Sarajevo: Café Raja Culture

In the Ottoman period, the word raja (from the Arabic rayah) referred to the subordinated tax-paying class. In Sarajevo today, raja means a group of friends with whom someone socializes, hanging out mostly in cafés. Raja is more than just a group of friends getting together. Raja has its own dynamics and rules. Here’s how to play at being popular in Sarajevo:

Playing the Social Butterfly

Everyone in Sarajevo has a group to hang out with – or a so-called raja. But it is not just about having friends; the point is that friends take priority over everything else in Sarajevo. Feđa, 23-year-old graduate, and his raja have developed a ritual of drinking coffee every day. And all the obligations are very much conditioned around this routine. Feđa explains: “It already happened that my grandmother would call me to help her by going to the market for example. I say, ‘ok,’ but first I meet raja. The market will not run away anywhere. I go later, but when I finally go to the market, the thing that I wanted to buy has run out. What to do?”

Also with age, priorities seem to stay the same. Senad, 48, says that on his way to a shop to buy groceries, it is very normal to stop by in a café and return in the evening. The excuse to his wife (she waited for the ingredients to make lunch) will be: “Well, my dear, I met a friend…” He will expect that wife will not be angry, since meeting a friend is important.

In Sarajevo everything appears to be about socializing, but perhaps the most interesting aspect is how this game is played.

Hanging out with raja involves a lot of teasing. If someone is new for example, raja will first observe him and then make a certain provocation, explains Zvonko, 28. To gain respect and to feel accepted, the person should know how to answer the provocation. The point is to know how to play the game till the end.

Components: be quick and witty; be skilful and agile with words – if you are not skilful enough they will provoke you. If you lack skill, you will not be rejected. “It just means you won’t be number one,” says Zvonko.

Nebojša Šavija wrote about the phenomenon of raja that there are two main mechanisms: 1) develop a strong sense for self-irony; and 2) move out of the town, which as he explains is what many have done since it is not possible to just step out of raja in Sarajevo, since there is no other social space without raja (‘Sarajevski duh – etno(muziko)loška’, Časopis za kritiko znanosti 28, 2000).

Provoking Fun

To an outsider this game of provocation may seem silly, impolite or even rude, but to those from Sarajevo, it is just a way of having fun. In a group of four friends, two can provoke the other two, or three can bear down on one, explains Senad. Or the roles can be switched and someone else is targeted. Aljo, Senad’s friend, adds that someone can be teased the whole evening, and then this person at the end says: “Drinks for everyone!” (Most socializing in Sarajevo happens in a coffeehouse). And nobody resents anything.

However, there is a limit, since while teasing, certain subjects are taboo. Mothers and children are exempted from the list of topics while the wife is always on the list for teasing. “Your wife’s cheating on you” and the other answers: “So?? As long she’s not cheating with you!” The teasing and provocation usually do not have bad intentions, as long as it is entertaining, and that creates the atmosphere, says Senad. Eighty percent of joking is about oneself and this represents the peak of amusement for the others.

In raja, almost nothing that is said is allowed to go by without being wittily commented upon. Feđa explains that if he goes with his raja to a bar where they usually drink beer and he wants to drink Coca-Cola instead, everyone will say “Come on, cola?! Are you joking… I’ll pay the drinks, just not cola!” Feđa says, all this persuasion is just for fun and adds that “it’s just the way it is.”

Actually, wit is present almost everywhere in everyday life in Sarajevo. If someone finds some expressions unusual or funny, they often say: “Just you listen to him…!” (Čuj ti njega…!) and then they make fun of him. If while sitting in a bar or a tram one listens to conversations, most communication is flavored with cleverness. Oscar-winner director Mirza Tanović for the movie Nobody’s Land (2001) once said that Sarajevo culture is essentially “a culture based on jokes”.

