Epistemophilia: the Ferhadja Mosque and speaking of Serbs

I listened to a How We Got Here the other day (which is timely as I just started reading a mystery set in Bosnia during the war called The Monkey House) and Jeb told the story of the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja (pronounced "bahn-ya") Luka, currently the capital of Serb-run Bosnia. I still can't keep all this Balkan shit straight. I don't think anyone can. I don't think the Bosnians and the Serbs and the ....whatever you get the idea.

The mosque was blown up during the Bosnian War in 1993. It was built in the 1570s so it's really a shame, nevermind the other implications. Apparently, it was one of 16 destroyed in the city in this time period. It was a great example of Ottoman architecture. They Photoshopped the mosque out of pictures of Banja Luka. They took the pieces of the mosque and hid them. They threw pieces of the minaret in the local reservoir and other pieces in the dump. Amazingly, they are retrieving these pieces and rebuilding the mosque. Also amazing is that the climate to do so even exists. Just 7 years ago they tried to have a corner-laying ceremony and locals burned their buses, mounted a pig's head on the building (goddamnit, I hate people's shittiness but when they are cruel to animals just to be shitty to each other it's a whole 'nother level of fucked up) and stoned the people who turned up. One old man died from his injuries. The pictures at The World's website are just amazing. Random slabs of rock. I can't imagine how that professor of architecture will turn them back into a semblance of what was.

Meanwhile, on The World in Words they also have a story about the Balkans. Montenegro insists on calling its language Montenegrin, even though its essentially Serbian to many peoples way of thinking (like calling it "American" here in America.) It became an official language in 2007 but they are still working out the curriculum. I wonder why Montenegro is so interested in dissociating itself with Serbia? Obviously I need to do more reading about it but Montenegro did side with Serbia during the various Balkan conflicts (or at least the Bosnian and Croatian wars.) 


So, I haven't gotten too far in The Monkey House yet but I did notice a policemen referring to a murder victim as a lousy "cetnik." He thought it was funny she died in her bathtub. The book takes place in Sarajevo during the War. Not sure of the exact time. Anyways, I looked up cetnik and it's slang for Serb. It appears to be derogatory but Serbs (at Urban Dictionary anyways) call themselves that too. In fact, the Serb entry for the term is kind of loopy and scary.

Unrelated but I listened to an interview with Jonah Lehrer, the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, which is a book about the interconnectedness between science and the humanities. He said Proust's character in Swann's Way describes the memories that are triggered in detail by eating Madeleines. He said actually this is scientifically correct because taste and memory have a direct line to the hippocampus where long-term memory is stored. He also talked about how Virginia Woolf strove to get the psychology of her characters right and how the reactions to Stravinsky's "The Rites of Spring" changed over time (it caused riots when it first was performed) illustrate the plasticity of the human brain. Most amazing though is Lehrer actually made me want to read Proust.