Foča: The Bosniak

Foca

One of the most interesting books about Bosnia published in the 1990s was called The Bosniak. It is series of interviews or rather discussions between Adil Zulfikarpašić and Milovan Djilas. Zulfikarpašić came from a wealthy, aristocratic Muslim family from Foča. He turned to communism, became a Partisan during the war but then left for exile in Switzerland where he prospered in business. There he fostered ideas of Bosniak – as opposed to simply Bosnian Muslim identity – and when he returned in 1990 he was to become as Robert Donia has called him a "founding father" of Bosniak nationalism. Milovan Djilas was a towering figure of Yugoslav communism. A Montenegrin, he played a key role during the Second World War and in the early post-war years until he fell out with Tito and became the country's best-known dissident. In this extract Zulfikarpašić talks about his hometown of Foča.

In Foča… the Muslims and Serbs did not live together until the arrival of the Austria-Hungary. There was a mahala called Čerezluk where the Orthodox inhabitants lived. They had their own stores in the city too, but they lived, in Čerzluk-mahala and in the Varoš district where there was an Orthodox church. The Muslim population lived exclusively in the centre. When Austria-Hungary arrived, and after the formation of Yugoslavia, many Serb families moved to the city centre. I had a neighbour called Niković who had moved from Montenegro, and another called Hadživuković who lived with us in an atmosphere of mutual consideration and harmony. They didn't raise pigs out of regard for us. I don't remember a single Serb family in Foča raising pigs. So there was respect but... a lack of real knowledge. My family was not closely acquainted with Orthodox customs and the Serbs didn't know anything about ours. Each was ignorant of even the basic tenets of the other's religion, of the preoccupations peculiar to each ethnic group. I made up for that later in life, and only then realized what a mistake it had been.

The Bosniak: Adil Zulfikarpašić in dialogue with Milovan Djilas and Nadežda Gaće. Milovan Djilas & Nadežda Gaće. 1998.
[p. 50 / Hurst]

Please read an article by Robert Donia called: Archives and Cultural Memory under Fire: Destruction and the Post-war Nationalist Transformation in which he discusses the role of Adil Zulfikarpašić and his Bosniak Institute.