Mirsad Z., 51

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

“So we would change out shifts and exchange guns with each other, to ono… so like, I’d give someone else a gun while they were on their shift and then they’d give it back, and so that’s– that’s how a line was established on that hill, Mojmilo. Eto, so that’s that, Layla, this, that’s how I witnessed the war starting in Sarajevo.

Interview originally conducted in BCS.

Okay, what is your name?

I am Mirsad Z.

And tell me a little about yourself. Umm where did you grow up? What was life like there, where you are from?

Uhmm, uh… I was born in Montenegro, a little place called Bistrica. Bijelo Polje. 

Life in a village, like everyone else… you go to school. School was far, three, four kilometers, we walked by foot for about half an hour. And in a village, I don’t know how to say, you live there and you work on the land, you mow. I only finished primary school there, so I do not remember very much. I remember some interesting details about what happened, but, but… we lived pretty well. It was Yugoslavia, we all loved that country. You know there were parties, like here. Pioneers, events, school and some other manifestations like that. We played as children, played soccer, swam in the river called Bistrica. It went through my village, my village is others, more accurately known as Žiljak. And we did not really have enough in our village, I think.

For the most part, people worked off of agriculture, that is what they were doing, fruit growing and whatnot. That is how Zimnica was prepared for the winter. Someone would work outside, so that they would have a little more you know, so they lived a little better financially, and all that. But overall, that was that. If there are some details that I can tell you about that period, I can tell you that, but what I remember as being interesting for that period, I don’t know, ono…there are a lot of things. I remember everything, but what is, what is considered interesting now?

Well anything, if there is anything important to you that you would like to say, please share.

Well, what is maybe interesting for example, were happenings after going to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I went there, and somehow everything happened, spontaneously, quickly, what we as kids could have never predicted. For example, that… that those bad times would come quickly. Overall, we lived so well, so freely, walking around wherever. There wasn’t any kind of anxiety, except for when our parents lectured us if we were getting home late or something (laughs). 

Overall there was not any kind of anxiety and you could walk wherever. Nobody, nobody would mess with you…there was no harassment, there was never a big difference between religions. If someone was a Muslim, an Orthodox, a Montenegran, Croatian, there were no big differences. You lived well, freely. But financially, that was based on everyone’s specific situation you know. 

When did the war begin for you? Was there some specific moment when you realized that the war began?

Well there is an interesting thing, Layla. I can tell you this true story of how it was, uh… the day when the war simply began in Sarajevo. We were, uh I was living in Sarajevo, I was working. I finished school in ‘87,  I was in the army in ‘89. JNA, you know JNA. I was there in ‘89 and ‘90. I came back in March and I started to work in my firm again. In ‘91, it already started in Croatia, alleged shooting there, the army, you know, JNA was there, we heard that there was shooting, there were casualties. However, in Bosnia, in ‘91, there was nothing, we lived normally and whatnot. 

In ‘92, at some point at um… end of February, March, it already started. Some sometimes barricades were moved. You know what a barricade is? That thing at border control. That means there were all of the paramilitary formations. There was not anything, that means JNA, there were some Chetniks gathered, somewhere, so supposedly JNA was somewhere against them, trying to move them, so the police moved them somewhere and that was it. 

Overall there were about two, three months where nobody knew anything.

But there were no deaths, maybe accidentally, some accident, all the way until April, I believe… or actually April passed. It was actually in May, actually in May that it started. In May, there was already delineation of territories. We were defending ourselves from JNA, Yugoslav National Army, and Chetniks who formed, the Bosnian Serbs. They formed their own units, all kinds of them were there, and on our side, units that were not under control of any specific leader, a president, for example.

There were all kinds of units, therefore the circumstances were already, end of February, March and April specifically, the circumstances were very wor-worrying, and very bad. 

