Je demeurai longtemps errant dans Césarée

"Almir Baraković will today bury skull and two bones of his father Muriz found in three mass graves"

Yes, this boy wasn't supposed to exist. In the plans signed by a rotten war criminal that the UN knew about and did nothing to stop, nearly his entire family was wiped out 31 years ago. But the people bosnian serb (chetniks) forces desperately tried to bury in the ground, bones trampled over and moved from one mass grave to another to hide what they deny but knew (why else would they try to hide it so desperately) was genocide, those people left a seed to grow and one of those that still remember is our football player who just competed at the World Cup - Esmir Bajraktarević.

Esmir was born in the USA after the war. His father was lucky to make it to the free territory in Tuzla and from there his parents went to Switzerland and then America to look for a better life. In Srebrenica he lost paternal and maternal uncles and cousins (yes plural for both), and maternal grandfather. Esmir is the youngest of three siblings and his older brother is named after that grandfather. His aunt, his mother's sister, returned to live in a village near Srebrenica as many our families did. As the world gathers in Potočari Memorial Centre to remember and commemorate this coldest month of this country every year since 1995, his aunt remembers her brothers enjoyed playing football as much as Esmir does.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]