Around the Balkans in 20 Days (Part 5/5)

[INTRO PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: Morning in Sarajevo.
The cloud is lifting over the city.
We almost died in our Yugo last night.
So we decided to give it a rest and trade up for our
fixer's Chevy Aveo.
So you can see, the choice has made all the difference.
We're automotively living in a lap of luxury right now.

This is our fixer, Elvis.
He's blind in one eye, which kind of makes him look like a
Bosnian David Bowie.
He's also wrecked three cars in the week we've known him.
THOMAS MORTON: Yeah.
I was wondering where all this mist came from.

[HORN HONKS]
THOMAS MORTON: Before the Serbs turned it into Hogan's
Island in the '90s, Sarajevo was an extremely modern
European city.
It's also the biggest Muslim city in Europe.
Though most residents are Muslims the same way, like,
New Yorkers are Jews or Christians.
They go to mosque for prayers and the holidays, but
that's about it.
All the men have shaved faces, most people
drink, ladies wear jeans.
It's relaxed.
While the majority of Sarajevans and really Bosnians
in general are sort of Friday Muslims, Islam is still a
really big deal.
During the wars, the Bosniak Muslims became a cause celebre
in the Arab world, with countries like Saudi Arabia
and Afghanistan sending money for humanitarian aid and even
funneling Mujahideen fighters in to lend a hand.
All of which is basically a push to increase Arab
influence in the region and stoke a national religious
revival, which naturally would play into places like Saudi
Arabia's political interests.
This mega mosque in Sarajevo was built
entirely with Saudi money.
It's also on the grounds of the Saudi Embassy, which
technically means it's on Saudi Arabian soil.
And obviously the crowd here looks a little different from
the congregation across town.

Now, our goal right now is to see if we can meet some local
Muslims and figure out what's going on.
And figure out why they're more kind of into Islamic
identity and, by possible extension, extremist Islamism
in their parent's generation, or if that's true at all.
MALE SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: How hard is it to keep up the faith, like, in
this environment?
MALE SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: Sarajevo and Bosnia's other big cities
aren't exactly seed beds of fundamentalist Islam,
at least not yet.
But there's a village in the north of the country called
Gornja Maoca that adheres to strict Wahabi Islam.
The men there have beards.
The women wear full niqab.
It's kind of quaint.
Well, quaint in the way that Western newspapers describe
with things like "Afghanistan in Europee" and "a potential
terrorist training camp."
The residents of Gornja Maoca aren't super receptive to this
criticism or really the media in general.
Actually, almost every camera crew that's gone to visit them
has been driven out of the village.
In addition to just bad press, Gornja Maoca has also been
raided by the local and national
police numerous times.
In 2010, the Bosnian DA's office sent 600 officers to
the village to search for guns and evidence
of terrorist activity.
We were nervous about swinging by the village unannounced.
However, our fixer, Elvis, spent the previous month
hanging out with the Gornja Maocans at noon time prayers
and has kind of become buds with some of the
younger guys there.
Which hopefully means we can stop by and have a nice,
pleasant chat without having rocks thrown at our heads.


THOMAS MORTON: To show our goodwill, or at least what we
hoped would be perceived as good will, we left the camera
in the back seat of the car and got out to wait for the
villagers to finish there afternoon prayers.
We don't want to look around, right?
We did take a live microphone with us though, which may have
been a slightly bad move.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
ELVIS: He wants to know who we are.
Listen to us.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: We wanted to know if we could talk to them.
ELVIS: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]


MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
THOMAS MORTON: That revving, by the way, is the village
leader, who's probably pushing 70, pulling up on his Harley.
I cannot describe how awesome he looked.
ELVIS: No, not right now.
ELVIS: No.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
ELVIS: OK.

ELVIS: No.
MALE SPEAKERS: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
THOMAS MORTON: No.
We have none.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
ELVIS: Do not show up ever again.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
THOMAS MORTON: OK.
We are sorry we have to leave.
Please apologize.
ELVIS: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

ELVIS: Right.
THOMAS MORTON: Then we can.
OK.
MALE SPEAKER 2: Yes.
THOMAS MORTON: Well, thank you and we're sorry.

THOMAS MORTON: OK.
MALE SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: OK.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: And that's somebody you had
never talked to?
THOMAS MORTON: OK.

THOMAS MORTON: Well, yeah.
Oh, this is not good.
We just got here just a little before afternoon prayer.
This angry dude came up and told him he had to leave and
picked up rocks, which maybe he just picks up rocks, but I
don't know.
I saw that as kind of provocative.
Sort of like picking up ammo.
We're trying to regroup right now.
We're back to the Serbian cemetery.
This will be very disappointing if we're unable
to talk to anybody.
Especially because more and more I learn about these
people, the less, like, you know, I wouldn't say I'm on
their side, but the more I kind of respect them being off
on their own and doing this shit.

Fuck.

Since it didn't seem like we were getting back in with the
Wahabis, we decided to hang out with their closest Muslim
neighbors, the Bosnian Eugene Mirman and his lovely wife.
Do you have many interactions with the
people from that village?
AVDO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: One of the reasons we know about this
village is that the police has come up here a couple times,
but they haven't found anything.
Were you here?
AVDO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

AVDO'S WIFE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

AVDO: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

THOMAS MORTON: Dispute being walked out of the village by
bearded men with the rocks in their hands, the more we
learned about Gornja Maoca, the more sympathetic we became
to it's wacky Wahabist residents.
Then two months later, one of those guys shot up the US
Embassy with an assault rifle, which seems a little off.

So what have we learned in the Balkans?
My generation grew up ingrained with the idea that
things like ethnic and racial and religious differences were
ultimately just bullshit.
The Balkans and the wars in the '90s is kind of a
centerpiece of this way of thinking.
We'll acknowledge that they have different cultures, and
they live in different geographies.
But we think about it the same way we think of people from
different states, sort of like Americans versus Canadians.
We say, hey, they look the same.
So what's the freaking problem?
As if that's some sort of solution.
But the ethnic differences aren't what actually matters.
It's the way people have internalized these differences
and the way they've been doing so for 1,000 very messy years.
This isn't unique to the Balkans either.
There's isn't something intrinsic about Serbs and
Croats that makes them hate each other, ditto Bosnians.
What's really kind of scary is what happened here in the '90s
could happen seriously anywhere on Earth.
We're all just simmering pots of rage and intolerance
waiting for an excuse to brutalize each other like
fucking ape men.
That's the real lesson in Yugoslavia, that and none of
these clowns have any business making cars.
[MUSIC PLAYING]