They will know you by your name

Some time in the last few months of the war, when the shootings were more sporadic, we heard that few people, namely Serbs, from our neighbourhood were occasionally crossing the 'border', the avenue between two buildings with opposite armies on each side. They were going to the Serb side to get food, since they were better supplied or to use a phone, since phone lines on our side still only worked for local calls. I have family in Belgrade, so one day mom, her girl friend, and I decided to 'go over'.

These crossings were still not 'legal', and the avenue was patrolled by the Serb army. There were no Bosnian soldiers there, so only those who were Serbs had really the freedom to go back and forth.

I must add here that during that time, something like this was only possible for women to attempt. Since only men were soldiers, any man without an adequate documentation to prove they live there, would be arrested and their fate unsure.

The 'border' was five minutes walk from our building, and the post office another five. We were able to get there unnoticed and shock my relatives when they heard our voices. There were no phone booths, so the conversation was censured and cryptic.

On the way back we were stopped by an uniformed man on the Serb side of the avenue. He asked for our ID's, and I was the only one who had my refugee card from Belgrade with me. Since my name sounds Serbian, I was 'safe'. Both my mom and her friend have Muslim sounding names, and would have trouble if caught on the Serb side. The solider asked my mom for her name, and she was witty enough to answer with the name where she removed one letter from it and said a similar name that sounds Serbian. The third lady then did the same. After little more questioning, he then let us pass.

This time we were lucky that this armed man didn't insist we all show him the ID's and didn't take us in for any further investigation.

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The level of destruction

Pictures speek for themselves.

This is a "Loris" building near the Zeljo soccer stadium, that was on the first line of defense. That was the first line that my friend and I were considering crossing while we were trapped on Grbavica trying to return into the city. The building was hit so many times, that the entire staircase on the corner has collapsed. It was made from the iron reinforced concrete.














All of these buildings, although some looked like they have been eaten up by termites, are patched up and still standing.









These two images are from the neighbourhood closest to the airport that we had to go through when embarking on the adventure to go through the tunnel under the runway.

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Back with the storries

I haven't posted in a while...
See, I was visiting Bosnia couple of months ago, and all of these memories came back alive during my time there. I just wanted to take some times to process them.

One interesting fact that I learned about these memories is that they affect me very much differently than they do for my mom, and probably other people who have lived through the first two years of the war that I avoided. They are very reluctant to bring them up to the surface, because they stir up too much emotions for them. Even when a war time event creeps up into a conversation unintentionally, they are quick to drop the subject as neither party wants to think about that time period. I noticed this first hand with my mom when I would ask her some details that I missed or forgot, and she basically asked me not to ask so much.

I guess I am blessed to not have such deep scars on my soul, and can re-tell these important storries without getting too distrubed.

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Displaced

I never knew there is a difference between definition of refugees and displaced persons until I became one. A displaced person is someone who was forced to leave their home but still lives in the same city. A refugee is a displaced person who lives in a different city.

I was a refugee while I was in Belgrade. I didn't officially become one right away when I got there, because there wasn't a war, and I didn't flee the country. After a few months of my life in Belgrade, when it became obvious the war in Bosnia is only getting worse, I started thinking of what to do while I was there. I met other people from Bosnia, who came after me and got a refugee status. With it they got some benefits, like free public transportation, a health insurance, and some humanitarian aid (which I later sent to Sarajevo). To get the refugee status, one also had to prove they are either in school, working or looking for a job. I was a student back in Sarajevo, and although studying was the last thing on my mind those days, I enrolled in the university to get the refugee card. On my refugee days some other time.

My family in Sarajevo, on the other hand, had status of displaced persons. To get the same benefits that refugees in Sarajevo, during and after the war, had, they had to prove they cannot return to their home because it was devastated. Also, to get an apartment to live in someone had to declare that our old apartment is not livable. For our old place it was very difficult to get such paperwork, because it was on to the Serb territory, and it took a long time until Bosnian institutions established a way to classify those properties. All of these procedures were very stressful for my mom.

After the first few days of their displacement, they were given keys to an apartment in the middle of Dobrinja. All apartments before the war were owned by companies, military, or government and their employees were given apartments based on merits and years of service. They were assigned an apartment for temporary use that belonged to a military Serb family who left the city. They moved there not knowing anyone in the building. The apartment was emptied of all the food by the neighbours before mom and brother moved in. It was difficult to ask for help from people they never met, and often times they wouldn't get any. Some folks were even very hostile and hateful toward my family because I was still in Belgrade. The Bosnian army soon wanted the apartment back, and mom had to look for something else.

After about two years my mom's company assigned her an apartment in a building next door that belonged to a man who worked for the same company as my mother. He was a Serb who left the city at the beginning of the war. The government, or companies, then declared such apartments abandoned and were assigning them to refugees and displaced persons like my family. It was first for a temporary use and then they changed it to a permanent permit. That was the apartment I came to after I returned to Sarajevo.

Couple of years after I moved to the US, the man who used to live in that apartment came back to Sarajevo wanting to claim it back. By that time, the government and companies were issuing certificates to anyone who lived in an apartment before the war so they can purchase it as private property. Those papers carried a value based on how many years the dweller has invested in the housing plan through the company. People who worked 20+ years had a high enough valued certificate that they could purchase the apartment with no additional cash. This man wanted to use those certificates to privatize his apartment, and then sell it to someone, as he had no intention of coming back to live in Sarajevo.

