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The Ruthless Destiny of a Wolf-Boy Found In Bosnian Woods
When people wanted to do ‘the right thing’
The spring of 1988. Europe. The south of it. Balkan peninsula. Bosnia. The eastern part of it.
Deep in a forest, hunters saw a boy crawling amid a pack of wolves. They were somewhere at the tripoint of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia — at the time, three republics that formed Yugoslavia.
What was the child doing in the woods with beasts?
Worried for his safety, they killed the pack and threw the carcasses into their truck next to the screaming youngster. He was malnourished and purple in the face, his body covered in bruises and scratches.
Back to civilization they drove.
The hunters asked him questions, but the kid with messy hair didn’t reply. He couldn’t speak. They didn't know who he was or where from, who his parents were, they didn’t know anything about him. Since they found him in the Bosnian territory, they gave him a typical Bosnian name — Haris Pućurica. And so the forest creature immediately got an identity, religion, and nation — something that artificially made him belong somewhere.
The hunters did the right thing. They sent Haris to a youth shelter in Belgrade (Serbia). For the next four and half years, they…
