Wartime Tales

They will know you by your name

2009-08-31T18:35:00.000-07:00

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.

The level of destruction

2009-08-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Back with the storries

2009-08-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Displaced

2009-06-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Exiling our home

2009-06-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

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.

The nature of the war

2009-06-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Am I ready...?

2009-06-09T06:34:00.000-07:00

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 war 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.

Means of transportation

2009-06-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Neighbourhood grave sites

2009-06-07T20:21:00.001-07:00

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.

Surrounded by garbage

2009-06-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

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.

Walk in the dark

2009-06-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

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.

No whistling, please

2009-05-31T19:04:00.000-07:00

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.

So strong, the shrapnels just bounce off!

2009-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

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.

A close call

2009-05-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

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.

School in the war-zone

2009-05-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Life under fire

2009-05-24T18:38:00.001-07:00

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.

The Sarajevo Zoo

2009-05-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

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.

The tunnel

2009-05-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

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.

More pictures

The UN lunch packets

2009-05-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

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!

Hunting for food

2009-05-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

There were very few things that we had any control of during those times. And as unusual as it may seem, there were not many things we can occupy our minds with. The life was dulled down to bare existence. The goal of each day was to survive just that day, in the best way we could. The main concern on our minds every single morning was what we are going to eat that day.

Since we were not able to secure a garden in the park area for us, we decided to go steal the vegetables from other people. Of course it would be too visible to try to do it in front of our building, so mom and I ventured on a nearby hill that had several gardens. The top of the hill had the most vegetables, but was also the most dangerous, because being up high we were exposed to snipers who were always looking for victims. We would hid between the berry bushes, and duck for cover when hearing the gun shots. Few areas had trenches used by Bosnian army at some point, so we also used those for cover when we could. The gardens had all sorts of vegetables, and we had to gather them fast, laying close to the ground. I became very proficient at digging out the carrots and potatoes in one piece, and mom would gather cabbage and other above the ground veggies. The only tool we had were kitchen utensils. The last time we went up there we were forced to rush, either by guns or owners chasing us, so much so that we left our special knife up there, and that was the end of our theft adventures.

Humanitarian aid

2009-05-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

To people who have not experienced it, the term "humanitarian aid" probably brings thoughts of hope. For me, those years in war left a bad taste in my mouth when thinking of humanitarian aid.

The most common items we have received through the regular humanitarian aid were flour, beans, rice, pasta (often with no eggs), lentils or peas, "kabash" soap - huge yellow smelly brick. Even now thinking back on these, I get that sense again of being disgusted with rice and beans. They were so often in our diet, that for years after the war I couldn't think of eating them again. Mind you that we didn't have spices or sauces to go with these, so plain boiled food was very tasteless. Fortunately we found few other sources for more nutritious food.

The Caritas humanitarian aid was not regular. They mainly distributed donations to those registered in a Catholic parish, and since there were not many of those in the city, the convoys were often routed to other, less dangerous territories. But we really looked forward to those distributions. They had items that I get excited thinking about even now. Things like jams, chocolate, cookies, sauces, canned meat, vegetable shortening, vitamins, cocoa, soups, milk powder, egg powder, instant mashed potatoes... All of these were rare, and in very small quantities, but for us at that time those were so precious and something we talked about for days.
Through Caritas we received help in more than just food. One or two times they have even distributed chopped wood, a cubic meter per household!

We were called, maybe a dozen times, for clothing and shoes distribution in Caritas. Many times someone from the church would first call those registered members to pick through the available items before opening it up to everyone in the community. Those were mainly second-hand items, with or without holes, barely clean, stuffed in huge boxes. As much as we needed clothing, especially my brother who was growing fast those years, I didn't enjoy being part of the crowd who elbowed through the piles of clothes, grabbing more than they can carry. I actually still have a pair of boots and have just a few months ago given away the last clothing item I got through them.

Some ten years after the war, the church choir I was in was replacing their old choir robes. Since they didn't know where to get rid of them, I asked if we could send it back to my choir in Sarajevo. Everyone was supposed to wash and fold their two layered robes and put them in boxes we prepared. When after the rehearsal I saw those boxes just piled up with tossed fabric, some still covered with B.O., it reminded me of the boxes of cloths we went through in Caritas. I stayed and re-folded every single robe, in an effort to make the gift more presentable to those opening it.