By that time both my brother and I lived in the US, and mom was tired of Dobrinja and all the bad things that happened there, that she found another place for herself closer to downtown. I was fortunate to be able to help her with acquiring that apartment, as all purchases were done with cash only. This one was about $40K. As the faith would have it, that same year I won a drawing in my apartment complex to live there free for a year! That really helped with the financial situation. That apartment we purchased is the same one I stay in when I come to visit Sarajevo.

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Exiling our home

As I mentioned before, prior to the war we lived in an apartment in the suburb Dobrinja. It was close to the military base and the airport, so there was a lot of military movement around the buildings in the days leading to April 5th 1992. When the city then became blocked off, and all roads closed, families have rapidly leaving our neighbourhood. Very few people who stayed behind, were forced to stay inside most of the time. Even in those early days, residents of Dobrinja had already had a different war experience from people who lived in other parts of the city and were able to walk outside freely in those days (for the most part). My mom and brother, and other people who stayed, started receiving threatening phone calls that the Serbs are coming to our building the next day and will kill anyone who hasn't left. Mom spent several nights on the floor by the front door. with a knife in her hand.

The soldiers and other armed men, from both Serb and Bosnian side, came several times during the days, to find out who lives there, and see if there are any soldiers and weapons. There were often gun fires outside, and they had to keep the blinds closed, and often turn the lights off. One day, somebody even started shooting at our bird on the balcony, and mom was furious and started yelling at an invisible attacker downstairs. I remember them telling me on the phone when they had the first bullet hole in the house. It went through a closet and into mom's fur coat. She was so upset, and was figuring out how it can be fixed. They had much bigger troubles ahead.

During the month of May, 1992, it became increasingly dangerous to live there, especially in our apartment that was on the corner of the building, top floor. In one day only, they would receive several dozen grenade hits. During the day, my family would stay at our friend's apartment on the first floor in the middle of the same building. Gradually, more and more people were gathering there. Their neighbours left them keys of their apartments, so people spread out in apartments in the first two stories in that staircase. Since they lost electricity during that time, they gathered all the food from all those apartments to consume it before it goes bad. They had big feasts.

By June, out of some 252 apartments in the two block area, there were only 40 people left, and they all congregated in that one staircase. The front of the building, which faced the Serb side, was too dangerous to walk in front, so mom and my brother used the back side and entered through balconies of the apartments on the ground level to get to our apartment. When it became too dangerous to go back every night, they packed a suitcase each, and with the bird cage, moved to the place in middle of the building. Mom carried all of her jewelry in little sacks around her neck, but didn't want to search through my room in order to take mine until the very last time they went back. The soldiers, this time from the Bosnian army, were already in the apartment, making them self comfortable, and one was sitting in my room. My inheritance was no longer there.

Those brave forty realized their lives were really in danger and decided they will all leave together on the morning of June 5th (I am going on memory here on these dates, so I'll have to confirm them later with mom). The gun fire had some pattern by that time, and they knew that it's usually calm early in the morning. There were few Bosnian men with guns there with them, guarding the entrance to the building. Since most of those entrance doors were tempered glass that has shattered, people welded steel bars to protect strangers from entering. On the morning of their set departure, they were awaken by guns near by. The men who were there to protect them were either asleep or not at their posts. Some Serb soldiers, who were not informed that there were still civilians in the building, were startled when they stumbled upon people in their surveying of the area, and started shooting. At that moment, my brother was on the ground floor and mom on the first. My brother's friend's mom grabbed the two boys, and started running across the street to the other side of the wide avenue. My mom saw them through the window and at first though "at least he will be saved". Then she realized that he is still a 13-year old boy and needs her, and jumped from the balcony, injuring her ancle, to run after him. They left all the possessions and suitcases behind, including our bird. All they saved was what they had on them, my mom's jewelry, and my brother's playing cards and dice. They hoped they'll come back to it in the next few days, but that never happened.

As they ran across that avenue, several people got killed and their bodies left their for days. The Serbs brought tanks near our building, and no more crossing to the other side was possible. When they made it to the building on the other side, parallel to ours, they knew they couldn't stay there. The grenades were forcing them to move further into the neighbourhood, so they made it to the next parallel building and then to the one perpendicular to it. That one however was facing the airport, and several tanks started approaching and shelling that building. They now had to run across another street to the building parallel to the one facing the airport, but on the opposite side. That street was extending all the way toward our building and further, and Serbs had the tank sending grenades down the street all day. It took them several hours until they could finally leave that area, a distance of maybe 200m. They stayed with another friend for a few days, until the local government gave them keys to another apartment to use.

Mom came back to the edge of the building from where she could see our apartment for several days following their exile. She wanted to make sure it is still there. It was getting severely damaged, but was still in one piece until one day in July. She came to that corner and saw the apartment on fire. All three stories were burning, and nobody of course was trying to put the fire out. The building is made of concrete, so it was still standing, but everything that was flammable was burning. It burned for 2 days, until there was nothing left. Because our apartment was on the top, it was heated the most, so even the metal structures got bent out of shape from all the heat.

After the Dayton agreement, while this was still the Serb territory, I went with a friend, the one who used to send inflammable bullets at our apartment, to see if there was anything left. There were still land minds in the building, and he lost his heel on a landmine as a soldier during the war, so he knew what to pay attention to. I followed him in his foot steps. The staircase was completely charred and full of bricks, concrete chunks, and other debris. The tiles have fallen off, the railing was half gone, and all apartments were just holes with no doors. There was very little debris in our apartment, just some trash left there by the soldiers. There were no remnants of any furniture, no parquet nor cabinets, and huge holes in the walls. Half of the bathroom was gone. We found a metal frame with
wires in the living room and couldn't at first figure out what it was. Then we realized it was from our piano. We found some ceramic pieces in the living room, collectibles from the old china cabinet. I collected and glued those back together, and those were the only physicall memories we have from the previous, peaceful life.

