September 2014 Cover: Mohammed Zaahidur Rhaman Editors: Mohammed Zaahidur Rhaman and Marta SantivĂĄĂąez Layout and Design: The Dew Crew Made in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
editorial This is us cutting the bullshit. That’s correct, the bullshit. This is us cutting the bullshit and speaking honestly about where we’ve been. Running for the sake of running. Running away from something, arriving in Mostar. We all have faith in this place. It gives as much beauty and struggle as it takes from us and, ultimately, changes us. So here are minds looking back on what was and is being and been. Looking back, The Dew Crew
„Svjetlost me je dočekala pri dolasku u Mostar,pratila za vreme mog boravka od jutra do večeri,a docnije, po odlasku,ostajala u meni kao glavna karakteristika moga sjećanja na Mostar.” Zapis o Mostaru (1946) Ivo Andrić
[It was the light that welcomed me when I arrived, it followed me from the morning to the evening, and when I left, that light forever stayed in me as the main characteristic of my memories of Mostar.]
Untitled Being a firstyear is one of the best experiences I've had in my entire life. All the hype, nervousness about things secondyears tell you not to worry about, shared joys and sorrow over the course of the year, and many other truly deep experiences will make you feel very proud of yourself at the end of the year. You will experience shock, the feeling of not being able to know what the time ahead will look like. You will experience the feeling of being on an emotional rollercoaster, and after 3 months, you will feel like you've matured 3 years instead. You will learn how to take care of yourself on your own, often without anyone's help, and after some time you won't seek help, it will become normal for you. You will feel like there is a world to discover and change, and you will feel, some of you for the first time, that your opinion counts, and that what you want to do counts, and that there are many people who appreciate you and want to help you. You will have an opportunity to travel around the Balkans, to explore, often depending only on yourself. I have used this opportunity many times, and You will create a bond with people you travel with and do crazy things with. You will realize that you actually want to do many things you would never see yourself doing, and you will feel liberated by doing them. You will learn a lot about cultures. But what makes this special is that you will learn together with your peers from other cultures, you will learn first-hand. Never, EVER, forget to appreciate the fact that you are becoming an adult with people from all over the globe. At UWCIM, you will learn what it means to be a global citizen. After experiencing a taste of UWC life, and the rollercoaster it brings, you will never want to land, and you will never see the world in the same way you sometimes did. You will always seek to explore more, to learn more, and to create purpose. After one year, you will feel like you've done something big, and you will, for sure. At the end of the year, you're going to see the big picture.
IVAN PEJIC
They are here All of a sudden they were everywhere. Filling the bloodstreams of my city with the sounds of the languages I couldn’t sing in and cultures I have never held hands with. They were like a rain. Every raindrop had a history of a country hidden in it, names that never danced off my tongue, landscapes I had never drawn as a child. They were living in a bubble, juggling with light bulbs. Big ideas from which some would light up, and some would shutter into small pieces. Even with their feet cut on the glass they would continue making paths in the high grass of the unknown. Their thoughts were restless like a hair on a fresh breeze and their minds poisoned with the sweetness of the future. Their windows had curtains made of flags, and when they would open them you could smell the upcoming change. I was sitting on the top of my tree. Never coming down.
ANONYMOUS
Arrival
People everywhere. Things everywhere. Everything happening anywhere. And there I stood in the middle of it all. Well, not directly in the middle, more off to the side, awkwardly situated with a duffel in one hand and my newfound sense of trepidation in the other, in a building with the crisp words “UWC in Mostar” printed the base. And the only reason I knew I was where I needed be was for this sign. “UWC Mostar, I guess this is it, huh? Here I go.” Everyone kept telling me I’d arrived, and the dozens of people greeting me and hugging me and shuffling me into my Musala residence, told me I was at home. But honestly I couldn’t have differentiated up from down let alone a house from a home. I walked up the steps, though the double glass doors, down the hall, timidly greeting all whom I came in contact with, and watched as the world which I had envisioned to be UWC Mostar spin out of control before my eyes. This was UWC induction week. This was the joy of being a first year in Mostar. Now I am a second year. Watching as these “firsties” as we call them have that same look for fear and excitement. Trepidation of futures yet to come. And we the second years walk around as if we know up from down or where to stand. I still don't know where to stand or what to do of who to talk to and how. But I try. And they try. But its never good enough.
