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design: ProarteMedia |
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copyright © 2003-04 goodpeopleeviltime, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Cambridge, MA USA |
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SET YOUR MIND AT EASE
[…] |
| LITTLE MOSCOW Mostar […] The Yugoslav People's Army entered the city on 12 May, and the next day they began to inquire about whether there were any Muslims left. They talked to us nicely, even though they knew we were Muslims, and they tried to put us at ease, saying, "Don't you worry. You will have everything: electricity, running water." Soon they started burning houses. On 19 May the army summoned Serbs over the radio to prepare to be evacuated to the town of Nevesinje. Our traditionally good relations with Serbs were what determined our decision to join them. We believed that in that way we would be getting out of hell. The Montenegrins, who were loading seven Serbs from our street into a truck, let the three of us get on, as well as a married couple who were also Muslims, because they didn't know we weren't Serbs. Our neighbors did not betray us. The Montenegrins drove us to a village next to Nevesinje. Mirko, one of our neighbor's brothers, took us to his summer house where his relatives were also staying. They made us coffee with milk and reassured us, saying that while we were with them nothing bad could happen. Mirko put us up in a Muslim summer house. He visited us every day, brought us food from his house, until he registered Mother and me with the Red Cross. He took care of us until 17 June. Then the Serbian army retreated from Mostar and chaos erupted in the village. The Serbian forces that had surrounded us began shooting. The local people fled in their cars, and we were left alone. We lost contact with Mirko. A Serb we didn't know brought us, lost, into his home from the street. "I'll find a way to get you safely out of here," he told us. That night Serbian soldiers threw bombs at Muslim houses and plum orchards. Everything was smashed, roofs collapsed, glass shattered ... In the morning an elderly Serbian man came by and told our host, "What are you waiting for, get out of here and save yourselves!" We realized that we were a threat to the man's life. He no longer knew what to do to help us. We set off on foot across the fields, detouring the villages of Nevesinje to a village further on where we spent two days, but Serbian forces drove us from there as well. Local people we didn't know who were both fleeing took us onto their tractor. We stopped by a canal. Along its slopes men had placed posts they had fashioned from felled trees, and had stretched sheets of plastic and tarpaulins under which 700 Muslims were staying who had been expelled from six of the villages around Nevesinje. Serbs from the nearest village who had been minding herds of livestock on a hilltop came running up on the fourth day and urged us with agitation, "Run, some other forces are on their way, torching villages!" People scattered in all directions in a panic. No one waited for anyone. The three of us managed to climb up a hill. Our legs sank knee-deep in mud. My brother and I dragged our mother along no matter what it took. The elderly had less strength and often were left behind where they were later murdered. The stronger and more capable people climbed up the steep hillsides and collected on the hilltops. Some of them proposed we set out toward Mount Velež. Others said, "Shells are falling there!" "We have no time to quibble," a man with a deep authoritative voice decided. As if following orders, or so it seemed to me, each person set off in a different direction. People went in smallish groups with someone they trusted. We weren't familiar with the terrain. I had thought it didn't matter that we were splitting up and that the paths all led to a crossroads where we'd be assembling again. About thirty of us went by mistake in the wrong direction. After great effort we reached the other side of Velež Mountain. There they were shelling Muslim villages and people were fleeing. Below us we could hear the whispers of the people fleeing .. . The people we were traveling with gave us an ultimatum. "You can continue along with us only if you leave your mother behind. All of us will be murdered because of her. Either you leave her, or you stay with her and the rest of us go on without you." We decided to stay with our mother, even if it meant we'd be killed. We spent forty-seven days here, totally alone. For twenty-five days we hid in a depression in the ground and slept in the rain. It was the rainiest June I can remember. Mother was sick. Her teeth chattered. My brother found a hut after many days and we hid there. We collected twigs and made a fire to warm up a little. We had no food. One day we caught sight of cows. At first we thought they were ghosts. They were going out to pasture and we didn't have a chance to milk them because their udders were empty. We hoped we'd have better luck that evening, but they obviously went back by some other route. The only good thing was a spring of water nearby. As the days passed I grew weaker, I kept throwing up and could no longer walk. I started to lose my sight, my joints swelled, my legs were black and white, my hair fell out, my fingernails started peeling off. . . Mother kept trying to bolster our spirits by talking about how nice it would be once we got home, even if we had to live in a basement storage bin. In moments of weakness my brother suggested we turn ourselves in, but we wouldn't hear of it. His wife and children were on the Dalmatian coast. He kept urging me, "It would be best for us to turn ourselves in. Let them murder me. At least