Bosnia and Herzegovina’s qualification for the 2026 FIFA World Cup brought a rare kind of joy into the exhausted lives of its citizens. A younger football team, visibly united despite ethnic differences and shaped largely by the biographies of players born abroad to parents who had fled their neighbours, briefly offered the country an image of itself that did not begin with war.
“I Am From Bosnia, Take Me to America”, a song by the Bosnian band Dubioza Kolektiv, became the soundtrack of a possible better tomorrow. Bosnian flags appeared all over Sarajevo. For those of us who grew up under different colours and still sometimes have to remind ourselves that this is now the official flag of our country, there is a particular tenderness in seeing it when Bosnia is winning.
My daughters, both preschool children, know only that flag. They love their country because they have been taught to love it, without yet knowing how complicated that sentence is here. They light up whenever they see the Bosnian flag, whether at a border crossing or among football supporters.
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