Chapter Two
A Bosnian Village
This chapter dealt with the village and village life in an attempt to understand the
Bosnian Muslim identity.
The Village
The village in question is Dolina, which is two hours north of Sarajevo. Dolina
was a thriving village in the 80’s and many young people didn’t leave it for the cities.
The village is split into the older section on the higher ground and the newer
section in the valley. The valley is full of flat fields, a river with a road beside it, and
mountains in the distance. The new houses were larger and further apart, with more
shops, schools, and offices, and so on nearby. The older part of the village is hemmed in
by hills and the buildings are much closer together, though they are separated into distinct
hamlets.
The hamlets were based on religion and until WWII were considered separate
villages. The Catholics were located around the church and had rectangular. The Muslims
were centered on the mosque and their houses were square. In the new sections that
joined these original hamlets, it is harder to tell the difference, since the Muslims and
Catholics are sometimes side-by-side and their houses are built in new, more modern,
styles. The house was an important aspect in defining the household. The Muslim
households in the old section were based on extended families and restricted to Muslim
area. Families shared some houses, but the younger couple often moved out when they
could afford to.
By the time this book was written the village was not so divided by religion or
ethnicity. Instead a Muslim living beside a Catholic was not rare, though the Muslims
were the majority of the population, about two-thirds of the 690 inhabitants of Dolina in
1981. By 1993 there were no Muslims still living in the village, as the Croats had killed
them, chased them off, or held them in prisons.
Economically, the village had shifted from the old section to the new section as
the new part became more urbanized and they moved away from land being the main
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factor for deciding wealth. Socially, the same change took place and it was caused by the
shift in were the wealth of the village was located.
Changes in Household Structure
Changes to due wage labor and modern education affected the household
structure. Most of these changes affected the women.
There are eight different terms in Serbo-Croat that translates into different forms
of the household. For example, a Kuca is a house and the people eat from the same pot in
it. The reason for clarifying the same pot is because if another family, a son and his wife,
live in the house and eat from a different pot then they are a Kuca as well, which turns the
whole thing into a Zadruga, a shared household. There are more, but it’s very confusing.
The Decline of the Joint Family Household
In the past the youngest sons would continue living with their father’s family, but
by the 80’s, even this was no longer common. The joint households were dependant on
quality and size of the land the family had, and since Bosnia is very mountainous the
never got very big.
When more than one family shared a house, each family got one room, usually the
top or bottom floor. What makes each family separate is that each has its own finances
and each eats separately, otherwise they are one household. In this case, when visitors
came, they would visit each floor separately or not even visit one family.
Many of the problems that occurred due to these joint households were between
the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, since they were both trying to organize the same
property. For example, a mother and her daughter-in-law shared the chores for a cow, but
when the cow was sold and a new one bought, the daughter-in-law refused to do any of
the chores associated with it, since all of the money from the old cow went to the mother.
Of twenty households only seven had a couple and their children and a daughterin-law. Almost every villager over thirty had lived in a shared household, but it was
remembered as a time of hardships and poverty, which is why the younger people wanted
to move out of the shared household. It was a sign of better things and a bright future to
have a modern house.
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The older couple enjoyed having the younger couples live with them, since then
they had power over the labor and economics of the younger couple. Independence from
the older couple to control their own lives was the goal of the younger couple.
Breaking Out of the Communal Household
It was the young daughter-in-law who pushed to move out of the joint household,
and the conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law created much of the village
drama. Men tried to avoid these conflicts, unless the mother-in-law was a known
troublemaker.
Sometimes the daughter-in-law would run away, back to her family, but they
often returned, especially if they had children. But they would return to their husbands as
well, or the husband would come and ask her to return, or her family could send her back,
since it was shameful for them to have her there.
When daughters-in-law became mothers themselves they thought they had more
rights and were willing to stick up for themselves, which is when most of the problems
started, especially if she had a son. Also the labor changes that brought more wages
home, allowed the sons to gain economic freedom from their fathers, thereby giving the
younger couple the means to move out and build their own house.
Women, Men, and Economic Life
Most households only had enough land to grow a garden, but some shared land
and livestock, making agriculture a bit more productive. However, most money came
from industries in nearby market towns (Kiseljak, in this case), such as welders,
carpenters, electricians, etc. In this Muslims and Catholics worked side-by-side as well.
In Yugoslavia there were no communal farms, but there was a limit on how much
land someone could own privately. Since many of the men had jobs (some worked in a
brick factory, others made pottery), the women did the little farming. Only a few young,
unmarried women, or married women with no children, had jobs outside the household.
In general they tended the garden, knitted, picked berries, and so on, only using their
husbands for the physically demanding jobs like ploughing or clearing fields. Few people
owned tractors or horses and they used them to help each other and those without either.
