Anonymous, 46

Nova Kasaba/Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina

“‘What am I gonna do with Edi?’ He was just burning in fever. He was sick. Edi’s father brought me a handful of aspirin, the-the pain relief pills, and he’s like, “I don’t know, just try to give him this at least to get his fever down.” You know, he is a baby, how you gonna give baby this? But you don’t know what to do. Uh… and I never gonna forget that-that day when my father left, he… He kiss us all, you know, he hug us. Uh… he kiss--I was holding my son, and he come and he kiss him. He was really happy, having a grandchild. And uh… He kiss me, and uh… He say, “Just protect your baby. Try to protect your baby.” And-and-and-and you know, he say bye to my mom and-and that was just… 
My father never came back.”

Interview originally conducted in English.

Is the recorder working? Yes

Yes, it’s working [laughs].

So first, tell us about yourself and life before the war. Where you grew up? How you spent a typical day? 

Well, I grew up in really small place, we call it nasilje. Nasilje is like a small town, it’s not village but it’s not big city either. My town was called Nova Kasaba in the municipality of Vlasenica. It’s just like a small town. It was between two big towns. So, through my place, uh, where I grew up,  if you go through Sarajevo, you gonna go through that town, that village. If you go through Zvornik or through Belgrade, you gonna go through my town. So that’s where I grew up. Was really small, nice town. I mean everybody knew everybody. We lived with Serbian people, you know, we had a lot of [Roma] in our town, Muslims... it was nice. Peaceful. You know? And I went there to school. 

I was seventeen when war started. So 1992. Before that we, I mean... it was just nice. Really just [a] nice peaceful place. And we enjoyed ourselves. In that time, all you have to do is go to school and be polite with the elders and do what your parents ask you to do and you good. We played on the streets, we [went] to fields picked flowers, picked strawberries, go to somebody else’s fields and steal the apples, or pears, or šljive [plums], or, stuff like that. It was just, um… [that] was just my childhood, you know, have fun. 

Refreshments from by [Anonymous] for the interview. She grew up drinking elderberry juice and eating watermelon after school, so she prepared the same snack for us in anticipation of sharing her story.

When war started, w-- from the beginning, I don’t think anybody really take that serious. It started I think in February ‘92 (deep breath). We, m-my family, didn’t think it was gonna be that long, that it [was] something that is gonna be scary or that there is gonn-- that there’s gonna be war. We thought it was just gonna be for a while and then everything is gonna be the same, you know. My family decide, my uncles, my grandma, my father, we decided to go away from that town. So we went to Belgrade, to our uncle’s house. In his house, he welcomed , I think, five, six families from [all over]. We were all just there in [a] two bedroom apartment. And you know how apartments are in Belgrade, is--really small. So, maybe two, three days after that, my father called back home and asked our neighbor, she was our family, “How’s everything home? If everything it’s okay can we come back home?” Because we just started getting--There were just too many of people in one apartment and everybody just started getting nervous and crazy, you know. What to do? Where to go? And plus, you know, too many people in one place, and… it was just crazy. 

And so she tells him, “Everything’s fine, everything’s good here, you should come back, what are you gonna do if you lose your job? You gotta come back and go to work. How you gonna raise your family, if you don’t come back?” And blah, blah, blah. On the TV news, everybody is saying, like “Who doesn’t come to work is gonna lose the job.” And in that time, my father was the only one that raise family, you know. It was me and my four siblings, [my] mom, and he was the only one that works, and all four of us were in school. I was in high school, my other three siblings were in middle school, and my brother was in elementary school. And I had younger sister, she was five. So he just sit down with his brother and his mom and he tell us, “Okay, I’m just gonna go back home.” He told my mom, “You gonna stay with kids here and we’ll see what’s going on and then I will let you know when to come back home.” And she’s like “No, I’m not staying without you. I’m going with you.” And of course, your parents leaving, going back home, we’re [the kids] going too, you know. So we all left that second day. We leave Belgrade to [go] back home. My father’s two brothers, mom, and two sisters, they stayed there in Belgrade. 

On our way back home, we got stopped in Zvornik, on a bridge, from the Serbian army. They stopped the bus, and they came inside the bus, and they are checking on people. They come to my father and they ask him for his ID and he give  his ID, and they’re like, “Where are you going?” And he says, “Well I’m not going nowhere I’m coming back home,” he say that. And [the guard] is like “Where were you?” and my dad says  “Well I was in Belgrade, and I’m coming back home.” And [the guard] was like “What, you were thinking to run away?!” 

And um… my father he wanted to say something else and he just tell him, “You better keep it quiet or your heard gonna be going through the river.” River Drina, it’s a popular river that goes through Zvornik. So, um, you know, I- we [were] just looking at our father, and we got scared. You can see his face just get so pale, you been scared and um… so they just look through the bus and they get out and they let us go. 

We came back home and our town was just empty. There was not that much people, a lot of people already disappeared. We came to the house, and that day, my father was really scared what’s, what’s gonna happen. Then he realized that this may not be a good idea that he came back home. And um...next day he get up, and he was working in Milići in that fabrike-- it was um, rudnik, a mine, I think. So he got ready and he left to work that morning. Once he left, not even 15, 20 minutes after that, our cousin came to the house, and she’s yelling “Oh my gosh, they coming to the town.” The, the Serbian army start getting inside the town with the tanks and with the puškas [rifles], and… lot of them coming through. 

We were...we were in the house waiting to see [what was going to happen]. And we see my father’s coworker, that was one of his best friends at work. He was now in the Serbian Army. He come to our, um avlija [courtyard], with the puška, and he called my mom by name. He’s like, “Where is [father’s name]. ” He say my father’s name. And my mom is like, “He just left for work.” He say “Oh my god.” That’s what he just said. And uh... he turned to us, we all standing there in front of the door with my mom, and he tell her,

“Just take your childrens, go inside the house, and go away from the windows. Stay away from the windows. Hide somewhere in the house.” 