These are some before and after pictures. The middle pictures were taken after only the interior and the windows were fixed, and the last ones after all exterior was completed.

This is the back side of the building, facing the avenue that divided the two armies. Our apartment is the top left one. Most apartments still had just foil on the windows.

This top window used to be my room, that I moved into not even a year before this all started. People got the materials to repair apartments from different sources, and that is why the windows are all different.

The front side of the building, with my brother's and mom's bedrooms. You can notice how the higher floors have much more damage. The corner room was actually missing half of the wall, but it has already been patched with new building blocks on these pictures.

Apartment entrance.

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The nature of the war

There have been many heated discussions when describing the war in Sarajevo as a "civil war". I will try not add to that fire here. I know what I know, and putting any particular label on what happened would not make it any less tragic.

I know who was integrating Me, who was preventing Me from being with My family, who made Us leave Our home, and who was shooting at Me. And I didn't volunteer to be a part of any of that. So for Me, it has never been a civil war in the sense that civilians from both sides have knowingly entered into conflict with each other. Many civilians in Sarajevo were forced to take guns to defend themselves and their homes. Many of the people I knew, who never intended to be soldiers, have had to become ones because they realized there was nobody else who will fight for them. The civilians, who had no weapons to begin with, had to face the national army. So, what I know is that some political decisions have caused our blissful, happy lives to be interrupted when heavy armed forces started targeting at us civilians as at a shooting range. A civil war involves two-sided violence; a massacre of civilians by the state is not a civil war.

Most people in Sarajevo have called it the aggression, and in many parts of the country it was a full blown one. It was an aggression in the sense that after Bosnia declared its independence, the national army of the former Yugoslavia, now under control of the government in Serbia, consisting of soldiers from both Serbia itself and the Serb majority regions of Bosnia, has occupied other parts of the country. The well equipped army had all the advantage against the civilians. For whatever reason, however, after the first couple of months of the war, the Serb army didn't advance any further into Sarajevo. They stayed at their positions up on the hills, and continued aggressively sending explosive presents down unto the city.

I realized after I moved to the US that in the west this phrase "civil war" was used by default when talking about conflict in Bosnia, and for the outsiders I suppose it looked that way. Over the four years of the war, the Bosnian army, through different means, acquired weapons to defend the country. With guns comes the violence and innocent people were killed on all sides. I am not going to delve into the dictionary definitions of these terms, but war in the city definitely had a different nature.

Sarajevo is a densely populated city. Most people live in apartment buildings and sky risers. It was also a diverse city, where some 75% of marriages were a mix of different nationalities. Many families were divided and people felt the need to take sides. Many Serbs in our old neighbourhood were in the national army, because half of the apartments were owned by the army. Many, if not all, of them knew about what was planned to happen, and left the town right before or in the early weeks of the war. Many Serbs were afraid what would happen to them if they stayed, so they voluntarily left their homes and moved just outside the city limits. Many moved into houses of people of other nationalities who had to leave because the army was threatening them (like they did to us).

Some of those who stayed were working as the insiders. They were shooting out from their apartments onto civilians who didn't expect bullets coming from those directions. These people eventually ended up in local prisons. My mom was telling me of the flashy signals coming out the building across from ours in the early weeks of the war when they didn't know what was going on.

In the early days, when the borders were still being defined, soldiers from the two sides would literally be on either side of a building. Some buildings, like this one, were completely collapsed in the middle, because the armies were so frequently sending grenades at each other. This picture is the first line of defence on Grbavica. The red building in the center had the Bosnian soldiers on the left, and Serb soldiers on the right. In the middle or the building all the floors have collapsed. This was an absolutely no civilian zone, for several blocks away.

The apartment building where we used to live before the war was also on the front line, from the Serb side, so you can imagine a similar destruction. The layout of the neighbourhood was different than Grbavica, and there was a 4 lane avenue in front of the building that was the border. The soldiers on either side had positioned themselves in certain apartments, ours being one of them, and barricaded the windows with bricks leaving only a small opening at the top. A friend of mine, whom I didn't know before the war, who fought in the Bosnian army had told me that he was in one such apartment in the building across from hours, on the Bosnian side. They were sending inflammable bullets, and competing who can hit through the narrow opening. Our apartment could have caught on fire through one of these games.

The ending of the war on paper happened at the end of 1995 with signing of a peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio. Because the military positions were within neighbourhoods, and apparently the participants in Dayton did not use detailed maps,
boundary lines in Dobrinja ran right through the middle of two apartment buildings. There were disputes as to which side owns what which emerged from the problems of partitioning what had been ethnically mixed territory.

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Am I ready...?

Am I ready to die this very minute?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Ever? And were you able to answer with a 'yes'?

There were only two moments in my entire life when I felt ready to die at that very instance. One of them happened during the war.

Living in constant danger of being shot certainly increased our chances of dying any minute. But most of the time I was just trying my best to avoid death. Rarely would I think about 'what if'. And when I did, I would always conclude that I still wanted to fight to survive. It seemed that other people had the same force driving them to live, because interestingly, in spite of lack of nutrition, we were all rather healthy.

