Mustafi Cengicu
Svi smo mi
bivši Jugosloveni
izloženi istrebljenju
od strane bivše
jugoslovenske armije.
For Mustafa Cengicnek
We are
former Yugoslavs
subject to extinction
by a strain of the former
Yugoslav army.
translated from Bosnian by Sara NovićIzet “Kiko” Sarajlić (1930-2002) was born in Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina to an underage mother and a railway worker father. He moved to Sarajevo at the age of fifteen, and published his first published his first collection, “U Sustretu” (In a Meeting), at age nineteen. Sarajlić went on to become the one of the former Yugoslavia’s most renowned poets, producing over thirty books of poetry, essays, memoirs and political texts. He also served as a long-time professor at the philosophy college of the University of Sarajevo, and worked to institute Sarajevo Poetry Days, now an international book festival. The following poems are from his 1993 collection “Sarajevska Ratna Zbirka” (Sarajevo War Journal), which he wrote during the first weeks of the siege of Sarajevo. Though he was injured during a shelling that damaged his home, he remained in the city throughout the war. Of the collection Sarajlić has been quoted as saying, “this is the only book which I can say I would have loved never to have written.”
Sara Nović studied in the MFA at Columbia University in New York City, with dual concentrations in fiction and literary translation. She is currently a teaching fellow and instructor of undergraduate writing. Her fiction is forthcoming in the 2013 Minnesota Review.