you'll be alive and you'll explain to my children what happened." "It is better to die than give up," I answered him with my last ounce of strength. I often heard him crying, "Is this how it's going to end? Will I never see my children again?" "Look, we've never done anybody harm. I don't believe it is our destiny to suffer like this and die. There must be a way out," I kept repeating with faltering conviction. We survived for forty-seven days with no food. When we came home I weighed 80, my brother, 106. On the last day of our ordeal my brother went off to bring back water and firewood. "Don't carry wood back. If no one finds us we'll die today or tomorrow anyway. Don't burden yourself unnecessarily. Bring only water," I pleaded with him. "All right, I'll fetch some water," he said barely audibly and crawled off toward the spring. The hut was out of sight in a sheltered spot but the spring could be seen from above. When he'd climbed up he caught sight of three men. He knew they'd seen him and he figured, "I have nowhere to run. If I try to escape they'll catch up and murder me." He came over to them slowly. He saw they were wearing uniforms with Chetnik insignia, black bandannas and beards. They were quiet. He figured they probably were not alone. "God help you," they greeted him in unison. "God help you, too," he answered, petrified with fear. All three of them showed their shirts and on the inside were the insignia of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim forces. "What is your name?" they asked him harshly. "Muharem." "How come your name is Muharem?" "My mother is a Serb and my father a Muslim," he explained, stuttering, while another four came over to join them. He could tell by the look in their eyes that they didn't believe him. From their conversation he learned that up on Mount Velež Serbian soldiers had murdered the father, mother, sister, the sister's two daughters, an uncle, and an aunt of one of the men. "Do with him whatever you want. He's yours," they said to the man, who asked, "Are you alone?" "No, I'm not. I am here with my mother and sister." "Take us to them." "Don't murder them, please," he moaned. I saw them as they were coming toward us through the fog. It looked as if there were more of them because I was seeing double. One tree looked like a whole forest to me. I told my mother some soldiers were coming. "I don't care. Let them come," she answered listlessly. "What is your name?" they asked me. "Give me something to eat, I'm starving." "What is your name?" "I'm starving." "I'll give you food, just tell me your name." "My brother went off to get water. Don't kill him," I pleaded, not seeing him among them. "Don't worry, your brother will be here in a minute." Several soldiers came up with my brother, who told me, "Show them our papers." "You know we haven't got any," I lied, trying to protect him from the strangers. "Don't make things worse, please, give them our papers," he coaxed, and then he shook them out of my purse. When they looked them over, they noticed, "You don't look like yourselves at all. Last year lots of Serbs got their hands on three ID cards, one for each nationality. How can we believe that you really are the people in these pictures?" One of them picked up my job pass and asked, "What's this?" My brother brought him over my ID card so that they could compare them. "This looks fine," they decided. We were so relieved. "Now let's see whether you can walk," one of the soldiers told me and helped me up. I took a step and stumbled. "You'll recover. We'll be moving on in four days. Wait here for us. We are going into the village. We'll bring you some food tonight." Completely numb with hunger we had no strength to get excited. My survival instinct made me practice walking. I had no sense of direction. I was nearly blind. My brother led me by the hand, and I held a walking stick in the other. They did not come back that night. We heard the pounding of a battle going on in the distance. We had no idea what was happening. My brother was desperate, "They'll be killed, and then the enemy will search the area and find us and murder us." Our saviors did come back the next day around noon. One of them was wounded. They'd brought us fruit salad and juice. They had potatoes as small as walnuts. "We have a wounded man with us. We have to keep going so his leg won't get infected. Get ready to go with us," they hurried us along. By evening we had climbed up to the highest peak of Mount Crvanj, Zimomor, which is at an elevation of over 5,700 feet. It was very cold. The fighters hopped from foot to foot, massaged each other, and picked the ice off. We spent three days traveling. They put Mother on a horse because she couldn't walk. She screamed with pain because there was no saddle. She kept slipping. They'd push her back up and she'd slip again. They also lifted the wounded man, who had been hit by a cluster bomb in the leg, up onto the horse using an unrolled tent and he groaned with the pain as well. We would stop so that someone could scout out the area. Then one by one they would take first my mother across, then the wounded man, on the horse. My brother and I would catch up with them on foot, I held his trouser belt and limped along on a shepherd's staff. We boiled up the potatoes they brought. They had a few cans of sardines. We were careful with food. In the morning we ate a little of the sardines, and in the evening we'd drink a little juice. They were soldiers of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who were looking for survivors from their region in order to evacuate them. On our way we came across a valley where a lot of raspberries and strawberries were growing. People picked them and brought them to me. Images began to come