Handful of times through Caritas, the "children", the term that was used loosely, have also gotten packages that were supposed to be from other children in other parts of the world. I think this might have been part of "Christmas boxes" operation. It was an exciting event because the boxes were all nicely wrapped, it was a present, and not just a rationed distribution. The packages were all the same size, so we would just pick one, having no idea what was in them. Most of the boxes had a message from the child that put it together, but these were the "real" children, sometimes pre-school age, so messages only had a few words. The items were also interesting. One time I got a box that had a card, couple of gloves of garlic and one slipper!

Merhamet (Muslim) and Dobrotvor (Serb) organizations were also distributing packages to those who had background eligibility to receive aid from them, which my family had both, but we only received help from these organizations a handful of times.

Look inside the flour bag

2009-04-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

During my two and a half years in Belgrade, I had a status of refugee there. One of the benefits of having that frowned upon status, was that I had received some humanitarian aid from red cross, mainly food and toiletry items. Almost 100% of those I had sent to my family in Sarajevo.

I must have sent close to 50 packages during that time. They received probably less than 10 complete boxes. The first food convoy from Belgrade was in November of 1992, organized by "Politika", a large news paper agency. I had been anticipating this opportunity, and had gathered all sort of delicious food and even clothing for my teenage brother who had been outgrowing his shoes every few months. Some of the items I remember that were in those two boxes were potatoes, cabbage, onions, oils, canned goods, pasta, sauces, chocolates, jacket, jeans and tennis shoes. My family never got those packages. The package delivery didn't go through a secure post office delivery, but the agencies organizing them had to go through several check points before reaching their destination. At each of those, the army or whoever was patrolling them would take whatever they wanted from the convoy. Even when the boxes arrived at the storage place, those working there would often first take something for themselves before letting the recipients know they have the package waiting for pick up.

Over time, I got more wise about packaging. First, I would send few smaller boxes, instead of one large one. There was a bigger chance they would get at least one box if I send more than one, even if it's smaller. Then through conversations with other people sending packages to their family members, and through few messages I was able to get from my family, I learned to hide the 'delicatessen" items. I would put chocolate, coffee, or jams inside the large bags of flour. Some packages appeared from the top as if they only have flour, rice and pasta in them, and were not of interest to those who did not dig deeper. My brother would later tell me how exciting those moments had been when he'd bury his hands into those flour bags to discover a hidden treasure.

Lack of food

2009-04-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

After water, the second hardest aspect of living in the war was the lack of food.

Since there were no grocery stores, and people didn't work to earn any money, the few farmers markets that existed operated mostly on a trading system. The value of local currency deteriorated very quickly, so some companies paid some sort of a social aid (there were no real salaries) to their employees in cigarettes, which were very valuable in trading since we have had a large population of smokers. People were trading cigarettes and bags of flour for meat, vegetables, eggs, or cooking oil. People were also trading their clothing, books, or jewelry on the markets for food.

The monetary unit was Deutsche Mark (DM), a money used in Germany before the euro, because it was a stable currency. The prices for items on the markets were in DM, but since very few people actually had this money, the trading was done with other merchandise based on their estimated value in DM. For example, 1 pack of cigarettes or 1 kilo (2 pounds) of flour had a value of 1 DM for trading purposes. So, to purchase a can of pate, which was 25 DM, one would need to bring 25 packs of cigarettes or 25 kilos of flour to the market. During the worst times 2 eggs were 30 DM, 3 onions were 50 DM, and 1 liter of cooking oil was 70 DM. As the war progressed, and there was less food and resources available, the prices started to rise. The flour prices went down because people accumulated it through humanitarian aid. During the first two years of war, people lived mostly on bread. For comparisons, average European annually consumes 55 kilos of bread; people in Sarajevo were eating 180 kilos of bread a year.

Some prices I pulled out from other sources:
January 1993: meat 1 kilo - 50 DM, government monthly salary - 20 DM, 1 monthly pension - 2 eggs
July 1993: Oil 1 liter - 30 DM, flour 1 kilo - 10 DM or two packs of cigarettes
March 7th 1994: coffee 1 kilo - 120 DM
March 21st 1994 ("blue roads" opened): coffee 1 kilo - 40 DM
May 1994: 1 encyclopedia is worth 5 eggs (used to be 1 egg)
September 1994 ("blue roads" closed): all prices went up 100%, bananas 1 kilo - 6 DM
November 1994: average salary - 2 DM, cost of living 350 DM.

