AT THE GATE OF DEPARTURE
“Your mission is coming to the end,”
He tells me
And a strange smell spreads through my memory.
As if I dreamt it.
“You have paid your debt.”
“I think it is not the right time,”
I say.
I let my roots grow in the crystal solitude.
And feelings in the spring wind …
That you can measure neither with instruments,
Nor with time.
This smell is also borrowed from somewhere,
Some time.
And that I am here to pay my debt:
That too!
“Your path is not behind your back,”
He says,
And that smell grows stronger
Reminding of ripe quinces,
Like light becoming stronger
When the sun breaks the night.
I feel everything merciless
And feel pain because of happiness
When I hold it in my arms.
Can I leave without a great pain,
Tell me,
Without leaving pain as my legacy?
Speak … Tell me!
Without leaving pain at the gate of my departure!
HIDDEN DIMENSION
two lines
parallel
like a frozen memory
akin
like times unlived
stiff
like run-over puppies
laboring to unearth a path
and nothing ever returned to beginning
two lines
frozen
bound to eternity
to blue infinity
and nothing ever returned
to memory
resembling long-vanished
conveyances levitated carriages
in the storm of distrust
or somebody’s rinsed-out dream
in my eyes
or another enchanted world
I can not capture in my aching thoughts
and there must be something therein
within
an unfinished image
of someone departing
into an unknown warp of space
ENDNOTES
Isaac Asimov was an American scientist and writer who produced over 500 books that enlightened, entertained and spanned the realm of human knowledge. He was one of the central figures of science fiction for five decades of the 20th century. His breakthrough work, “Nightfall”, is acclaimed as the best science fiction story ever written.
Bosnian Krajina is a region in northwestern Bosnia, on the border with Croatia. In the city Bihac, the major center of that region, Tito created the first Yugoslavian Government in 1942, during the Second World War.
George H.W. Bush is a former American President, former Director of the CIA, and father of President George W. Bush, creator of the doctrine of permanent war against terrorists. As Director of the CIA, he forbade American President Jimmy Carter to open the American secret UFO files, citing national security concerns and the need to avoid public panic.
Nicolae Ceausescu was the Romanian dictator during the time of communism. At the end of his power, Romanian revolutionists held a two-hour “kangaroo court” trial and sentenced him, together with his wife, to death by firing squad.
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and lecturer. Already renowned for his theory of transformational grammar, beginning with his critique of the Vietnam War in the 1960s he became more widely known for his political activism, in particular his criticism of the foreign policy of the USA and some other governments. Critical of the American capitalist system and big business, he describes himself as a libertarian socialist. In many of his books and articles, Chomsky attacks the double standards of US foreign policy: preaching democracy and freedom for all, while promoting, supporting and allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states. He argues that this results in human rights violations which fit the standard description of terrorism.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, co-inventor of the AquaLung, pioneered and popularized oceanographic research with the aim of promoting sound ecological practices long before “environmentalism” became fashionable. His research vessel, Calypso, was originally a wooden-hulled minesweeper built for the British Royal Navy. The Irish millionaire Thomas Loel Guinness bought Calypso and leased it to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year. The Cousteau Society continues his work.
Chenrezig: According to Tibetan legend, Chenrezig made a vow that he would not rest until he had liberated all the beings in all the realms of suffering. Tibetan Buddhists believe whenever we are compassionate, or feel love for anyone, or for an animal or some other constituent of the natural world, we experience a taste of our own natural connection with Chenrezig. They view each Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of this legendary monk.
Erich Von Daniken was born in Switzerland, educated in Germany and became famous – and controversial – in the USA and later in the entire world as the “father of the ancient astronaut theory”. His first book, Chariots of the Gods, popularized the concept of extraterrestrial influence on human civilization.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was a Dutch humanist, writer, philosopher and theologian in the time of the Renaissance. After the dark, incredibly tyrannic domination of Christian religious institutions during the Middle Ages, Erasmus helped initiate and supported the reform of Christianity and reawakening of the sciences. His book The Praise of Folly (Encomium Moriae, in Latin) was small but, at the same time, rich and powerful – disruptive for arrogant religion institutions, inspiring for the new wave of artists, like Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy.
