UNMIK ON AIR
ADMIRAL
MAHIC
25 April,
2003
(Luan
Qorraj & Sputnik Kilambi)
Hello and welcome to
UNMIK on Air – and the first of our regular Friday programs on culture.
Today’s guest - Bosnian
poet Admiral Mahic. Vice president of
the BIH literary society, Mahic is the first Bosnian poet to have visited
Kosovo since the end of the war. He was in Mitrovica last year to attend an
international poetry gathering organized by local NGOs in memory of Fahreddin
Gunga, a popular Kosovan poet. The
gathering called “Cape of Good Hope”, after the name of one of Gunga’s
books. He has several books of poems to
his credit – and poetry, he says, is what he lives for.
Admiral Mahic: This is some sort of a divine
task and in a way, it destroys all wrong ideas you have about yourself. But to
be able to come back to oneself, to go beyond false ideas, to go back to the
human being- every human being is a miracle. Within this context I feel like a
child when I see Zeljko, or someone else writing about my poetry – they do not
let me leave my place of hope.
And a place of hope, for
Mahic, is anywhere where a person can breathe freely his experience in
Mitrovica, he says convinced him that Kosovo offers that space to poets.
Admiral Mahic reading
Poem:
We breathe in- everyone in his or her own way
While cloudy eels sing the song of birds
I didn’t know
Blue god
I didn’t know
A thing about love!
As a child I believed
That marriage is an ideal country-
But, the famous Plotin
made up this motto: There are no married couples in heaven!
This room said: There is no room in the Sky!
The window said: There are no windows in the sky!
A clothes clip said: There are no clips in the sky!
The chess clock said: There are no chess clocks in the sky!
A banana told me: there is no Banana in the sky!
The roast beef told me: there is no roast beef in the sky!
The refrigerator said: there are no refrigerators in the
sky!
The stone man said: there are no stone men in the sky!
The TV said: There are no TV’s in the sky!
The sky said: there are no skies in the sky!
The neighbor said: There are no neighbors in the sky
Inner space said: There is no inner space in the sky!
Death said: there is no death in the sky!
The phone said: there are no phones in the sky!
In a room, through a phone, I wept: Most beloved, married
girl, let us be in peace forever!
The lines you just heard come from the poem “The road
of Kings” published in his book “Dzaja’s Loza” – Admiral Mahic’s tenth book,
published just last year. As a Bosnian poet who has survived a war a large part
of his poetry still moves through memories of dead friends or places now
destroyed. He is often described as a typical “Bar poet” who still lives a
Bohemian life and believes that artists can have an impact on the world that
surrounds them.
Admiral Mahic: Writers can change the world-
physically and also emotionally, ethically through love and a sort of sacrifice
within that love. But it is understood that writers by themselves are not
powerful enough to change the world with their ideas. Yet, even though
politicians everywhere do not invest enough in culture, they are wonderful
people when they say “Writer, come here and read us a poem that is true art, or
that is true emotion.” We need this kind of input, to take part as poets in
this political situation, to build peace, friendship.
Admiral Mahic was born in Banja Luka. He lives in Sarajevo
as a free artist…still searching, he says, for the eternal secret of love.
Thank you for listening.