Bassim
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2008
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Bosnian
- Home Country
- Bosnia Herzegovina
- Current Location
- Sweden
Would you please correct the mistakes in my text?
I was born a couple of years after Grandad died, so I never had the opportunity to meet him, but as long as I could remember he was always present in our home. I must have been around seven when Father opened a cupboard and took out Grandad’s personal belongings he kept after his death: an old Quran in Arabic, prayer beads, a red fez with a black tassel, a short, brown cigarette holder, and a pocket watch with a chain. I looked at those objects as if they were sacred. I had heard many stories about him told by Father and my aunts, and now when I touched them, something inside me trembled with excitement. I snapped the watch lid open and heard it ticking. A minute hand moved slowly on the yellowish dial, just as it did decades before as it lay in Grandad’s pocket. I imagined him glancing at his watch, and reminded himself that it was a prayer time. He would stop doing whatever he did, place his prayer rug on the floor and have his prayers.
To perform prayers five times a day is one of the most important things in life for a faithful Muslim. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, and if you neglect it, you won’t enter paradise. What he heard from his local imam at that time was for most people the absolute truth, which nobody dared to question. Grandad grew up at time when children had to go to religious schools. Muslims went to a madrasa, and Catholics and Orthodox Christians to their respective schools, where they had to memories verses from the Holy Books by heart. If you failed, you received such beating that you remembered it for the rest of your life.
Grandad was born under Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The occupiers treated the land as their colony. They were interested in developing the capital, Sarajevo, and a few other towns, but the rest of the country was left to languish in poverty and neglect. Healthcare was almost non-existent, especially if you lived in the countryside. Thus, if you became sick, your only hope was local healers and their herbs, or prayers. The rate of children’s death was high, and because people were unable to change their misfortune, they saw every tragedy as the will of God.
It is true that the occupiers had built infrastructure, railways, and roads across the country, but their goal was not to make life better for the Bosnians, but to easier plunder the country of its natural resources: wood, minerals, ore, and coal.
If a young Serb, Gavrilo Princip had not killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Grandad would probably have lived a peaceful, unexciting life In his village, just as his father did. But the war that followed changed not only his life, but the lives of millions who potentates sacrificed like cattle in one of the largest slaughterhouses that humans had created in history.
At the outbreak of the war, the Empire sent recruiting delegations across the country to find more cannon fodder, but they had been ordered to choose only the best. When they came to the town near Grandad’s village, all the men capable to carry arms had to appear in front of them, and then they were assessed. In the end, they chose only four. Grandad was one of them. The transformation from simple farmers’ sons to soldiers was quick. After a couple of weeks of military training, they were dispatched to the Carpathian Front, where they would spend next four years, participating in a meaningless conflict. As I am writing this, I see him trudging through the mud before dawn with a bucket of cold water to wash himself before his prayers. He is not afraid of death, but to die unclean. He is not scared of shells or grenades that rain over him for hours and kill his comrades in droves; he doesn’t care if he loses his limbs or mind -- but the thought of hell petrifies him.
TO BE CONTINUED
I was born a couple of years after Grandad died, so I never had the opportunity to meet him, but as long as I could remember he was always present in our home. I must have been around seven when Father opened a cupboard and took out Grandad’s personal belongings he kept after his death: an old Quran in Arabic, prayer beads, a red fez with a black tassel, a short, brown cigarette holder, and a pocket watch with a chain. I looked at those objects as if they were sacred. I had heard many stories about him told by Father and my aunts, and now when I touched them, something inside me trembled with excitement. I snapped the watch lid open and heard it ticking. A minute hand moved slowly on the yellowish dial, just as it did decades before as it lay in Grandad’s pocket. I imagined him glancing at his watch, and reminded himself that it was a prayer time. He would stop doing whatever he did, place his prayer rug on the floor and have his prayers.
To perform prayers five times a day is one of the most important things in life for a faithful Muslim. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, and if you neglect it, you won’t enter paradise. What he heard from his local imam at that time was for most people the absolute truth, which nobody dared to question. Grandad grew up at time when children had to go to religious schools. Muslims went to a madrasa, and Catholics and Orthodox Christians to their respective schools, where they had to memories verses from the Holy Books by heart. If you failed, you received such beating that you remembered it for the rest of your life.
Grandad was born under Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The occupiers treated the land as their colony. They were interested in developing the capital, Sarajevo, and a few other towns, but the rest of the country was left to languish in poverty and neglect. Healthcare was almost non-existent, especially if you lived in the countryside. Thus, if you became sick, your only hope was local healers and their herbs, or prayers. The rate of children’s death was high, and because people were unable to change their misfortune, they saw every tragedy as the will of God.
It is true that the occupiers had built infrastructure, railways, and roads across the country, but their goal was not to make life better for the Bosnians, but to easier plunder the country of its natural resources: wood, minerals, ore, and coal.
If a young Serb, Gavrilo Princip had not killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Grandad would probably have lived a peaceful, unexciting life In his village, just as his father did. But the war that followed changed not only his life, but the lives of millions who potentates sacrificed like cattle in one of the largest slaughterhouses that humans had created in history.
At the outbreak of the war, the Empire sent recruiting delegations across the country to find more cannon fodder, but they had been ordered to choose only the best. When they came to the town near Grandad’s village, all the men capable to carry arms had to appear in front of them, and then they were assessed. In the end, they chose only four. Grandad was one of them. The transformation from simple farmers’ sons to soldiers was quick. After a couple of weeks of military training, they were dispatched to the Carpathian Front, where they would spend next four years, participating in a meaningless conflict. As I am writing this, I see him trudging through the mud before dawn with a bucket of cold water to wash himself before his prayers. He is not afraid of death, but to die unclean. He is not scared of shells or grenades that rain over him for hours and kill his comrades in droves; he doesn’t care if he loses his limbs or mind -- but the thought of hell petrifies him.
TO BE CONTINUED