back into focus as my vision improved ... The fourth day they brought us to a field hospital. The doctor examined us and hooked us up to an intravenous line. From there they transported us to Konjic where we arrived on 11 August. Here I heard the voices of people saying, "Why did you bring them here? They'll die tomorrow." I heard them say of my brother, who was in his forties, that some old guy had been brought in who was eighty and who was at death's door. Dragan Andric, the officer of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who had dispatched soldiers into the hills to save the lives of people who fled the fighting and were wandering, lost, inquired if I had seen any Serbian military or paramilitary troops while I was out there. I was so exhausted and furious that I replied, "All Serbs are Chetniks as far as I'm concerned!" "No, they are not. I am a Serb but I'm no Chetnik," said this man, who had saved us, calmly. After thirteen days of treatment and recovery they returned us to Mostar. […]
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| THESE ARE THE BALKANS Konjic My whole life has been tied to Konjic, a little
town halfway between Sarajevo and Mostar, from my memories of childhood,
to my youth, marriage, children, and employment in the same city. Since
the early 1980s I have been working as a driver for the company Konjic-Trans.
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TUZLA, ABOVE THE HATRED Tuzla Before the war I used to be a wrestler. As a
top-notch competitor I was a member of the Bosna team of Sarajevo. I
still have the medals from the Yugoslav Championship displayed in my
room. Although I am an engineer by profession, when the war started
I was out of work. As of April 1995 I started working at the district
jail as chief of security. |
| AND SEVEN DAYS LATER Displaced Person from Bratunac I was born in Bratunac in 1963, where I lived and worked until 10 May 1992. In late April 1992 strange things began to happen in Bratunac. Every day you could hear shooting on the outside of town and in neighboring villages. Rumors began to fly. All the men fit for military services were being picked up. We didn't know what to do. In terror we fled from our houses at nightfall and hid through the night in nearby woods. Two of my neighbors and I hid in a raspberry patch just up the hill from our street, because we had the best view from there down onto our houses. Our mistake was thinking they'd be after us at night, when it turned out they were picking men up by day. One evening in early May we hid in the tall grass, about 300 meters about the house of my neighbor from where we could keep an eye on the whole street. There were only women and children left on the street. At about nine o'clock that night a car came down our street driving really fast. We were surprised because for weeks no one had been driving through the town except for the paramilitary fighters under Arkan with their jeeps, and newcomers with their fancy cars, who we were hiding from. They stopped in front of my neighbor's house [...]
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| HELP FOR A WOUNDED "CHETNIK" The Village of Vranjak near Modrica
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PLEASE, MAMA, DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME Refugee from Visegrad I was born in Visoko, central Bosnia, married Esad in 1974, and moved down to Visegrad in eastern Bosnia on the border with Serbia. Later we built our own home in Sase, a Visegrad outlying area, where we lived with our son, Edin, and our daughter, Azra, until the war. In May 1992 when the war began, Esad came back from Sarajevo to bring his pay. He was working in Sarajevo in the public transportation company as a field worker. He was supposed to go back the next day. Panic erupted that evening; I noticed how my Serbian neighbors were turning the lights out in their houses, so I told my husband, "I'll turn out our lights to see what's going on." After fifteen minutes an unknown car drove into the yard, and then someone banged on the door and knocked three times. I didn't know what was happening and then I saw that the neighbors had turned their lights back on so I did, too. When I opened the door a flour sack fell into the front hall. Something inside jangled. When we opened it we found an automatic weapon inside, two pistols, and four bombs. We were mystified and scared. Esad was furious [...]
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| ENJOY YOUR TRIP, MA'AM! Refugee from Zenica I used to live with my husband and two daughters in Zenica, where out parents also lived. The war found all of us in Zenica. My husband was disabled and retired, and that was why he was not obliged to contribute to a work detail. We spent more than two years living in impossible conditions, constantly looking for ways to get out. We had no money to pay our way out of town, as most people did in order to save themselves. To do that would have cost a lot because there were eight of us. During the third year of the war I happened to meet a Muslim man I knew who told me he was working for the police. When I no longer knew whom turn to for help, I went to see him at home. I complained to him about the situation I was in and he said, "Come see me at my office once you can get together photographs of all the members of your family. I make ID cards. I'll make new ID cards for all of you. You'll be able to use them to get into Serbian territory through the town of Vares." A few days later, as he was seeing me off with my eight new ID cards with Muslim names, he told me, "You'll have to memorize all the information on the cards well, because if someone catches you and you confess who made you these cards, I'll loose my head" [...]
