A news story out of Bosnia is being told around the world this week. I've found it on ABC news and the AP and all over the Internet. I'm not surprised at the legs of this story. Heart-warming tales that give hope of ethnic healing are so rare here.
Since the war a dozen years ago, this is not so much a country as three ethnic groups bound only by some weak joint institutions like a three-person presidency.
Well this week, the Croat member of the presidency, Zeljko Komsic, was riding in a motorcade in central Bosnia, coming back from a visit to Croatia, when they noticed a car trying to speed along the same road. It turned out to be a Muslim man rushing his wife who was in labor to a hospital in the bigger town of Zenica. It seems she was his second wife; the first having died of complications from child birth five years ago. Komsic had the police clear traffic, got them to the hospital and even helped carry the woman inside.
The couple had a healthy baby boy. The father reported that instead of the traditional Muslim name Mustafa they had planned, their son is now Zeljko,
Nice story. As we hope, as someone half-joked, that the followup will not be a tale in six years about the torment and bullying of a Bosniak kid with a Croat name.
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