But this one time, I was particularly aware of how close the end of my life could be, and there was nothing I could do about it. It might have been late 1995 and I was riding on a bus. The bus was following the street parallel to the river, the street that was going along side the hill Trebevic, from where most of the missiles came. Standing next to a window, I was observing those houses and woods up the hill. There were few buildings that were protecting us from the view, but for most of the route the hill was very visible from the bus, and vice-versa. I was thinking about how there have been before, and maybe there were at that very moment, snipers looking and targeting at vehicles on the streets bellow. And that there may be one that is targeting at me right there.

At one point, in the minuscule reality of that scene in the bus, the realization came: "I am ready to die right now". And I felt at peace with that. I was not afraid, anxious, nor angry. I don't believe I was giving up, but I wasn't resisting either. My mind was not grasping for control in protecting my body. I didn't have any regrets. I thought I lived my life the best way I could, and for that brief moment, I felt like my soul was clean and ready to leave the pettiness of this world and meet its Creator. And for me that meant continuing onto something better for which I was ready.

I was ready to die.

I thought about this in the years since then and how liberating it felt to be ready. Like I said earlier, only one other time was I physically, mentally, and spiritually ready to go in that particular moment. Usually my answer would be: "could I go tomorrow?", because I had, or at least I thought I had, things to take care of. I have tried to remind myself every now and then that I never know when I'll be called home and try to be prepared mentally that it is inevitable. Even thinking about it on occasion has helped me live in a way where I could at least be a little bit more ready tomorrow.

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Means of transportation

Sarajevo residents were always relying on public transportation to go places in, and even outside of the city. Those who owned cars would still rather not drive them every day into downtown because of limited parking. We had buses, trolleys, trams and shuttles connecting pretty much every low and high point in town. Sarajevo was actually the first city in Europe to have a full-time (from dawn to dusk) operational electric tram line. Even commuters from the small nearby towns were using the buses on a daily basis. Sure, we had to walk few minutes to the nearest station, but it certainly could not prepare us for all the walking during the war. (picture: Sarajevo tram today)

Most small, personal vehicles were soon destroyed in the war while just sitting in the driveways. Bullets and shrapnels would make them non-drivable and often completely set them on fire. The owners didn't have money to buy gas on the black market, anyway. So these cars would usually end up as barricade piles on the streets.

Besides those armored vehicles from military and UNPROFOR, the large trucks and vans with no windows were usually the only rare vehicles on the streets. We would often catch a ride in one of these when we had to venture downtown. We'd never know what is, or was, in the back of those all closed-in cars. Sometimes when the back door opened we'd be greeted by a full crowd of people all squeezed in. There would be no seats, and no hand rails to hold onto, so everyone would just be squatting down avoiding the dirty and trashy floors, holding onto each other. The roads were absolutely horrible, full of holes from grenades and sagging asphalt from the ditches underneath, that made those rides quite uncomfortable.

Sometimes there would be more than just people transported. My mom once was carrying bags of flour to trade on the market and was picked up by a truck that had sheep in it recently. When the truck hit a big hole on the road, they all tumbled down into the mud left there by previous four-legged passengers, and the flour spilled all over them.

A skateboard was a useful tool to have in transporting heavy load, such as packages mom sometimes received from her former employer from another part of town. Rolling wheels were good, but the nature of the skateboards is to tilt sideways, so the boxes would often fall off.

In the summer of 1994, just before I returned, the trams started operating part of the route. Sarajevo is mainly situated along the river and main avenue that runs straight through the entire city, about 12 miles. The trams followed this road. After spending four weeks on the hills of Grbavica before being able to enter the city, and seeking how visible the streets of Sarajevo were from up there, I was very much surprised to see the tram running. Sure, it was a peace agreement time, but there were still sniper shootings and it only officially lasted until enough people got killed to call it war time again. The people in trams were often the target of snipers, (from the hill in the background on this picture). They would get shot while just sitting by the window. Still, people used them, as they were a sign civilization was coming back.

In the first couple of years of war, the city was full of trams that were abandoned in the middle of their route, then destroyed in artillery fighting and caught on fire. They were good barricades for people to cross the streets by running behind them. Their sight, however, and the debris around them were a horrific image of the state the city was in. So, when the streets were cleared, tracks and electrical lines fixed, and few trains patched into a drivable condition, people were excited. There were really only a handful of trams operating, and just in the middle of the day, 10-4 I think, so they were usually overflowing with passengers. A dozen people, literally, would be leaning out of every door. They all had to get off first at every stop in order to let others out.

Dobrinja has never had trams, just buses and trolleys. The first buses started operated I think in early 1996. In the October of 1996, after the reintegration of those parts of town which have previously been under aggressors occupation (including Ilidza), the tramway line Bascarsija-Ilidza, which is the longest one, has been re-established. A month later, the trolley-bus line opened from Dobrinja to downtown, which for us psychologically meant the normal life is back.

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Neighbourhood grave sites

Death and burials, often by dozens, were a daily reality.

Our two main cemeteries were on the opposite sides of the city, but both outside of the siege area. So, since people were unable to transport the remains of their loved ones anywhere else, the neighbourhood parks had wooden grave markers poking up between the vegetable gardens and trenches. The burials had to be done at night.

We had half a dozen in front of our windows, different markers for different nationalities. My best friend's grandfather was buried there. It took several years after the war until people were ready and able to give them a proper funeral in a real cemetery. The last grave mark in front of our building was removed some three years after the war ended.

May they rest in peace.

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Surrounded by garbage

One of the challenges of living in the war, that probably doesn't first come to one's mind, is what to do with all the garbage. Sarajevo didn't have a regular garbage collection service during the war, for several obvious reasons: it was too dangerous to collect, the city dumps were outside of the siege area, and the city didn't have the resources since almost nobody was working and paying taxes.

