Sarajevo's Romeo &
Juliet
Sarajevo's Romeo and
Juliet" was a name given to a young couple killed in a
sniper fire in May of 1993 on one
of Sarajevo's most dangerously located bridges at
that time. Twenty-five-year old Admira Ismic had come from a
Muslim family, and her sweetheart, twenty-five-year old Bosko Brkic,
was a Serb. Despite their different backgrounds and
prevalence of politics at the time, they had been together for
9 years and stated that nothing but a bullet could keep
them apart.
After the siege of Sarajevo started, the two
decided to leave the city and seek a safer future
elsewhere. They struck a deal with the Muslim army to escape
over the bridge. However, the aggressor kept the area under fierce
sniper fire. The couple was almost at the end
of the bridge when a bullet instantly killed Bosko, followed
by another shot that wounded Admira. Devastated,
she crawled to embrace Bosko's body and without even trying to
fight for life without him, Admira took her last breath.
The bodies were
buried in a joint grave at the Lion Cemetery two weeks after the
shooting.
The story
outgrows the couple's love and death to symbolize the city's
plight.