A friend recently asked me why I feel so at home here in Bosnia. While many move away, I make mine heimat from. So what do I like about it? There are dozens of reasons, including love and the way of livingbut deep in my heart it is also related to the courtesy of the people.
Their graceful behavior that is not seen as submissive. The Bosnian sees modesty as the ultimate form of courtesy. Both here in Sarajevo and with the diaspora in the Netherlands. And we have largely lost that in Western Europe. Also in the Low Countries.
That is why we know so relatively little about Bosniaks. While we can actually praise them. Did you know that of all migrant groups, unemployment is among the lowest and the level of education among the highest? The Lower Bosnian scores better on many fronts than a native Dutchman. They gave us one of the most successful integration processes in Dutch history. And they did all that quietly. Because with stories about success, or those about great sorrow, a Lower Bosnian is not for sale.
heartache
Yet their concerns deserve no restraint. Especially now that the pain of the past is melted silently into the heartache of the here and now. For the second time in thirty years, Bosnians have to sit and watch as young and old leave their motherland en masse. They are forced to follow in their families’ escape tracks.
I recently incorporated this theme into a theater performance that I directed for the Bosnian National Theatre. After the press conference, a journalist approached me with tears in her eyes: ‘Now that my son says he wants to be a doctor, I know that we will only be together for a short time before he leaves us permanently.’
She was shocked by her emotions and apologized. But she’s not the only mother in tears. A real exodus is now taking place. 55,000 people emigrate abroad every year. Mainly highly educated young people. This time not chased away by bullets and grenades, but attracted by a normal job in Europe. ‘What kind of future does my child still have here?’, the journalist wondered.
As we walk away from the press conference, I ask the young actor Harun whether he would also leave Bosnia if he had enough income. ‘No of course not! But, for my future I have no choice. I have to go abroad to gain experience. After a few years I want to come back to share my acquired knowledge with others.’
But research shows that once they have left for another country, few come back. There is a will, but no way.
Deadlock in families
These are heartbreaking conditions that symbolize the impasse in which many families find themselves today. Young people really don’t want to leave at all. But that uncle or aunt in the Netherlands or Germany often offers a life preserver.
European economists measure young people like Harun along the neoliberal yardstick. Their money machine destroys the humanity factor. Technocrats explain it to us as a win-win situation. But they are tax mantras that are almost completely debunked by international reports. In reality, there is no courteous reciprocity.
The brain drain deprives poorer countries of their most valuable asset: the young people who are really needed to lift a country out of poverty. And Europe? She behaves like a real profiteer. The angling in of cheap and highly skilled labor migrants has become a European sport. There’s nothing modest about that.
No one just leaves their country. The need to leave home and hearth behind cannot be expressed in economic terms. Only in soul pain. Spread across generations. With only 2.7 million inhabitants, Bosnia continues to export strongly. Bus loads full. Those left behind are politically hostage and economically paralyzed in this beautiful country that has been under international guardianship since the end of the war.
Nick Teunissen is a theater maker, director and writer living in Sarajevo. In the month of June he will be a guest columnist on volkskrant.nl/opinie.