On the way to Mostar that evening, Gorin explained that the scars on his hands came from Serb bullets, those on his arms from Bosniacs. He told us that he had friends among the Bosniacs, the war was political rather than ethnic, and that he feared it would resume again if the American soldiers left soon. But he was ready if it did, he said. And in that instant I could picture his sad eyes staring down the barrel of a gun. In Mostar we found a similar balance between hope and fatalism.
Structural damage seems to mirror the lives of the inhabitants.
Though many buildings are still sound, and some are being rebuilt quite beautifully, the arteries that connect the town's Croat west side and Bosniac east are still mostly wrecked, symbolic of a community that has yet to come together. The Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniacs had been friends and allies here for hundreds of years. They were united when they repelled an invasion by Serb nationalists in 1992. But the alliance was not to last. One morning, without warning, artillery controlled by a Croat army opened fire on the beautiful historic quarter where the majority of Bosniacs lived.