My father had really big family, you know. He had five children and only him working. He built our house. He start building [it] maybe two years before war started. And so we had, um, um, we had a basement, and then it was first floor, second floor. And that first floor that we had um-- when he started [the house], he first built one room, and then moved in, with mom and kids, and then after that he started making it bigger. And so that room that that he he built first was in the middle of every other room. So my mom took us to that room where that was in the middle and there was not that many windows around and doors and everything, so we just went there and kept quiet. 

Soon after that, we start hearing like a shooting and bombs and like… our town was like this (gesturing a valley) so all over was mountains and villages and when you go to the mountains, there’s villages where people lived and in so many different places. They start shooting at those mountains. Uh... they didn’t do nothing to us, those of us who stayed in the house. They didn’t do anything to anybody [in their house]. But this day, all day, they’re shooting, and bombing, and shooting and bombing it was just really… that was first thing that we experience. Nine Muslims were killed that day. And um… finally, sometime like around afternoon, 4 o’clock in afternoon, they stop. They stopped everything and they just leave. My father comes after that. A little bit after that, he came home. When we saw him alive, we were so happy, and he just said he didn’t know what he was gonna find when he comes home, you know. If he is going to find us alive, because he [heard] everything that's going on, you know. The place where he works, it wasn’t that far, it was maybe just 15, 20 miles away from home, but you know, he could hear everything. And, uh… he just said to my mom,

“Get some food together, and some clothes, and let’s go, we’re leaving to the mountains…” 

There was supposed to be Muslim army posted up in the mountains. Like, you know, some place we can be safe and protected. So that’s what we did. We pick up some food-- My grandfather was a baker, he had his own bakery, and he had a lot of flour, which, at that time, not a lot of people had too much food, you know. That’s what we had. We had a lot of that, but not anything else that much. So, we just brought some of that with us. And my father was like, “Let’s just take, as much we can, now.” And he took my, um, our grandma’s horse, he put stuff on the horse, the food, and, uh, we left.” 

We going away from home now. We crying, “Why we have to leave home again,” you know, “What’s gonna happen with us.” This is something really serious going on, you know, and, um...now my father isn’t even thinking about job, about losing his job, he’s just thinking about how to save his family. His children. Just to take us away and protect us. And that was the place where we can go, you know. So we left. 

And since my grandfather was baker, a lot of people knew him, from villages and everywhere, so they accepted us to their houses and they find us this podrum [basement]. It was with two rooms, and they gave us to live there, stay there. So when we were in that village, sometimes we would go back to our house (early in the morning) with my father to get more food. Whatever we had left, we hid it. My father actually built, um, in the podrum that we had, he put all of the food, flours and all of the stuff that we had, he put it in the middle [of the room] and around he piled bricks since, you know, he was building the house and he had a lot of bricks. So he put the bricks around that so that people would think it was just bricks and nothing else. So we would go sometimes early in the morning, go back home, before even, you know, daytime, to bring more food, um. From the beginning it was ok-- we were okay with the food. We had something to eat. It wasn’t something that fancy but at least we had food, you know. So, we stayed there in that village from March until, I think, next year, maybe February or March, something like that. 

A Bosnian coffee set that [Anonymous] and her mom had from before the war. It was one of the few items they could bring with them to America.

Of 1993?

Yeah, so ‘93. Early 1993, we moved back down, closer to our home. And we lived in this house, um, close to the river. We had our neighbor living on the second floor. We’re still, you know, going back [to our] home and bringing whatever [we had] early in the morning and coming back. I remember one morning, we went and they saw us from the other side...The serbian army was on other side and they saw us from there and they start shooting, bombing, everything. We were walking, I was first one. It was winter time, so it was snowing. So I was walking first, my sister was behind me, and my friend, she grew up with me in Nova Kasaba and that girl that was on the second floor were walking behind me. 

So… all I heard, just like, BOOM, and I fell. Like something just threw me. And they [my friends] say they saw it when it fell, when they throw the bomb next to us. And um, I wake up, I come, and pick up my head, and maybe just… just this much space [gesturing fingers three inches apart] from my head was one of those grenata [grenades], in the snow, like, uh, with the smoke and everything. It was hot, and and it just like psshhhh. My friends were just like “Oh my god, something happened to her.” You know. And I said, “No, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.” So my mom, when she heard that, she runs from the house--she was always waiting for us, you know, when we gonna come back--and she’s just yelling at us, screaming, “Run! Run! Run! And we were running to the house. We got there, and I was like, “What did I do? How blessed I am that I survived this?” You know, I could...I could be dead, there. 

So, from there, it was... everything was okay. Until maybe a couple of months after that, they [the Serbian Army] actually get into Cerska. Cerska is one of those villages in that area, that Istočna Bosna [East Bosnia]. And um...the Serbian Army took over that village. That was one of the places where our army was most of the time, so everybody, all of the civilians that had been protected there, had to start moving away.

And where to go? Still it’s winter time. It is May, but it’s winter, it’s cold. And we are travelling from Konjević Polje to Srebrenica. Walking. We were walking for one day and night through the woods, during the winter time. Um. We didn’t...and...in, in this time, we don’t really have right clothes for the winter, right shoes for the winter, no boots. It’s still snow, and my feet were all wet, and frozen when we came to Srebrenica. And you’re not going through nice, um, paths, you know, you will have to go through the woods and stuff to find your place, find your way. 

One time, my mom fell, and she dropped-- we had a picture album with us that she brought from home--and she fell, and she dropped that album into a creek. Our pictures get all wet. So, we didn’t...we didn’t really save that many from that album. 

We walk to Srebrenica, we get there. Now, in Srebrenica, there’s 20,000 people [there] already. You know. People that was there before war, people that came from all around Srebrenica, all the Istočna Bosna, it’s in Srebrenica now. All of the people from all of towns that are around there--it’s too many. Too much people. Too much people sleeping on the street. Too much people that doesn’t have family, doesn’t have nowhere to go. 

