Mostar residents resumed the bridge dive tradition amid the ruins of their city

Evidence

One Mostar tradition is the annual bridge dive. Daring young men and women would dive off the high-arched old Ottoman bridge, far down into the Neretva River. In the summer of 1994, in the wake of the siege, when east Mostar had been pummeled into ruin and its inhabitants starved, shelled, and confined to cellars for months, the people came out for the annual event. The spectators got out their swimsuits and sat along the banks of the river. An improvised, temporary bridge was placed over the blasted-out central section of the great bridge, and the divers dove. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 299

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The image of people diving from a temporary bridge over the blasted span of a destroyed cultural monument, in defiance of siege, is a rich narrative seed about resilience of ritual amid catastrophe.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Grafting & Growth’ essay’s theme of bridges and structures as cultural infrastructure — here the destruction and defiant re-enactment of the Mostar bridge rite.