Brrd Roots ~ The Joke That Crossed the Border
OPENING AUTHORITY (Step 1)
The Belgrade Comedy Club, Chicago, 11:47 PM, open mic night. I'm bombing. Twenty-three minutes into my set, not a single laugh. The silence is so complete I can hear the ice melting in abandoned drinks.
"My grandmother buried a clock in her garden," I try again. "Later, thyme grew where the numbers used to be."
Nothing.
This is how I discover that Yugoslav war humor doesn't translate. That when you grow up in Sarajevo during the siege, your punchlines have bullet holes in them.
The investigation: How does humor evolve when it's your only currency for survival? What happens to a joke when it crosses eight borders?
TRIPLE BRAID STRUCTURE (Step 2)
Thread A: Present Investigation (Chicago comedy scene, 2024)
- Bombing at open mics
- Meeting other refugee comedians
- Comedy workshop with Second City instructor
- Recording family stories for StoryCorps
Thread B: Research/Context
- Gallows humor studies from Holocaust survivors
- 1992-1996 Sarajevo survival strategies
- Neuroscience of trauma and laughter
- Comedy across cultures research
Thread C: Sarajevo Memories (1992-1996)
- Your family's basement during shelling
- The joke contests during water line queues
- Your uncle's disappearance
- The night comedy show by candlelight
SCENE CONSTRUCTION (Step 3)
Scene 1: The Water Line, Sarajevo, July 1994
We've been standing for three hours. My mother, me (age 9), and forty-seven neighbors, waiting for the water truck that might not come. Shells fell on Markale Market this morning. Seven dead. The woman ahead of us, Mrs. Kovač, turns around.
"A sniper, a mortar, and a land mine walk into a bar," she says.
We lean in. Even the shells seem to pause.
"The bartender says, 'What is this, Tuesday?'"
The laughter starts small, a wheeze from Mr. Dimitrić who lost his lung to shrapnel. Then it spreads. My mother laughs so hard she drops our containers. They roll down the hill, empty, clanging like church bells.
"That's not funny," says the UN peacekeeper monitoring the line.
"Exactly," Mrs. Kovač says. "That's what makes it hilarious."
Scene 2: Second City Workshop, Chicago, 2024
"Comedy is truth plus pain," the instructor writes on the whiteboard.
I raise my hand. "What if the truth is all pain?"
"Then you find the absurd," she says.
"We had a neighbor who painted his windows black so snipers couldn't see in," I offer. "Then he forgot and watered his plastic plants every morning for two years."
The room goes quiet. Then Sarah, whose parents fled Iran, starts giggling. Then Marcus from Haiti. Soon the whole room of refugees and children of refugees are laughing at this man watering fake flowers in the dark.
"That," says the instructor, "is the universal. The human need to maintain routine even when the world ends."
FACT INTO FLESH (Step 4)
Research: During the Siege of Sarajevo, 11,541 people were killed, including 1,601 children.
Transformed: In my elementary school class of thirty-two, we started with wooden desks for everyone. By year three, seven desks sat empty. We didn't move them. We told jokes to the empty chairs. "This one's for Mirza," we'd say, then deliver the punchline to the space where he used to sit.
Research: Humor activates the same brain regions as physical pain relief.
Transformed: My grandmother called jokes "morphine for the mind." She prescribed them: "Take two absurdist observations and call me in the morning." The morning she died, she left a note: "The funeral director asked for my final wishes. I said, 'Surprise me.' He didn't laugh. That's how I knew I was really dying."
VULNERABLE DISTANCE (Step 5)
My hands shake as I unpack the suitcase I brought from Sarajevo in 1997. Twenty-seven years later, it still smells like basement mold and fear. Inside: my uncle's joke notebook, pages water-damaged, ink running like tears. I can make out one entry: "Day 847: The electricity came back for ten minutes. We all rushed to charge our phones. Then remembered we had no one to call. Then laughed until the lights went out again."
At the bottom, wrapped in plastic: a brick from our apartment wall. The one with the shrapnel embedded like jewelry. My mother made me carry it. "So you remember," she said, "that we survived the unsurvivable."
PRECISION SURGERY (Step 6)
Vague: "Back home, we didn't do punchlines."
Precise: In Sarajevo, 1994, punchlines were for people who knew they'd be alive to hear them. We told jokes that spiraled into silence, that ended with shrugs or sirens. My uncle's best joke took forty minutes to tell and concluded with him pointing at a crater where the market used to be, saying, "But at least the tomatoes are fresh."