We had mom’s sister already there, so she accept us to her house… that was ‘93, May ‘93. 

We went to her house and from there, she found us a place to go and live, just us. We were living in one room with a few more families in the house. We don’t even have that much food, now we don’t have anything. You know, before, when we were closer home, we were able to go and bring whatever was left in there. But this time, there’s nothing, it’s not even… we’re nowhere close to home, we’re not even able to go back. My father start warning us, you know... we were happy if we had just one meal a day, you know, and it will be just, maybe, piece of cornbread. Or, you know, bean soup, which was more soup without any beans in there, you know? I mean, sometimes it wasn’t even salty, you know. My mom, she would give her rings and her jewelry for food to people who have food, or who were planting something, organic something, like vegetables and something. Or like a milk to have once in a while milk or, or piece of meat, just to um… 

So I was 17. You see your, your father struggling to bring food to the table. You see him worrying all the time, um…Even if we have some food, he will not eat, he will give it to us, to his kids. It was just um… you’re afraid. You never know what’s gonna happen, when they gonna come again, or what’s gonna happen with us, or-or, are we going to survive? You know, that was all we were thinking about. Are we going to survive? Srebrenica was well-protected at that time from Naser. You heard about Naser? So, him and his army, they did a good job protecting everything. Um. My sons, Edi and Omar, their father, he was in his army. And somehow, they had food, you know. Sometimes he would bring us, like um... some salt or something.

That’s how I actually met him.  He was a friend of family, so he started coming over. I know I was uh… y'know what? Even though people did not have nothing to eat in that time and they was afraid and scared and you know--we all heard all this one got killed here, one got killed there and you know you heard all this stuff but-- Srebrenica [got] kind of normal. We start living normal in that [situation], all that was happening around us. We were making life to be normal, um…

So since I was young, I wanna live my life, you know. I start dating, my sister started dating, we start dating these two guys who were cousins, me and my sister. Uh... so we would go out in the afternoon to walk, there would be like a lot of people walking on the carsija, in the city center. You see a lot of young people, older people. They started opening the movie theaters. They will have, like, parties in front of schools. Those guys who know how to sing and play [instruments], they would play. And you know, life started getting normal, living in that situation, we started getting used to it, you know. 

United States start sending food over, but they were throwing from the airplanes, you know and during the nighttime. When it’s nighttime, they would drop the food in the mountains and we would go there with our father to try to grab some food. A lot of people would be there...thousands, thousands people would be there. A lot of people got killed from those palettes because they throwing from the airplanes and they don’t [where they’re gonna land]. People, they hungry. They go and they don’t care if they gonna get killed, or hurt, you know, at least [they] gonna bring some food to [their] kids to eat. So... a lot of people will get killed like that. 

We would go-- we would always go to safe areas where-where we-where they not really throwing palettes, or where the palettes would just break and the food would just be all over the woods and bridges and fields. And you would find something, like even one of those ready-made soups like we have here [in America].

Everything was in foil packages. Even like the powder-powder milk, you know. And from the powder milk, if we grab the powder milk, we were happy-- “My mom gonna make us bread!” you know. They were making bread out of that. 

Or like, you get one of those packages of the soup uh... It’s-it’s readymade soup, but she can add more water and more, you know, like a bean soup, and that will give some flavors, you know. And uh… so yeah, we were, you know, we-we were happy if we find anything, you know. Uh… but it wasn’t enough. 

Uh… somehow this guy, the father of my boys, he started getting the way of the guy I was seeing at the time. He was always telling him stuff to stay away from me and this and that. I don’t know how, I just run away from home and got married with this...with this friend of the house, friend of the family. My father come and ask me to go back home, and I didn’t wanna go back home. I was thinking, you know, he’s in a army with Naser, he can bring some food home, and I can share with my family. At least they gonna have something to eat, you know. Uh… so he was...he...that was my life.

I got married. I got pregnant. My baby was born, Edi was born ‘94, December ‘94, and uh… he was six months old when uh…when the Srebrenica genocide happened. 

They [Serbian army] start...they started same way like they started in Cerska-- taking over the lines on the mountains, pushing everybody back to Srebrenica, all the people. That was happening over the course of days.

Um… we were just just in apartments or-or in the podrum [basement], you know, hiding and praying that this gonna stop. But, every day was worse. They would be closer and closer to Srebrenica. 

Uh… and it’s... the day comes when they start coming to the city.My father uh… he has to go to the woods to try to get to safety, to Tuzla or Sarajevo or Kladanj. He had to leave that day. That was July 11. Edi he was six months old in that time… And... he got sick. He was like uh burning in fever. His father come to our apartment. My mom, my siblings,, my father was there. And my ex,  he told my father, “You gonna go with me. I’m gonna get you safe… on other side.” 

We're all crying. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. And they telling, you know, we can hear over the speakers they saying “Everybody goes to Potocari-- go to Potocari. We’re gonna take you back to safe areas. We gonna take you back to your people, and mans and childrens and womans and everybody. Just go there to Potocari.” And, of course we don’t believe them, you know. Nasser doesn’t believe this. There’s are men who choose to go with family to Fabrike Akumulatora [battery factory] (32:31). That was the name of that uh of that fabrike [factory] where they had us. Uh… my father chose to go with uh… with my ex, with the father of my boys. 