While I was in Belgrade, I had been sending the packages to my family that had both items to keep and to trade, such as canned goods or 'delicatessen" items, or flour for trading. But, by the time I returned, flour was no longer trading, and there were no more packages coming in to exchange them for nutritious food.

The worst, however, (which I avoided), was the first year of war, until the first humanitarian aid convoys made it into the city. It was particularly hard on my family because they were refugees in a different part of town than where we lived before and were no longer in our home where my mom has somewhat gathered non perishable groceries that could have lasted them through. Also, the apartments they were assigned to stay in after the exile was already emptied of all and any food, so they didn't even have a grain of salt to start with. Plus, it was a new neighbourhood, where they didn't know anyone, and unfamiliar people in bad situation themselves were reluctant to offer any help.

By the time they arrived there, all the green areas between the buildings had already been claimed by residents as their mini vegetable garden areas. All the trees in the parks have been cut down for fuel, and all the lawns converted in 10x10 gardens. Our family didn't have one, so we lived off of measly humanitarian aid or we had to find other ways of obtaining food. The humanitarian aid was neither regular, sufficient, nor nutritious enough to survive solely on it.

Two and a half years into the war, the aid was arriving into the city by NATO planes, but the air traffic had to be halted whenever there was an elevated level of danger, which in the war happens often. During the times where the aid was considered "regular", each household would have received it every 10 days or so. Since it was too dangerous for people to leave their homes, the aid was distributed at the entrances of every building.

The town's main bakery, which used to supply almost 100% of all the grocery stores with bread before, never stopped operating throughout the war. However, since it was located on the opposite side of town, it was too dangerous for regular bread delivery into our subdivision until the second part of the war. Once we started receiving bread as part of the distributed aid, it happened once a week and each person would get about half a loaf, per week.
December 1994: 1 kilo of rice, 200 grams of beans, 0.15 liters of oil, 1 can of spam 340 grams, 2 kilos of flour.
July 9th 1995 (last round of humanitarian aid): 400 grams of beans, 300 grams of peas, 300 grams of rice, 0.2 liters of oil, 1 kilo of flour.

You only need the phase

2009-04-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

Streets in Sarajevo were shadowed by myriad of cables spread above them. These were referred to as "wild power". Most apartments didn't have electricity, but there were "priority" locations that were almost always powered. These included hospitals, police, and military offices which were located, at least in our neighborhood, on the ground floor of many buildings. There were also some privileged army people, who for whatever reason, were allowed to connect cable on the exterior of the building from the office downstairs to their apartment. Most of them didn't even try to be discrete about it, and would have no shame that in the entire building was in the dark and their windows were the only ones beaming with light.

We happened to have one of those privileged individuals living right above us. He was some officer for moral in his unit - a title that real didn't' fit his behavior among civilians. A cable going into his apartment was right in front of my bedroom window. I didn't understand at first how just one cable can be used to have power, when all outlets have two holes. My brother enlightened me that all that is needed is the phase cable, which, when connected to the outlet, will form the circuit with the ground cable that is already there.

So, we finally decided to give it a try one evening. We got some long insulated wire and I connected one end to one wired in an outlet. On the second end I removed an inch of insulation and shaped the wire into a hook. That evening, around 10 PM, I reached for the wire in front of my window, made an incision on the insulation, connected the hook on my wire, and wrapped it with the electrical tape. Then we put the shades down, so that no one can see that we have a light in the house, and we plugged in a lamp into that outlet. And voila - there was light!

Since we knew there is only so much power we can draw from this cable while our neighbor uses it as well, we only had one light and portable burner and/or TV plugged in. Before going to bed, we’d disconnect the cable and protect the cut outside table with the tape.

Our innovation didn't happen until close to the end of the war, so we didn't get to enjoy our little secret for too long. Having the power on all the time afterwards, however, was way better than stealing it every evening.

Life without power

2009-04-10T10:38:00.004-07:00

Majority of time, we didn't have electricity, and would have to mange without it.

It was great when we at least had natural gas, which was during about half of the war. We used it for cooking and baking, since we had a gas stove. Gas stove also heats up much quicker huge pots of hot water for showers, and the oven was a good supplemental heat source during winter.