The garbage first started accumulating around the neighbourhood trash containers, but they were quickly overflowing. This picture really shows just a minor problem. Then we were just piling it onto a parking lot. Our neighbourhood, Dobrinja, was in a particularly bad shape because it was under an extra tight siege. If I could find a picture of that trash scene somewhere, it would truly speak for a thousand words. The piles were humongous; They would start with just a few trash bags, and as people added to it over the months the pile would reach 100 ft in diameter and 3 stories high. After some point it would be too high to throw on top of it, so it would just continue expanding on the perimeter.

The garbage from these mini-hills would get collected maybe five times a year by the UNPROFOR's scoop and dump trucks, the only ones who were able to drive outside the city limits. Even their vehicles working on the neighbourhood dumps were often under fire from the snipers on the hills.

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Walk in the dark

The other evening, as I was walking toward my bedroom after turning off the lights, I was reminded of all the walks in the dark we were forced to during the war. During most of the time when we didn't have electricity for days at a time, we didn't go to bed at sun down. While it required minimum activity, we still had to move around the apartment in complete darkness.

The darkness was more intense than what you'd get by just turning off all the lights in your house. There was no light coming from the outside either, from street lights, cars or other buildings around. If there was no moon and it was cloudy, it would be pitch dark inside.

We didn't have flash lights, as those require batteries which we didn't have. Every now and then we'd use candles, but those were very rare, too. We mostly used glasses filled with water on the bottom and oil on the top, with a little string, threaded through a cork screw, lit at the top. Those were dangerous to move too much, especially as you are walking in the dark, as the oil can spill and catch on fire. Sometimes it was even desirable not to have the light coming out of the window because a lit room was an easier target to snipers.

Our eyes would somewhat get used to the darkness, but we could still only barely see the contours of the walls, doors, and furniture. So we adjusted to manoeuvring through the rooms with hands constantly feeling our way through. Because we would do it so often, we'd have a good sense of the distance between objects, but we still had to touch around us. Inevitably, there were few head bumps.

So, every time I walk to my bed after having turned the lights off in the living room, and I stretch my arms out to feel where the table, kitchen counters and door are, I remember those long nights in Sarajevo.

The sad memories also returned few months ago when our neighborhood lost power for a couple of hours. We gather all 10 candles we had in the house, and lit them all next to each other in an attempt to create the biggest light source we could. The TV, home phone, and desktop computer all not working also added to the anxiety, but at least the cell phone and the laptop had enough juice to keep us busy until the power was back.

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No whistling, please

You never get used to hearing grenades. The sound they make I still carry with me.

The launching of a grenade makes a popping sound, like a champagne bottle cap popping, only a thousand times stronger. Then there is a brief moment of silence, as if to tease your brain into thinking the pop came from some other source.

Then the whistle sound starts creeping in, very faint at first and then increasingly louder and louder. You can assume the direction the missile is going by this sound. Like with thunder, you can guess how close it's going to hit.

By this time, all your senses are focused on this high pitch noise and anticipating its inevitable ending in the explosion. You know it's coming. You can't help but pause all your thoughts for a brief moment until you know the ending.

And then the BOOM happens.

You actually feel a sense of relief that the anxious wait is over. The roaring sound still lingers, the building may be shaking, and the sirens are usually blaring. But your mind is released from the temporary freeze.

The two seconds are over and you can go about your day.

Most people who lived through a war may never get used to the whistling sound a grenade makes. For years after the war the kids in Sarajevo would do pranks in the public transportation and make the low-to-high whistle sound somewhere from the back. You could see an instant tension on peoples' faces; their minds locked for a moment to process the sensation and link it to reality. Some would duck, some look out the window, and others just freeze. Those kids would usually be thrown off of the vehicle at the next stop.

I am still easily startled by similar sounds, and flinch when people or objects suddenly appear from the behind.

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So strong, the shrapnels just bounce off!

I rarely mention this story, simply because some might wrongly interpret it as maybe bragging. So, so many people were badly wounded, crippled, and sadly, many have died from wounds inflicted by shrapnels from grenades, that my scar on the arm seems as a minor scratch and only as a reminder of other kids who suffered in that same incident.

The grenades are a nasty thing. They are so much worse than snipers, whose bullets are smooth and go straight though the tissue. The grenades are filled with metal, which, when grenade explodes, shreds into small sharp and rugged pieces. These shrapnels, combined with pieces of concrete or other material the grenade hits, create thousands of very destructive particles. Even the small pieces tear the tissue in different directions and leave large scars. The wounds get easily infected because of all the debris carried in and the cleaning is very painful. A good friend of mine got a pass-through wound on her shoulder, which had to be cleaned daily by pulling yards and yards of gaze through it, without any anesthetics....an absolute horrible thing!

Our neighborhood, Dobrinja, was positioned between the Bosnian and Serb army on the either end, and the airport and a hill on the other two sides. The two sides would send grenades over the buildings. Our building was along an avenue that ran the entire length of the neighborhood, which was about 1 mile. The armies often used these custom missiles that combined three grenades mounted onto a small motor. These were supposed to better control the distance. Those contraptions made a distinctive noise and were moving slower than regular grenades, so with that sound, we could almost follow them as they travelled from one side to the other.

In the summer of 1995, the frequent shooting was forcing us to stay inside most of the time. I spent many days studying on the balcony that faced the avenue. Even though grenades were traveling on the skies above, the faint fact that missiles were not falling between the buildings allowed me to sit outside, but constantly aware of their frequent sound.

