Amer

February 2021

Sarajevo International Airport

This is the fifth piece in a multi-part series on Sarajevo, in which I hope to capture and convey the various emotions I felt on my first journey there in 2019. 

There are two ways to get from Sarajevo Airport to the town center using public transport. There is the old 103 trolleybus, which departs from the nearby neighborhood of Dobrinja (built as the Olympic Village for the 1984 Winter Games), a roughly fifteen-minute walk away. Alternatively, there is the modern Sarajevo Airport Bus, run by a private company, which will take you from the terminal building to the Baščaršija (Sarjavevo’s old bazaar). This bus theoretically runs on a posted timetable, but in reality it’s often late, and sometimes does not show up at all.

I had been waiting for the Airport Bus for nearly forty-five minutes when a young man walked up to me and asked if I wanted a ride into town.

Rule #1 for travelers abroad: don’t solicit rides from random strangers outside the airport. In no mood to get robbed or kidnapped, I waved the guy off, saying no thanks, I’ll take the bus.

“You sure? I’m going that way anyways,” he said in a tired voice, “I can drop you off in the middle of town. He flashed a badge at me, “Look, I work here at the airport.”

And somehow, despite everything I’d ever been told about getting into cars with random strangers, my gut was strangely...calm. There were no internal alarm bells ringing (no small feat for someone who is nearly always on edge). The dude looked like a normal person in his mid-twenties, and somehow felt too...dispassionate...to be a scammer.

Naive as it sounds, I tested him with the oldest trick in the book, asking “you’re not going to rob me, are you?”

He let out a mirthless laugh. “No, man, I’m not going to rob you. I’ve just had a rough day at work and thought I’d help someone out, that’s why I’m asking. Come if you want - you might be waiting hours for this damn bus.”

I really shouldn’t be doing this, I thought, but….fuck it.

“Ok sure, why not?”

We walked across the highway to his car. On the way, he introduced himself; his name was Amer, and he was a local who had lived here all his life.

“Where are you from, man?”

“California.”

“What?” he exclaimed, “I would have sworn you were from Dubai or something, with your beard and all. You know, we get lots of people here from Dubai. They’ve built a lot of the new buildings in town.”

As we drove into the city, we chatted about the outdoors (he was an enthusiast). He told me that next month he was heading to Banja Luka (the capital of the Republika Srpska, one of the two semi-autonomous regions that makes up the nation of Bosnia) to go skydiving with a few friends. We talked about our shared love of rock climbing; we indulged in a moment of awe at the exploits of Alex Honnold (Free Solo had just been released a few months before).

“To be honest, man, I was pretty high when I watched that movie,” he admitted, “My legs didn’t stop shaking until a few hours after I had finished!”

We talked of Bosnia and of Sarajevo. He pointed out some things to see in town, and told me not to worry too much about crime – that Sarajevo was a really safe town. That took me aback, seeing as the country was one of Europe’s poorest and only twenty years removed from a bloody civil war.

“Why is Bosnia so safe?” I asked quizzically.

“Because we’ve been through war, man. All we want in the world is water and food and peace. Nobody here cares enough to fuck with you.”

As it turned out, my hostel was just up the street from his house. He pulled the car over, gave me his number, and told me to text him if I needed any help or recommendations while I was in town. I thanked him profusely, and after trying several times to pay him for his trouble, grasped Amer’s hand to say goodbye.

“Welcome to Bosnia,” he said as we parted ways. He waited to make sure I got into my hostel OK before starting the engine and driving away with a wave.

The incredible kindness Amer exhibited was parallelled everywhere I went in Bosnia, the direct unassuming generosity you’ll find in poor countries the world round. There’s something about shared trauma and suffering that lowers the walls we humans like to build around our hearts.

As Amer said, the vast majority of people want nothing more than “water and food and peace”. It’s important to remind ourselves of that, in a world that seems inundated by rancor and suspicion. I realize that this sounds like the epitome of cliché, but I think most of us need a tangible reminder of this, that the world is more than the virtual bubbles we spend our days immersed in.

That car ride with Amer was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, one of those small moments that remind you why it’s worth exploring the world. I probably shouldn’t have gotten into a random dude’s car in a foreign country. I probably never will again.

But I did on that rainy June evening in Sarajevo. And I consider myself so incredibly fortunate to have done so.