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Christopher Merrill

Aug. 12, 2015, 3:43 p.m.

Christopher Merrill

Christopher Merrill writes, translates, wanders and animates cultural life in different corners of the world in the spirit of culture of dialog. The International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where he serves as a director, is bridging writers from different continents and supports them when their life or freedom of speech is threatened. He led the initiative that resulted in the selection of Iowa City as a UNESCO City of Literature, a part of the Creative Cites Network. Writing his books he was travelling to the borderland regions inflamed by wars and neighbor conflicts like former Yugoslavia, Malaysia, China, Burma, Afghanistan, Iran or Mount Athos. A witness of bridges’ destruction, he never limited his work to the description of ruins, always rising questions and searching for the wisdom of rebuilding and reconciliation. His poems are intimate journeys to the other bank, toward the Other.

Among his poetry books are: „Watch Fire” (1995), „Brilliant Water” (2001) and „Seven Poets, Four Days, One Book” (2009). His non-fiction writings include: „Only the Neils Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars” (2001), „Things of the Hidden God: Journeys to the Holy Mountain” (2004), “The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expediation, War” (2011).

In the book „The Old Bridge. The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee” he writes: Finally – who did it? The Muslims are accusing the Croats, the Croats are accusing the Muslims. But does it even matter? For four centuries people needed that bridge and admired its beauty. The question is not who shelled and demolished it. The question is not even why someone did it – destruction is part of human nature. The question is: What kind of people do not need that bridge. The only answer I can come up with is this: people who do not believe in the future – theirs or their children’s – do not need such a bridge. […]

There [in West Mostar in 1994] I met and spoke with two Croatian special policemen who only month before had been soldiers fighting in the Croatian Army. […] “Who blew up the Old Bridge?” I said. “The Muslims care more for the bridges than for people,” the first policeman sneered. “It was an old bridge, like an old person. It was time for it to die,” said the second policeman. “Who blew it up? We did, they did, but we finished it off,” he said proudly. […]

“The bridge,” declares Slavenka Drakulić, “in all its beauty and grace, was built to outlive us. It was an attempt to grasp eternity. Because it was a product of both individual creativity and collective experience, it transcended our individual destiny. A dead woman is one of us – but the bridge is all of us, forever.” […]

That night I lay in the dark, in my flat, thinking about the wobbly cableway that took the place of the Old Bridge. Walking across it earlier, I kept losing my balance, especially when the Bosnian boys dove from it into the river some twenty meters below – the tradition they ancestors had practiced for hundreds of years from the Old Bridge. I reach for the cables, embarrassed by my clumsiness and afraid of falling. I stood there for a while as old man and woman crossed without a flinch. It occurred to me that this is how connections are re-established between warring sides: with a makeshift bridge, which in turn will be replaced by a permanent structure. […]

I told him [EC military monitor] about a schoolteacher I knew from Vukovar, a young Croatian woman who was quarrelling with her aunts because they had traded Christmas cards with Serbian women living in refugee centers in Belgrade. The schoolteacher could not understand why the older women would reach out to their enemies. “Those Christmas cards are the best way to the future,” said the monitor. “Lasting peace will come only with small gestures.” Bridges are built with such gestures. Imagine the courage of the first ones to cross any bridge; in time whole generations will pass over it without firsthand knowledge of the terror preceding its construction. And humanitarians, to use a metaphor, are in the business of building bridges (in the same way that metaphor bridges disparate realms of experience). I took one step on the bridge. Another. I heard the shrieks of delight of children swimming and sunbathing below, and then just the wind.