On one particular day I was taking a break from the book to do some laundry hand-washing in a baby-tub on the balcony. As I was leaned over, a grenade landed on the sidewalk on the corner of the building across from ours. Now, someone who has been through the war from the day one might have instinctively jump to the ground to the sound of a grenade, but my instinct was to raise my head to see what just happened. As I did that, I distinctly remember seeing three shrapnels traveling my way and one hit me in the right arm. Actually, after hitting my flesh, burring the skin and making an imprint, it bounced off. The other two pieces missed me. I believe that if I was still bent over the tub, or attempted to squat down, the shrapnels would have hit me in the head.

I was bleeding for a little bit, and my arm swelled, but I was fine. My mom was so upset and she threw the three metal pieces off of the balcony, which I hoped she didn't do so I could have saved the metal with the same shape as my scar. :) We put some covering over my wound, but the real frenzy became to figure out where my brother was. He was supposed to be with a friend in the building in front of which the grenade fell, and they usually hang out right at the entrance. (many kids usually played in this area) His mother told us my brother was not there. Mom tried to run out to the site, because there were many wounded and killed at the scene, but the police stopped the people from approaching. Sadly, often times it happened that after a grenade kills many people at one spot, few minutes later, after others have gathered to check on them and carry them away, another grenade would be sent to the same spot or to the closest hospital that would be accepting those victims, so as to kill as many more people as possible. The police tried to stop that. The ambulance cars were loading the wounded, limp and bloody bodies, and my mom was panicking that my brother could be one of them. Mom was screaming here lungs out maybe an hour or two, until my brother came back, totally clueless of the magnitude of stress his absence has caused us. He was with a friend in the nearby neighborhood, some half an hour away, and he only heard people on the streets talking about the massacre in Dobrinja. After he was accounted for, and the sirens outside have died down, I went to the hospital, twenty minutes walk away.

They were still working on the kids with more serious wounds. One boy, around 13, had a shrapnel on his behind. He was laying on his stomach, his mom comforting him, as the doctors tried to stitch him up. Another little girl, maybe 5 years old, got hit in the heal as she was running up the stairs away from the explosion. I felt embarrassed to be there for my little wound. They cleaned it up, made sure there were no pieces in there, put some gaze and bandages on it, and told me to come every day for two weeks for cleaning. I wasn't happy with that thought, knowing what that usually means. They were actually taking the scab that formed every day off, to make the wound open and clean of infections. This has caused the bumpy scar to remain instead of skin being smooth.

The nurses made a list of everyone injured and killed and gave it to the news station, as they usually did. They reported it on the radio and TV, so that relatives would find out as most phone lines were not working. The next day my family from another part of Bosnia were calling after they heard my name, and not knowing how bad I was hurt. Again, it was a somewhat embarrassing position to be in and explain I was really fine. I was all right. I just received a scar, maybe more on the inside than the outside, as a reminder of this event. My life was saved, by the grace of God, in that moment of curiosity that made me look up instead of jump down.

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A close call

During the two years of the war I lived there, there were no grenades that fell in the U-shaped park area between ours and the two buildings on either side. One week in the summer of 1995, the shooting was particularly bad, we couldn't leave home for several days, and were getting house sick. I needed to take a brake from studying and asked mom to go with me for a short stroll in the 'park' outside. The park is made out of small gardens, each surrounded by a two feet metal or plastic sheet fence.

We only made it about half way when, in a split of a second, we first saw a huge light mass in the corner of our vision traveling toward the building in front of us. The shiny ball landed with a roll of thunder about 50-100 yards in front and to the right of us. As soon as our brains could process the information, we fell to the ground trying to protect us from the damage we realized was going to come from this explosion. But, we could not think quite rationally that quickly and we squatted down by the fence on the left side, instead of the right. As we tried to make ourselves as small as possible we saw a rain of shrapnels come our way from the right, clanking against the metal sheets all around us. This lasted for a couple of seconds. Not a single one has hit either of us!

After a few seconds, deafened by the extreme noise, and still in the fetal position, we yelled at each other to confirm we are both all right. Then, we run as fast as we could toward our building. As soon as we made it inside, two other grenades fell in the park area. That afternoon was the first and only time I felt I needed to hide in the basement with other neighbors.

After that day, no more large artillery hit the area between those three buildings.

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School in the war-zone

I attended electrical engineering college that was downtown. The classes were held unless it was a "really bad shooting" day; a term that was so relative. The professors didn't take the attendance, but since we didn't have the real books, their lectures were the only material we had. Plus, there was nothing else to do at home, no entertainment, unless we were creative to make up something. So, I studied and went to school whenever possible.

The college was in exile as our old building was now on the Serb territory. We held classes in what used to be partly kindergarten partly economics college building. The rooms didn't have any glass on the windows, which took the entire wall on one side. There were only heavy clear plastic sheets on the openings, many of which had holes too. At least we had enough sun light, because we usually didn't have electricity. Winters were rough, with our entire gear on, including the gloves. The only way to warm up was to run hot water down our fingers during breaks, which was heated on natural gas. There were times when it was so cold in the classrooms that our calculators would not work.

Somehow, I can't remember walking all the way to school more than just a few times. Even when I first came back to Sarajevo, the tram was operating part of the day. It was about 45 minutes walk to the closest tram station, which was the beginning of the line so there was no problem getting in. The carts would get full very quickly and it was sometimes hard to board after the first few stations. The trams would stop operating when it was too dangerous, and I usually didn't go to school on those days. I also hitchhiked a lot, which was common in my neighborhood, and rode in all kinds of trucks, large and small.

