A jar of pickles, a jar of memories

Yes, this is a jar of pickles. No, I didn't go insane, or at least not completely. The thing is, these are the pickles from Bosnia and Herzegovina, exported to Canada and absolutely blowing away the competition in terms of quality and price.

Last time I left Bosnia, I left a country of ruins, land mines, scars real and internal, mired in unresolved political and religious tensions which, it seemed to me, will last for generations. And now, not even 15 years later, in the heart of Canada I am buying Bosnian produce. That, of course, means that the situation there has greatly improved. I wonder if at least some of the scars have healed too.

With a tandem of "butchers of Bosnia"--Radovan Karadzic, the mastermind of genocide which brought me there in the first place, and his henchman General Ratko Mladic, with blood of around 8000 men and boys from Srebrenica on his hands, all massacred by his direct order--finally on trial in The Hague at the war crimes tribunal, maybe it's fitting that I can bite with such a pleasure to this tiny but superb product of the country they meant to bleed to death. Bosnia, it seems, is moving on. And, as an afterthought -- looks like the scars of Bosnia live deeper in those who left her than in those who stayed.