Across the Great Divide

ELVIS BARUKCIC/AFP

BRIDGING THE GAP: Construction workers will use some original stones to repair the Stari Most, destroyed in 1993 during the Bosnian war

Rusmir Cisic, a Bosnian muslim engineer, remembers the day his native Mostar lost the bridge from which the city takes its name. For more than four centuries the Stari Most, or Old Bridge, linked the Mediterranean and Ottoman worlds, Christianity and Islam, West and East. Its graceful arch and stone towers in southeastern Bosnia were a meeting place for Serbs, Croats and Muslims as well as travelers from as far away as Istanbul and Glasgow. That ended with the Bosnian war, when the Neretva River became a front line between the town's Croat and Muslim residents. Some tried to protect their...

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