February 27, 1996

Muslims Hope to Bring Serb Ghost Town Back to Life

By STEPHEN KINZER

OGOSCA, Bosnia-Herzgovina -- When the bus from Sarajevo pulled up here on Monday for the first time in four years, the first person to jump out was 18-year-old Edin Spanic, who was chased out of town in 1992 together with his family and all other local Muslims.

Asked how long the ride had taken, Spanic replied: "Four years and 20 minutes."

As recently as a few days ago, nearly everyone living in Vogosca was a Serb, but when the Serbs learned that their town was to come under the control of Bosnia's Muslim-dominated government, all but a few left. Over the weekend, Vogosca, where 17,000 people lived before the war, was a ghost town.

On Monday, it began to come back to life. Muslims seeking to reclaim their homes walked cautiously through the streets, barely believing that the moment of their return had finally come.

Spanic grinned broadly as he bounded from the bus. Accompanied by a friend, he began walking briskly up the road that leads to the home where he grew up.

Warm air and bright sunshine seemed to add to Spanic's enthusiasm. During the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, he lived with his grandmother in a one-room Sarajevo apartment. His mother died of illness and his grandfather was killed in a mortar attack while attending a funeral. These and the other tragedies of Spanic's short life, however, seemed almost gone from his mind as he neared the house at 28 Gornja Josanica Street.

On hys way up the hill, Spanic met several of his old neighbors, including an aunt, all of whom had come to Vogosca on missions like his. Too excited to stop and chat, he passed them with quick greetings. As he walked, he wondered aloud whether the unknown Serbian family that had lived in his house since 1992 had burned it, vandalized it, or left it intact.

"There it is," he finally said, stopping in front of a sturdy red-and-white chalet. "It looks good. The windows are gone, but it's not burned."

After a moment's pause, he said to no one in particular, "This place is my whole life. This is my sunshine. Four years, it's a long time. But everything ended well."

Vogosca's new authorities have warned returning residents not to enter any buildings until they can be checked for explosives and booby-traps, though none have yet been found. Spanic promised his aunt, who lingered beside him for a few minutes, that he would not be so foolish as to enter his house, but he was lying. As soon as she disappeared around a bend in the road, he and his friends gingerly made their way across the yard, poking the ground with sticks in a crude effort at mine-clearing.

Carefully avoiding a suspicious-looking wire sticking out of a snow bank, they came to the basement door. First they tried pushing it with a long stick, but when it did not open they abandoned even that modest precaution and kicked it down.

"I'm scared," Spanic confessed, "but I have to keep going."

The house, though not burned, was a wreck. All the bathroom appliances had been smashed, and a Serbian helmet with the name "Dakic" lay on the ruins of a sofa.

Picking through the debris, Spanic found some of the possessions he had left behind, including record albums, a souvenir copper plate from Bratislava, an umbrella, and a copy book in which he had painstakingly done his Russian-language homework. He had hidden his stereo in a compartment above the ceiling but it was gone.

In what had once been Spanic's bedroom, even the floorboards had been torn up. The picture window was gone but the view of snow-capped mountains and the town below was still spectacular.

"It's destroyed, but it's fine," he said. "I'll fix everything. In a month, I'll be living here with my grandmother. I'll get a job, everything is great."

Few returning Muslims were as bold or as foolhardy as Spanic on Monday, but dozens stood in front of the homes from which they had been chased four years ago. Several sat down for bread-and-cheese picnics, as they gazed at sights that some had feared they might never see again.

In the center of town, workmen were installing a new lock on the front door of a cafe were Bosnian Serb soldiers were cursing their fate over coffee as recently as last Wednesday. They dared not enter, but said the place would be open for business as soon as next week.

"The Serbs who took our homes had to leave, but the rest could have stayed," said one of the workmen. "Their leaders told them to go, and they listened. It's a shame. We could have lived with them again, even though a lot of blood has been spilled. Anyway, with or without them, it's celebration time for us."