And uh… I never gonna forget this... um...I was like, “What am I gonna do with Edi?” He was just burning in fever. He was sick. Edi’s father brought me a handful of aspirin, the-the pain relief pills, and he’s like, “I don’t know, just try to give him this at least to get his fever down.” You know, he is a baby, how you gonna give baby this? But you don’t know what to do. Uh… and I never gonna forget that-that day when my father left, he…

He kiss us all, you know, he hug us. Uh… he kiss--I was holding my son, and he come and he kiss him. He was really happy, having a grandchild. And uh… He kiss me, and uh… He say, “Just protect your baby. Try to protect your baby.” And-and-and-and you know, he say bye to my mom and-and that was just… 

At this moment, you know, you afraid you may never gonna see him again, but also you-you thinking he’s gonna be safe with Naser and his army…Nobody knows what’s gonna happen to them, you know…

 They left. And we, we had to leave also the apartment and go to, Fabrike Akumulatora That’s the building from where they told us that they gonna send us back to Kladanj. So we leaving Srebrenica and we walking again to [the] other town. We, with all other people...there’s like sick people, people that had been in war and that’s already without hands, without legs, without… there’s a lot of womans and childrens and adult mans and adult childrens and it’s just like… and everybody rushing, screaming, crying, you know. We walking there, we don’t know what to expect there now, uh, so we all walk in front of this frabike, with thousands and thousands more people. Summer time. And you going there, but you hear all over the shooting and the bombing all over the place, all around you. You know that they [Serbian military] is gonna be waiting for your  loved ones somewhere in there in the woods. But you also worrying about yourself.

We came there and it’s getting dark… I was with my mom, my three sisters, my brother, baby. Six months old. (Gulps). He’s just like, you know...Edi’s burning in fever and he’s just like sleeping, he’s not even waking up which… that was kind of good for me, you know? He didn’t cry. (Choking up). Um… we sitting there, we don’t have a food, we don’t have water, we don’t have anything, you know we… And we’re just waiting. What’s gonna happen now? Everybody’s worrying, everybody’s scared. And then you heard them start talking on speaker and saying moms with young childrens and adults were gonna be let inside that fabrik. They said they’re gonna have food there and a bed to sleep with the babies. Everyone was waiting with the babies there outside, you know. And my mom was pushing me to go, with my son, and I said, 

“No, I don’t wanna go away from you.” 

“No you gonna go there, at least you gonna have some food. ” I was breastfeeding at that time. 

“You gonna have some food for your baby.” 

You know, she’s...she pushed me to go there. I went there, by myself, with six months old baby, and thousands more people in there. I-I’m just by myself. She’s staying outside with my siblings and I’m going there and I-I’m like, “What i’m gonna do with myself.” I-I’m young also, I’m 19--I was 19 when I had my son. And, um. I don’t know what to do. Luckily, I see some of my neighbors-- they were actually living in same building in same apartment complex where I was living with the father of my boys, and they were like “Come here, you gonna stay with us.” 

So, you know, I felt kind of like I’m with somebody that I know. And then in that place, that night, I saw my uncle, my grandma’s brother. His two sons, their families, his wife, my other uncle’s family, children and wife. So, [I saw] a lot of friends, you know, adults, adult men, not just children, not just young guys, like adult mans and a lot a lot of families. 

So we stayed there that night. And This is a-a big surprise for me. When I come there, they tell us we gonna have food and bed and you know… nothing. There was no food. There was no bed. There was no blanket that you could put on you. Nothing. There was not even windows on those on that fabrika anymore. It was everything empty. It was just, you know--and that fabrike it was a build of that cigla [brick]. It’s really cold. It was really cold in there. And, just between rooms, there’s like a wall, and then again another room and wall, and so many women with the childrens with the babies--since they said “Go inside with the babies, you gonna be safe there.” So a lot of moms with the babies went in. (Deep breath). 

You just hear babies crying here, crying there, crying here, crying there. My baby quiet...because he was under fever, plus I gave him that aspirin, like I broke up the aspirin and I give him that with the water and he drank that. On the second day, they say “We gonna give you some food.” And these girls that were with me, they went to [stand] in line-- there were long lines... I couldn’t even wait for food because I was by myself with the baby. They just bring us a small plate, she bring me some plate and… it was a soup with nothing in it. Nothing. Just the water. Nothing else and maybe like this much (Holds fingers two inches apart) of bread. You see them, Serb military, walking between people. And you just… every ten minutes, they pull out somebody from the group and say “Come with me.” A man. Or a young guy. Or, or young girl, just taken outside, from the groups, and taken outside, and uh, you know… next thing you heard, it’s shooting outside…

Second night, we still there, nothing is happening. They not taking anybody nowhere. Like they say they gonna take us to Kladanj. They just picking who they want and taking away. But not families. That night, um, this lady, that was um close to us with her baby. Her baby was crying. And he comes to her and he say… “Shut that baby up.” And she say “I can’t, baby is crying.” You know, he was little bit older and he just… baby is crying, he’s hungry, baby is hungry. And he just keeps telling her, “Make him quiet or I’m gonna make him quiet.” And she’s like “I don’t know what to do.” He’s still crying. And she’s just holding him and trying to comfort him and everything, but baby still not, you know…

He just come close to the baby, he took that baby for the leg, from her arms, throw it like this (gestures fast throwing motion), against the wall. And… this mom… I-I would do the same, I would jump on him also...She jumped on him. 

All he did, he just turned her to him, and he grab his knife and cut her. (Gestures slitting a throat). Um… we all saw that, and I was like… “Oh my gosh, I’m next.” Because that just happens, right there in front of you… you next… Edi was quiet all those two nights, the three days that we were there. He didn’t even… he never cried. I thought that he may not be alive. 

Um… the third day, in the morning, early in the morning. They come to us and they say, “Okay, now we gonna take you [to Kladanj].” And, uh, they start taking people outside, like families. When we get out… outside, when I went inside the frabrike, there was a lot of people left outside, around the frabike. When we get out, there was no more people there. I… this moment, I’m like...My mom is not here no more… Where is my mom? Where they are? We don’t know nothing. So they start… th-there’s like, buses on the street, uh… with open backs and their trailers open. In some of them they putting one group of people other one other group of people and we walking. And how we walking, they [Serb military] is standing on the sides and they just pulling people from the lines. So you just see, you know, guy stays there, all the older mans, young mans, young guys, eleven years old boy, just pulling away from the mom… “You can go, you stay.” They say, “Oh he will come, don’t worry, he’s coming after you.” We all going and you know… we don’t believe them, at this moment, we don’t believe they gonna leave anybody alive. 

