11/1/2002
A Bridge Rebuilt Offers Hope for Tomorrow

In 1561 a young architect received a commission for a bridge across a river which at that point ran in a deep gorge. He conceived a design based on a single, almost semi-circular, span constructed out of marble from a local quarry and for five years he supervised the construction, watching over his bridge as it took shape. Once the shuttering was removed the delicacy of the edifice became apparent. The robust bridge towers dissolved into a narrow filament high above the swirling waters of the river. And that narrow filament was all that there was to hold vast strain and stress that the bridge would have to bear.

When it was time to open the bridge, the architect was so certain that he had miscalculated, so certain of disgrace and ruin, that he ran away and hid. Not for him the unshakeable self-confidence of many an architect before or since. Very high and very steep and very slim, what possibly could keep such a bridge in the air?

And yet the bridge did not fall down of course. It survived the daily commerce at the heart of a small Balkan town for more than four centuries and even when it had been hit by one tank shell after another, it still stood proud, defiant as if determined never to release its grip on the two communities, now divided civil war, for which it had so long proved a lifeline.

But nothing endures for ever and after a final shell, on 9 November 1993, the bridge at Mostar, or what remained of it, tumbled into the depths of the river Neretiva. That, however, was not the end. Indeed how could it be? For work has already recommenced to build a bridge over the Neretiva.

The young architect who ran away and hid (or so we are told) 427 years ago was Mimar Hajruddin and it is to his exact design that the bridge will be rebuilt. The original stones are too worn and damaged to be used safely, so new ones are being cut from the same marble quarry five kilometres to the south. The project will cost $15.4 million and is being financed partly by a $4 million loan from the World Bank Learning and Innovation Fund.

All being well there will be a flying high stone bridge again across the Neretiva by the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the original. A bridge to link the Croats with the Bosniaks; a bridge which signifies the beauty of unity and the triumph of the human spirit.