Why Sarajevo Notebook?

__Vojka Smiljanic-Dikic and Velimir Visković__
One morning we woke up and we no longer have domovinu.Slutili we will be true, but there is always hope for a man to be the worst will not happen. When it happened when he started the war and chaos, we were petrified. It was a strange feeling, can you imagine waking up one morning and there is no longer France, Italy, England. It was hard to believe that Yugoslavia no longer exists.

Our generation grew up with this homeland and we knew each other. We traveled from one end to another with a feeling of security. We have always preferred Bled, Ohrid and Dubrovnik, but our dark big cities full of snow, rain and noise. Suddenly the boundaries on his way to Dubrovnik and on her stern policeman who we looked carefully; visa to enter Slovenia beloved. And when it passed the shock, when the reality became all too apparent as other consolation Arabic proverb that is repeated like a prayer: "Lord, give me strength to change what I can change, to accept what can not change and to understand the difference!" .

This group of people around the Sarajevo volumes as soon as the war ended bravely began a dialogue, restoration of old ties and build new ones. Before the war most of us knew. We were friends, colleagues, was among us intelektulnih love, and perhaps those of true, it is helpful to easily find a common language for how to accomplish this project without the love. After the war we began to telephone each other to write letters. Maybe at the beginning to see that you are alive, and then we listened carefully whether we are ready to begin talks what happened in these past ten years in the literature of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Kosovo.

Ties were broken dramatically in the war, but after the war. At the beginning we believed that we should organize some sort of round table and simply talk about the situation in the region. As Borhes says in his poem The dialogue:''On the bank of the Euphrates two men sit and talk, do not try to convince one another in in anything, just sit and talk and it was the capital fact of our history.''

Unbelievable experience behind us. All telephone calls, all correspondence, whether the results. They all wanted to see, to start something together and slowly crystallized the idea that a magazine was the best solution.

With the help of France and the Swedish Embassy in Sarajevo and their ambassadors (Bernard Bazo and HE Mr. Nils Eliasson), Soros's Open Society Institute and the Cultural Centre Andre Malraux, we organized the first meeting - as we then called - a virtual newsroom, which was attended by all ambassadors European countries accredited in Sarajevo in year 2000. year. We presented the idea and almost all European ambassadors have supported us and we get a quest to realize the project.

These are the names of people who gathered around this idea: Milica Nikolić, Drinka Gojkovic, Mihajlo Pantic, Jovica Acin, Gojko Tešić, Zoran Hamović, Ljubica Arsic, Mike Šuvaković, Tihomir Brajović (Serbia), Boris A. Novak, Ales Debeljak Mitja Cander (Slovenia), Ljiljana Dirjan, Elizabeth Šeleva (Macedonia), Basra Capriqi (Pristina), Zdravko Grebo, Niko Kovac, Zoran Mutic, Mark Vešović, Enver Kazaz, Dzevad Karahasan, Senad Musabegović (United Kingdom), S. Schneider, Banac, Miljenko Jergović, Julian Matanović, Sibila Petlevski, Dasha Drndić (Croatia) and the signatories of this text (Vojka Đikić-Smiljanic and Velimir Viskovic).

We are called to a meeting of ambassadors of European Union embassy in Sweden, which at that time chaired the European Union. It is unusual for such meetings to present someone who is outside the European Union, but has given us an opportunity to fifteen minutes in defining the idea. We think that this meeting was very important that the European ambassadors understand the serious need to do something together to show to others, and ourselves, that cooperation is not only possible but also necessary.

Many in the region were skeptical about this idea and did not believe that we will succeed. Part of the media we have not been friendly at first. But we were so many personalities from the former Yugoslavia and the countries of the world have given strong support.

When we first came to present the number of Ljubljana, all four Scandinavian ambassadors have traveled with us in Ljubljana and spoke on the promotion. It was an incredibly wonderful journey and effort from many people gathered around a noble idea. They traveled with us and promotions in Banja Luka, Mostar and Belgrade. As if they wanted to say: "No matter what our governments are hugely involved in the funding of your magazine, and his presence we want to give you support."

The first issue of the Sarajevo volume was presented in Sarajevo on 29 September 2002 in the framework of third literary gatherings organized by the Cultural Centre Andre Malraux. It took us almost two years to prepare and publish the first issue.

And then they started the numbers one after another as if they broke some invisible barrier. The rules are the numbers with ease, was a response by izvaredan and there is no instance that we spoke to a writer, and that we were refused on the contrary, there are examples of other types, that some writers appeared, because they seemed to have bypassed and send your text.
Among the issues that were dedicated to women's writing, a letter to the Air, the national literary canon, may be particularly emphasized five issues devoted to Roman Drama, Pripovetci, poetry, criticism and film. So we get a kind of encyclopedia of creation in the region over the past fifteen years.