Fare Well, Illyria

Chapter 3: Bosnia-Hercegovina

Chapter 3 Bosnia-Herzegovina My first exposure to Bosnia and Herzegovina came early in my Balkan days when who knows why or how—but one day in the summer of 1963, the government of the Socialist republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina got the idea of organizing a raft trip to display the beauties of the storied Drina river to outsiders. First the republički Komitet za Informacije solicited members of the foreign press corps in Belgrade, which probably numbered a score or more. I was the sole one to accept. They turned to the diplomatic corps, which was considerably larger. Only the Venezuelan embassy accepted. a mere handful of yugoslav journalists displayed interest—but together with a couple of wives, enough to make up a raft party of a dozen. The motley crew descended from a bus on a hot august morning at Sčepan Polje, where the Tara and Piva rivers join to the Drina, whence it courses through what had been the old Pašaluk (“pasha’s domain”—from the Turkish) of Herzegovina. Tied up on the right bank was a raft made of fourteen long, thick pine logs. In the middle was a broad platform of boards on which stood some low chairs. Near it a pig was already roasting on a spit over a brazier of coals. Bottles of wine and beer lay in the creases between logs keeping cool in the 60 degree water. This was not the Nile, but we were being treated by the Bosnians like a pharaoh. at bow and stern were rough-hewn tiller posts for the eighteen-foot sweeps. Manning the stern was ahmed Osmanspahić, tall, slender, wearing a faded blue beret and no shoes. as soon as we settled on the platform, he pushed off and we were borne downstream in the swift current—at a velocity of what seemed like five miles per hour. With the encouragement of ahmed, I stripped and jumped into the jade green water, swimming 34 FARE WELL, ILLYRIA alongside for a bit. The Venezuelan ambassador sat peacefully by himself in his white Panama hat, listening to his portable radio. We zipped past spectacular rock faces and dark forests of the steep valley, here and there the red-tiled roofs of peasant cottages. The only town I can recall passing was Foča, although ahmed must have pointed out Ustikolina , his birthplace. We stopped when several women asked to go ashore so they could relieve themselves in a degree of privacy. ahmed steered us to the right bank next to a thick stand of trees. The silence was suddenly broken by piercing screams. The women reappeared, their clothes in disarray. “Medved! Medved!” (Bear, bear!) one yelled as she dashed onto the raft. all at once a beast appeared—not a bear, but a brown cow. raucous laughter erupted on the raft, accompanied by the hoots of husbands—“a bear with horns!” one shouted. enraged, the women punched and slapped their tormentors. ahmed steered us to a spa just below Višegrad where we spent the night, some sixty miles downstream from Šćepan Polje. The next day we viewed the magnificent Mehmed Pasha Sokolović Bridge, completed in the sixteenth century and made famous again in the twentieth century by Ivo andrić’s novel, Bridge on the Drina, admired its eleven graceful arches and then strolled about Višegrad. I walked up the main street in the company of Duško Trifunović. The budding Bosnian Serb poet, then thirty, was in our rafting party. When we passed a shoeshine stand, I looked down and saw the old shoes I had chosen for the rigors of the river looking as though I had waded through flood waters. Duško and I chatted as my shoes were being shined. looking down I murmured, “Duško, he changed the color of my shoes from brown to red!” Duško spewed a stream of invective at the shoe shiner until all at once he stood up and shouted: “Shut up! I know what I am doing and when I am finished his shoes will look better than they do now!” Duško’s jaw dropped. “He told me to shut up!” he said, astonished. “To shut up!” We left it at that. Dinner was laid on at outdoor restaurant under an awning, with a trio of accordion, violin, and guitar playing accompaniment for a fleshy singer to what I now suppose was a sevdalinka (a melancholy love song). It was raining...