Sometimes it would happen that the fighting was really bad in one part of the city, and all quiet in the other, but we didn't have a way of knowing because there was no electricity to hear the news. On one occasion I made my way downtown only to find out that only I and my professor, who also lived in my part of the city, made it to class. All other students from downtown, who were aware of the magnitude of artillery in the area that day, did not show up. So, as not to waste the day, the professor lectured just me there for 5 hours straight. He figured we don't need to take breaks since there were no other students to talk to.
With only plastic on the windows, we were able to hear shooting outside loud and clear. The professor would stop for a second to acknowledge that a particular grenade was probably coming from a certain area, and then moments later to offer his guess where it has landed. The end to that class day could not come any sooner.
When we stepped outside the building, I realized it was too dangerous to try to make my way all the way home to the other side of the city. I decided to try to make it to my godmother's house, an hour walk away on the hill on the opposite side of the river. I remember running and praying like never before up that steep hill, keenly aware of how exposed my back was to the snipers on the hill on the other side of the river. This time, again, I made it safe.

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Life under fire

It is a fact that doesn't need stating that Sarajevo was under almost daily gun fire during the war. We all lived with the fact that when we go outside we can get shot. But the war lasted 4 years, and we of course couldn't be inside for that long, so many people, some 10,000 civilians, got killed in Sarajevo. That number is higher than the number of Bosnian soldiers killed in the city.

It also may be obvious, but I must clarify here, that we mostly walked, actually run, wherever we needed to go. Despite the lack of food, we were in good physical shape because of all the running. There was no public transportation, there was no gas for personal vehicles, and anyway most of them were destroyed by artillery. So, people were a relatively slow moving target for a distant sniper, and grenades an effective 'solution' for large gatherings.

The geographical position and the siege of Sarajevo allowed civilians to be such an easy target. Sarajevo lies in a valley and is surrounded by several hills and mountains. The Serb army was stationed on the elevated positions on the three sides of the city, and on the 4th, west, side is the airport, thankfully controlled by the international forces after the first few months of the war. West of the airport was the territory and the only mountain, Igman controlled by the Bosnian army. The windy road up this mountain was under frequent fire and few, very brave drivers dared to ride it. They would usually go at night, but their car lights would give them away. Our parish priest, fra. Mirko, made numerous trips on this, the only road leading into the city, bringing supplies to all the people of Sarajevo. My godmother went with him a couple of times, and told me he always requested she led the prayer of absolution, the long version, she would say. He received honors from the city for all the selfless, generous, and unbiased help that he brought.

We kind of new when it was a bad day to go out because of the shooting. It was obvious, we didn't need the news. Some areas were more dangerous than others. In the early months, several intersections were marked with signs like these "Attention, Sniper". Many streets were not passable, and we took the back roads. There was pretty much only one route to go from our side of the city to the center, 6-7 miles which took about 3 hours. We had to maneuver through some trenches, go behind the buildings whenever possible, and always run on the intersections. Even after the war we had an instinct to cross the streets very quickly.

Because we knew the guns were up the hills, on most smaller streets facing the hills people draped large pieces of fabrics hanging between the buildings on each side of the street. On large intersections huge steel cargo containers or damaged cars were lined up and stacked up. Amazingly, snipers sometimes were able to find the victims even through the small spaces between the two containers.

Our eight story building was 'safe' for most of the war. We lived on the third story, but we still had few bullet holes in the walls, and most windows blown out from grenades that fell on the top of the building. The last two floors were all destroyed. We had a sniper once trying to hit my mom and brother on the balcony as they were setting up the stove. That sniper was "working" that area only shortly, and after a couple of weeks we were able to live in that side of the apartment again. There was only one occasion when we were scared enough that we had to run down to the basement. Some city residents, on the other hand, spend many of their days under the ground.

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The Sarajevo Zoo

When thinking of the war time in Sarajevo, one may not consider that there were more than humans affected by it. The siege of Sarajevo devastated the Sarajevo zoo. It was on the front line and most of its animals either starved to death or fell victim to artillery or even sniper fire. The last animal, a female black bear, died at the end of 1992.

This was all happening before I returned to Sarajevo, so I don't remember all the details, except hearing from my mom's letters that almost all the animals have died. I found that this sad story was reported by The New York Times and here is just a part of it:
"The scene in the animal house is wrenching. A putrid odor pervades the concrete building, and cage after cage is littered with the carcasses of lions, tigers, leopards and pumas. From the skeletal remains of some and the whole carcasses of others, it is clear that some died sooner than others, and that their surviving mates fed on the bodies before they, too, succumbed to hunger."

The zoo reopened in 1997 after the area had been cleared of landmines and unexploded mortar shells. Unfortunately, it is facing another crisis as the city cannot afford to look after animals donated by zoos across Europe.

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The tunnel

There were no stores in Sarajevo during the war. The food on the few street black markets came from outside of the city. Since we were under siege, there were no roads in and out of the city, except during short periods of peace agreements.

In the first couple of war years, volunteers working in eight-hour shifts dug out a tunnel underneath the airport runway, which led to a little town Hrasnica, on the "free" territory controlled by the Bosnian army. The tunnel was mainly for the soldiers, but every now and then they would allow civilians to pass through. Even when the civilians were allowed, if an army group or some politicians happen to come to the tunnel at that moment, all civilian traffic was halted, sometimes for hours. Some paid big money to go through the tunnel, either to evacuate from the city or to bring large quantities of food to sell on the markets. Others, like us, just wanted to buy for themselves some food that was 5 times more expensive on the black markets in Sarajevo. The tunnel was just about 5 ft high and had rails on the ground, for mine-like carts, that transported everything from weapons, people, to food.

