Albahari, David
Stroke of History
David Albahari
The Borderland Foundation documents borderland culture from its headquarters in the Jewish ghost town of Sejny, Poland.
Bird in the Willow
David Albahari
Yesterday, when I looked through my kitchen window, I saw a strange-looking bird sitting on a branch of the willow tree in our backyard. I went to my study to get the camera, but by the time I got back to the window the bird was gone.
Dangerous Times
David Albahari
One of the things I learned on those school trips—besides the geography of the human body—was that we actually kept changing all the time. Even revolutions eventually wear out and turn into something else. However, this time, on my short trips across Canada, I learned that change is not always good. It seemed that people everywhere blamed change for the loss of safety.
Balkan Farewell
David Albahari
Only when I settle down in the back seat of the cab do I notice that on the dashboard there are several stickers with the letter U, the sign of Ustashe. During the Second World War, Ustashe was the ruling party in the Independent State of Croatia. They also had their own army and ran a number of concentration camps where many Serbs, gypsies and Jews were slaughtered.
My Father’s Hands
David Albahari
Walking along the streets of Paris, watching thousands of tourists using their digital cameras, I remember the way my father held his old Kodak when he took photographs.
In Jerusalem
David Albahari
I haven’t been in Jerusalem for sixteen years and the first thing my friend shows me is the wall that separates them from the Palestinians. At first I don’t see it: I am tired after a long flight and my eyes hurt under bright sunshine, but slowly I realize what it is that I have to see: a greyish, silvery separation wall that slithers like a snake across the opposite hills. “It is terrible,” I finally mutter. My friend agrees and says that the very idea that they have to surround themselves with walls makes him angry, but the wall has stopped the constant flow of suicide bombers. He also points out that we are looking at it across the Valley of Gehinnom, where in ancient times Jerusalem’s refuse was burned. It seems that the valley lent its name to hell (gehenna in Hebrew), although it definitely doesn’t look like Dante’s inferno.
Voices
David Albahari
My friend, who writes poems and stories, tells me in the café that he finds it more and more difficult to deal with the writer inside him. “I just hate it,” he says, “when I realize that I am looking at somebody or something and thinking how good that person or that scene would be in my next story.”
