Logavina

One night in the summer of 1991, three of us remained at the Cultural Center Logavina after an evening prayer meeting. We had been renting the building for our church (Biblical Faith Fellowship ‘RAFAEL”) since September of the previous year, and had just finished some interior renovations on the facility. In the foyer, we built a cafe (called Noah’s Ark) and bookstore (pretty cutting-edge back in that day for a church to have!), and had an office, several meeting rooms and a large theater room. The director of the center, Dzevad, kept an office for himself.

On this particular night, at around 11 pm, the dynamics would change. As the three of us stood in the cafe talking, about to lock up the building, we suddenly heard the sound of a convoy of trucks pulling up beside the building. Soldiers entered the building, and without acknowledging our presence, quickly moved about to identified the various rooms of the building. Other soldiers began bringing in crates filled with machine guns, ammunition and various equipment. We quickly joined in to help unload the trucks. I was told that the Cultural Center Logavina had been designated by the Bosnian government to become the Civil Protection HQ for the newly formed muslim army, with the assignment to protect Bascarsija/Old City of Sarajevo. The commander would be arriving the next day, and we would be told about our status in the building.

 

 

The following day, I decided to make a ‘pre-emptive strike’ so that we would know where we stood with the commander, if he was going to kick us out of the building or not. Dzevad, the director, didn’t know what was going on and had left the building out of frustration because his office had been chosen as the command center for the militia’s commander. When the commander arrived, he was immediately escorted to his new office. I waited for about an hour to allow him to get settled in with his staff, and then brought in to them freshly made Turkish coffee. Without hesitating, I set the coffee on the desk in front of the commander, and quickly introduced myself and told him about RAFAEL and ‘our’ building, during which time he stayed focused staring at his military maps. Then I said, “I have one request.” At that he lifted his face up to me and our eyes met for the first time. “What would that be?”, he asked. “I would appreciate it,” I said, “if your soldiers wouldn’t smoke in my cafe.” After a few seconds of contemplation, he responded, “Dobro.” (“Good.”). I left his office knowing we were in.

We spent the next 10 months or so, till the war started in the spring of 1992, sharing Logavina the building with the muslim militia. The benefit was two-fold:

• 1) As a church, we had 24/7 security!
• 2) The men serving in the militia lived in this part of Sarajevo, and many heard the Gospel for the first time as they would listen to our worship and preaching.

 

 

Logavina Street would become memorialized after the war when journalist and writer Barbara Demick published “LOGAVINA STREET: LIFE AND DEATH IN A SARAJEVO NEIGHBORHOOD”.

A book review says: “Logavina Street was a microcosm of Sarajevo, a six-block-long history lesson. For four centuries, it existed as a quiet residential area in a charming city long known for its ethnic and religious tolerance. On this street of 240 families, Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats lived easily together, unified by their common identity as Sarajavans. Then the war tore it all apart.

As she did in her groundbreaking work about North Korea, Nothing to Envy, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick tells the story of the Bosnian War and the brutal and devastating three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo through the lives of ordinary citizens, who struggle with hunger, poverty, sniper fire, and shellings.

 

Logavina Street paints this misunderstood war and its effects in vivid strokes—at once epic and intimate—revealing the heroism, sorrow, resilience, and uncommon faith of its people.”