I was in the bus (Deep breath) from Srebrenica to Kladanj, and I passed my town where I grew up. All the way to there from Srebrenica, on the side of the road, you see dead people, you see clothes, you see backpacks, like you know… it’s so much… stuff around the roads, and that was everything from the… from our people that was coming from Srebrenica through the woods and they was trying to cross towns so they can get to Kladanj. But, they didn’t make it. 

So they brought us… the bus that I was in, they brought us like a few miles away from Kladanj. And I remember the place that they sent us, where they threw us outside. It was just like woods around, river was close to the road, and it was like um really deep down around, you know. And they throw us there and they tell us, “Okay, if you go up that way, you gonna, you gonna find your people.” Like uh Muslims and army and that’s gonna be our safe area. Now we’re thinking, they probably just gonna let us go ahead of them and they gonna start shooting us… Um… but no they didn’t, they let us go. 

I came to Kladanj. In Kladanj, I didn’t find my mom or sisters, my brother. From Kladanj, they [Muslim military] give us their food, and they give us place to stay, to sleep, and the next day, they-they took us to, other place, to Dubrave. Dubrave was where they had all the people from Srebrenica. It was just like one of the big field with the uh šatore [tents]-- “Kako se kaze šatore?” Tents.

[There were] people outside, people on the road, sick people, crying people, everyone worrying, “Where is my husband?”, “Where is my son?,” “Where is this or that?” Once I started walking on Dubrave, and they bring me there with Edi, my mom was on the street. I was so happy to see her. She grabbed me. She started crying and she say, “Thank god. I thought you were killed. We heard they kill a mom and baby there, and I thought that you were killed.”

So what they did when they were transferring people from Srebrenica to Kladanj, they first took away all the people that were outside [the factory]. All the family, and they separate mens, adults, young childrens, and everything, and uh, then they start from the inside. So uh we came there, some family accept us. My Edi, my boy’s father came I believe 7 days after we came to Tuzla. My father never came. 

He [my ex] say he lost him an hour after they all start walking, together. They [Serbian military] started shooting at them, and everybody was just trying to hide, you know, protect themselves. That’s where he lost [my father]. He never found him again. We heard from some families, some people that knew my father, the last time we heard, that saw him alive, maybe like three, four days after that, in a village close to our home, close to our town. [They said] that he was there, and that he was just... they asked him, “Where are you going? What are you gonna do?” He says, “I don’t know,” like he was worrying that he maybe [we] saw some killed, some dead. He said, “I want to check on them, see if maybe my grandson’s father is there.” So that was the last time that they saw him alive. After that, we never heard anyone saying that they saw him anywhere else. 

In 2004, 2005 we heard that they find his remains. Not the whole body. His head and his right hand and his right leg under the knee is still missing… 10 years after. So we were...we decided, all together, to wait to see if uh they gonna find the rest of his body so we can bury everything together. We were waiting until 2010 that they never find his remains, everything to complete [his body]. So in 2010, we decide to bury him. That was um... until that day, you still have hope that he’s alive. You still waiting for him to come from somewhere. But no... he never came. That day was our… I think, that that reality that we lost him. That was the worst day in my life. 

When we were there, that July 11, 2010,  burying your father and you-you know that he’s never gonna be complete. And that’s when you thinking, what did they do to him? Where is the rest of his, where is his head? How did he get killed or how did he die? Did he suffer? Or this and that, uh, it was, that was the worst day, I think, for all of his children. We never gonna forget that. They never let us know if they find anything of him, but at least we have... we know where we bury him. Even though it’s not completed, we go there, and we know that he’s there, and that he’s in peace, and that we have somewhere to go visit. 

It’s... you know none of us want to lose a parent even though when they’re a hundred years old. You don’t want them to go. But when you lose your parent, you’re 20 years old and your other siblings are younger than you and he’s only 39 years old and he got killed from, for what? He-he was just a different religion. It-it...he...he just got taken away from us for no reason. For, that was just no reason. That was uh, I-I never gonna understand, what did they wanna do? Why they were killing all them? That many people? Why so many people got killed that day? I’m always gonna miss him.

I never got enough of him. There’s a lot of more that he--that I needed him to teach me. To-to-to be adult, to-to survive, to-to raise my childrens. I-I didn’t get that from him. 

My mom took us, took over all [place]. She was our father and mother. She tried her best, she did an awesome job, but we always gonna miss him. My father was one of those guys that, he never hurt anybody. 

He was the best man for me, for all of us, and there’s still, whoever knew him, people saying how good a person he was. That there’s nobody like him. He will help everybody. He will be there for everybody. He’ll never hurt nobody. You know, he grew up in this small little town, and you know, he was just a really peaceful man. He got along with everybody. My father never put his hand on me except that day when I run away and got married with this guy. That’s the day he put his hand on me and and and I forgive him for that because I wish he, I wish he beat me up more than that and took me back home. But if we knew that this is what’s gonna happen, and my mom say I would have never let him go back home from Belgrade. His siblings, his brothers, sister, and mom from Beograd, they all went back to Janja in Bosnia. And from there, they cross the river Drina and they somehow got to Germany. 

So they survived the war. They were in Germany and came back from Germany when other people start coming back after 2000. And they all were alive. And my father got killed just because he wanted to protect his job, wanted to come back home protect his job so he can have job to raise his childrens. 