ZACH GIESLER
Questions
If I choose you, you will know.
I will call on you.
And you will speak, you will stumble, and you will fall.
And maybe from this we can resurrect an answer.
ZACH GIESLER
Mostar, its rain and its joggers “It rains a lot in Mostar.” That is what everyone who knew something of Mostar had told me before arriving here as a firstyear. I have been soaking wet two times so far, during my life in Mostar. Both times, I was jogging. One year ago, on a cloudy September evening, Bo, my secondyear, and I went jogging from Susac to Musala and I could not help, but stop along the way, even though I knew the purpose of the CAS was to keep going. Never having been an avid jogger, I had still not recovered from the “embarrassing” first jogging session I had had with Bo: I had thrown up as soon as having reached the residence. This is probably not the nicest thing you will read, but I feel it is important for the rest of the story. So, getting back to that cloudy, prospectively rainy day… I reached Musala, exhausted, completely sure I would not make it back jogging. I remember Bo had to go run up the hill, but being the careful secondyear she always was, she set a goal for me “Walk until the Piramida, then sprint uphill to Susac”. I did walk and before reaching Piramida, it started raining. Jogging in the rain, when others are trying to run for a shelter, makes you feel as if you were in one of those Nike commercials…unless you are a myope, like I am, then, it does not. I was considering keeping walking. After all, who would see me? Then, I recalled my first session and how Bo had kept my spirits high the whole way by keeping up with my same (so shamley slow, but still unbearably tiring) jogging pace. The rain got heavier (“It rains a lot in Mostar.”) and heavier. In those moments, if lightning strike had hit me, I would not have felt it. Anyway, I did reach Susac alive. One year after, there was Mekides, Zuzana, Aleksandra and I. Still jogging, this time from Musala to Susac. I was sure I would not make it. There would be no secondyear with her helpful advice when I would run out of breath (“Inhale twice, exhale twice, Rega!”). I would probably stop somewhere near Bristol. Like any other time, I would feel like I was ready to climb Everest at start, then I would realize that I also needed to breath while running (Two things at a time, no way I could do that!) and eventually walk to Susac.
Well, that did not happen. There were moments I felt tired and applied Bo’s golden advice, there were moments I was behind the group, then Aleksandra let Mekdes know and Mekdes turned back and jogged with me. Then, Zuzana clamped on my shoulders and said “You are doing well.” Then, it started raining as we were in front of Piramida. Not again! We all started going faster, then I felt tired and Mekdes would turn back again. We reached Susac. One year after, Susac was still there. One year after, I was there. In one year, so much had changed. On the way back, it was only Aleksandra and I. I was telling her what a great thing jogging had been, transiting me from “embarrassment session” to a non-stop Musala-Susac jogging after one year. And she suddenly claimed: “What wonderful things UWC does!”. I found it funny first, to connect UWC with a jogging amateur. But, she was strikingly right! If it had not been for Bo, Mekdes, Zuzana, Aleks, too… if it had not been for UWC Mostar I would have still been the person, who looked at sports as only for athletes, who looked at rain time as a time to stay home, who looked at life in general as very predictable and predetermined. It rains a lot in Mostar, but who said that is a problem?