I think it was, I think it was somewhere, end of April I think, I had a cousin, she lived in švrakino, that village, if you know where it is–

–I don’t know where it is 

Švrakino village… it does not matter, it was in a new city. Me and her husband were hanging out, doing something, some kind of business, something that we did to earn some extra money. It was a Saturday I think, or maybe even Sunday, and I left that day in the morning. I wasn’t… I wasn’t married, I was single, I wasn't… I was alone, and this… it was Saturday or Sunday I think, I left in the morning to go see them. To get a little breakfast coffee or something, I don’t even know.

 So, I was with them, it was the morning, I know it mostly well… I was with them somewhere until 12pm roughly, somewhere, you know… and when I started going home, I lived on Grbovska ulica, this, um… and, what’s it called– that village, I can’t remember what that village was called. But anyway, from where I lived, it was a 20 minute, half-hour walk, and I came home… I came home, and I was maybe halfway there, this um… I heard them shooting… shooting, those automatic rifles, those single shots, you hear bullets passing.

And I , and I– I was scared, you know? What is this? What’s happening? And so… on this one place, there were some military trucks near us. And they’re just parked on the road. 

And I’m passing them, and I see a lot of people all around, those, um… our people. And I, you know, approached them and they were saying “They’re attacking us,” saying “četnici,” this… here… weapons were here, one of our, who was down in the barracks in Rajlovac– I knew his name of that man, but I forgot– and he says that they dragged these weapons out so that we could defend ourselves. The četnici want to occupy this… to occupy that hill, you know. 

That hill is called Mojmilo, eto, uh, so that was where I lived. I think it’s called Mojmilo, but I’m not sure the hill is called Mojmilo. And I just finished in the army, it was 1990 that I was otherwise a commander in the army, and so I knew weapons and everything well.

And I borrowed one of the pistols, uh, we called them papovka, that’s a semiautomatic rifle. And um… I also got some ammunition and I left spontaneously for the hills. 

How do I say it, I don’t remember the exact details, you know…what it was, where it was. Generally, everything was without… without… I don’t know how I’d say it…nothing was known. Someone brought us those weapons, so that we could protect ourselves because there were barracks down in Lukavica. It’s now called Novo Sarajevo, it was Lukavica before. 

Anyway, there were barracks down there, and in those barracks were JNA and četnici, who we knew were Serbs, who we knew wanted to take over that hill. They shot from below, they wanted to go out onto the hill… the barracks below were later named Ramiz Salčin, I don’t know what it was called earlier, it wasn’t called Ramiz Salčin at that time, but later it was named after a commander– actually the 105 Brigade that I was in. The barracks were named after him, and below there were still JNA forces down there. However, we spontaneously– some people had some small weapons, someone had this, someone had that, so…On that day, that-that-that truck…  it was decided that we’d, in fact, defend that Mojmilo. 

And later, in the evening, at night, when it calmed down a little bit, I went back down to my home with my pistol and a little bit of ammunition that I had. But when I came back to my house in the village, there were these people gathered, a lot of them, and so I told them that I had a gun and that… they said “Great,” and they had just started to organized this, like, like… a command that was going to go to the hills. 

So we would change out shifts and exchange guns with each other, to ono… so like, I’d give someone else a gun while they were on their shift and then they’d give it back, and so that’s– that’s how a line was established on that, Mojmilo. Eto, so that’s that, Layla, this,

that’s how I witnessed the war starting in Sarajevo. 

What was life like during the war? What was a typical day for you? 

Uhh, during the war, Layla, everyone has their own, uh, different… different stories. At the beginning o the war, we had some food supply…however, quickly, it all started quickly… the shooting. They were attacking us, stronger and stronger attacks from the hills, from Trebevića. They started throwing grenades into the city, they were trying to enter Sarajevo with tanks. Uh, I can’t now… I don’t know what was happening on my, on my line, on my side, we say, um, July 12… maybe ma-ma-may… they organized a cruel attack on Mojmilo. There were so many killed on our side and on their side, ah, but eto… that’s now, this um… it’s another special story the way it all went down… there’s details, you know, but… to, so, um… 

Life, Layla… Sarajevo was very quickly blocked off, surrounded, you know, with JNA and četnici and so they really quickly surrounded us, this… so that situation was…I don’t know how to say it. Incomprehensible. 