Um...it’s... I don’t know. I-I I never really cared to listen that much about politics or… it was really painful to… for a years to even talk about this, to even remember what happen uh there is a lot of more stuff that uh I mean, that we they say they didn’t start the war, that it was us. That’s not true. They were killing people from Hrvatska, people from, you know, from Bosna. Why? Just because they wanted to take everything over. They thought that like they wanted to be only them and nobody else. They wasn’t able to kill everybody. They killed a lot of people that but not everybody. 

Just last week, Ratko Mladic got what he deserved. After what? 26 years? He’s he’s going to die soon anyway. What’s the point now? He, he’s still alive and there’s almost 10,000 people that he killed in one day. Where are they? How many more people, how many more families couldn’t find their children or their husbands? There’s so many more. We were at least lucky that we found something of my father and that we able to go visit him. 

But uh... um...yeah, I wish he’s you know he stays alive and here with us. But it’s something that... that’s that hole that we always uh it’s gonna stay open always and that’s the part of us that we’re gonna be missing for the rest of our lives. And worrying and questioning ourselves. How did he get killed? What did they do to him?

People need to know about this. But I don’t think anybody can understand that much what we went through. Even people that were in in Sarajevo or Tuzla or, you know, they they they were in war also. They were suffering in different ways. We were suffering... for us it was something that we don’t wish for anybody to grow through that, to experience that. 

I say, you know, the way we grow up, we didn’t grow up like really rich family. But I would rather stay poor for all my life and be there with my father and my mom together. Better that than ending up here now. We thank to God, we thank God that we came to United States. That we were able to bring our children here and have better life than we had. But just because we lost so many families and so so many loved ones. You know, we will...we never gonna forget that. It’s always gonna be missing something from us.

Could something different have happened? I don’t know, I mean, I don’t know. They were stronger than us. And we had protection for two years. You know, that UN was protecting us but when they [Serbian military] started taking over Srebrenica, even Holland wasn’t able to do that much to protect us so...who knows what would have happened there? Who knows if somebody could do something more for those 10,000...almost 10,000 people. Maybe yes, maybe no. We always gonna be questioning, but it happened.

Lot of us are saying, you know, “yeah, we all together in this, you know.” If I was only one who lost someone I love, somebody close to me, I would feel worse. But somehow all the people that lost the loved ones give support to each other and so we can get better from all that, that we have all suffered. Here we are. Like I said, I don’t think I would ever want anybody to go through something like what Bosnian people went through. It was it was horrible. It was scary. It was just something that no human does. 

My sister, she’s 13 months, younger than me (I heard this when I found my mom). My mom and siblings were outside  the fabrike in Srebrenica. They could go to the houses next to the fabrik to get some water (they had outside pipes), to get water to drink. She went there, she went to get water for my siblings. My mom said that when she came back, she did not have water with her, but she just was pale and quiet and she didn’t even wanna speak. She didn’t wanna tell her anything that happened. But when they came to Dubrave, that’s when she told her. Where she went behind the house to get water, she found a couple people dead… a lot of blood around them. And all she did was just turn around and leave. She got scared and left without water.  A lot of us saw something like that. In that moment, all you think is “okay, I’m next.” You see something like that, you’re thinking “Okay, I’m next.” You don’t believe you’re gonna survive. But you know, they did bring women, and children. 

Boys 10 years old or younger, they let go. My brother was 11 years old in that time and he was really short, skinny, so they didn’t take him. They didn’t pay attention to him. But his friend, that he grow up with, he was a tall guy, taller than my brother, and they take him away from his mom. That’s the younger boy that was killed that day. So um I... I had... I lost my grandma’s brothers, two brothers, three nephews. I lost uncle. I lost first neighbor from back home, a father and two sons. I lost friends that were my age in school with me. A lot of other people that I knew.

That day, I forgot to add this, that day when when we we just came back from Beograd, and my father just went to work, and they come that day. That day they killed nine neighborhoods. Nine neighborhoods got killed that day. Those were the first people in our town that got killed. And um that one of the person that got killed that day, his son and his wife were living together with me in Srebrenica. So his son got killed also during the Srebrenica fall. It was then that the guy, the best guy ever, he was a few years older than me, but he was always helping me with my baby and he would always come when my baby cried, he would hold him and everything. But he got killed. Um, his sisters’ lost their father, brother, and mom during the war. And now, when I see her, all I’m thinking, “How did she survive?” She’s happy, you know, she’s living. Somehow I was lucky that we lost just my father. How...how would we survive if they took away my brother? I don’t think we would. But yeah, there’s a lot more people who lost more than we did. You don’t wanna lose anybody but somehow some of us were luckier than others. 

[Long pause].

Thank you for sharing all that.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot, you know. Like I said, a lot of details I forget, you know... what was happening each day and stuff like that. But it wasn’t easy to see a lot of people you know suffering so much. And we all just say that we’d all get to leave someday. We’re not gonna be here on this planet forever, that’s what’s supposed to happen, but when you lose somebody this way...that’s painful. It’s hard to recover from that. We had a really hard time to recover from that. 

But you know now sometimes… I remember when my boys start going to school and most of the teachers, when they find out where you came from, they want you to talk at the, you know, the career days and stuff like that (laughs). They always call me to go to school and talk about it. I wasn’t able to talk about it before but... I don’t know. I’ve worked through a lot in my life...not just during the war but even me as an adult, having my own family, going through a lot. I learned how to deal with even hard situations, with difficult situations, with painful situations. I learn, especially in the past few years, how to let it go and accept whatever happened. So I mean, all of us somehow we accept this. It’s but every year when it’s the July 11, we...we all remember. We kind of, you kind of...you’re, you don’t want to, but you still remember. You go through those days in your mind. You remember how it happened, where it happened, how you felt. Somehow, your anxieties come back. And for me, it’s like I’m living again those days [again]. I’m still there. Like, I don’t like fireworks, for example. In the beginning, when I came to this country, it didn’t bug me that much.. But lately, maybe in the past 10 years, I get so many anxieties when its fireworks because I get scared. It reminds me of those days. [long pause] Scary. Hard. Painful. 