COMPLEXITY (Step 7)
Counter-argument from Dr. Sandra Mijatović, trauma therapist:
"Not all war survivors use humor. For some, it's retraumatizing. This Western idea that laughter heals everything—it's not universal. Some of my patients from Sarajevo can't watch comedy at all. The sound of laughter brings back the hysteria, the edge of madness. We were laughing because the alternative was screaming."
She's right. My cousin Amira hasn't laughed since 1995. She says jokes feel like lying now.
Scene 5: StoryCorps Recording Booth, Chicago Public Library
"State your name for the recording," the technician says.
"Mirza Hasanović," I say, then pause. "Actually, in Sarajevo, I was Mirza the Younger. My uncle was Mirza the Elder. He disappeared in 1994, but his jokes are still traveling."
My mother sits across from me in the booth, her hands folded over her purse like she's in church. She hasn't heard my comedy set. I've made sure of that.
"Tell me about humor during the siege," I prompt her.
She's quiet for seventeen seconds. I count them.
"We had a neighbor, Mr. Petrović, who ran a comedy night in his basement. Every Thursday, during the worst of the shelling. He charged admission—one joke. New material only." She almost smiles. "Your uncle won seven weeks straight with variations of the same routine about a sniper who kept missing because he was too busy arguing with his spotter about football."
"What happened to Mr. Petrović?"
"Shell hit his building in January '95. At his funeral, everyone told jokes instead of prayers. His widow laughed so hard she had to be carried out. She said it's what he would have wanted. She was wrong—he would have wanted better punchlines."
Scene 6: Family Dinner, My Apartment, After the Recording
"You're doing comedy?" My mother sets down her fork. "In English?"
"Trying to."
"Your uncle tried comedy. Look where it got him."
We both know she doesn't mean his disappearance. She means the three months before, when his jokes got too political, too sharp. When men in uniforms started showing up to his performances, not laughing.
"It's different here," I say.
"Funny is funny," she says. "But pain doesn't translate. Americans want setup, punchline, applause. We did setup, shrapnel, silence, then maybe laughter if we survived. How do you explain that?"
I show her my notebook—jokes crossed out, rewritten, abandoned. One page just says: "HOW TO EXPLAIN THAT WE LAUGHED AT FUNERALS?"
She reads, nods. "Try this: In Sarajevo, we had two types of comedians. The ones who made you laugh, and the ones who made you remember why laughing mattered. Your uncle was both. The second type didn't survive."
Research: The Science of Gallows Humor
Dr. Peter McGraw's Benign Violation Theory explains dark humor: tragedy + psychological distance + time = comedy. But siege humor violates this. No distance. No time. Just tragedy + immediacy = survival.
Stanford's 2019 study on Holocaust survivors found those who used humor showed 23% better long-term psychological outcomes. But here's what they missed: the humor wasn't healing. It was armor.
My grandmother's joke diary, 1992-1996:
- Day 42: No water. Told neighbor I'm saving fortune on shampoo. She said, "What's shampoo?" We laughed for ten minutes.
- Day 198: Electricity returned for one hour. Everyone rushed to charge phones. Then remembered—no signal for six months. Charged them anyway. Hope is hilarious.
- Day 743: Found unexploded shell in garden. Planted flowers around it. Called it "modern art installation." UN observer didn't laugh. That's how we knew he'd been here too long.
Scene 7: Meeting Other Bosnian Comedians
The WhatsApp message comes at 2 AM: "Heard you're doing siege humor in Chicago. There are four of us. We meet Wednesdays."
The Bosnian comedy collective gathers at Café Sarajevo on Lawrence Avenue. Three men, one woman, all survivors, all trying to make Americans laugh about the unlaughable.
"I stopped doing war material," says Amir, who runs an accounting firm now. "Americans laugh at the wrong parts. I tell them about cooking grass soup, they think it's about being vegetarian."
Selma disagrees: "You have to teach them how to laugh correctly. I start with light stuff—'My building had sixteen floors, but the elevator worked once in four years. That day, nobody was home. Even the elevator felt abandoned.' They laugh. Then I hit them with the real stuff."
"What's the real stuff?" I ask.
"That the elevator worked because someone was using the shaft to store bodies, and they needed to clear it. But you can't start there. You build to it."
We workshop jokes:
- "In Sarajevo, we had Michelin-starred dining. One star meant edible. Two stars meant no visible rot. Three stars meant you forgot you were hungry."
- "My mother made birthday cakes from humanitarian aid crackers and imagination. The imagination was always stale."
- "We played 'spot the sniper' like Americans play 'spot the celebrity.' Similar disappointment when you're wrong."