Everything was predetermined. There were some, those, SFOR forces they controlled at least… nothing. We didn’t have much of anything from them, at least I didn’t feel any kind of security or anything from them or any great help from them. At least me personally, that’s just how it seemed to me. 

This, um… everything was the way that we had organized it. How we defended ourselves, how, how– who helped one another if, if it was about or something, and that’s how it was. Humanitarian aid did start coming immediately from somewhere, very quickly, uh, and so… There was some supply, but you know, in regards to wardrobe, shoes, we somehow managed. There were those, some kind of– warehouses where there were enough shoes and clothes, so it wasn’t some horrible problem, in regards to those sides of things, and I’m saying that there was some food supply, and so… later the humanitarian aid started and so. That’s that. 

And you mentioned that you were in the army during the entire war. 

Pa… I was. Yes. 

And what was life like in the army? How was that experience? 

Eh… how would I explain this to you, Layla. Eh… enough, enough in relation to…

…we organized ourselves out of nothing. We had enough in regards to food, to c-c-c-clothes, and so that… we managed ourselves well enough. How? I don’t even know, to tell you the truth.

I didn’t freeze, not even in the beginning, there was really bad, bad food, it wasn’t high quality food, we were getting some humanitarian assistance, konzerve, which weren’t healthy, and a lot of people got sick– me too. 

I remember that I went to some doctor, and I got some injection because I had stomach poisoning and that– I had some problems. The food was really bad. However, later, when things seemed to be more stable and all that, uh, how do I say this… then, then I didn’t think about it that much… what it was, how it was, is it what we need or is it no, and all that. 

Everything was… everything was, I think, I don’t know how to explain it…really irregular, disorganized…people who weren’t professionals but were positions where– they had positions of power, command positions.  

Because I had finished my time in the JNA Army and there was this corporate– I had, I had rank, and um… I knew a little bit about how those things go and how different levels of command work, styles, styles, planning, and stuff like that. However, in that, our Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina things… it was really, really mm…not–mm–not, I don’t know, I won’t, I won’t– I wouldn’t want to make a mistake, but, it was very uncertain, everything that was happening. 

It was a small organization, there was no professional staff, we didn’t have even… we didn’t have even enough weapons that were needed, pa– that could be a big reason that there were a lot of things that shouldn’t have been. 

Was there a time where you had an “all is lost” moment? 

Pa, Layla, it’s important that I tell you um… hope, or not,  it was a fight for our lives. Every day, every day. We don’t  know what the night was going to be like, we don’t know what the morning would bring. So as we use it here, now, we say “hope.” “Hope.” And that’s… there was very little of that because people were simply fighting day by day. And we say… that, eh… even it… there wasn’t even a place for that hope. 

For someone now to say, “What will happen tomorrow?” “What will happen in 10 days?” “We want it to be over, how are we going to live better?”-- conversations like that were really sparse. It was all fought day by day. To survive, to defend. 

 That Mojmilo, where I was, our greatest hope was that the četniks wouldn’t take that hill. That was our one hope that we would defend. And like that, what does it matter any of the other things? Every man thought about that sometimes and so… about what you hear on the news and elsewhere, that… stories, United Nations this, that. And about Bosnia and about the war and then the man thinks about those moments… 

However, there wasn’t a lot of time for that. For someone– for that kind of reflection besides, “What are we going to eat?” “What are you going to do on your shift?” “How are you going to save yourself if they throw grenades on us?To not die if they shoot bullets at us?” There were snipers, they were… they were everywhere, they were coming from everywhere. There were grenades, you know… you never know and that’s that. 

And so that’s… Layla, I don’t know what to tell you. If there’s something specific that you’re interested in, feel free to ask me.