We used gas even for "lighting". We used an IV tube connected to gas line on hour stove and with a metal straw at the other tip. It was connected to a doorpost, and controlled with a slider clip on the IV rubber tube. A small amount of gas lit would give enough light to move freely around the room. If we wanted to do any reading, we had to have another light source. We often used a glass filled with water on the bottom and oil on the top (because we often didn't have enough oil for the full glass) with a woven string threaded through a tiny metal plate to hold it in place. We called this "kandilo", like those vigil lamps lit before icons. It is a very low light, which probably contributed to both me and my brother needing glasses after the war. Some of you may think "Why didn't we use batteries or candles?" There were none. There were no stores to buy anything, including light sources.

When we didn't have natural gas, nights were so long, especially during winters when we also had to sit fully clothed under blankets until it was time for bed (we couldn't sleep 12 hours). The cooking was challenging, too. Most households obtained a hand-made aluminum box-stove during the first couple of years in the war. There were handyman who could make those from scrapped metal, for example from gutters or aluminum roofs. It was about 2 feet tall, with an oven and a compartment bellow for fuel material, and a little flue pipe at the top. Since the chimney in our apartments was busted, we kept this stove on the balcony until it became too dangerous. When one day mom and my brother were being shot at while on that same balcony, we decided to move the stove inside, and make a hole in the wall for the flue pipe.

After the first couple of years of war, there were no more trees in our neighbourhood to cut down for burning. The kids were even hammering down doors and windows frames on an old construction site nearby. But, in the second part of the war we had to improvise. We burned everything from encyclopedias to rubber to clothing. One tennis shoe would last enough for the bread to bake. We sometimes had those fuel cubes people use for camping, but they were rare. One cube would be enough to boil water for coffee and make scramble eggs (those with sour cream were the best breakfast ever!). But many days we didn't have a hot meal.

Without power, there was no TV of course, which made boring days even longer. We figured out we can listen to a radio for a short time by plugging it into the phone outlet. Also, old batteries when boiled, would run a small radio few a few minutes. Radios were the only way to find out important information about the fighting and danger threatening a particular area. My brother and his friends hooked up a boom box to an exercise bicycle, and made someone paddle so they can all enjoy the music.

4 hours of electricity

2009-04-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

The electric power was mostly unavailable to us mere mortals during most of the war. At best, the electricity was rationed for 4 hours every 4-5 days. At worst, it would be weeks or even months until we would have power again. So, when the power is on, we made sure we made use of it to the fullest.

When we were on 4 hour/4 day schedule, there would be times when the 4 hours would fall during the night, for example 2-6 am. We always had to be very organized during those 4 hours to make use of the electricity to the fullest, and it had to be the same way even if it was in the middle of the night. We'd turn almost all the lights on, plug in all sorts of devices and be busy with chores because we knew after those 4 hours it's all going to be dark and silent again.

Mom would have several meals prepared to be cooked when the hour strikes. My task was to vacuum and/or iron and monitor the washing machine and add water when it needs (majority of time we didn't have water at the same time as electricity, and the machine needs a running water to operate). My teenage brother would sometimes take over vacuuming but most of the time would just use the power to watch TV and play electric guitar. And even though we'd be groggy at first, because it's hard to get going at 2 am after sitting in dark since sundown, we knew it had to get done, and we'd do it.

The best hours to get power were in the early evening, when we can get everything done, get ready for bed at normal time with lights on, and just then it will all go black.

1 gallon showers

2009-04-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Of course, we had to be extra cautious how we use the precious water.

For teeth brushing we used just a glass of water, and same for washing the face. There were times when we collected that water to use in the toilets later. Showering had to be done with one gallon of water. Since the bathtub was used to store the water, we were showering on the bathroom floors. (Sometimes we'd use a baby's tub to stand in, so that we can collect that water - again for the toilets) Fortunately, those buildings are made of concrete, and entire bathrooms are tiled, and have a drainage on the floor, which made this kind of showering more doable. Another interesting detail of this process is that the bathroom didn't have windows, so there was no natural light coming in. The electricity was also restricted, and the candles were usually a commodity during those days, so we had to shower in very low light.
I realized I was using the term "shower" very loosely here. Since there was no running water, our "shower" was a cup with which we would pour the water. Also, we had to first heat smaller amount of water to mix with the cold water to make it somewhat bearable temperature.

On the days when we would get the electricity, we wouldn't necessarily have running water at the same time. To operate a washing machine, we had to manually add water when the machine expects it. By the way, the whites cycle on our machines took about 3 hours. We had to constantly monitor it and when the cycle expects the water coming into the drum, we would pour it from the top with a cup.