REGA SOTA
The roomie thing A piece of advice
Truth be told, having a roommate is not easy. I shared a room with my sister for most of my life, I shared rooms/tents at summer camps and conferences... I thought this was going to be just as easy and breezy and fun. It wasn’t. But then my roomie and I started talking. I didn’t know she’s bothered by my desk lamp in the evening… until she told me. She didn’t know that I get cold when the window is open at night… until I told her. I didn’t know she wouldn’t like visitors in the room past midnight… until she told me. She didn’t know I’m annoyed by loud music… until I told her. So, I got her a night-mask to wear when I’m studying in the evening and have my desk lamp on. She gave me an extra blanket, so we can leave the window open at night. I told my friends not to come over after midnight, or to be really quiet if they do. She started using headphones and when she wouldn’t use them, she’d ask me first before playing louder music. Just talk. It’s sound simple (and it often isn’t), but it is so important. Don’t suffer in silence and assume your roommate will understand what is bothering you. Trust me, it’s sometimes impossible for another person to notice that they are doing something that annoys you. Especially since where I come from some things are more acceptable than where you come from. Even if we’re from the same country, some things are more acceptable in my family, than they are in yours. And that’s completely normal.
Talk about what has happened in the room, talk about how it made you feel and talk about your needs. Be ready to compromise, to reach a middle-ground, to discuss, maybe to argue even – as long as you’re talking to each other without attacking each other, you’re working positively on your relationship. Try to talk about things from your perspective, don’t tell your roommate that they were being insensitive when they had their boyfriend over (they might’ve not known or not meant to be), tell them that you felt uncomfortable, explain what made you feel uncomfortable, why you felt that way and what you need in the future. … and that’s exactly the point, you need to work on your relationship with your roommate. Problems will usually not solve themselves or disappear, they will just build up, until you’ve had enough and your roommate has had enough and your other roommate has had enough and then there’s so much tension, that at some point the room just explodes into tiny little pieces and the entire residence collapses and we all have to go back to our families and UWC Mostar dies and the world ends. You don’t want that, right? So… talk about your problems with your roommates. Go out for roomie-dinner or coffee next weekend <3
ANONYMOUS
Painting a picture: A triptych An anonymous reflection It is very easy to lie in a house full of strange faces. When I came here last year, it was a sensory, albeit blurred, ordeal. I didn’t really feel anything deeper; though I was far from skin-blind and ear-numb. Be it from shock or ignorance, I didn’t feel like I could grasp a tussock on solid ground. I found myself circumventing the issue by eating of the aesthetics in the new town that I was in, which seemed like that brochure we all read, only dog-eared by the realities of living. Alien shapes and customs bear certain novelties that fill but cannot satisfy; the MSG of perception; a photograph on Stari Most, a coffee I had to buy to stay in the café, the walk to the school from Sušac. The resulting retrospective is one full of radioactive concrete and tanned bodies in the morning chewing the pastries like cud. Thus I drove through my days under the two easy whips of moralism and social obligation, chancing on pockets of interest. It’s a welcome memory. It’s an easy trick to sort all the people you meet into ideas. It’s like putting them into long filing cabinets, colour coded by different tags or strains of trust and envy. Being totally lost the summer before, I think it is safe to say that I came here for rebirth. My expectation relied on it in a way. As a prophet who descends the mountain to stand a foot shorter than his disciples, the induction week arrived, lay in arrant absurdity and departed leaving in its slipstream an enigma marbled with appreciation. And then, after the first term I felt as though I had decoded enough to appreciate the place and people. I suppose that’s a kind of rebirth, learning how to handle delayed gratification again. A second Freudian potty-training.
Days of Mostar Summer was. Smudged days, Smudged edges, Cassette replays. Heat bloomed like The heavy heads of dandelions, Out Of a fat ceramic floor. Consecutive days Moored to The Collective Sigh, Melded at the waist. Small overlap Preaching dusk; Each envelope Woven with The shriek between Dominoes.
Nights and gaps In the phalanx Of a gleaming Millipede. You can stretch out a hand, And feel something As bland And stark As a hot stove. Mostar, You potpourri, You tray of cakes, You knotted spool Of wire.