Do you have some specific stories that you want to tell? Or about your experience in the army or just life when you were in the city?

Pa, my Layla, there’s– there’s a lot of those things, but God, for me they’re… they’d be really difficult to… to tell you. Those kind of…I’d be able to write some details for you, maybe, and that’s okay, but… right now to tell you some details… what happened to me, that’s… m… for me it’s still difficult, you know.

Mhm, I understand. 

Wait, I just want to take some water. 

Sure, go ahead. 

And so my Layla… like we have that ... in general I can - I can talk like that but ... like some personal things, it's very. not really- not really- easy, you know?

Yeah, I understand… Is there someone who really helped you during the war? 

Always– always there was someone who helped. There were a lot of people, Layla, how do I say this… people with whom I’ve collaborated. War is was the kind of situation where, everyone helped each other. If someone saw someone else fall or– you didn’t even need to ask for help that– people just helped. And so… there’s, there’s some person who… who has especially stayed in my memory, this… of them, I’d say– do you want their first name and last name? Eh…

Eh, pa, we could do their first name or something like that. 

Aha, eh, good. Yeah… I don’t need to give out their information. 

There was, there was one, Ago. I hope he’s still alive, when I was there [in Bosnia] last time I think I saw him. He was… 

I got married in 1993, and so we lived in some building, in an apartment, that I had temporarily because down where I lived before… it wasn’t very safe to live and such. And this guy Ago, he was working in the meat district. And he really liked me and [my wife] and was constantly coming to me and asking us if we needed anything and stuff like that. We didn’t even know what to say, what we needed. However, when he came to see our apartment, he saw that something was wrong. 

I remember it well. There was one stove that we got from some donation, and pa, it was… there was something wrong with that stove, um… we got it and we brought it with us, it was a new stove. Peć, you know, the thing that burns wood, you know? So he’d help us, he’d always give us information about what they [the donation center] had if we needed anything. And so, there was a lot of stuff that I’ve forgotten, I can’t…. I can’t even remember, but this, um, when you ask that, “Do you have someone who”-- I can’t remember anyone. And so… 

You mentioned that you got married during the war. Did you also meet [your wife] during the war? 

Uh, yeah. Yeah I did. The question was how [we met]? 

Sure. 

[Laughs]. That’s another interesting thing.

I had a sister down in Alipašino Polje. She lived down in a building there, and sometimes I’d go down visit her, it was my older sister Emira. And so one time I was over there with her and I had this bicycle, I don’t even know, I can’t… I don’t even know where I got it from, but I didn’t have it before the war, as far as I can remember I didn’t. I didn’t really need a bicycle, but I’d use it for, you know, city transport and stuff. 

And this one time, I was with my sister, and while I was coming back, I saw this girl riding her bike in the same direction as me and I was behind her. And it was Ilvana in Ilidža. If you meet someone that rode a bike, that was really um…rare. And so, I joked around a little bit. I told her that she blew out her felga. And felga, you know felga?

No, I don’t. 

Eh, felga, isn’t the tire from the bicycle, you know, it’s the metal part. 

The rim? 

Yeah.

And so she said “What?” And she fell immediately, you know, [laughs].

You can’t blow out a rim [laughs]. And so that was the joke, you know, it’s like if someone said “Uuh, you blew out your rim,” you can’t blow out a rim, you can blow out a tire, you know, but you can’t blow out a rim. And she immediately stopped and she was scared, and I said, “Ma–I’m– I’m joking!” [Laughs]. “You can’t blow out a rim.” She said, “Ugh, are you that rude?” You know, [laughs].

And so that’s how we started talking, a little bit. After she got up, you know, she didn’t want to talk to me at all. I just started riding slowly on my own way, and later she slowed down a little bit. And that was interesting– how could I say anything to her? And so then we started to talk a little bit and then…

 So that's how we met. Eto, um… coincidental.

[Laughs].

And, uh, when did the war end for you? Was there some moment that you felt that the war was over?

When I heard that we finished those negotiations in Dayton. 

