Friday, June 18, 2010

MISS SARAJEVO by Gozde Avci, Cash For Work Programme Director

My favorite song, “Miss Sarajevo”, was echoing in my head as I handed out the medals to our first team champions for girls basketball, part of our Youth Projects Program in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti.

“Is there a time for keeping your distance?
  A time to turn your eyes away?
  Is there a time for keeping your head down,
  for getting on with your day?”

 “Is there a time for different colors,
   for different names you find hard to spell?
   
 “Here she comes,
   beauty plays the clown,
   here she comes,
   surreal in her crown!”
The song was written specially for a beauty contest which was held in Bosnia during the war. Out of context, the lyrics seem an odd anthem for a beauty contest, but considering the sheer force of will required for everyday survival in Sarajevo at that time,  the lyrics become an oddly perfect anthem for a beauty contest.  
Years later, my godfather, the Serbian-born General of the Muslim, Bosnian Army told me what it was like to be in Sarajevo at that time. He described a city besieged by Serbian forces, the endless battles as the city refused to fall, and what he also told me was that despite these skirmishes and firefights taking place quite literally in their own backyards, the people of Sarajevo continued with their day-to-day lives.  At the risk of falling prey to a sniper, they continued to go to work and to school, attend concerts, and  be beautifully turned-out to do so; although they were not technically engaged in battle, the people of Saravejo, both Muslim & Christian, were also “Refusing to Fall”.
So I sang the song quietly, and if anyone was listening in the middle of our Youth Project, Girl’s Basketball Championship in rural Haiti, I must have sounded crazy.  But as I watched the girls play, I realized that although the girls were wearing sweaty gym gear and were without any make-up, they too were victorious beauty queens; each one a dead ringer for the Bosnian beauty queen, who proudly walked down the aisle, wearing her crown, wryly smiling as the song “Miss Saravejo” competed with the sounds of the bombardment of Sarajevo.
I’ve even joined the Deschapelles girls team...I play with the same girls to whom I awarded medals (all 20+ years younger than me!) We’re all looking forward to another championship....It’s all surreal indeed…watching us as we play, wearing own personal, imagined crowns.

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