Victims of Nationalism

“History has a way of turning peoples who have endured the same suffering into strangers -and sometimes enemies- of one another. A lemon tree uprooted from its soil, or a Sevdalinka echoing as a song of longing, reminds us that pain, when acknowledged, can unite, but when denied, becomes an inheritance of violence. Those who once bore the weight of exclusion and discrimination often reproduce the very injustices inflicted upon them, despite shared memories, landscapes, and cultural bonds. In such moments, nationalism ceases to be a source of belonging and emerges instead as an artificial instrument that fractures humanity. By bringing historical experience into dialogue with narrative representation, this work argues that the possibility of coexistence does not arise from mere tolerance of the other, but from recognizing the other as fully human.”