Vidimo se

I’m having a little trouble letting go- it wasn’t like this in Rome. Sometimes I feel like it would be best to secretly steal away like a thief in the night rather than undergo this painful goodbye process, even if it involves being showered with gifts. I was following Sehida and her husband around on their household errands all this evening like a stray dog that just won’t go away- from the supermarket, to another store to buy a kettle, and then on to delivering batteries to Djermana... But it’s more sad with those I know I will probably never see again, or at least not for years by which time they’ll have relegated me to some self-contained memory- the Anthropologist and Juliana are in this category even though I spent so much time with them. It happened like that with the Frenchies in Chateau Chinon and I lived with them for 6 months on a frozen and isolated mountain. Until around Wednesday home had seemed like an abstract, distant notion and I still had all the time in the world to spend here.

I know I was never patient enough to properly describe my experience in an intellectual way but really I was always learning from everyone and we would be continually exploring questions about language, culture, religion; comparing our experiences and our understanding- whether it was Physics Aida, or my Bosnian professor patiently translating Bosnian songs for me and explaining the psyche of Bosnian love songs (the lovesick boy will never directly address the object of his affections, he’ll chat to a bird instead, or write a letter only to erase his words- and so he goes on dreaming and yearning hopelessly for some angelic creature who has no clue he exists..) to the joyful and perhaps fanatical gleam in Suada’s eye as she takes me, at 2am, through the historical phonetic transformations that bring some order to the chaos of Bosnian’s 16 verb types. Not forgetting the crash course in The Macedonian Question I received through having coffee with the German crew.

So this will be my last blog from Sarajevo and possibly my last post altogether as I only started this up again to share stories with my people back home. Perhaps I have a few silent readers in Sarajevo but I doubt they’ll take an interest in my mundane Mancunian life. I was going to write this post in Bosnian and show off my newfound skills but my vanity is a contrary creature and fears mockery at the same time as wanting to boast and thus restrains me. The ultimate test of my ability will be if Sir Smiley doesn’t scoff at my attempts as he was wont to- I guess I’ll find out when I get to Manchester on Sunday. And if you’re reading this Sir Smiley tell me now if you’re pining for anything relatively lightweight – it will be your birthday after all...

Anyway all this scurrying around town bidding farewell means I must still tidy, cook, knit, wash, hoover, launder, and most of pack before 1am tomorrow and still make time for a few final meetings. In other words I must stop blogging.

Goodbye my Sarajevans, I will miss you all too much.