What started to happen to me at the meetings with veterans and visits to the execution sites in this unfortunate country of ours, had a certain feel of ‘awakening’ to it, in comparison to what I had been going through in the first few years after the war, when I had the chance to meet with people ‘from the other side’, whether we had known each other before or not.
What it meant was to talk about issues and topics that were until recently considered a taboo, in my view. People mostly try to go by an unwritten rule, or more precisely, a code of conduct, that does not allow us to ask the others about the things we would not like to be asked, therefore more time is spent talking about political and economic situation, and how many people took advantage of this evil times and benefited from them, then asking or talking about mass graves, rapes, executions, slaughter, camps and so on and so forth, or even about some brilliant examples of humanity and nobility of the last war.
I felt this awakening in such a way that I could talk candidly about everthing what was going on in the war and about people’s roles in it, normally with my own perception and subjectivity. I also felt that that the other people’s ‘defence’ was slowly coming down, too. We were becoming more and more humans and were less hiding behind “ours and yours”, and were looking for our own positions regarding the past events, including our own responsibility.
No need to mention that CNA switched on a good deal of those switches in our heads and provoked our badly damaged brains to move into a new direction, not to devastate or destroy, but to build some new, I wouldn’t say bridges, but shores onto which the foundations of those bridges that are to be erected, should be laid.
The entire process that was going on inside of me was probably quite recognizable with others too, as soon as I was in a position to be asked a favour, so to say.
During the veterans’ visit to Zavidovići, after leaving the Memorial Room, Lj. approached me, visibly agitated. I did expect the rush of emotions from him because the Brigade from his area had had some huge losses on the frontline around Zavidovići and the room was full of “trophies” that bared the insignia of that unit. He also started to talk to me about it, and how it had struck him, because he had lost a lot of friends and acquaintances there, and a lot of them were still missing. Basically, he asked me, if it wasn’t a problem, for him and few of his friends to come to Zavidovići to visit the Memorial Room.
Since the Memorial Room is at the premises of the Disabled War Veterans of Zavidovići and they have the key to it, I consulted A. and I was told that there was no problem, and that all it took was a few days notice, to take the key.
I passed the information on to Lj. and after having agreed on it, we parted.
Maybe less then a month later, Lj. got in touch and announced his arrival. I did everything in advance and was expecting them. However, the morning they were supposed to come something happened, I think someone died, and he informed me that they wouldn’t come.
More than a month passed since then, when he called again and said he was coming.
I prepared everything once again, informed A. and
M. and we waited for what must have been two hours when he called again and said that there was something wrong with the car and they could not come that day.
When he called the following day and said they were on their way I took it with a pinch of salt, thinking something would come up again. M. was at work, and A. had something to do on his own and said that he could be with us for just a little while. I went to the Disabled War Veterans’ premises from work and spent an hour there with the president and the secretary of the organization, waiting. They knew some Serbs were coming to visit, but did not open the subject. A. was also there, trying to tidy things up in the Memorial Room.
Soon I got a call from Lj. and he said they were parked outside the building.
I got out and saw him, and the two men I didn’t know before, so I was somewhat taken by surprise, because I had expected that he would come with some colleagues from his veterans’ organization that I had had the chance to meet during the visit to Prnjavor.
We met and if I remember correctly, I think that one was named P., and the other B. I saw they were carrying officers’ purses and cameras. I thought “Fuck Lj., who did you bring along!” They did not seem to me as people who came to see something and evoke some memories. At that moment, I was angry with Lj., for not telling me in advance who was coming. Perhaps he was afraid that in that case I would turn him down.
P. asked whether they could enter the Memorial Room to see it. I told them that was what we were there for and invited them in.
A. said goodbye to them and apologized because ha had to go. I brought them into the office of the President of Disabled War Veterans’ Association and he received them nicely, welcomed them and said compassionately that if there was anything he could do they should come to him and that they should feel at home.
All that time, I felt confused. Thousands of questions were brimming in my mind, I was looking for answers: who were they, did they belong to some security forces, what were they really interested in? The only thing that encouraged me was that I recognized some signs of their discomfort, too.
Some sort of bell of silence had come down upon us before we entered the Memorial Room and somehow isolated ourselves. Then we started talking and one of them said he was from some place near Banja Luka, and the other one was from Srbac as it seemed, but I’m not sure. They asked whether they could take photos, and I agreed reluctantly, but I was thinking to myself: why the heck they wanted it, whose archives did they need it for?
Then Lj. stepped in and said, if I understood well, that one of them was searching for his father and the other for his brother, who had both disappeared in this area. It may sound bad, but I felt relieved then. I needed to know the purpose of their visit, and I knew that units from their region had been here.
I did not want to dash their hopes, but I said that all the documents that were stored there were one hundred percent processed and that the data had been already forwarded to the authorities in charge but that they were free to look at anything they wanted.
That’s exactly how it was, they reviewed all the confiscated military id cards, personal id cards, drivers’ licenses, war diaries and took pictures of the documents that belonged to the individuals they had known or those they knew were from their region. I was initially little uncomfortable because there was a lot of poking around, and I’m not really at home with it, but I went out of my way to make it possible they check everything. Unfortunately, they did not find any information on their loved ones, but they were glad they had the chance to look and see.
When they were done with their part, we spent the rest of the time looking around the other exhibits in the Memorial Room. They asked and I answered as I could and explained. I saw melancholy in their faces, just like with any normal person when they saw all those names and pictures of the killed. This is particularly the case with the people who have lost their loved ones.
We went out, said goodbye to the people from the Disabled War Veterans’ Association, thanked them for their hospitality and stopped at the parking lot for a smoke.
They were very pleased and said they did not expect such reception, but Lj. had told them he never doubted it, having known me.
We said goodbye, they went home, and I got back to work and back to my thoughts.
Anyway, let me get back to the ‘awakening’ from the beginning of this story. If something like this had happened to me before, if I had been under some circumstances in a similar situation and had to do something in the same way, I would not have made it. I’d be a rack, it would tear me apart to think whether any such expression of good will towards people who were a part of something that wanted to destroy me and my own, whether “theirs” who had been killed were some butchers or just unfortunate plain soldiers, whether they were the gunners who shot schools and kindergartens with a smile, or forcibly mobilized people with health problems, who did not have any money to bribe the authorities to let them off the hook.
What will people from my community and those ‘verified patriots’ say? Will I be labelled a traitor and accused of betraying the legacy for money? Will I become worse and more hated than those who slaughtered on my behalf? Will they let me desecrate the Veterans Memorial Room by bringing some “Chetniks” into it? I can go on and on with such schizophrenic questions, I’d surely keep thinking about it and that would torture me.
But thank God, that is not the case. I have seen my light at the end of the tunnel and I can do whatever and help if I get a chance to every human being, hurt by this war, whose sacrifice I do not recognize by their name, but by the pain it left, with my head clear and without my conscience objecting.
Amer Delić, veteran of Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina November 2010