I must say, we were never lacking drinking water. We rationed elsewhere, so there was always just enough of the clean water for drinking and cooking.

It took me years to not think about hording water. Every now and then I would remember those days, for example when brushing teeth and resisting temptation to not close the water for those two minutes, just because I can....or just be thankful for the (almost) endless running hot water in the shower...or the store bought water bottles that I don't have to keep as containers, because I can just go an buy the water.

Gathering water

2009-04-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

Most of the days during the war, we didn't have running water regularly. There were times when we didn't have it for months, and then other times when we would have it on a set schedule, i.e. every 5th day.

We had canisters, bottles, and different containers filled with water all over our apartment, a habit that was hard to break for years after the war was officially over. On a day when we had water, we would try to store as much of it as we possibly could, by filling everything from the bathtub to small jars. But that can only last so long, and we had to go gather the water when we run out.

In the first couple of years, people have constructed several manual water pumps in our neighbourhood. We would take all the empty canisters to the pump, and wait in line , sometimes for hours, to collect the water. The challenge was bringing those gallons and gallons back home. We used skate boards, hand-made carts, and those who were lucky had a bicycle.

There were few, very rare, occasions when a cistern would come into our neighbourhood, but it would take only a handful of people with huge barrels to empty the cistern before most of us would get any of the water.

We were fortunate that there was a little creek in our neighbourhood. The water there was clean barely enough to use for the toilets. We had special buckets that were used only to gather that water, and we collected it every couple of days or so. The bacteria in the water would quickly develop a terrible smell, and that multiplied by 8 stories of apartments, made it at times unbearable to stay anywhere near the bathrooms. Some people have even done laundry or were washing rugs on the river banks, but I always doubted that the smell would air out after the clothes dry.

On rainy days, people would venture out with buckets and cups to collect water from large puddles formed on a parking lot with a bad drainage. Those who were super vigilant, or in desperate need of water, would run out in the rain first and position their buckets or barrels under the rain gutters. Water from rain gutters is cleaner and fills the canisters much faster than scooping it up from the ground. Rain water was much better than water from the creek, and it can be kept longer without developing an odor. Besides for toilets, we used it for washing clothes.

Crossing to the 'other' side

2009-04-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

Since my trip to Belgrade was never meant to be a long term exile, I was seeking the first opportunity to go back to Sarajevo. I actually had my bags still all packed for several months that first year. The first chance to enter the city came in the summer of 1994, when the "blue roads" were opened for the first time. These were roads located throughout the country between the two army forces that were patrolled by the UNPROFOR peace keepers during the peace agreements.

A friend of mine and I decided to take this trip together. None of my family and friends could understand why I'd want to go back, when the war was still not over. I remember an incident at the university when I went to get my transcript. The administration personnel, naturally, assumed that I was going back to the Serbian side of the city. So they told me they will just fax the papers to the other school. When I tried to explain that I am going to the Federation side of Sarajevo, and the fax communication doesn't work there, the lady yelled a cross the room to her colleagues "Hey, this girl is going to the other side!"

My friend and I took a bus that would bring us to the Serbian side of Sarajevo, Grbavica region. It was on the south side of the river, and one of the bridges was the only "blue road" for us to go back. The trip took double the time than what it was before the war, because the bus went only through regions controlled by the Serbs. It seemed we were not the only ones completely clueless of the real situation, because there was a couple who didn't want to get off the bus at its final stop because they thought they are going all the way to the other side of the city. We were staying with my friend's family friends, who actually were not very friendly to us. The lady worked for the local government and gave us some ill advises that led us to be stuck on that side for about a month.

To cross the bridge, one would have to fill out some paperwork with the local administration. We had to explain why we are going over, and for how long. Since we were told we have to tell the truth, we put down we are going back permanently. That automatically closed all doors for us. The Serbian government were not going to let us go over without asking an exchange from the government in Federation Sarajevo. They requested one famous doctor who was a Serb, and the mother of the Grbavica Serbian party's leader. Of course, the government in Sarajevo had no interest of doing this exchange for the two teenage girls.

