Bridge

People come to Mostar to look at a bridge. Not to understand the area’s recent and not-so-recent war history. Not to explore the unique Herzegovina landscape. They come to look at a bridge. Not a particularly spectacular bridge or a particularly big bridge. Just a simple stone pedestrian bridge that links the old section of town on the east side of the Neretva river with the newer restaurants and bars in the west. The Stari Most or ‘Old Bridge’ even gives the town of Mostar its name. The Old Bridge, as it currently stands, was built in 2004. So it’s not even that old. The original bridge was built in the 16th century but was destroyed during the war in the ‘90s. So whilst it’s excellent that the town has its symbol again, renaming the Old Bridge as the Used-To-Be-Old-But-Not-Anymore Bridge was not the chosen route. The original Old Bridge wasn't even the oldest bridge when it was built. So there has always been a bridge older than the Old Bridge. Tourists come to Mostar from Split en route to Dubrovnik or as a day trip from one of those southern Croatian cities. They come for the day to see a bridge and so that they can tick Bosnia-Herzegovina off of their countries-I-have-visited list.

Sometimes, even, people come to watch locals jump off the bridge. Here’s how it works. A couple of shirtless men step over the balustrade on the more picturesque side of the bridge, avoiding the twenty metre drop below. With this comes great excitement from passersby. “Someone is going to jump,” everyone thinks. The excitement builds. The growing audience closely observes the stuntmen in this contemporary reimagining of Barnum’s circus.

Here’s the thing though, none of the shirtless men are going to jump. They are cowards. They might have walked out of the nearby Mostar Diving School but they have no intention of jumping off the bridge in their current state. Their backs are tanned from standing on the bridge all day and their board shorts are noticeably dry. They haven’t been in the water for a while. Even in the early summer heat, the water is still very cold. Sitting at the nearby riverbank, I dunked my feet in the water but retracted them instantly. It’s around ten degrees celsius. The water is clear and blue and beautiful and rushing down the river at great speed. But it’s also very cold. The only way someone’s jumping in is in a wetsuit.

The shirtless men carefully walk along the narrow edge of the bridge rallying up their crowd. There’s only one thing they want: money. Just give them a little money and then someone will jump. This is what they claim. This isn’t a lie but it’s still a scam. They manage to get some cash from spectators, still thinking that the jump is imminent. It’s not. At the riverbank underneath the bridge a similarly tanned, shirtless man excites the ground-level audience and shakes out any spare change from their wallets. They set up their cameras in the ideal position to capture the upcoming superhuman feat. “How lucky,” they think, “that I just happened to be passing by and now someone is going to perform a stunt off of the bridge.” They think the jump is imminent. It’s not.

Once the shirtless men feel they have enough cash, which can easily be a twenty or forty or sixty minute wait, someone prepares to actually jump. A steps out of the diving school and saunters across the bridge in a wetsuit. The jump is now imminent. He steps over the railing and, with little panache or acrobatic flair, steps off the bridge. He descends towards the water at great speed and splashes in. No flips or tricks, just a simple act of falling off the bridge and into the water. Exactly what you’d expect to see at any local aquatic centre, albeit a bit of a bigger drop. He is underwater for a brief moment, returns to the surface and puts his arm in the air to signal that he is okay. The audience cheers with great excitement at, what is essentially, a failed suicide attempt. They check their phones to see if they managed to capture a picture good enough to put on Instagram so that they can tell all their friends about their chance encounter with Mostarian divers. They are then left with the realisation that they have to fill the remaining twenty-three and a half hours of the day.