible to describe the pain here.
A "Sevdalinka" starts like this:
"We were divided while these roses were dyed blood red,
Blood and tears are still flowing,
To dying hearts
This heaven above us,
Like a dark curtain,
Seven levels of heaven,
It burns in our hearts,
Our tears
It fills the springs,
With an eye to heaven,
Even deserts can bloom."
Ayşe Kulin calls Sevdalinka "the cry of Bosnians". Sevdalinka, which actually takes its name from the songs of love, the folk music of Bosnia, is almost a lament for their loved ones, their spouses, their lovers, who were slaughtered, who knows where, whose bodies they cannot even see nowadays.
I decided to write a book while I was in Bosnia. It was going to be called "Sevdalinka". Just then, Ayşe Kulin's book came out with the same title. She is a writer I love very much, and I am sure she wrote very well. I should read it at the first opportunity. At least I wanted to write an article for Mirza, even if it wasn't the book I promised him. Mirza's expression and voice when he told us about it, his pain is still in my ears. Almost no one survived in the neighborhood where he lived. The world has become completely deaf and dumb. They were subjected to a serious genocide by Serbs and Croats between 1992-1995. Even 80% of the aid coming from Turkey was withheld as tax by friendly cities. They tried to fight and live with what was left. They fought as children. They slaughtered and ate the dead horses. Even Mirza's father died in the war when Mirza was 5 years old. When the neighbors gathered and cried and told Mirza that his father had gone to heaven and that he would always follow them from heaven, Mirza said something that would go down in history: "Well then, if my father is dead, can we eat his meat? I am very hungry..."
It is not for a smart person to believe that the tragedy here is man-made. You can still hear the pain on the walls of the buildings and throughout the city. This is a place where beautiful people live and the beautiful Bosniak spirit has not been extinguished. People still smile here, these are the people of the country where the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra continues its concerts under the bombs and resists the war with its violins. More than 300,000 civilians were killed during the more than 3-year siege. In 15 days, 8,000 civilians were massacred while the Netherlands was accompanying them. Hundreds of women who were raped in front of their mothers and wives killed themselves...
After the War of Independence, when we had to leave Bosnia when we withdrew from Europe, I say in response to Bosnia, who complained and mourned, "CAN A SISTER BE GIVEN TO ANOTHER? " I say in response to Bosnia, who reproached and mourned... YOU ARE STILL OUR SISTER AND OUR LOVED ONE... We feel your pain deeply... We hope that there will be roses in that land from now on... It will smell of roses... The rose color of love will shine forever...
Mukaddes Pekin Başdil
Researcher-Author