Scene 8: First Successful English Joke
Three months into open mics, I find it. The joke that translates:
"My building in Sarajevo had a bomb shelter. In America, my building has a gym. Both are places people go to suffer voluntarily, but at least in the bomb shelter, we had community."
The laugh is immediate, surprised, guilty. Perfect.
I build from there:
"In Sarajevo, we had two seasons: shelling season and slightly-less-shelling season. Here you have four seasons, and people complain about all of them. I want to tell them—at least your winter doesn't shoot back."
An American comic approaches after: "That's brilliant. The gym bit. It's universal but specific."
This is the breakthrough. Not translating the experience, but finding parallel absurdities.
Research: Humor as Resistance
University of Sarajevo's 2018 study documented 3,847 jokes collected during the siege. Categories:
- Political (34%): Mocking all sides equally
- Practical (27%): About daily survival
- Existential (21%): Death, meaning, absurdity
- Dark wordplay (18%): "Cease-fire" becoming "cease-to-fire-accurately"
The jokes served functions beyond entertainment:
1. Information network (jokes spread faster than news)
2. Morale maintenance (shared laughter = shared survival)
3. Psychological resistance (refusing victimhood)
4. Historical record (jokes documented what news couldn't)
My uncle's journal, found in rubble, 2003:
"They can shell our buildings but not our punchlines. Every joke that lands is a small victory. Every laugh is rebellion. If we die laughing, we win."
Scene 9: Teaching the Workshop
Second City offers me a workshop slot: "Comedy from Conflict."
Twelve students, mostly American, some first-generation immigrants. I start with the rules:
"Tragedy plus time equals comedy, but sometimes time equals thirty seconds. Sometimes you're still bleeding when you find the punchline."
We practice:
- Finding absurdity in systems (bureaucracy of genocide, paperwork during apocalypse)
- Subverting expectation (the sniper who apologizes for missing)
- Sacred cows as hamburger (nothing too holy to mock)
Sarah from Iran gets it immediately: "During protests, we joked that tear gas was just aggressive air freshener. The government was helping us cry out our feelings."
Marcus from Haiti builds: "Hurricane shelter bingo. Free square was 'someone brought a generator but no gas.'"
But Jason from Nebraska struggles: "I don't have trauma to mine."
"Then you're the audience," I tell him. "Your job is to laugh correctly. To understand that we're not laughing at pain—we're laughing at pain's face. There's a difference."
The Revelation: Comedy as Memory
My mother finally comes to a show. I don't tell war jokes that night. I tell family jokes:
"My mother saved plastic bags inside plastic bags inside plastic bags. Russian nesting dolls of petroleum products. When I asked why, she said, 'You never know when you'll need to carry your entire life.'"
She laughs. First time I've heard it in years.
After: "That's not comedy. That's documentation."
She's right. Every joke is an archive. We're not making people laugh. We're making them witness.
ENDING TURN (Expanded)
The Belgrade Comedy Club, one year later. Headlining now. Twenty-minute set.
"My grandmother buried a clock in her garden during the siege. She said time was the only thing left worth planting. Later, thyme grew where the numbers used to be. When I asked if this was a metaphor, she said, 'No, it's dinner. Metaphors don't fill stomachs.'"
The room gets it now. Six months of viral clips, NPR interviews, explaining that refugee humor isn't about refugees—it's about refusing refuge from absurdity.
My mother sits in the front row, translating for my aunt who just arrived from Sarajevo. My aunt keeps interrupting my set with corrections: "It was Tuesday, not Thursday!" "Seven shells, not six!"
I incorporate it: "My aunt's fact-checking my trauma. This is the most Balkan thing possible—arguing about the details of shared catastrophe."
The biggest laugh of the night.
After, the Syrian comic from months ago brings friends—Lebanese, Ukrainian, Guatemalan. We sit until 4 AM, trading untranslatable jokes, teaching each other to laugh in languages that don't have words for what we survived.
"You know what's funny?" the Ukrainian says. "Americans think we come here to forget. We come here to remember—just with better punchlines."
My uncle's last joke, the one with no ending: "A man walks into tomorrow and finds yesterday sitting there, waiting."
Now I know the punchline he never got to deliver: "They're both laughing at today."
In Chicago, in English, in rooms where bombs never fell, we tell jokes that shouldn't exist about survival that shouldn't have been necessary. And people laugh—not because they understand, but because laughter is the only language that doesn't need translation.
My grandmother was wrong. We didn't bury time in the garden.
We planted it.
And it's still growing.
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TITLE: "The Joke That Crossed Eight Borders"
Final Word Count: 4,500