Owning a cow was a status symbol and a great source of extra income, for the
surplus products could be sold. The people of Yugoslavia weren’t obligated to sell any
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amount of produce to the state, leaving lots of leftovers to be used however the families
wished.
Social and Moral Geography of the Village
Because Dolina is made up of scattered hamlets, people refer to the hamlet they
are from as their home when in Dolina. These hamlets, religious quarters, and
neighborhoods all divided Dolina in to social and geographical sections.
The different religious groups would mingle, but only with their close neighbors,
but not even with the close neighbors of their other (same-religion) friends. On the streets
of Dolina the Catholics and Muslims would be civil and polite, but they wouldn’t be
overly friendly, which includes not using religious or ethnic greetings used only by
members of the same religion or ethnicity. Later, in the war, to turn the Muslims into
outsiders, the Croats used these ethnically exclusive sayings.
The older village was seen as poorer, but was more ethnically mixed. The newer
village was seen as modern, but not as the true village, since the morals of the valley
villagers were questionable. The two villages also represented the differences between
rural and urban, between culture and uncultured.
Cultured came from being educated, but also from how one spoke and behaved,
which made the older part of Dolina, the traditional part, uncultured. Culture also came
from youth and moving into a modern house in the valley. Also what you did and where
you did it mattered, for status was based very highly on social perceptions.
The Catholics where directed out of the village to their church outside of town,
while the Muslims were directed inward to their mosque and the center of the town.
Which was also the case of greater spiritual leaders, for the Catholics looked to Rome and
the Muslims only looked to Sarajevo. The Muslims were attached more to the village,
which was already shown to be backward and uncultured, at least in the eyes of the
Catholics. Also the Catholics viewed Muslim words of Turkish origin as old-fashioned,
another sigh of their difference.
A major difference between the Catholics and the Muslims is the way they dress.
The Muslims dressed in traditional Dimije (baggy pants) and a headscarf in the village,
while only the older Catholics do, and even then they are of different colors, black for the
Catholics and colored patterned ones for the Muslims. The younger Muslim women
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would dress in Western fashions when they left the village, since it was better to look
good outside the village. For the men the only identifying item of clothing was their darkblue or black beret, which only the Muslim men wore. The beret and dimije both became
symbols for the Muslims to identify themselves with.
A Village of Two Communities
As neighbors, Catholics and Muslims got along great, giving them shared
experiences to bond over, while also pointing out the differences between them. They
identified themselves as Muslims or Catholics, Villagers and not City Folk.
One of the social activities that were shared by the Muslims and the Catholics, but
also emphasized the differences between the two groups, was coffee drinking. Even when
differences were plain or pointed out, such as using one teaspoon or individual teaspoons,
they still found other events, such as common experiences as women, to bring them
together.
Visits could be to households, individuals, or members of a household unit. Visits
were important social occasions and the household tried very hard to make the visit
special, creating an obligation among the visitors to repay the kindness when the
household goes visiting. Voluntary work between neighbors was another social exchange.
People preferred to do voluntary work for a friend than do communal work for the state,
since by volunteering they put their neighbor in their debt, and there was the promise of
food and drink when the work was done. The most common form of voluntary service
was for house-building projects. These house-building projects were one of the few
things that Muslims and Catholics did together as a community. These projects also
involve gift giving to the sponsoring household (the one whose house is being built), to
say “thanks” for the party.
The Village and the Yugoslav Communist State
The state ran the village council by having its members elected equally from the
different ethnicities. This village council approved all building projects, but had no real
authority beyond municipal decisions and organizing communal work. This gave only the
police any legal authority. These members of the village council had to be members of
the communist party and not members of any other group like the mosque council or
church parish.
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The educational system was a way for the state to create a Yugoslav identity. At
school the children met children of other ethnicities and religions and all learned the same
information, thought it was often biased to teach only Yugoslav history. Muslim children
also went to their religious schools. The state schools were biased against Muslims, so
that much of what the Muslims learned came from their religious schools.
Contrasting Identities
Most of the perceived differences between the Catholics and Muslims were used
to define the other group as “not us”. The differences were such that the Catholics could
identify by saying we do that and therefore could identify the Muslims by saying they do
not do that.
Because of this view of “us” and “them”, interracial marriages were highly
frowned upon. Both the Muslims and the Catholics respected each other and each other’s
customs, but marrying someone not of your own religion was unthinkable. Also since this
area was mostly Catholic and Muslims, they didn’t have experience dealing with
Orthodox Serbs, making the Serb a third other, different because they weren’t Catholic or
Muslim.
Religious traditions could also be practiced as a form of separating the two
groups, for they are a large part of ones identity. Therefore they viewed the war as an
attack on their culture, since mosques, graves, houses, anything Muslim was destroyed.
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