Miruna Vlada is a young Romanian poet and cultural facilitator born in Bucharest in 1986. Besides Bucharest, she lived and studied in Graz, Berlin, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Prishtina. She published her first book when she was 18 – “Poemextrauterine / Ectopic Poems” (2004). The book received a series of national book prizes for debut in poetry and provoked a public debate about “feminine” writing. Her second book “Pauza dintre vene / Break Between Veins” was published in 2007, together with an audio book. She was included in several anthologies of the most important young Romanian poets and she was awarded by the Bucharest Writers’ Association. In 2014 she published „Bosnia.Partaj” („Bosnia.Separation”) considered by the Romanian literary critics a „revival of Romanian political poetry”. The book was nominated for the best poetry book of the year by various literary magazines in Romania and it won the Best Poetry Book of the year Prize offered by the Radio Romania Cultural, the national broadcasting radio company. Selections of her poems have been translated into English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish. She is now working on her first novel.
Amira
‘I have never let my hair
grow since
I used to have the longest hair in the neighbourhood
my mom locked herself in the basement
and started to scream
after she saw me
I heard them speak in the kitchen
‘her hair uses much water
all our water for a week
she must wash it
but we won’t have anything to eat
what do we do?’
our neighbour had a big tailor’s scissors
she didn’t even bat an eye when I told her
that my mom had sent me
I was 16. it was a game.
I wanted to look like a boy
I wanted to save my family
I learnt to give up quickly
what I valued the most
that’s how I survived, together with my entire family
her hands shook a little
she was saying a prayer while cutting
when I took the bunch of black hair
in my hand (it must have weighed 2 kilos)
I felt it a bit wet and dirty
our neighbour started crying
and cursing Karadzić
I can still hear her
Oh, Iosip Broz, whom have you left us to?
you know, older women are more hysterical
every loss is irremediable to them
even cut hair hurts them
they feel losses deep down, to their guts
as if nothing can ever grow back
although hair always does
her and my mom would both drive me crazy
I couldn’t figure them out
there was death all around
and they were mourning my hair
my brothers wouldn’t have had anything to eat
it was normal for me to cut my hair
to save water
as each family was entitled to 5 buckets of water
a week
my hair
would use at least 2
it was Mathematics, not tragedy
either I didn’t wash it and get lice
or I washed it and left the family starving for 2-3 days
well,
in our case, Mathematics is tragedy
how could it be possible to have something natural here left?
I wish it wouldn’t grow anymore
so I wouldn’t have to cut it all the time
I kept it in a box
I took it with me everywhere
it’s like having the luggage ready at all times
I’m scared to open it and look it in the eye, though
to me, it stinks
when he sees the box,
my husband tells me
‘it’s a pile of hair, unused
let’s do something good with it
let’s sell it to a wig store’
he has heard some of our family’s stories
that I had the greatest hair in the neighbourhood
it had reached mythological sizes in their stories
it was huge
possibly the longest black hair in the world
now, there’s no longer mythology
it’s nostalgia
cold as ice
no, no
I don’t want to give it away
I let it grow there, in the box
I keep it here
and know that maybe a head
going bald because of cytostatics
would need it
but I can’t bring myself to give it away
it smells bad
that hair is my soldier dead for freedom
I won’t give it away
I don’t want to give it away, is it so hard to understand?
go fuck yourselves with all your bald heads
I won’t give it away
I don’t care about your cancer
and your wigs
I’m healthy
and I survived the longest siege in modern military history
I sometimes go down to the basement to get my mom
and find her in the dark, stunt
banging her head loosely against the wall
I’ll keep it, mom, don’t worry
I gathered it all
And I’ll take it into the house
I won’t lose a hair
We’ll have soup all week’
Hatidza
‘in ’96,
I used to work at a local radio station
I used to love it
because I would remain by myself at times
in the sound room
and play with the buttons
I would turn the bass on and off
then on again
a bass that’s on
makes your ears buzz
and the loudspeaker vibrates smoothly
and you feel it in your chest
it was a reflex, I guess
to play with the buttons and feel in control of the bass
control and no remorse
looks like the war has taught me something, in the end’
Jacqueline
‘one never gets bored here
well, all that drama
is indeed food for tears
or for scoff
and we, foreigners, are refugees
we came here
when they were heading West
they were leaving after the war as asylum-seekers
we were coming here to be hospitalised
like in a recovery centre
we have consumed lives
and we’re here for rehabilitation
they are looking for the Las Vegas we’ve left behind
and our skyscrapers
they are enjoying everything that run us down
look at us now
we are some refugees from the great capitals
here in Bosnia
we barely speak the language
and we keep on wondering of the life
that’s still poignant despite this debris
we are the filthy-rich brats of Europe
and we came to retrieve our inner peace in Sarajevo
when they were gathering the rubble
we wish to train our compassion
and taste the bitterness and rebecome human
it’s like we reached the party at its 5:00am-ish end
they are all leaving this country as if programmed to
but we come because we smell live flesh
and we ransack their abandoned lives
the hills of ants running in all the directions
they want to taste our hamburgers,
grow fat and watch MTV,
lead advertisement-like lives
they abandon themselves to us
and we abandon ourselves to their remains
we accommodate ourselves in the powder keg
«bosnia is our rehab»’
Masha
‘there’s something porno about this whole issue. It’s like a deal with tears and blood.
I find it horrible to talk about it, really
what to say?
that everything has fallen apart?
but yes, you’re right,
this helps Angelina Jolie come to Bosnia
to raise money against our tears
and to have a shoot, black veil on her head.
she does look nice, doesn’t she?
we are the new eccentric tattoo on her shoulder blade
Oh, dear Lara Croft, mother of my bereaved nation
adopt me
give me some kilos of cat food from the aids
and display all of my clichés on screen
show all the blackheads on my nose to the world
act brave with my cowardice
act porno with my pain
help me
they refuse to get it – Bosnia
was only hip in the 90’s!
ah, but wait-
they are obsessed by everything that’s vintage,
by the age-old hatred between peoples
the clash of civilisations for all
these consumers of highly-processed genocides,
are the last ones to still share interest in our dramas
and to still tuck us under their guiding wings
they come here to gain wealth against our tears
on the land of blood and honey1
it’s pathetic, don’t you agree?
they come here as if it were a second-hand shop
with nationalist 19th-century movements
they find this KinoBosna cool 2
we don’t.’
- The Land of Blood and Honey, film directed by Angelina Jolie in 2012, based on the Bosnian War.
- The name of a cinema in Sarajevo, during ex-Yugoslavia, that has now been transformed into a bar and a show theatre.