Mostar Story: how Bosnian street art made a great lesson for kids in Hull

The Crow’s Nest, a column by Russ Litten

Current Affairs

It’s far too easy to let day to day living blind you to a place.

I’ve been guilty of wandering round my home city with my eyes trained purely on the floor and, as a consequence, often find myself at an embarrassing loss when quizzed upon local history by visiting friends and relations.

I know all the obvious stuff, but large chunks of fine detail are absent from my wider knowledge. I suppose it’s the same for anyone with regards to their immediate surroundings. Familiarity breeds not strictly contempt, but certainly a fair amount of ignorance.

This point was illustrated keenly to me on a trip to Belfast in June 2019 to work with some young writers. I was looking for an address in Queen Street, which I had been informed was in the city centre. Every person I asked had no idea where Queen Street was.

And these were not tourists - each of the replies I received in the negative were delivered in the broadest of Northern Irish brogues. Some of them had lived in Belfast all their lives. I got several life stories, but no firm directions.

This is, of course, not exclusive to the city of Belfast. I tend to direct lost tourists in Hull with vague hand gesticulations and references to obscure pubs. Street names and specifics have rarely served me well. Besides, getting lost in a strange city can be good fun, providing you have a little time and money on your hands.   

Like most of us, I don’t get out much these days. The limited travelling I manage is largely confined to the square three miles around my house. Thank heavens then, for Zoom and the power of creative writing.

Last week I went on a tour of Mostar, the fifth largest city in Bosnia, accompanied by a virtual classroom full of secondary school pupils. And I learned something new.

MOSTAR: ‘A backdrop of mountains, spires, and domes’

I was first invited to Mostar in real life in the October of 2019 by the writer Mirko Bozic as a guest of Festival Poligon. This international literature festival pulls in writers from all over the world. All I knew about Mostar is that it had suffered extensive damage in the Balkan conflict that took place between 1992 and 1995.

I remember young refugees being evacuated to Hull at this time. I used to get my hair cut by a Bosnian lad in town. The war was on the TV all the time. Like all wars, it was a horror show. I was intrigued to see how things had changed.

Mostar reminded me of Belfast, if Belfast were snuggled up against an old Ottoman Kingdom against a backdrop of mountains and spires and domes.

Catholic iconography sat alongside Islamic architecture. No finer example of this than the old bridge, the Stari Most, from which the city takes its name, and the conduit between the battered but indefatigable new town and the ornate old, where tourists cram against the railings to watch local divers plummet into the Neretva river below.

TAKING THE PLUNGE: A street diver gets ready to jump off the Stari Most

Like Belfast, there is street art everywhere, especially on the bombed and bullet-riddled buildings that dot every other street and avenue. I took scores of pictures. Most of the art is political, featuring aspects of the recent struggle.

Whilst flicking through them to refresh my memory ahead of the workshop, I came across a piece that puzzled me. A white haired fellow in a suit and tie and a face festooned with bulbous boils. The caption above him read “LET’S TALK ABOUT PCB”. I presumed this referred to some political faction, but a cursory Google search revealed nothing.

I emailed Mirko, usually the font of all Mostar knowledge, and quizzed him on the context. “I pass by that thing often, and I have no idea,” he replied. So there was nothing for it but to make something up.

INTRIGUE: Street art that baffled at least one resident of Mostar

With the aid of Zoom Share Screen, the lads in the writing class and I had a virtual wander through the streets of Mostar and beyond.

We took a plunge from the bridge into the river. We flung ourselves into a Whirling Dervish in a bejewelled riverside mosque. We marvelled at the statue of Bruce Lee in Zrinjski Park. And we looked at the street art, the boil-faced man in particular, and we gave ourselves the creative writing prompt - who, or what is PCB? And why should we talk about it?

The responses were wildly varied and invariably wild. PCB stood for everything from Pokemon Controlled Bots to Perfectly Crunchy Beatles, Pretty Cartoon Bones and various other lurid inventions. The stories were joyously wacky.

Then one lad posted up a tale about how the city was radiating dangerous chemicals due to the previous ravages of war. The building was literally making the street art character ill. It was painted all over his face.

Our young writer followed this up with a link to an article on a scientific research site. He hadn’t made it up. The story was actually true. Polychlorinated Biphenals are a type of man-made chemical. The soil, the air, the very infrastructure of the city was redolent with past suffering.

I messaged Mirko with this fresh info. “Interesting,” he replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised though, given our daily diet of bull****.” Mirko is a beautifully sardonic fellow, who, like all idealists sometimes decorates his despair at the world with flippancy. I like him very  much, he has a great spirit and he makes me laugh.

STRONG MESSAGE: Mostar street art

But all of this, ultimately, serves to establish two things - 1) My internet research skills are sorely lacking and, 2) Some stories are so ingrained you can live in a city all your life and never hear them being told. Even when you walk past them every day.

One day, when this pandemic is over, I would like to take a load of young writers over to Mostar and show them how art and culture can persevere through unimaginably testing times, and provide a living, breathing record of the things that mattered then and continue to matter now.

Mostar is a beautiful city and its people have a rare and precious spirit. The same can be said of Belfast, or Hull, or virtually anywhere else in the world. By introducing each other to our city’s stories we can help forge the international bonds of empathy that will be required if we’re going to steer this milky blue marble towards anything like a safer time and place.