Sarajevo: Survival Guide

How to survive, but also how to die in the city? This is the first guide-book of death in the recent history, the guide-book which puts an end to our lighthearted wanderings across the globe. It should definitely change our geographic perspective and our travel morality. We, at the end of the century, and possibly of the history itself, must gain different insight which began with Nietzsche and is continued today with Sloterdijk: the project Mankind is a dubious one and, one could say, a failure. This guide-book will certainly deepen our sadness, but it might also dampen the false optimism of the charitable games. There is no help. There are no rescue teams and no life preservers: the ambulances are prime targets and the red cross on a sleeve is a suicidal invitation to those who are going to shoot. This is why we have to stay where we are. Sarajevo, its inner city, cannot be brought out - it would be a futile and nonsensical effort. What remains of its hidden sense is breaking apart in the glare of the world; nothing can be described but the description itself. Therefore, let us not describe the city, not even its dignified, perfidious death. Instead I wish to appeal to modesty, indespensable to good intentions of any moral and intellectual tourism. Some of our actions mark us as the witnesses to and the interpreters of the moral degradation of a moment in mankind history., instead of making us the indicators of the troubles which beset the spirit of a single individual.