30 years of grief: From Sarajevo to Ukraine

Reflecting on the Siege of Sarajevo's 30th anniversary through my own grief

30 years ago, my life and the lives of millions of Bosniaks, changed forever as Serbian forces attacked the city of Sarajevo and subsequently the rest of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I do not remember much about life before the war and genocide. I was, after all, a child. What I remember is feeling safe and how abruptly that safety came to an end.

As bombs and mortar shells hit the city, day after day after day, and as snipers gunned us down…I remember thinking this was just what life was for everyone. For me, there was no knowledge of peace. War was the normal. After all, being so young when the war broke out meant that I had little to compare it too. Instead, I accepted it for what it was: my life. My life meant days and nights in a cold, damp basement as the skies above us were full of mortar shells and the ground surrounding us full of mines of all sorts. It meant waiting to hear if my father made it out of the concentration camp. It meant waiting to hear whether my uncles or my grandmother survived after they bombed her house. This was my normal, my life. No food, no electricity, no water, just darkness and grief. An abundant amount of grief.

Throughout the Siege of Sarajevo, all I ever felt was grief. As news after news of killed loved ones arrived, I felt as if grief was all I would ever have. I was a child and yet I felt much older than I should’ve felt. As the war came to an end, the grief continued.

I grieved my childhood first. I grieved how it was taken away from me, without any mercy. I grieved my family second. I thought of the advice I would never get to hear from my grandfather and grandmother. I grieved the hugs I would never get from them. I grieved my uncles and the adventures I would never get to experience with them. I grieved my godmother and her beautiful curly, black hair and how I’d never get to play with it again.

I grieved the city last. My beautiful Sarajevo. I grieved each building that was destroyed and even those that remained. The scars of the war so abundantly clear on them. I grieved the streets full of “Sarajevo’s Roses”. I grieved the mosques and the churches and the temples all damaged by the war. I grieved my school, surrounded by fields we could never play in because they were full of mines. I grieved the boy I went to school with that stepped on one. I grieved the days we had to learn how to identify bombs and mines. I grieved the childish innocence all of us lost those days. I grieved it all.

The day I left Sarajevo, forced out of my own country due to the damage of the war and genocide, I grieved even more. From the train to Zagreb all the way through the flight to Des Moines, Iowa I grieved and I cried. My father held me. The man who lost his brother, father, cousins, friends, and neighbours. The man who survived the concentration camps. The man who walked around with a piece of shrapnel stuck in his dead due to the mortar shell hitting him, was comforting me. I remembered yelling, I hated the war. I hated what they did to us. I wanted to go back home.

But I couldn’t. Instead, I turned grief into my home. I settled in there and I remembered. Each day, I remembered. The bombings, the destruction, the massacres, the rape camps, the death camps, the torture, the death and the pain. I remembered it all and I grieved it. In every piece of writing, in every poem I wrote, and in every speech I spoke…there was that grief. 30 years of grief.

Today, I am no closer to the final stage of grief than I was 30 years ago. In many ways, I remain stuck in my own grief. A part of me fears that if I let go of the grief, I will forget them. All of those beautiful souls who were killed due to their ethnic and religious identities. All of my loved ones who did not deserved to be taken away from us. I fear if I let go of the grief…I will forget them all. So, I don’t. I hold my grief closer than ever. Some days it is all I have. But it is powerful too. I use my grief as a catalyst for change. I use my grief to speak out and to remember. I use my grief to remind the world how it stood by and allowed us to be sent off to slaughter. I use it every day.

Recently, my grief has gotten worse. It appears day and night. When I least expect it. As I watch the situation in Ukraine unfold, all the memories of the Bosnian war and genocide return. It feels as if a thousand little cuts are happening right across your chest. More grief and more pain. It is impossible to let go.

I think of the words of my friend, Amila Buturovic, “Every war becomes my war” when you are a survivor. After years of watching the suffering in Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Ukraine…I finally realised how apt that is. Every war and every genocide becomes a part of you. Your own memories triggered by the news of new bombings and videos of human suffering. Your wounds opened wide and salt poured on them by every photograph of a dead body. It’s not yours and it’s not your loved ones either, but it’s somebody and it is somebody’s loved one. And you know…you know exactly how that feels. You remember because you have to, because you have your grief and it refuses to let you go.

My grief comes to me as an old friend. A familiar face full of comfort. A soft blanket I use to cover up the pain of the memories. My grief and I are old friends and together we sit and we watch what is unfolding in Ukraine and we wonder…how does the world continue to let it happen. We wonder about the children in Ukraine and which one of them will be forced to carry their grief for the rest of their lives. I wonder. How much grief will be enough for the world to learn its lessons.