Sunday evening [The air is iced like a bun with thick humidity. The walls are blinding and white. The cicada’s drone adds weight to the atmosphere. All in all things are lazy and fluid. There is a café on a narrow street, its metal chairs spill loosely into the road. On one table, two espressos poise in matching saucers, astride a mismatched Jägermeister ashtray. The shot fills with GL in her brass-rimmed Ray-Bans, black lenses shrouding her stare.] GL: [With a still head, as though staring- at what, we cannot discern.] Do we even have anything planned today? RD: [Out of shot] I don’t think so. Oh, maybe there’s a ‘cosy evening’ at seven, I can’t really be sure. Check it. GL: [Reaching for a pack of Drinas] It’s fine, we have a while ‘til then. [A waiter walks by and his apron is sponsored by Julius Meinl. The red insignia of a Turk is printed on it. The acrylic through which it is printed is made sticky by the heat of the sun. He is a brief flash of black and bill holsters; concurrently GL remains the centre of the view. A general ruckus of other voices further off into the café continues as GL makes no audible sound. She carefully extracts a white tube of tobacco from laminated card. She puts it into her mouth.] GL: [A cigarette dangling lazily from her mouth like a prosthetic leg. She raises her glasses and asks to the left-hand side of the shot.] Got a light? [A white hand reaches in with a rosy palm and ruddy back. The butane in the transparent lime plastic undulates between the two chambers in a string of pearly bubbles.] RD: Everyone smokes in Bosnia. Actually, come to think of it, everyone smokes everywhere. GL: Yeah.
[Enter RD] [The shot changes and replaces GL with RD, who is speaking to her right, her eyes scintillating with vigour. She lays back into the socket of a metal chair. A cigarette burns steadily in her lips; its teal fronds beat cosines into the wind.] RD: I had a fit at the airportGL: Oh really? RD: Yeah, because people were just pulling out cigarettes and lighting them. GL: Yeah, I get what you mean. I’ve been out to Munich and nobody does that over there. It’s weird. [The shot docks in the door of the café and the voices chattering in the street bleed into one another. Gradually, like a comb through a mane, a throbbing silence descends. Focussing on a countertop of imitation marble, the shot slowly zooms in. There is nothing but oatmeal coloured wall and a plywood door-frame. An old man wearing a suit and black beret limps out as it continues to slowly bore into the empty surface, as though looking for something. The sound of his footsteps chuckle off backwards and out of earshot.] [Cut]
MOHAMMED ZAAHIDUR RAHMAN
The Road from Home to Home The blue is getting lighter. Slowly. The dim light from just behind the hilltops is casting grey streaks into the night. The faint silhouettes of trees by the road are now not the only things you can make out. Houses have appeared. Some standing, half-built in functionary incompleteness. You imagine people inside. The streets and sidewalks that have appeared are still empty of cars or people; it is only dawn after all. Every now and then you see a muezzin. A stray dog.
The same images three hundred and sixty-three days earlier. The same geographical destination and most probably the same starting point. The same road and maybe even the same bus. Yet on that morning a year ago, every turn the bus took – was nervously anticipated. Every new scene taken in, every new town quickly examined as you drove through. Trying to limit the vast unknown. Eagerly trying to familiarize everything and completely overwhelmed by the amount that was there to be taken in. You don’t know yet, what that valley that you are driving closer and closer to, will hold for you. It’s paralyzingly terrifying. You’re thankful that you don’t have any control over the wheels that are turning and turning beneath you or the speed that the bus is going at. It might never get there otherwise. You’re not entirely sure you want it to. You might not like it there, you think; you’ll miss home, your family and friends. And then your worries are interrupted by another jet of suspense, as you turn into yet another new valley and check the time, wondering whether this may finally be the right city. The hours on the bus have felt like forever, silent. It doesn’t feel like you are ever going to get there.
And then you do.
PAULA KOLAR
Self-reflection Breathe in. Just breathe in for one long second. Let the air and its stinky smell fill you in, take in, overcome. Sway as you do so. Totter. Fall. Break. Destroy.
Breathe out. Just breathe out slowly, as if there was nothing else to do, nothing else to be done. There is none. Breathe out and let the air and its stinky smell go; allow the blue and the smog and the humidity to go. Forget. Or don’t.
Look back to the previous minute. Rewind. Repeat. You are home.
MARTA SANTIVÁÑEZ