January 1993 | Voices from the Drina

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Featured Authors

It’s midnight on New Year’s Day, and Serb paramilitaries are cynically congratulating the people of Srebrenica with a renewal of intense shelling. A house near my building has been hit. (1/2)

Everyone in my house was asleep when it started. Then we could hear the grandmother screaming to her daughter from the room above us. “Lalo, bring the children, we will all die!” What an ominous start to the New Year. (2/2)

We’re living on the 9th floor of a building. The water pressure is so weak that my mother has to go two floors below to get some water from neighbours.

Mum came back from getting water from our neighbours. Sevda is the mother’s name. She told Mum that her children are too exhausted and hungry to get up anymore. Mum is going to give them some food.

Dad is back from his latest trek for food. He pulled a huge pot on a sledge. It’s a pot of pig fat. Dad said there was no other food left.

🧵 At the door of our apartment, every day there are people knocking who do not have anything to eat, and they have to beg for food. We always give what we can.

These people who beg used to be people who had everything needed to live a normal life. In Srebrenica they have become refugees, who have nothing.

Some people are ashamed when they have to beg for food. I am so sad when I give them food that I don’t dare to look at their faces.

Since Serb forces attacked my village of Ravne, I’ve been detained in Trnovac. Evil was done to me there. I’m now being transferred by my Serb captors to an apartment in Foča town.

Parents have decided that it’s time to sell Mum’s jewellery. She’s been collecting it since her wedding day. It’s the only way we can get food. Dad and I are going to try to sell them in a nearby village. We’re going to look for a relative again.