A Peculiar Kind of Popularity

In order to better grasp what raja is about and to understand the socializing process in Sarajevo, one should know that there is also a more exclusive concept called ‘Sarajevo raja’ (sarajevska raja). This concept was well-known during the Yugoslav era and it defines Sarajevo in comparison to other parts of Yugoslavia and even from other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Café Fis is one of the legendary places where Sarajevo raja used to hang out, especially in the old days. People coming here were usually ‘somebody’ – an artist, politician, musician, etc. The renowned Sarajevo journalist, Senad Pećanin, who wrote about Fis, described it as “the most Sarajevian place in Sarajevo.” (Položili u Beogradu, pali u Sarajevu.’ Dani, 11. maj 1998) As he says, the foreigner will never understand why this café is so popular and has such a cult place in Sarajevo. Every day, musicians, politicians, journalists, small-time crooks and thieves come and sit around in this modestly-equipped café. Everyone who enters has to leave their social status outside. In Fis, anything that would imply a certain status is not welcome and could provoke serious mockery.

In Fis and in Sarajevo in general an individual’s achievements are acknowledged in a very particular way. Journalist Muharem Bazdulj comments that Sarajevo does not like too much perfection; it prefers rather imperfection and a talent, rather than a genius. For Sarajevo, an artist is the one who could achieve anything – but he did not.

This principle can be also noticed if one compares the popularity of two renewed rock groups from Sarajevo, Bijelo Dugme and Indexi. They were both popular in the 1970’s and 1980’s – Indexi already in the 1960’s. Famous world music performer, Goran Bregović, led the group Bijelo Dugme at the time, says that they were the most popular group in all of Yugoslavia, but in Sarajevo, Indexi were more popular. This is difficult to grasp if one considers that Indexi only released one album until the 1990’s.

The popularity of Indexi seems to be connected to the reputation of their singer, late Davorin Popović – Pimpek. Davorin was an artist as Sarajevo likes it. He had talent and could sing. He could have achieved more, but he did not. It is crucial to note that he never accentuated his fame and success and he never neglected raja. He was just another regular guest in Sarajevo coffee-houses, someone who is part of raja – and that’s what counts. Raja lifted his status, not him.

How someone’s status and accomplishments do not mean much in Sarajevo, are illustrated also in anecdote, retold by Zvonko. A Nobel Prize laureate, writer Ivo Andrić was having coffee in Café Parkuša when a random guest called to him: “Hey Ivo, how’s the writing going?” This goes to show that you can be successful and renowned, but this will not earn you to be addressed with any more respect in Sarajevo.

Drinking Coffee with Raja

How does hanging out with raja look like in practice? Let’s take for example seven guys aged between 20 and 25 years old, who drank coffee one Sunday afternoon in a summer garden of a traditional café in an old part of Sarajevo. At the beginning, the conversation was how they spent previous evening (they were in some café with folk music). This type of conversation in Sarajevo has a name: ‘prepričavanje’ (story-telling). It is about telling your friends what you did previous night and usually includes some bending of the truth. Meanwhile, everyone that passed by that café was subject to their wit. The most popular targets were soldiers from the international peacekeeping force, who are present in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, and of course women.

The story-telling was followed by a few hours of long pure joking. Whatever the conversation is about, everything can have a humorous epilogue. When someone would say something, the other one would play with his words. This is also called ‘provaljivanje’ (provaliti is to break into something) and it means that one is talking about something without any concrete content with the only intention of making others laugh. For instance, when one of them concluded a story with a Bosnian proverb and said that there exists one hundred people and therefore one hundred different characters (Sto ljudi sto ćudi), someone replied, “one hundred people, one hundred characters, one hundred women, two hundred tits and fourteen nipples.” (Sto ljudi – sto ćudi, sto ženski dvjesto sisa, četrnaest bradavica).

Each awkwardly used word was another opportunity to have fun. Most of the time one would not listen to the other until the end and would interrupt them with his own story of amusing anecdote. During these few hours of raja time, no important or serious subject was brought up. At the end, there is one more question to be answered: who is usually playing the raja game, men or women? Well, Zvonko says that it is quite equal, that in Sarajevo there were always mixed groups. However, later on he added that men are usually the ones who play raja, but women still have important role and they lead their own game because after all is said and done, women are the reason for it all.

Lidija Jularić is a cultural anthropologist based in Slovenia writing primarily on Balkan local traditions and diaspora communities from the former Yugoslavia. She finished her postgraduate degree in Nationalism Studies at Central European University in Budapest.

Samir Misira is a Sarajevo photographer: www.photobysamzy.com.ba