Dragan

I’ve been working with Dragan, an AV technician here at the Court, on putting together a promotional DVD for the Court. We huddle around his computer screen in the AV office, sorting through old footage of the war, the Court’s construction, trials and other relevant bits.

Often this involves me asking dumb questions and Dragan and the tech guys making fun of me. Going through some grainy video of long-bearded soldiers, I asked: “Who’s this? Are these Serbs?” Ady, another technician sitting across the room who spent the war in Toronto, jolted me out of my seat when he screamed and leapt to his feet. “Serbs!! What?! Run!” We all cracked up, including Dragan, a Bosnian Serb whose first loyalty, like thousands of other locals, had always been to Sarajevo, not to his contrived ethnicity.

Dragan rolled his eyes. “Serbs, Sem (roughly how my name usually gets pronounced). Serbs? Ha! Look at them. What do those look like?”

“Uh—"

“See the beards - they’re mujahadeen. You know Bin Laden and them, da da da. Ha! Serbs! Ha!”

“Hehe, sorry, I’m just a dumb Canadian, you know. We don’t have these mujahadeen or this Bin Laden, whoever he is.”

Dragan, quick off the mark as always: “Sure, yeah right! They are there. You just don’t know it yet! Ha!”

Once, after many dry-eyed hours of editing, Dragan announced a cigarette break. The snow had at last melted, and I went out to stand with him on the Court steps.

"So, you like it here in my town, Sem?” Dragan asked, gesturing to the minaret-dotted hillside across the street.

"Yeah, I love it here. It’s a special place.”

Dragan looked down and took a long pull on his cigarette. As sometimes happens here in hyper-emotional Sarajevo, it seems I’d unexpectedly struck a chord.

"You know… this is my city, my home... I got married to Muslim woman during war. But special… before war was special. So many different people here from so many places. You wouldn’t believe. The old Sarajevo, maybe it is hiding in smokey café somewhere. I don’t know… Everything is so different now… Still, yes... you are right, it is special place. It is…” Dragan is a true poet of broken English. He took a last puff and stamped out his cigarette. “Ok,” he announced. “Let’s go, Sem. Back to work.”