A Shortcut to Mushrooms

There are cemeteries everywhere in Sarajevo.  Some are large, like the Kovaći cemetery on the east side of the city, located just below the hill of the Yellow Bastion. Some are ancient, like the nearly 500-year-old Jewish Cemetery, the largest of its kind in Southeast Europe; it contains graves dating back nearly five hundred years, when Bosnia was one of the few places in Europe where Jews were welcomed. Some are tiny, small squares of grass located in the midst of the city or visible on a hilltop high above. During the war, residents converted “ parks, schoolyards, gardens, alleyways ” into burial grounds for the nearly 12,000 military and civilian fatalities. As a prominent Sarajevo funeral director proclaimed at the end of the war, “Sarajevo is the biggest graveyard in the world”. The solemn gravestones and tombs provide a captivating glimpse into this ancient city’s history, into the life and death of its denizens through the centuries. And the countless graves bearing numbers...