FROM DESPAIR TO SPLENDOR
I admit. I haven’t read Dante until that October night in Belgrade. Earlier in my childhood, I’ve scrolled it, I thought it might be too hard for me and I’ve left it for the future. But after that match, in Marakana, Belgrade, which I barely watched because I’ve dreaded about our fans and the author of this monograph, who was on that pitch, I wrote these introductory sentences of text for Slobodna Bosna. ”Inferno? Dante wrote something about it. But not even close to what our players and fans survived that night in Belgrade.”
Then, when we came back home from Serbia, I read Dante’s book. And I realized that he was right. Dante’s inferno, which he passed through with Virgil, had nine circles. That Belgrade’s had 90. Each one for every minute of the match But it wasn’t that fascist inferno that was the worst thing for Mario and me. We weren’t hoping for anything better, we were just trying to find a way out. It was painful to see Blaž Slišković flaming some Sergej Jakirović in his game of life. ( I was the only one who actually knew about him. It happened accidentally because I had met him a year before while I was in Graz at Saša Papac and Almedin Hota’s place. Jakirović was on trial with Klagenfurt, and didn’t pass.). It was also painful to see Bulend Biščević twitching in despair on the banch. The defender of Sarajevo, substitute in Slišković’s team who would gladly die on the field for his team. Or Muhamed Konjić who watched the match from the stands dressed in the national team track suit asking: “ How will I get to the dressing room over these?” Or the leaders of the Football Association all hangovered from last night, on rafts, how their money, accreditations and tickets are falling from their pockets and bags.
We were there. And we knew that ” THEY “ won’t last for so long. All those Ušanović’s, Čolaković’s, Pašalić’s… Because that was mire and you couldn’t go lower. It last more than we wanted but they are gone now. We followed them out and we showed them out so they can never come back again. New and better ones came. New ones who are not familiar with rafts and jakirović’s. We were the first one to publish their names and took photos of their faces.
But all these years it was more important for us to watch how our kids were growing up. How they grow up and how they are becoming football players. People. Players. In now, already demolished, bistro on Vrbanja bridge in Sarajevo we met the man who introduced himself to us. “Fahrudin Pjanić “, he said. He was telling us about his son, talent to whom “fatass” bureaucracy in Sarajevo and the Football Association didn’t want to give bh passport. We, journalists, tried to help as much as we could. And we did it. We were the first one to go to Lyon, watching the boy play, the boy for whose passport we fought. And that is felicity. To know that we helped him, through photos and words, to become ours. Representative.
It is also felicity when some unknown people buy you sausages and beer in Wolfsburg. Because you are Bosnian and Because You’ve come there to take photos and to write about the celebration of their club. It’s not hard for you to drive 15 hours and take a camera in your hands and work. Happiness is when you are in Torino, without accreditation and they let you in training centar of Juventus, because you came to write about Hasan Salihamidžić. But the biggest happiness is when you are standing in the rain, which is freezing your bones, and you are watching all these boys and taking photos of them in the Divič, little village near Zvornik where they came to play game for returnees. Happiness because you see faces of people to whom this day is the greatest in life.
But it is also sadness when you have to go to Heidelberg and wait to see cally Vedad Ibišević, infront of the hospital. The best player and shooter of Bundesliga who injured his knee in harmless pre-season match. The hospital has two exits, so after the whole night driving you still have to stand 8 more hours on the wind and temperature of minus five celzius degrees. Mario on one and me on the other exit. To see and take photos of Vedo. And you don’t even ask him anything because his face expression is telling you everything.
We testified to all of that. Mario took photos. He saw, so people could watch. And understand. And that’s all infront of you, on next pages. All of ours and his fifteen years of work. Hand and camera that saw everything. From hopelessness, despair, angryness, happiness, sadness. To the pride from “Marakana” to Marakana. And none of Dante’s circles isn’t describing heaven like Mario’s camera does it.
Nor the felicity you feel on the photo when the aeroplane lands from Kaunas.
Nedim Hasić
