Excerpt of Essay read in Dubrovnik, IUC (Identity of Europe), 2024

(…) Here, the concepts inclusion and exclusion take on a history of their own. The political assassinations, tombstones, snipers on the hills, and, on the other side, in the history of inclusion, there’s the street where west becomes east, or east becomes west, Susan Sontag and Bruce Dickinson, the heretical Church, Jewish tourism, feline freedom. On the west-east street, there’s an Ottoman-style café. Globalization has not yet begun its campaign of exclusion. The Bosanska Kava hasn’t been replaced by the iced caramel latte. My view is selective, I know. I don’t want to romanticize bullet holes and fragile economies. But, in Sarajevo, I see a critique of modernity written in stones. These streets that go up and down with graves, cats, slow days are too bumpy for the wheels of progress. In this city of contrasted traditions, I sleep in a hotel and find a home in history.