The vicissitudes of war are probably borne best by stoics, and the people of Mostar, having endured WW2, and, worse, the Yugoslav civil war, must come close. Yugoslavia no longer exists having splintered into its ethnic constituents. The Mostar bridge does. Towering 70 feet above the Neretva river, it spans a deep gorge. If it survived WW2, it fell victim to the civil war and was blown up under the spurious logic that it was being used to transport arms and armaments -- it was only a pedestrian bridge with a slippery cobble stone surface.
At the end of hostilities, the people of Mostar chose to rebuild the bridge first ahead of their town. A Hungarian and Bosnian team constructed it, looking exactly like the original of 1566... which the Turkish architect Mimar Hajruddin completed under the commission of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
There are some cafes along the river now with the bridge as backdrop for the patrons enjoying their meals or even just a coffee. A million plus tourists visit Bosnia each year, about a third of the country's population.
The gorge itself is picturesque. In the Ottoman era, the bridge was a strategic asset transporting cavalry and infantry and supplies as needed. There are lessons in its history, as it stands, a mute witness to human folly.
It
has seen the might of the Ottomans supplanted by the Austrian Empire.
Both eventually disintegrated leaving just Turkey itself, as also
with Austria, neither playing a major role in the world of today.
And
Yugoslavia, a patchwork of different ethnic regions, cobbled together
by the victors in the Treaty of Versailles and called as such until it
assumed the name Yugoslavia.
So it existed for over a half century until the greed of certain groups and the fear of others led to a brutal civil war that divided them forever into Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Something similar happened in India, forming first two countries and later three. The bloodletting preceding and in the aftermath of the first breakup cost a million and more lives. These were people who had lived together for centuries but then turned on each other -- one group is now again being demonized by the current Indian prime minister's party, the BJP.
The human genes for self-preservation run amuck every now and then, often triggered by politicians turning that instinct to political advantage. But the genie let loose from its bottle can soon be out of control causing havoc and mayhem.
And
then, we have the Mostar bridge and its scenic surroundings, or the Taj
Mahal in India and its serene beauty... built ironically by the group being
targeted there. It seems humans never learn. Just look at the current horror
of Gaza and a supine U.S. administration with its feeble attempts to bring peace.