Goya’s Nude Maya was shrouded in mystery from its first days. The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya painted two Mayas. The Nude Maya is probably the most famous nude painting in art history. In the same room with it was a clothed version of the same figure, the Clothed Maya. Speculation has it that the nude version used to be hidden behind the clothed version in the same picture frame, and that the lady was the Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya was infatuated. How he managed to get a noble woman to pose this way in Spain at that time is only one of the many mysteries surrounding this work.
Goli Otok (Barren Island) is a small, barren island off the north coast of Croatia. Throughout World War I, Austria-Hungary sent Russian prisoners of war from the Eastern Front to Goli Otok. After the Tito-Stalin split, Goli Otok became a high-security, top secret detention and labor camp for persons imprisoned as Soviet sympathizers. In his 1984 book Goli Otok – The Island of Death, Macedonian poet Venko Markovski described the horrors of that prison for the first time. Rifet Bahtijaragic in his novel Blood in the Eyes mentions Goli Otok as a grotesque error of Tito’s regime.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the last Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His attempt at reform – perestroika – ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the USSR and contributed to the end of the Cold War. He has expressed pantheistic views as his religion, saying “Nature is my god.”
Okanagan: In the summer of 2003 massive forest fires facilitated by climate change and dubious forest practices destroyed large areas of this British Columbia valley, threatening the city of Kelowna while consuming many homes and huge tracts of timber.
Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrian was emperor of Rome from 117 to 138 AD. Hadrian was both a Stoic and an Epicurean philosopher. He rejected Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire because he didn’t want one dogmatic vision of a transcendent God to supplant the many anthropomorphic Greaco-Roman gods. The most illuminating view of Hadrian in our modern era is Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian.
Haida-Gwaii: The archipelago off the northwest coast of British Columbia known to European cartography as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Its name means “Islands of the People,” and it is the homeland of the Haida Nation.
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher, one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe, one of the most important figures in philosophy after Aristotle. But in his hometown of Konigsberg, people remember Kant for his very strict and predictable life. His neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks: he got up at five a.m., and after a cup of tea and a pipe of tobacco worked till nine, when he went to lecture until one. He never married
Mostar is a beautiful old city in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The city’s symbol, the “Old Bridge” (Stari Most), was one of the most important structures of the Ottoman era, built by Mimar Hayrettin. During the last Bosnian War, even though the bridge was under the protection of UNESCO, Croatian forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina destroyed the monument. After the war, the bridge was reconstructed, but without the previous charm of Medieval art and its five-hundred-year-old patina.
John Forbes Nash is an American mathematician, receiver of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. After the movie A Beautiful Mind, where the actor Russell Crow presented Nash’s very complex, troubled scientific and mystical mind, Nash became well-known throughout the world. A schizophrenic, Nash invented mathematical statements which could perhaps not have been devised without his special, abnormal mind.
Narcissus: In Greek legend, young Ameinias loved Narcissus but was scorned. As a way of rebuffing Ameinias, Narcissus gave him a sword, which Ameinias used to kill himself on Narcissus’ doorstep; he prayed that Narcissus would one day known the pain of unrequited love. This curse was fulfilled when Narcissus became entranced by his own reflection in a pool and tried to seduce the beautiful boy, not realizing it was himself. He only realized that it was his reflection after trying to kiss it, and Narcissus took his own sword and killed himself. His body then turned into a flower.
Oryana: Pre-Incan legend asserts that a golden ship came from the stars; in it came a woman, whose name was Oryana. She had only four fingers on each hand. Great Mother Oryana gave birth to 70 Earth children, then she returned to the stars.
Pandora: According to Greek mythology, jealous of Prometheus’s exceptional work regarding the creation of human beings, Zeus, the chief Olympic god, created a woman named Pandora. She was as foolish as she was alluring. Zeus sent her to Earth carrying a pot (Pandora’s box) that she was ordered never to open. The men, enchanted by her charm, welcomed her among them. But soon, stupidly, she opened the secret vessel, as Zeus knew she would, and out of it flew the miseries that afflict humanity to this day – war, famine, sickness, evil and sin. Only hope, ever deceptive, remained in the pot, a slight comfort.