I was in the field, eh, it was winter, and I don’t know exactly when that Dayton was signed, exactly. I don’t know, but I know that there was a lot of snow. And we were, um… on the line, at Bajta. We called that house Bajta, you know, but that’s like a ditch, a ditch where we slept and from there we’d go to our posts ono… in fact, Bajta was, it was where we slept but in a lot of cases it was also used as a ditch when we were on the line. It wasn’t really possible to walk very far, bad weather and snow and everything and so most of the time it was where we slept. We slept there and kept watch.

Anyway, I remember that it was morning, there was a lot of snow, and that… and, uhh… someone announced that the war was over.

 And when we came back to Sarajevo in 1995, so it was ‘95, that was ‘95– they finished that Dayton Agreement, it was winter, it was December. I’m not sure, but ‘95- that ‘95, 96’--that winter, I think.

And then when we came to Sarajevo, it was already noticeable that there was less shooting, fewer attacks, less attacking each other, and all that. It already felt like something had just happened. And after that, we felt it a little more on the ground… however, everything was just less intense, you know. 

There wasn’t a need for… people on both sides were simply… had a feeling that that was ending. 

And what was life like in the post war period? 

Before and after were different… really different. We say… really… Uh, I, similarly… I somehow had a lot of hope. Before the war, I somehow managed… I was single, but I had some kind of imagination about life–what I would be, how my life would be.

Put simply, you had possibilities. Anything, everything–To-to-to imagine what and how beautiful your life could become. 

However, after the war, everything was… [laughs]... senseless. It’s a stupid word, senseless, but, but it was really like nothing, you weren’t… you couldn’t know anything. You couldn’t move very far, you couldn’t… you couldn’t, I don't know. It’s hard to describe, Layla. It’s difficult to describe really, that, that, senseless and ridiculous condition. 

H-here, you know, I don’t know… very, very…I think I could try to d-describe this to you but that would be ridiculous. It’s just that, it’s just that there’s no shooting, no one’s dying anymore, everything else was, if, if, not worse, but nothing was better. 

You can’t plan anything, you can’t enjoy anything in any way. To spend time or… there was nothing. So there was maybe… in fact there wasn’t, maybe, surely 4-5 years after that. Nothing, there was nothing, there was nothing. There were definitely positives, people were surviving and whatnot, but something- something good for me to remember from that period, I really couldn’t remember. 

What year did you come to America?

2001.

And how did you come? What kind of experience was it?

How could I tell you Lejla, like everyone, like everyone ovaj… 

Actually, uh you submit, you try… There wasn’t an agency in Bosnia, but there was an agency in Croatia. The first office for emigration.  So we managed to sign up through that. They also asked for details, information, about you. Who are you? What are you? Where have you been? What were you doing? And so that… based on those stories, the commission decides to give visa and approval and whatnot. 

And what kind of experience did you have as an immigrant or refugee from war?

Eto that is… that is a good question Lejla [smiles]. Ovaj, when we came here… Before we came we were ha-happy to come to America. I actually personally had, in my head that… Just coming to America to-to-to just to come, would solve everything in life. I had those thoughts. 

However, the reality was quite different. When we came to America we didn’t experience anything better, in fact it was better for me in Bosnia than… Honestly, I wanted to go back. At least there I wasn’t terrified… will someone attack me? At my door? I wasn’t terrified when I went outside somewhere. Where could I go, which streets I could go to and which one I couldn’t… WhereverI  was allowed to go like that. 

So for the period before I came to America–I don’t mean the period immediately after the war, immediately after the war you couldn’t necessarily go everywhere– Uhm… I had better housing in Bosnia [smiles] than I did here where I am ovaj… Uhm… It was very hard, I even-I even thought about coming back. Once I wanted to go to the airport, but my wife didn’t let me. I wanted to look for a one-way ticket to go back. And like that it lasted maybe about one year… a year and a half… year and a half, maybe a little bit less. 