[Long pause].

So, you all leave Srebrenica, you can’t find your dad and your husband at the time, and you all gather, you’re all in Dubrave. So where did you go as a family? What happened while you left? 

Yeah. They bring us to Kladanj first. From Kladanj, they take us to Dubrave and from there, everybody start finding places to go. When we came to Tuzla, my mom and my siblings were accepted from my father’s aunt. She took them [in]. And then I went with my husband in that time to his mom’s home. His mom was in Tuzla at that time. So we stayed with her for a while and then we find our own spot, our own place. 

So you were all kind of scattered.

Yeah. So that was ‘95. I came to United States in '98. 

My sister-- remember when I say that me and my sister started dating these guys in Srebrenica? That boyfriend that she was dating, he left Srebrenica before Srebrenica’s fall. He left through Žepa. He got caught by Serbian army and he was in a logor [prison camp]. And somehow, he left, and when they let him go, he came to United States. How? They just...I guess he was refugee in that time also and so he came to United States.When he heard about my sister, that she was in Tuzla, he sent her papers to bring her here [to America]. 

My sister was 19. We all sat down and we were like “Okay, what should we do?” I don’t have my own home in Tuzla. My husband in that time, he didn’t have a job. All my siblings are younger than me, they’re still young. My mom, she doesn’t work. We can’t go back to our home, still. How we gonna survive here? I already have a child... so we have to think about future. And um… she [my sister] decide to go to America, to her boyfriend, to accept his papers. 

So we had to go to Hrvatska first, to Zagreb, to start, uh, papers. So we, we would always go to Croatia for the refugee asylum interviews. So she came, she went first, and after she finished all the interviews and she passed the medical and all that stuff, they accepted her to come to United States. But, they couldn’t send her to her boyfriend (he was in Chicago at that time). They told her, “Since you’re not married with him, we can’t send you to him, but we, could, we could send you to Houston.” And, so she accepted to come to Houston. 

So, girl, 19 years old, doesn’t know nobody, doesn’t have anyone here, no family, she doesn’t know if she gonna have any friends here or anything, uh, no english. She came to Houston and uh, I guess when she come here as a refugee, she met some other Bosnian people. So she found some friends, and then she sent us, the second month, she sent us papers. For me, my mom, siblings. 

I wasn’t actually legally married with my husband in that time. We were just still just living together. But she [my sister] sent papers under his last name to me. So I had to get married with him there, in Tuzla, so we can starting working on our papers. We started working on papers together with my mom and my other three siblings. 

We came here, ‘98, March ‘98. I was pregnant with Omar. I got pregnant, so I was six months pregnant with my youngest son when we come to United States. My mom and my siblings. They stayed here [in America] for six months. She [my mom] couldn’t handle it no more. She just… it was it was totally different life than in our country. For somebody in her 40s, she never worked before, now she have to get up and go to work and it...it was just too much for her to handle it. She decide to go back home. My mom went back after six months and she took my siblings back. My brother, at that time, just started high school here when they went back. They’re in Tuzla [now]. My mom is in Tuzla, my brother he is in Živinice, one of my sisters is in Banovići, and the youngest one, that was just five years old when war started, she’s in Germany. 

So… and me and my younger sister, who’s 13 months younger than me,we’re here. It’s just me and her and my other friends, the family that I met here (smiles). I have friends that I met here, there’s some of them that I’m really close with, there’s some of them that you just see once in a while. I came here with my ex-husband, the father of my boys, and we separated after a year here. Omar was only six months old when we separated, so… Omar basically he grew up next to my daughter’s father. He was 18 months old when I met her father. 

I was for, for a while, single mother here in United States with two boys, on my own. I start working in a restaurant in La Madeleine, and I don’t speak English at all because I couldn’t even learn English. Edi was one of those crying babies that he never wanted to stay away from me with anybody. The first time they took us as refugees to this english class--we had free English classes to learn English and they had a babysitter also-- I was pregnant with Omar, and I was so big. I got to leave Edi in the room with the babysitter, and all I heard was him, screaming and calling my name and crying, and I’m just like “Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’m gonna learn anything.” I just got up and got him and I never went back to English classes. (Laughs). 

So, I learned english, you know, at work, watching TV, just talking to people. I don’t know, somehow I learned, (Laughs). Um… but yeah, um, it was hard. It was hard. Um… But, you know, life is life. It’s… it’s… you learn how to live life even as a single mom or as a married mom. Even after I re-married, I was still on my own. Like still doing things on my own. I never wanted to depend on a man. I guess that’s just the way I grew up. And maybe even that--we were, during the war, that we were struggling, and trying to survive. That taught us a lot. So, you know, when we come here, it was just like... you already were experience a lot, during the war. So here, just being here, and learning life here, it was… it was hard but it was easy, you know?

Like, “Okay, here we go again.”

Yeah. Especially, you know, the worst part, was learning English. Being able to communicate with people. Once you learn English, everything is easier. Some people had better than others, luckier than me, you know. I don’t know. I’m just really unlucky with mans. My love life is horrible (laughs). That was the worst thing for me because I never was in peace with that side [of life]. Even that you know...when you divorce one time, and try starting from the beginning, you lose so much time there. And then you find somebody, you try to build life with him, and then you know, everything start going down, and you didn’t work with that one, and then you started life again at the beginning. And that was my life, you know, starting from the beginning. Not just one time, but a few times. And… here we go where we are. I mean, this is what we have (laughs). I don’t say that we have so much, but I am happy, you know, I’m blessed, my children are healthy. 

You mentioned your mom going back and your family staying there. Were you worried when they decided to move, or do you worry about issues happening in the Balkans now? 

Yes! Of course! Especially with the situation how it is, even after 26 years, the economic situation is not that great. Anything can happen. I do worry about that. I didn’t want them to go back. But,  my mom chose to go back. I guess it was just hard for her to live here. I don’t know, maybe it would be hard for me like… I think she was like my age when she came here. So maybe it would be hard for me also if I go from here somewhere else, you know. I’m already half of my life in United States. 

