Sabahudin Hadžiali? is another Balkan aphorist and also deputy editor-in-chief of the online satirical weekly Zikison. Like many Balkan aphorists, Hadžiali? works as a journalist. In 2009, Hadžiali? published a book of aphorisms, satirical dramas, and short stories called Abecedna Azbuka. Balkan aphorisms tend to be blunt rather than surgically sharp, so that when the blade of satire passes through your mind it leaves a rough and jagged path in its wake, a path that is immediately covered over with a kind of oozing black humor.

There is only one life, but you die many times.

Forbidden fruit is sweetest, but it very rarely ripens.

Great pain is mute.

Human beings are like rivers: pure at the source and dirty at the mouth.