from: www.bihcityreview.com
Once upon a time in an unknown valley, through which the river traveled, embraced by beautiful intrepid green forests, and vividly kissed by the morning sun so much that the valley burned from that kiss, once upon a time there lived the Slavic knight Gorazd…
And so the days and years passed, the forests, the river and the sun stayed and from the hero Gorazd a town remained that someone called Gorazde.
Whether it is for the surrounding mountains or it is for the verb meaning to burn, or it is for the knight Gorazd, nobody knows it today. In the beautiful valley of the Drina River there lives a town that resists the times and the people, too. Surrounded by green mountains, waken up by the sun and the caravans that travel by sea with silver in Srebrenica, or messengers who go to visit Kosaca. The time passes, the people, the wars, the stories …but just the city and the memories remain.
Gorazde is a town where the writer Isak Samokovlija spent a part of his life. Isaac loved Gorazde and Drina. Even when he left, he often returned in his thoughts to the town and the river of his childhood. He returned to the fearless and cold beauty of Drina, to the green mountains, to the sandy embankments near the Drina River. He returned to the people of Gorazde. When Isac's colleague, the writer Abdulah Sidran, heard of the serenity which this town and its river gave, he went to Gorazde, fell in love with the River Drina and stayed there.
Sometimes it was the city where the industry flourished, in which the youth found their future in the factories called "Pobjeda" (Victory) and "Azotara „. A town in which the late bohemian Rade Jovanovic would meet the dawn in the bars and wrote the verses on the margins of the spent paper the song of Drina:
„No one else has such a build
Nor there it is more beautiful mouth with such a caressing voice
From her song the nightingale shuts
From a bleak wish the heart to burst”
Rade wrote some verses about some beautiful Hanka. Isaac wrote a play about some beauty with the same name. It is not known whether this is the same Hanka but it is known why both of them originated. It is certainly for some woman of Gorazde! Today when I meet an older lady on one of the Gorazde’s bridges I recall Rade’s Hanka and the verses:
"The tumultuous years swept away the youth
Like the winds swept the leaf of the forests
In the eyes the joy doused
Wrinkles hid the wonderful face!"
But the women of Gorazde do not give themselves to the time. The youth doesn't give itself. They still teach children in schools, heal the sick in Isak's health care center, take care of the records in institutions, care for the town and the memory of Isaac and Rade, and after the working hours with a brisk pace cross the bridges and go home to take care that the lunch is on the table on time. At celebrations they dance to Isak's Hanka and sing Rade's songs.
These are the middle aged women of Gorazde. And the younger ones look as if they emerged from Isak's plays. In each of it his Hanka is hidden. They are beautiful and eager for life. They are hot blooded, each dreaming of her Sejdo. They learn, study, work, and love … The younger women of Gorazde. They learn from the older ladies how to be a successful
businesswoman, but also a mother and a wife … a housewife.
Thinking about the women of this city, my look wandered along the Drina, and stopped at "The Willow", where Abdulah Sidran has settled himself, and I wonder if another,or third, Hanka will incur with his pen… painted with the pen of the woman from this town!
Written by: Elma Hodzic