The tunnel was built in my neighbourhood of forty thousand, Dobrinja. Since it was at the edge of city line next to the airport and surrounded on three sides by Serb army, it was also one of the most dangerous regions in the city. The area around the tunnel was long emptied of all residents, because in the first days of the war the national army took hold of the airport and positioned their tanks and artillery there. There were also massive slaughters of people in their homes close to the airport, which contributed to this area quickly becoming a military only zone. Between all the buildings were trenches, and that was the only way to get close to the tunnel. The entrance to the tunnel was through the basement of a house belonging to the Kolar family. Part of the house is now a museum. The basement holds army uniforms, shell casings, and empty sacks of humanitarian aid. Today, only 20 metres of the tunnel survive - the rest has collapsed.

The tunnel ran for approximately 870 yards in length. That distance from above the ground looks so short, but it could take hours to go through the tunnel.
This picture was taken at the entrance on the other side, and in the distance, on the other side of the runway, is where we used to live. One day, I think in late 1995, my mom, her friend and I decided to try to go through the tunnel and get some food in Hrasnica.

It was close to impossible to obtain a civilian permit to legally enter the tunnel; you either had to have strong connections with military/police who controlled the entrance, or pay hundreds of dollars equivalent money to get the papers. So, we talked to people who had done it before, and got directions through the neighbourhood and the tranches to the side entrance to the main trench leading into the Kolar house. It was just 20 min walk from where we lived, but quite dangerous once we went passed inhabited buildings. Being on the first line of defense, this area was often covered with land mines. We were told which buildings to go through; they all had holes in the concrete walls through the entire length of the building, so that people can run through the building instead of outside and be out of site from the snipers. Then we had to maneuver through a maze of certain trenches, jump out by the garbage mini-hill, jump into the trenches again, turn right when we see a cow (!)...and when we finally reached the final leg of the trench leading toward the house, we had to wait for a good moment when the guards were not looking so that we can jump into the line with other "legal" people. The official entrance where the guards check the papers was before this point in the line, so the guards were not so vigilant for anyone sneaking in through other trenches - only those crazy folks like us would attempt something like that. We were very lucky to have made it safe, and weren't ratted out for cutting in the line.

We quickly made it into the house,down the stairs into the basement and were in the dark tunnel. The guards controlling the traffic through the tunnel would only allow flow in one direction, because the tunnel was very narrow. People on the other side would have to wait until everyone from the opposite side would come out. There was very little light in the tunnel and we had to just move with the flow. It had steel support beams, and because the ceiling was so low, many people hit their heads, so many beams had blood on them. We tried to keep our heads low, and watch where we step. People coming back would had dropped their load, probably when bumping their head, so there were potatoes, smashed eggs and similar obstacles between the rails that we had to watch for. When we finally reached the other side, I remember a sigh of relief, not only to be outside of claustrophobic tunnel, but also a sense of freedom that this town had.

We made our purchases, our eyes wide open in awe of all the food available. The money we had was from my mom's quasi salary, that was sometimes made in cigarettes, which we traded on the black markets, as well as other non-perishable food collected from other sources. Our main items on the list were eggs, fresh produce and meat, all rarely seen in our diet those days, as well as other things such as cooking oil, spices, sweets, and coffee. We loaded probably 50 pounds each, huge backpacks so heavy that I was bent over the entire time - it helped not to hit the steel beams on the way back. :) When we lined up at the tunnel entrance in Hrasnica, we had to wait few hours because military battalion had arrived and they had the right of way. I remember degradation as all of us waiting there were treated as some lower class by police patrolling the entrance. All they would tell us is that tunnel was currently closed to civilians and we all had to just wait. It was getting dark, we were already tired, and we still had to make the hardest part of the trip and carry all that food through the tunnel. When we finally made it in, I felt like a mule under all that pressure, just following the person in front of me, trying to keep my head low and not to fall down. We made it home safely, and my brother was very happy to see us alive, safe, and to dig in into all that yummy food.

We never considered going through the tunnel again.

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The UN lunch packets

Since we lived very close to the first line of defense, there were many UN tanks positioned on the streets close to the border. The UN vehicle that was a bit further in between the buildings often had kids around it wanting to talk to the soldiers, practice their English and maybe get some handouts. At one point, it became known that the UN soldiers are trading the old Yugoslavian paper money for lunch packets. Since there was a huge inflation right before the war, we had many paper bills with 6 and 9 zeros and these were apparently interesting to those man. I decided to be more proactive and target those soldiers at the front lines. So, few times I went with a handful of old paper bills, money that were totally useless at that point, to the UN peace keepers stationed in the ground floor apartments in the building on the front line. That area was clear of any civilians, actually several buildings around it were totally empty, and some wired with step-grenades. There were also no Bosnian military or police allowed in the zone. So, mom went with me to the corner of the building, and then I made my way to this apartment, entering from the balcony with no fence. And, those few times I was nicely greeted by both man and woman in uniform there, who gave me few very delicious lunch packets that they received in their regular supply. My adventures didn't last too long. On one occasion, as mom and I were returning from the front line zone, a Bosnian policeman stopped us and threatened us that we will go to jail if we ever go there again. So we stopped going. But, the packages were so special. They had things like canned cheese and fuel cubes, both of which we couldn't find anywhere else. In hindsight, I am thankful for those treats but also that I was stopped before I got into some series trouble. That front line was no place for a twenty year old girl!

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