Whether from Mostar, other parts of BiH, or other parts of the world, for UWC Mostar students and staff this city becomes our home. In an attempt to capture the sentiments we feel towards Mostar, we feel a poem by our own alumnus does it best.
Ways
An elephant looms
In the vaults of our minds
In the sounds of the room
In the seams of the light.
I’ll introduce him,
to you, by name:
his name is ‘Good-bye’.
The lake splits
plunge back…
Find me in Mostar,
where I’ve been,
like a bone in a fig,
counting, clacking
the hundreds of
days, faces, shocks, smiles,
stacking to
drip like ink,
beads of hours
a rosary of moments,
shine, slip and splat
with you old friend,
soft in your chair,
in your way.
Spanish Square, Abraš,
Konzum, Mejdan,
glitter and throb
in a warm bath,
where I’ve been
with you and your laugh
on Instagram-coloured days.
All written in ripples,
through the watery eyes
of a silver memory;
a perfect sighing day.
And it took a while,
it did.
We grew, bolder to wiser,
a crashing street band,
screech of metal
and drone of strings,
teenage angst and sisterly love,
tumbling Bambi-legged
up a plait of steps
to the quivering crests
of a future.
And if we meet,
on that quaking grounds,
in the sketch of a Starbucks
and you’d grown a beard,
or burnt that coat,
or fixed your fringe,
to mutate
out of the photo-frames,
well, I’ll know you again,
from where we’ve been,
in Mostar,
clear and Neretva-veined.
Bobbing up,
back through the murk…
There’s this stage
and your seat,
There’s an elephant called
‘Good-bye’, who looms
but then there’s us,
dry, now, together,
where we’ve been,
in Mostar,
in our way.
Mohammed Zaahidur Rahman, Class of 2015
