They will never forgive me for my success, those who were on budgets and achieved nothing!

Writer, journalist, columnist and author of one of the most popular bestsellers and the play “Ja, mahaluša” Indira Kučuk-Sorguč spoke out seven days after the Sarajevo Canton Government appointed her as Chairwoman of the Management Board of the Public Institution Cantonal Institute for the Protection of Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage of Sarajevo, reports the Patria news agency.

-Thank you to everyone who is burying me on forums for the umpteenth time. If it eases your souls, fine. I just wonder where all this anger comes from over my appointment to a management board with a fee of 200 KM. I am a history professor, whose transcript mostly consists of straight A's.

I was born, raised and wounded in this city. In various newspapers, I have published serious and professional essays in the fields of culture and history, which have been cited and reproduced in various monographs and academic papers both here and abroad.

However, our public was not interested in that then or now, with the exception of a few people from academic circles. And so, in a difficult period of my life, first the column and then the play „Ja, mahaluša“ came about. Something completely different from everything I had done before. Yes, a populist thing, definitely. But I would never disown it. It is mine, it is me, it is us.... Tens of thousands of viewers in the region – with all the performances, exactly 160 thousand souls who have watched my original plays.

Tens of thousands of smiling faces in today's times. I created a brand and they copy me very unsuccessfully, which is proof that this story has become „more than a game“. That is something the pseudo-cultural circles, who have not achieved anything similar, will not and cannot forgive me for, even though they were in various cushy positions, on the payroll and budgets, unlike me. And still they have not accomplished much.

And again, never, thank God Almighty, have I become part of the spineless who call themselves the fine urban elite. I, fortunately, remained "just" the urban elite. They are bothered by everything that smacks of the mahala, in proportion to how much they favour the provincial and everything foreign. No use, they prefer foreign crap over our baklava, which they find "too greasy". 

I will always be proud of the mahala that produced me, which has its own code of conduct, its own wisdom, its readiness to help others in trouble... And the fact that in the mahala you can forget about privacy - well, that too is part of its magic.

Mahaluša once, mahaluša always. Mahala rules. Love from your mahaluša Chairwoman. Never give up the comfort with which the mahala nursed us, and as for the enemies, let them not die. Let them bark if it makes them feel better, Kučuk-Sorguč concludes.