In Europe

days, surely then this will all be over.
    We are living in the aftermath of the fourth Yugoslav war. The television at the hotel shows endless relief convoys that have been stranded for days at the border, in the mountains of Macedonia. For reasons of some bureaucratic harassment or other, they are not being allowed to enter Kosovo. That was to have been my final destination as well. I still have people to meet in Skopje and Prižstina, but this snowstorm is making a complete mess of things. Instead I end up spending a melancholyafternoon at Café To Be or Not to Be, with Hrvoje Batinić, journalist, Sarajevo expert and professional pessimist. ‘For me, pessimism is a way of life,’ he claims. ‘So whenever my expectations turn out wrong, I'm always pleased. During the siege, I felt great. Friends who came by would always say: “Batinić is a complete mystery. He's lost all his gloominess. It's as though he likes it!” But to feel free, all I had to do was look at the clouds. These days my depressions are back.’
    He talks about the first year of the siege, and about the army unit in which he served: ‘Serbs, Croatians, Muslims, there was no difference. We all saw ourselves as citizens of Sarajevo, normal people being attacked by madmen in the hills. But then, in September 1992, all the Serbs were kicked out of the Bosnian Army. That's when it started, that thinking along ethnic lines, even among us Muslims. And now we're right in the middle of it. Today there is only one thing to which no financial limitations apply: the building of mosques.’
    According to Batinić, these are the days of the great game of peek-aboo. Bosnians of every party hide themselves in the crowd, behind a stronger and wealthier leader. ‘During the election campaigns, no one talks about the normal issues any more, only about vague things like the “universal question” and the “nation”. That keeps you from being accountable for anything. That way it's always the other guy.’ Many of his fellow citizens still have no idea what has happened to them.‘Everyone's confused. At first, people blamed the war for all their problems. Now they're noticing that they've also lost all the economic security that socialism brought with it: jobs, health care, housing, education. Right now, unemployment here is at around seventy per cent.’
    A legion of Western relief workers has descended on Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia. They drive around pontifically in their expensive Land Cruisers, make calls to all over the world on their mobile phones, stay at the Holiday Inn to the tune of 350 marks a night. They are the heralds of wealthy Europe and America, the humanitarian activists and flashy ‘nation builders’, the media heroes hopping from one cause to the next. Batinić leans over and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Tell me, Geert, honestly: what kind of people are you sending us anyway? The ones at the top are usually fine. But otherwise, with only a few exceptions, the people I have to deal with are third-class adventurers whowould probably have trouble finding a job in their own country.’ It makes him furious. ‘To them, we're some kind of aboriginals. They think they have to explain to us what a toilet is, what a television is, and how we should organise a school. The arrogance! They say Bosnians are lazy people, but it takes them a week to do a day's work. And you should hear them chattering away about it! At the same time, everyone sees how much money they spend on themselves and their position. They put three quarters of all their energy into that.’
    We order another drink, and Batinić starts complaining about the corruption in Bosnia, the rise of religious leaders in the city, the enthusiastic discussions at the university about ‘the Iranian model’. ‘Sarajevo isn't Sarajevo any more. The city has filled with runaway farmers. Of the people who were here during the siege, maybe twenty per cent are left.’
    Batinić's pessimism has had the upper hand again for some time now. ‘When our children grow up,’ he predicts, ‘there's a great chance they'll be even more fanatical than the people who started this war. That thought is more than normal people can bear. We still remember how it was, the Yugoslavia of ten years ago, a normal European country. And look at it now. We lost everything we were good at, and we kept everything that was bad. Is it easy for you to look at yourself in the mirror? Do you dare to admit that