The Balkan Chronicle

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The Yugoslav Army would have been hard pressed to find a more scenic spot to build a nuclear bunker.

Begun in the 1950s and completed in the late 1970s, the bunker is built into the green and lush hillside overlooking the tumbling Nevetra River, an hour from Sarajevo, near Konjic, in central Herzegovina, where it's surrounded by conifer peaks and valleys. Costing more than $4.6 billion, it was intended as a shelter for President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and 350 elites of the armyin case of a nuclear attack.

Dario Džamonja, whom many knew as Daco, was a well-known writer in Sarajevo. He was also my step-brother. Our father was Vlatko Džamonja, a tenor in the Sarajevo Opera. He had Dario in his first marriage, with Ljepša, and then, eleven years later, he had me in his marriage with Dženana Kučukalić. We did not grow up together and my memories of him before my age about 14, are almost non-existent. I knew he existed but I really learned about him and about a few other things the one and the same night, when I found the "forbidden" (forbidden to me) book "Priče iz moje ulice" (Stories from my street) that he had published some years before.

It is said that Americans have a genius for simplification. Gradually, however, the quest for it has become a global trend, one that continues to conquer new territories, just as blue jeans once did.

The speed of our daily life is visibly increased – and not for the better – by this unstoppable evolution. The tyranny of pragmatism seems to mark all of the complex dilemmas of our time. Too many valid choices are ignored or skirted through the routine of short-cuts.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah Embraces Islam and talks about why and how. 

I embraced Islam after graduating from Cambridge. Prior to that I was a skeptical Catholic; a believer in God but with a mistrust of organized religion.

The Qur'an was pivotal for me. I first tried to approach it in anger, as part of an attempt to prove my Muslim friend wrong. Later I began reading it with a more open mind.

The opening of Al Fatiha, with its address to the whole of mankind, psychologically stopped me in my tracks. It spoke of previous scriptures in a way which I both recognized, but also differed. It clarified many of the doubts I had about Christianity. It made me an adult as I suddenly realized that my destiny and my actions had consequences for which I alone would now be held responsible.