I started working earlier, too. I lived here in-in one apartment where it was very… very bad, very bad. And a lot…a lot of work. And eto it took maybe a year, a year and a half, and then I felt…different. And I met a lot of us [Bosnians] here,

I saw that they were well off and then I had some hope…that…that I too will one day find my way like that. And so it is… it started and every day after it was… everything was better and better. And eto today thank God ono, we are satisfied and we live nicely…

And uh- what is something that you want Americans, students, others to know about the war and life in Bosnia? 

Uh… Uhm… Hm- what is most important, let’s say…I want to say… that no war is good. Really, I’d like for there to be no wars, and yeah. H-How… I can say… that nationalism, is a very, very… very dangerous thing, this kind of, like… a common mad.

 I’d say, personally, to the ex-Yugoslavia or for Bosnia… politics played it all. People…the people were surprised. Very, very few people would have wanted to happen what happened. Politicians and politics took advantage of that.

But, this life in war in Bosnia… what would I want them to know… Let’s say, students and-and-and everyone who hasn’t experienced that… may God himself never experience it. 

One thing that’s interesting and that’s very, um… big, is how-how we prevailed to protect Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, without anything and without anyone’s help, that we prevailed and we protected that. 

Like I already said, Layla, details and all that, it would be difficult for me to talk about those, but now I’m remembering an experience that…for example, we were, with homemade rifles or hunting rifles or semiautomatic and sometimes automatic rifles, we fought against, an army that… that was so organized and armed with tanks and mortars and heavy artillery. 

One time, someone ran up behind a tank with a fuel canister and banged it against the tank to blow it up, to incapacitate it. That was one– one big thing that I’d like to have written down,. I didn’t make that up or imagine it, it happened in one of the battles I was in. And that tank? I personally saw it. This… how they, not me, but how we and my comrades fought back and incapacitated them… those kinds of details I want to tell you. That took down those weapons and we won. We armed ourselves and we fought and how we protected ourselves as a people from Serbs and Croats, who were later, who surrounded us later and fought us.

 It was huge.., A big thing for-for us as a people, that we prevailed and that we survived. 

Is there something specific that you’d like for other Balkan people to know about the war? Or about your experience? 

Pa, I’d like to say that, specifically for Balkan people and people in Bosnia, and in all of that eastern Europe, where people really deal with something really contagious and evil, and that is nationalism. 

I’d like to say that people should pay a little attention and really watch how the modern world thinks and what they do, and to not give anything to nationalism or to religion or say “You are that and I am this. I’m better than you.” You know, land belongs to the ones that use it. That’s their land, and who’s it’ll be after that? Who knows. You know, those who live in those areas, whether it’s Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Croatia, they should think about that as their state if they were born there or even if they moved there, and not deal with that nationalism. “They are this and we are that.” Pa… it’s this constantly spinning circle and it’s really bad for everybody. And so there’s a lot of that there, so I would say something like that. I could talk about that so much, but that’s it in short, Layla. 

Thank you for your time for this interview and for your responses to these questions. 

Nothing, Layla, just that, onaj, sorry– you are maybe noticed that parts of it were tough for me, onah, and you know about that, how that-that is, that period… I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

But this kind of, ono, though-though…it’s special when someone can share what-what-what they can, isn’t it? 

To be someone who… to be someone who… can be of help. So when she [my daughter] asked me about this [interview], Layla, I said to her that it wasn’t a problem. Just those… those details and that would probably be interesting, I have, but, my God, it’s just so tough to… to be able to… really difficult for me to share those details with you. 

There’s no pressure to talk about those details. We understand that for a lot of people, um… it’s still difficult to talk about those things and those details. Thank you so much for what you shared about your life and how it was during the war– we really appreciate it. And we say that every experience is important. 

Uh, and thank you, Layla. And I’m so glad that you’re one of these people who are organizing this and it’s really, really dear to me and I’m happy because all of our kids especially um… so in any case if you have more questions I can… I can try and help you in any way.