ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a reconstruction of that evening's conversation, full of personal and political tensions, and contextualises it within post-war Bosnian realities. In the year 2000, the first day of October was a Sunday, and even in post-war Bosnia that day had remained a day for rest and social occasions. During the 1992-95 war, Tuzla was continuously controlled by a local alliance of the Bosnian Army and the Croat Defence Council (HVO). After the war, Tuzla still housed a larger proportion of national minority groups than any other urban centre in Bosnia. Firstly, national affiliations and territorial attachments, while crucial to any understanding of contemporary Bosnia, are not nearly as clear-cut as is often assumed. Tuzla shows that every locality in Bosnia has its own peculiarities in terms of history, demographic composition, geography and politics. The war was waged overwhelmingly along national lines of division; nationality is clearly only one amongst several major fault lines in Bosnian everyday life.
