A Good Heart

Nov. 22, 2005
Sarajevo
I have been wondering how people here live with the past. How do people grapple with a time when so much hate was directed at them that a war became a genocide. How do they look at their neighbors, ethnic Serb or Croats, and find peace? Someone who had lived through the terror in Argentina during the 1970s told me once that the quest for healing was an American issue. They don't need to heal, they can't heal. Maybe that is true but when I ask people here they say the same thing, more or less. They make a distinction between their Serb neighbors and the Chetnik fanatics who brutalized so many (of all ethnicities) during the war. Why, they ask, would they want to hurt or hate someone just because they are of the same ethnicity (or religion as it works here - Serbs are Orthodox, Croats Catholics, Bosniaks Muslim) as the Chetniks? There were plenty of victims on all sides and it would be pointless. Many Bosniak soldiers I talked to said the same thing: I could have killed, raped, burned, pillaged during the war, but I did not want to. What reason could I have for doing that? they ask. So it occurred to me today that when you have a clear conscience it is easier to have a good heart. Then you can see people as humans and as individuals.