My Homeland in World History – A Game of Identity. (Introduction)
My Homeland in World History – A Game of Identity. (Introduction)

Summary/Abstract: Using a stylistic interlude situated between an Introduction and Preface, I introduce readers to the book without claiming to determine its meaning. The book’s core focuses on my homeland and its prominent figures who, through their activities, shaped local, regional, and global politics. The book is dedicated to the memory of the sons of my homeland who first felt the sun on their faces in southern Herzegovina and carried the warmth of that touch without falter throughout their lives. Its text is shaped by trauma, nostalgia, and the unforgettable. What is my homeland, what area does it encompass, and how do I define it? In a geographical, physical sense, when I climb to Gradina, the high point of the Dubrava Plateau in Donji Jasoč, in my birth village of Crnići in Stolac Municipality, everything I see with my eyes, everything I take in, is my homeland, my microcosm. From Gradina, I can see parts of the municipalities: Stolac, Ljubinje, Nevesinje, Mostar, Čitluk, Ljubuški, Čapljina, Neum, Ploče, and Metković. The Dubrava Plateau is a geographical area between the mountains Velež to the north and Žaba to the south, bordered by three ancient towns: Stolac, Počitelj, and Blagaj. On Gradina, there is a large plain where we played football with children from the neighboring hamlet, Smarlovina. It did not bother us that this plain on the top of the hill was bordered by stone heaps, Illyrian burial sites, from which we would sometimes scavenge fragments of ceramics and sometimes encounter the bones of the dead. Furthermore, there is a point from which, in clear weather, you can see the sea. That visual contact with the Adriatic Sea at the mouth of the Neretva River opened my homeland to the infinite, to the blue depths of the world, breaking its enclosure and enticing longing for travel and adventure. The people I am writing about, raised in a small place, a village, compared to the vastness of the world, built their world with courage and contributed to its history.

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