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When Bosnia and Herzegovina qualified for the World Cup, contagious excitement spread through the country. It was more than just football fever.
Three decades after the end of the war, after surviving genocide and the now-infamous Dayton Accords, we’re back on US territory to show we can finally start dreaming beyond that bad deal, which imposed on us harmful political structures and left our country in a straitjacket.
Truly, football has brought out the core of what it means to be Bosnian: we are the softest and the hardest of souls, we do our best in adversity, but are tough on ourselves in peace. We are dragons, but we are also lilies.
On June 24, when our team beat Qatar and qualified for the knockout stage for the first time in its history, the country was ecstatic. It was not just extreme happiness but a sense of freedom and unity. We Bosnians may excel in quarrels, disagreement and self-deprecation, but boy, do we love this headstrong country. And we love those blue boys.
Huge blue-clad crowds took over not just the streets of Seattle and Sarajevo, but every single city and town in the world where Bosnians live. Even Bosnians on vacation in exotic places had watching parties in hotels and took other guests to the streets to sing in celebration.
In Republika Srpska, those in power have supported the Bosnian team’s opponents in the past. But this time, many people did not fall for the hate and celebrated at home in front of the TV. Some even dared to display their joy publicly.
In neighbouring Serbia and Croatia, people also defied ethnic politics and openly celebrated with the Bosnians, posting on social media messages of support for our team.
Images of Bosnian fans marching through the streets of Canadian and American cities made the news internationally. Ahead of the match with Switzerland, a crowd of Bosnian fans stunned locals as they moved through a notorious neighbourhood in Inglewood, chanting “Palestina! Palestina!”.
In between the chants, fans sang. But these were not proud nationalistic songs like we often see in such contexts. Those were not songs prepared by big stars especially for the World Cup. No, those were old songs that organically attached themselves to the game, and that very much reflect the national psyche.
The first one is a satirical song by the popular band Dubioza Kolektiv, “I am from Bosnia, take me to America,” a song that cuts deep into the illusion of the American dream and asks Bosnians who easily assimilate to dream another dream, a bigger dream, a dream of the motherland. Funny and nostalgic. Hilarious and sentimental.
The second song, which is even bigger, is the love song by the late folk star Halid Bešlić, “Poljem se siri miris ljiljana.” This is a soft and beautifully intimate song, which in translation goes like this: “The smell of lilies is spreading across the field, and the flowers smell like my darling. And the small swallows are coming back from the south, as if carrying her love back to me. In this city, I have no one. Darling, I will die if you’re someone else’s.”
Yes, our country was at war just 30 years ago but we are not singing the “we’re-the-best”, “crush-em-all” warrior songs.
This is unheard of. This is so out of left field. Our choice of songs testifies to how we see ourselves: we are tough and we bear scars of war, but we make fun of everything (mostly, of ourselves) and we sing of love.
We call ourselves the Dragons, a reference to the famous Bosnian military commander and rebel Husein Gradaščević (1802-1835). But we also call ourselves lilies, like in Bešlić’s song.
We were meant to be wiped out, but we survived and turned into seeds. This is why, in addition to the official blue-yellow star-spangled flag, you are seeing white flags with a coat of arms with golden lilies. The white flag is that of independent Bosnia, the flag under which we survived, and under which we were accepted into the United Nations.
The other flag was a compromise, another bad deal – just like Dayton, just like the national anthem, which was agreed to be without lyrics after our leaders who deal in ethnic politics could not come up with a unifying text.
But we are not a people without lyrics. And you see it in the World Cup. You hear us sing of lilies and you see them bloom on the football field.
Aside from the seasoned stars like Edin Džeko, ours is a young team. Half of the players are boys born to refugee parents far from the heart-shaped motherland.
These are the kids who were not meant to exist, whose parents were hunted down and driven away. They now move on the green field of Seattle as if they are playing in the Bosnian meadows.
They fight, but they do not fight dirty. That goal in the game against Qatar by Kerim Alajbegović, who just made the list of the youngest goalscorers at the World Cup, was a work of art.
It reminded me of the graceful but fierce penalty Esmir Bajraktarević scored to knock off four-time World Cup winner, Italy, in the qualifications. It is hard to rewatch that goal without thinking of how incredibly symbolic it was: the child of genocide survivors from Srebrenica, born and raised in the US, a member of the new generation of golden lilies. A Bosnian American boy who will now have to play against his second homeland, the US, on July 2.
In one fell swoop, with a couple of goals, these boys crushed all the nasty political rhetoric that seeks to divide and secure the power of the corrupt elites. They are Edin, Esmir, Jovo, Ermin, Kerim, Martin, Osman, Sead, Dennis, Tarik, Nihad, Stjepan, Nidal, Amir, Benjamin, Armin, Dženis, Ermedin, Samed, Haris, two Nikolas, two Ivans, and two Amars. And the coach is Sergej. Most of them don’t play in major clubs. They are not expensive (yet). They are here to stay.
Help them sow the seeds. Watch the next game. Watch the smallest take on the biggest on their own turf. Cheer them on. And sing along.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
English (US) · 