Stolac.info - The one and only

1978

Students escaping the smog of Sarajevo, we stepped out into the little valley
town late in the afternoon. The driver snapped off the skirting pop-kolo, climbed
down the coach steps and headed cafewards. Quiet -flowering lime trees round
the square, the rush of a river over a weir.

Just beyond it, N had promised us the finest mosque in the Balkans. Which turned
out to be a small, white, empty, perfect cube topped by a perfect white hemisphere1,
its interior picked out in mock-solemn green and red patterns of interwoven
vines heavy with grapes. Outside - chestnut trees, the fruit spiky and green,
and cheerful, turbaned gravestones. I leant with R, my English room-mate, over
the bridge as we left, spotting trout against the shingle. N joined us. ‘Nice
place to be buried,’ I quipped. She smiled briefly. ‘You know what happened
in the war? Here they threw the Muslims in the river.’ ‘Who did?’ She shrugged.
And then we noticed the inscriptions on the stones: so many from one year, 1942.
(Long after I have fixed this in writing, I am told that I have merged two
memories. One is of a winter visit eastwards to the magnificent AladÏa mosque
in Foa, built around a sacred meteoric stone; from the nearby bridge, many
Muslims were knifed and thrown into the Drina, both in World War II and the
war that was still to come. The other is of a spring visit southwards to Stolac,
near the necropolis of Radimlja; there, the simple mosque by the little river
was all the more exquisite for being disused, empty of everything save sacred
geometry. Somehow, over the years, the two sites had merged to form a single
archetype, like the two images on a stereoscope slide. The mosque was now a
place of the heart, not of the brain - which is why I have let it remain.)
Next day, Radimlje - the necropolis. It was hot; the morning breeze had dropped
by the time we arrived at the wire fence. Inside, the steci: rows of four-foot-high
stone oblongs in the straggling yellow grass, some with pitched roofs, like
houses for the dead. No guard, no visitors but ourselves. The gate opened and
we drifted in different directions.
On the near end of the first tomb, I saw a vine heavy with fruit. Along its
long side ran a frieze of crescents and crosses, beneath it a line of stylised,
full-skirted women dancing the kolo. About to turn to see the other end, I looked
ahead, and found myself face to face with a man whose head was the sun and whose
enormous right hand was raised palm-first at me - the Uncrucified, the Heretic
Christ? On the next stone, the sleeper under the stone, an armed giant brandishing
a bow in his left hand. And his right hand again raised - to do what? A snake
as thick as my wrist - no stone dragon this - slithered in panic half a metre
in front of me, heading for the long grass round the tomb. I turned and sauntered
in feigned nonchalance back to the others.

Raised to do what? No-one knows. There are theories, of course. To ward off
the evil eye. To stop the sinful, the enemies of the True Christ. Or in greeting
to the stranger. No-one knows.