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| SAVE THE CHILD Laktasi With my mother, when I was a two-year-old child, I moved across the Sava River from Croatia to Laktasi in Bosnia. In my heart I carry my childhood, school days, friends of all faiths, and my love, all of it bound up with Laktasi. Right Before the war I married Mirzeta, a Muslim woman. After three years of the mindless violence and dearth, a son was born to us in 1995. Our joy at the triumph of life over ethnic blindness was shared by friends of ours, Serbs, who came to congratulate us. I have committed myself to this area. The town in Croatia, wher my father and two brothers live, is not far away. But someone drew a terrible line, called the front. Weapons spat across it from both sides, with the purpose of expelling or murdering the other side. I fought from the first day in the army of Republika Srpska. Once during a lull in the firing, in a trench in Slavonia, a fellow fighter asked me, "How can you shoot at your brothers and father?" "I'm hoping they aren't there. And if they are, isn't that what we call fate?" I mused aloud [...]
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A LAST NAME SAVES THE DAY Banja Luka Fifteen years before the war broke out, I was living in Sarajevo with my husband and three daughters. I worked as a production metallurgy engineer at a factory. During that time we had friends and acquaintances in all three ethnic groups. Until the war, Sarajevo was a city where no one paid attention to one's religious background. It would happen that on Catholic Christmas, for instance, a Muslim, a neighbor of ours, came to wish us a Merry Christmas. I thanked him for his wishes, and explained that we weren't Catholic. Our last name is unusual and sounded more Croatian than Serbian, so my husband wasn't bothered during the war by Muslims or Croats, but it did happen that some Serbian fighters led him off to be executed before a firing squad, even though he, himself, is a Serb. Luckily, the confusion was cleared up just in time [...]
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| OUT OF NOWHERE, A FEAST The Village of Rudice near Bosanski Novi I was born in a village near Bosanski Novi in 1976. During the war I was a soldier in the Republika Srpska army. Twenty of us were taken prisoner in combat near the town of Donji Vakuf. As I threw down my weapons and went over to their solders with my hands in the air, I was anxiously waiting to see what would happen. They, however, behaved very decently, following the rules of war. They gave us cigarettes and offered all of us brandy. No one abused or humiliated anyone. They did not even speak of the war. They took us from the combat zone into Vakuf where we spent three days. There we experienced what we had feared from the start: we were beaten by other, unfamiliar soldiers who kicked and punched us and smashed us with metal rods day and night. We spent the next four days in Bugojno where they maltreated us in a similar way. In a state of exhaustion after the torture, we
were transferred to a camp that was in Novi Travnik. There the first
surprise for me was the man in charge of the camp, Hamdija Krupic, a
Muslim I had known from before when he was a policeman in the town of
Bosanski Novi, which some now called Novi Grad [...]
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| THE HODJA'S HUNDRED GERMAN MARKS Refugee from Gradacac I was born in 1952 in Tolisa, in Northern Bosnia. I lived in Gradacac from 1971 with my husband and two children, and when the war came we were expecting our third. My children were scared of soldiers, so I took them to my parents' house in a nearby village. We all thought we wouldn't be separated for long. People said that fighting would never break out in Gradacac. The first time the town was shelled by Serbian forces on 14 July 1992, I was at my job. I worked as a grocery store cashier. I saw a Croatian journalist and an Arabic man through the store window who were starting to film the city with a TV camera ten minutes before the attack. That evening, Croatian television showed the footage, and the next day a Muslim soldier I knew by sight warned me that I should change the name on my service jacket [...]
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| Please click on the name of the city
CONTENTS
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"For every front line soldier there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ordinary people whose lives are affected by conflict. To most, the mere act of survival is all-consuming. Some commit remarkable acts of heroism and a few place themselves in great danger by reaching out across conflict lines to people in need. The people in this book are ordinary. Their stories are anything but ordinary. In view of this, their testimonies are all the more necessary. That in itself makes this an important book." Her
Majesty Queen Noor |
