Normal things
In times of war, the plank of normality is so easily lowered, and it does not come back when things get closer to actual normality.
In Sarajevo, I speak to women, who were more or less Katya’s age during the war. Those are the ones who would be considered lucky not to have any outstanding experience: they were not raped, tortured, or imprisoned, their families, too, survived; they did not have to roam in the mountains, hungry and freezing, risking to bump into paramilitary Serbian units that were even more cruel and dangerous than the chetniks. Just like Katya with that “just one” bullet in the leg of her father, they call normal the things that are way far from normal or acceptable, or possible, just because Bosnia is full of way more awful stories. Teenagers who were regularly group-raped by Serbian soldiers, because they were Muslim, women, who saw or heard their husbands, brothers, or fathers tortured or killed, and those who lost young children and spent the years after the war looking for their bones at the various sited of exhumation of the victims of the war – they all still live everywhere around.
Maybe, in comparison to that, the other things look completely normal, especially after 30 years. Or maybe this is just the way to cope. The plank of normality is so easily lowered, and it does not come back when things get closer to actual normality. What does it do to us, what are we ready to take as a normal after this?
Narcisa in Sarajevo right after the siege was over.
Lejla says she did not care if there was food or electricity in Sarajevo (there was no), for the life was so vivid. “At Grbavica, on the Serbian side of the city – it was scary there. No one was around. But in Sarajevo, we went to the theatre plays and there were a lot of kids to play with, we were outside all the time, enjoying ourselves. My father’s sister was just 10 years older than me and just married, she and her husband took me out”.
Narcisa tells me that she and her friends were only allowed to stay in front of the building, but instead, they went everywhere around. When they were going to the concert or something the thing they were afraid of was not a bombing, grenade, or sniper’s bullet. They were constantly afraid their parents would notice the children were not where they were allowed to be.
Just like in Ukraine now, there was an enormous splash of cultural and artistic life during the war in Sarajevo. They did not have electricity, paper or film, let alone things like the Internet, but that did not stop people from creating, studying, and organizing all kinds of exchange. Just like in Ukraine now, everyone was visiting – not only journalists and reporters, documentalists and filmmakers, but artists, designers, writers, singers, actors, philosophers and you name it. It was to show solidarity and support but also to respire that special air so full of life, energy, and inspiration.
Narcisa saw one of her friends killed just next to her. They were sitting down and playing cards and then he just fell. No one knew where the bullet came from. Narcisa’s ex-husband was already a soldier back then and lost his eye. When their kids were little, they used to ask where daddy's eye was, and Narcisa and her husband would tell them Daddy went on a business trip and forgot his eye somewhere.
Lejla, being taken, as a matter of safety, to Serbia by her mother’s parents, who were Serbs, too, saw a young Muslim woman, 18-20 years old, being taken away from the bus at the checkpoint and never coming back. All the people on the bus kept silent. Lejla herself was a daughter of a Muslim man, who stayed in Sarajevo and fought. After two years, when she was 14 she decided to find a way to come back to Sarajevo, which was still under siege. She came up with the idea to keep the strict diet not to be the only fat person in Sarajevo so people don’t feel wrong about her, and actually kept it.
As we talk, the list of those “quite normal things” they’ve seen or experienced during the war grows and grows and grows. Nothing from what they are talking about is even close to normal.