Luggage

Our language, our souls' only treasure,
We stuffed in the suitcase
Next to the family album,
And off we went to tilt it at the windmills
Beating the chilly Dutch air.

(Ferida Duraković)

Nightmare

What are you doing, son?
I am dreaming, mother. I am dreaming, mother, about how I sing,
and about how you ask me, in my dream: what are you doing, son?
What, in your dream, are you singing about, son?
I’m singing, mother, about how I had a house.
But now I haven’t got a house. This is what I’m singing about, mother.
About how, mother, I had a voice, and my own language I had.
But now I haven’t got a voice, also a language I haven’t got.
In a voice I haven’t got, in a language I haven’t got,
in a house I haven’t got, I sing a song, mother.

Mustafa Nadarevic reciting Nightmare, a poem by Sidran Abdullah, a Bosnian writer and poet. The scene is taken from Perfect Circle, a Bosnian film directed by Ademir Kenovic (1997).
Sidran Abdulah wrote distinguished screenplays for some of the best Yugoslav films from the 1980s: When Father Was Away On Business (directed by Kusturica), Do you remember Dolly Bell? (directed by Kusturica) and Kuduz (directed by Ademir Kenovic).