During our time in Grbavica, and in an effort to get approved to cross the bridge, we went from civilian government, through secret service, to military leaders. The final approval had to come from the general Dragan Bulajic, the head of the Bosnian Serb commission for the return of prisoners of war and missing persons. We spent days in front of this headquarters, waiting for him to return from wherever he was and to let us talk to him. The phone lines between the two sides of the city were not operational, and the connection was possible from only a few government locations. So, all of the communication with my mom during this time actually happened from this building, when they would let us use the phone after days of waiting.

There we were met with all sorts of soldiers eager to talk to girls and sniperists who threatened to kill us from the distance once we go over. There were some who actually offered to arrange for us to "run across the front lines at night", which was not unusual during that time. We would not be able to take our bags with us, and they would, probably for a fee, arrange with their guys in the buildings on the first line of defence, who would somehow communicate this with the soldiers on the Federation side, to not shoot at us when we run across! This all sounds crazy to me right now, but we were actually considering it. On this picture, the first line, where we were contemplating crossing, was between the red bus and the burned building behind it. Later I found out that many got killed trying to cross this way, because the arrangement was not fully communicated to both sides, and their bodies would lie on the streets for days.

Since we were told the only way for us to cross the border is through an exchange, our parents had to talk to Bulajic's Bosnian government counterpart, Amor Masovic, to try to convince him to release the two Serbs. So, just as I was standing in front of Bulajic's office every day, my mom did the same at the Bosnian parliament. During one of our conversations, Dragan Bulajic requested that I call my mom right there and let him talk to her. When I told her "Mom, this general wants to talk to you," her first reaction was "What am I going to talk about with a general?" But she did, and it turned out that the two of them used to work for the same company before the war, and had met on few occasions. Bulajic promised my mother that he will arrange for me to go over, and ended that once this war was over "maybe they could meet and talk over coffee". He kept his promise and I was allowed to cross the border few days later. They actually did run into each other some 10 years after the war in Sarajevo and talked.

The arrangement was for me to go over the bridge during early afternoon hours, a time during which no crossing has ever been done before. The Bosnian soldiers on the bridge told my mom she can go back, because this was obviously some miscommunication and that there is no way I could be going over the bridge during that time. The bridge had huge barricades on either side, with UN soldiers between, and we could not see what is happening on the other side. My friend, our host family, and couple of other people we met during my 3.5 week stay in Grbavica, came to see me go over the bridge. I first had to go through the 'customs', which was in the old gas station and operated by few soldiers. They went through all of my six bags, took all of my mom's letters she sent me during those 2.5 years, and all of my pictures (when crossing the bridge one was able to take only 3 letters with them and very few, if any pictures). They also took my journal and when they saw things in it such as "Bosnia will live", they started a heated discussion with me about existence of our country. They told me that if I choose to stay in Grbavica they wouldn't go through any of my stuff. When they saw a bag full of books from the university in Belgrade, they told me one of them was a son from the dean of college in Grbavica, and would help me get in, and will give me one the many empty apartments there...My goal was to be with my family, and none of this was going to change my mind about crossing over.

Finally, after an hour of interrogation in that gas station, and my friends already getting worried about me, they saw me walk out. The French UN soldiers wheeled my bags away and I followed. It was an eerie feeling walking out onto that bridge (ironically, its name before the war was Brotherhood and Unity Bridge); I used to go over this bridge every day going to high-school that was just on the other side. Now, I could not see either end of the bridge from the huge barricade containers, there was a barb wire on each edge, and the street stripes were replaced with shrapnel holes on the pavement. When I reached the other side, my eyes were nervously watching between containers to see my family. I barely recognized them. They were standing with my friend's parents, who were so hoping their daughter would be there with me as well. She was stranded in Grbavica for another week.

I remember them run to embrace me, and I was in the arms of two people who looked nothing like my mom and brother. My mom has shrunken and wrinkled, her blond colored short hair was now dark with some gray and pulled up in a bun; she has aged 20 years. My 14 year old brother has grown in those 2.5 years, and was now a head taller than me, with butt-long hair and super skinny. My brother went to a concert downtown that evening (Yes, amazingly, the life still existed in Sarajevo), and mom and I had to make our way to the other side of the city where we lived.

It was around 4-5 PM, and the last few trams were about to go by. When I saw how full it was, with half-a-dozen people hanging off of each door, I realized there was no way for us to get in with all my bags. We left half of the stuff at my friend's family who lived near by, and the two of us continued on a 4 hour walk toward Dobrinja, with one bag between us and 2 bags in tow on a skateboard.