She never went back home, to live in the town where we grow up. Because it’s Republika Srpska now. It’s more… there’s not that many Muslims people there, especially the town where we were coming from. Not even 25% of people that are back home are Muslims. Most of them were killed or they left to another part of Bosnia. And she never was...she never felt that safety to go back and be in our house. We have a house there, you know, and we go to visit but we never stay that long. She never… every time I come from here to visit my country, and I don’t want to stay in Tuzla that much. I want to go back home, where I grew up and I wanna stay there for a whole month. But they don’t want to. My mom is afraid and so we never stay that long back home. We always just go for maybe a couple of days. I will just go without her and stay there. But a lot of people are like that... they are afraid to go and live with the… somebody that was killing you. 

When was the first time you went back home? Not just to Bosnia, but to your town?

To Nova Kasaba? Hmm. Well I went back first time my home 2003.  I came here ‘98 and 2003 was the first time that I went to visit. Sometime around 2000 they people to come back to their homes. That’s when I went first time. 

I remember we come to our town and uh… there’s barely anybody that’s come back yet. We had somebody, some Serbian family, that was living in our house during the war. But my mom-- after they said we can come back home, my mom went there and that lady moved out from the house. It was hard to come back to the house and see that your father is not there. 

I remember the first time when I went--before the war, I wanted to talk to him about going to highschool--and when I went back,  I went to the same spot where I talked to him [about high school]. He was building one of the rooms, and I told him-- I remember I told him, uh, “Babo, I wanna go to highschool.” You know, and of course, in that time when I was growing up uh… Our parents were so strict. They didn’t give us that much freedom. Once we turned thirteen, fourteen years old, we didn’t have that much freedom. Not like now, you know… They-they were trying to, they were trying to protect us like from anything, you know. So yeah, I went to that spot where I talked to my father, and I remember… It was just like, I was just here talking to him about going to highschool, and here we are now- he’s not here, you know… Yeah.

So you were living in Tuzla, and then you left in ‘98. Dayton was signed at the end of ‘95. How were the years in between the end of the war and when you left? Being in Bosnia, in that environment?

Uh… Well that was...that was okay. It was starting to recover, but… I don’t really remember that much from that time. For some reason, I don’t remember those three years being in Tuzla and what happened all those three years. But, I guess we had a lot of help from UNICEF. UNICEF was helping a lot, and I remember in that time, there was some Arabic company that was also helping our country. When my sister left to start working on her papers ‘96…, for us, it was always just working on our papers and thinking, “When we gonna have our next interview?” It was between Zagreb and Tuzla, Zagreb and Tuzla, because we had to go to Zagreb-- we had to have actually apartment there to prove them we living that country uh… and uh that we can’t go back home, you know. So it was- for us, it was just a busy busy busy.

When did the war end for you? Was there a specific moment when you felt like it was over?

Th-that moment when we… lost our father. That was, for us, that was the end. 

Is there, um, is there something that you want Americans or non-Balkan people to know about the war?

I mean whoever wants to know what happened in our country, there’s like a lot of YouTube videos that they can watch. But there’s still not that many people that knows about this [Srebrenica]. There are so many people that when you tell them that you’ve survived the war, they’re surprised. “What war?”

Is there something you want like Balkan people to know? People who are still there? 

(Shrugs)

Same thing?

That everybody… everybody...we all know what happened. What we went through. And there’s nothing for them to tell them something new that they don’t know about already. You know. They’re still struggling. You know, some people it’s... it’s okay with the life they live, some not. I don’t blame anybody that’s trying to get out from Bosnia because they don’t have a good life. Because the economic situation is just… I don’t believe ever ever is gonna be the way it was before war. The war just messed up so much. 

Yeah, have you seen Quo Vadis Aida? That new movie about Srebrenica? 

I did. 

What are your thoughts on it?

Uh… I was actually expecting more in that movie. When the movie first came out, I didn't wanna watch because I thought it was gonna be too much for me. I was just gonna stress myself so much watching that. But… I was expecting more. They didn’t… they didn’t show that much what happened in there. It’s just something off in there, it’s not everything like it was. I want, honestly I wanted them to show more than they did. At the end of the movie, when they killed her husban dand her sons in the, in the building, it, it it may be happening something like that, but they could do more than that. They couldn’t show more because there was a lot of more happening.

But, definitely, at the end, when she went back to her home and she sees the guy that actually killed her husband and her kids, and she had to live with him, you know, teaching his children, it’s just… It, it, it happened like that. A lot of people went through like that. 

And finally,  do you have a story or something you want to share about Burek?

About Burek? (Laughs). Well I can, I can share, um… maslanica. Maslanica is something, it’s not burek, it’s pita with butter.

So during the war, I still remember the taste of the maslanica. That was the best maslanica I’d eaten, ever! Because you know, you don’t have food. And my mom, she got from somewhere, some flour, white flour, so that she can make maslanica. It’s made the same way as the burek, it’s just it’s not with the meat and stuff, it’s only butter. I can still taste that maslanica, I’ve never made the maslanica like that (laughs) ever since. 

That was, I mean that was... when we ate that maslanica, it was like we were eating čevape or burek or sarma, that was such a fancy meal! (Laughs). So, (laughs) yeah, there we go. And even till this day I still remember it, and I still tell my mom “Mom! Remember that time when you made this maslanica and-- what did you put in it? Like I wanna, I wanna make one now.” It was just such a treat. It was so good. That was my burek story. 

Thank you so much

Ah you’re welcome. I mean, I’m sorry I wish, you know, I could remember more stuff!

No, that--

Omar come here! [Calls her son to the table]. 

Memorial plaque [Anonymous] keeps in her home. It reads: Never Forget Srebrenica.