Bill Reid was a Canadian jeweler, sculptor and artist. He took from his European-descent father a very developed sense for exploring, and from his Haida mother, exceptional artistic vision. In ill health, suffering from almost complete paralysis, he drew “The Hunchback of Haida-Gwaii” on the flyleaf of little girl Blanca Bach’s book The Hunchback of Notre Dame de Paris. Bill did this in front of his sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii at the Vancouver Airport three months before he died.
Revisionism: A deviation from revolutionary Marxian socialism, an evolutionary rather then revolutionary spirit. In the Communist world, the most notorious instance was Tito’s Yugoslavian revisionism. This was a deviation from Marx and Lenin’s principles of society governed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in practice meant the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Instead, Tito’s Yugoslavia practised the principle of self-governed socialism: the power of workers exercised in a direct self-governing form of democracy with the purpose of achieving material well-being.
Theutus According to Renaissance magician Cornelius Agrippa, Theutus was a demon who taught mankind “all the wicked arts and sciences of warfare, black magic and adornment”.
Marshal Tito was baptized Josip Broz. In the year 1941, early in World War II, when the Nazi’s and Fascists were taking Europe and Africa part by part, Tito stepped before the Yugoslavian nations and sent a message to the Hitler/Mussolini Axis: “Better war then a pact! Better the grave than becoming a slave!”. As President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, he sent a similar message to Stalin in 1947, and inaugurated the Yugoslav revision of communist ideology. This was the man who created the Movement of Nonaligned Nations together with the Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. His funeral was the most magnificent of the post-war period. He inspired both Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama. Josip Broz acquired the name Tito in primary school, when he would assist the teacher and give direction to his fellow students: “Ti to, ti to …” (“Do that, do that …”).
Stefan Zweig was a famous Austrian writer, journalist and biographer. Much before today’s European Union, he advocated the unification of Europe. He lived in two extreme periods of civilization. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared, and in Europe there started to blossom cosmopolitan multiculturalism and tolerance. Jews, Catholics, Serbs, Prussians, Muslims, Gypsies and numerous other peoples mingled and lived in something close to harmony. But nothing good ever lasts, it seems. The Austro-Hungarian Empire splintered and then vanished into the National Socialist hell of Hitler and Mussolini’s expanding ambitions. Zweig, one of the most popular writers in the world at that time, together with his wife, committed suicide somewhere in South America’s wide spaces.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rifet Bahtijaragic originated in the Balkan Peninsula. Here cultures of East and West mixed, and here also the sectarian politics of power and predominance bred confrontation and ignited destructive wars at least twice during one human’s life. Running from that destructive Balkan syndrome, Bahtijaragic has spent the course of his life searching for paths throughout narrow nationalistic and intolerant religious societies close to home and far away and tried to grow into an Earthling with the sensibility of cosmic belonging. In the last war of bloodthirsty nationalisms in Bosnia, he could very easily have been murdered because of his pacifist orientation.
He was born on 7 January 1946 in the small mountain town of Bosanski Petrovac, close to the Croatian border. He finished his university studies fourteen years before the Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games, and during those years worked in two separate fields: as a specialist in economic development for state banks and companies, to make his daily bread; and as a writer of journalism, poetry, stories, essays and novels, to earn sustenance for his soul.
In the time of peace and happiness during Tito’s Yugoslavia, Bahtijaragic did not succumb to the challenging temptations of the international metropolis. (He served as governor of Centrom Privredne banke Sarajevo , the Bosnian state bank service for Francophone countries, headquartered in Paris.) He could have stayed in this role while remaining out of Yugoslavia, but, during the last Balkan Wars, at the end of the second millennium, he emigrated with his family from Bosnia to Germany, and then in 1994 to Vancouver, in Canada. He is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada and The British Columbia Federation of Writers.
Rifet never served in any army in his life.
Cover Artist: Bill Hoopes is a Canadian artist. He paints primarily in oils, with some watercolour work. Hoopes uses his art to carry a social message – that we examine our role as users and guardians of this planet in order to accept our responsibility for maintaining and preserving our environment. He lives on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, with his family.
(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Footprints Page 14