FictionThatMatters.org

 Print This Page

Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic.
Translated from the Bosnian by Stela Tomasevic.
Archipelago, 2004, 195 pages.

Sarajevo Marlboro is a phenomenal collection of short stories set in war time Bosnia. Delivered by a master storyteller, it is evident why this work won the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize upon publication. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) served as an enduring warning to war mongerers in its depiction of German soldiers in World War I. Jergovic’s work delves even more deeply into themes that touch us all, beyond a soundtrack of mortars and shell shock.

A cactus given from a dead lover, an old man of ninety leaving his village, a fabulist who speaks his way out of prison camp, a farting dog – these are just a few of the gems in this literary mosaic. The Sarajevo Marlboro cigarette was a special blend of tobacco designed to suit the local tastes of the Balkan region. So too do these stories capture the unique palate of Sarajevo. Jergovic is concerned with love, faith and the petty excuses that others use to terrorize or love their neighbors. There is also an ongoing exploration of morality and idealism in the face of massacres and violence:

You know how the story goes: by chance, two people meet and fall in love, they get married, have children and live happily ever after, or, at any rate, until death finally casts them asunder. This is a cliché most of us believe in from puberty onwards; it doesn’t take account of reality.

But his bleak ‘reality’ still offers love in the form of a cactus, or an old well that a neighbor generously uses to replenish his neighbors.

Originally published in 1994, these tales are as much a portrait of a complex Bosnian society as they are a celebration of the short story form. Jergovic effortlessly moves between voices and experiments with time. The writing is efficient and sardonic, but never becomes self-consciously witty:

Saxophonists don’t make history – they make music. But perhaps, after so much talk and fighting, unspoken words do create a silence in whose gentleness the survivors of good and bad can sleep easy.

Jergovic is a Bosnian author, and reviewing books about the Balkans is fraught with peril. The political and cultural history of the region is so complicated as to defy easy categorization. Attempts to understand the conflict, which raged from 1992 to 1995, as a battle of Christians against Muslims or Serbs against Kosovars easily fall apart. So do blueprints. While outsiders offered clever solutions to the conflict, most were unworkable because of tensions that bristled beneath the surface. This book debunks the myth of an intrinsically polarized Bosnia. Sarajevo is presented as a cosmopolitan city, loud and full of cursing, but peppered with eateries where Christians, Muslims, Serbs, Kosovars and even, as the penultimate story The Letter portrays, blacks could eat in peace. The city may have been polarized at times but there was still tolerance. The war threw these complex interactions in sharp relief, and many of these seemingly simple differences were exploited by drives for power.

Jergovic is not just a fiction writer, but also a poet and a journalist, one who had received some acclaim before the war. This is not surprising for a region where writers often have to carry more than one trade. The Croatian national soccer coach, for example, is also a lawyer and a rock star. They somehow manage to pull it off, again and again.

While there is a danger in attempting to give simplified explanations for Bosnia, there is also the threat that a book set in a war zone will glorify it, and make way for more war. This work does not do so. The only major drawback to Sarajevo Marlboro is that it does not tussle with many of the themes required by fictionthatmatters.org. (For example, there is only a limited discussion of purely ‘human rights’ issues.) We will turn a blind eye. The book and the binding are exquisitely presented by Archipelago, with a comfortable feel and generous textual space to contemplate the weighty words. The quality of the writing – and of Stela Tomasevic’s translation – moves this work from a mere contemplative examination of life in a splintering country to literature that deserves to be ensconced within the canon.

–Deji Olukotun