Along the way, I wasn't able to hide my complete shock of all the destruction in the city. (This was the front line near the bridge, the four apartment towers are on the other side of river Miljacka, in Grbavica.) All the letters and stories I've heard could not have prepared me for seeing this in person. Although all the buildings were made of concrete, they all had huge grenade holes, some were completely collapsed, there were barely any windows without plastic on them, some intersections had huge fabrics draped across to obscure the view from the snipers up the hill, there were drenches in every neighbourhood....

When we finally reached our neighbourhood, it was already dusk, and my mom pointed out the building where they now lived. "We got the power!" she exclaimed, after seeing most of the windows lit up. She realized she might have left the stove on from the last time they had electricity, and ran ahead of me to check up on it. I made the last few hundred yards by myself, entering into this new life that was going to be anything but ordinary.

Introduction to the war

2009-04-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

The war in Sarajevo officially started on April 6, 1992. We had few tribulations before that in the city, with demonstrations and barricades with armed people on the streets, but we refused to believe the war can happen in the city.

A little background:

Former Yugoslavia consisted of 6 republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia (from north-west to south-east). Because of the political reasons and the predominantly Serbian majority in the government, Slovenia decided in the early 1991 to separate from Yugoslavia. They met with some resistance from the federal government, who sent national troops (again majority Serbian) to the Slovenian borders. However, since Slovenia had very few citizens who identified themselves as Serbs, there was little opposition from the inside to their government decision, and the federal government soon withdrew the troops. There ware virtually no lives lost over this separation.

Croatia was next who declared Independence, and this is where the war officially started. Larger regions of Croatia had Serbian population, and these people didn't want to all of a sudden live in a different country than where Serbia is. So, they joined the national troops and the federal government sent the extra troops that used to be in Slovenia to prevent the separation. Once the political games started and the local governments started enticing the people to fight their neighbours because now they are their enemies, the war from the borders all of a sudden became very personal and civilians lost their lives.

That turmoil started spilling into Bosnia in early 1992, which was next wanting the Independence. We saw increased number of uniformed people on the streets in Sarajevo. There were two days in March when peaceful demonstrations were scheduled, but in some areas barricades were put up to prevent people from going downtown. There was one evening where a curfew was ordered in some neighbourhoods, including ours, and we saw uniformed people with guns running and doing some sort of search in few buildings. All of this still didn't make us believe the war is coming to Sarajevo.

On the evening of April 2nd, I got home from school and my mom had an urgent decision for me to make. One of her co-workers has been diagnosed with a rapid leukemia, and their company has arranged for his blood samples to be sent to a specialized clinic in Paris. They paid a ticket for someone to take the package that evening to Belgrade, from where there was an early morning flight to Paris. Since I have an uncle in Belgrade who worked at the airport, the company gave the ticket to my mom, and she was asking me if I wanted to go instead since I haven't seen my family there in a while. I was going to stay only 2-3 days over the weekend. I was convinced, and even though I had a comprehensive exam to study for next week, I packed a bag for 3 nights and left.

The war in Sarajevo started on April 5th, the day I was supposed to return (I actually originally had the ticket for the 4th, but my aunts convinced me to stay one extra day). All roads and airport in Sarajevo were closed from that day on, and instead of 2-3 days, I stayed in Belgrade for 2.5 years. A lot has happened during that time, which I may cover in another post. When I came back in 1994, it was during a few-months long peace agreement, and in the middle of the war. The war officially ended in February of 1996, after the NATO bombing of Serbian troops around Sarajevo.

So, my introduction to the war was not gradual. I came from a peaceful life in Belgrade into a war-torn Sarajevo, where my family were refuges since our old home was destroyed, there was no water, no electricity, no schools, no shops. The "peace" didn't last long, and grenades and snipers started killing people again. I had to learn how to adapt quickly.

More on the Siege of Sarajevo

About this blog

2009-04-08T08:59:00.001-07:00

During the years of war in my hometown Sarajevo, life was anything but ordinary. This blog is a collection of my experiences throughout those times.
Over the years, I have been sharing these stories with my friends in the US, and often times they would encourage me to write them down. So, even though everyday life in those days seemed dull to us, looking back, there were some good, interesting, and definitely unusual events worth sharing.
Enjoy the reading, but please, do whatever You can not to allow another war happen anywhere in the world!

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2009-03-30T15:48:00.000-07:00