December 1993 | Voices from the Drina

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🧵 Today I translated for a Canadian journalist from the Toronto Sun, who arrived to report on Srebrenica. Here’s what happened.

We went to one of the collective accommodation centres, in a bus station whose large interior has been divided up with red bricks into smaller rooms.

In one of those bare-walled rooms, a young woman, no older than 25, was sitting and breast-feeding a child. Her other child was playing in the room. She smiled, her free hand shyly covering her completely toothless mouth, and patiently answered the questions.

He was asking questions and I was translating, until I noticed that he was not writing down her answers but standing with his arms hanging loose. He was just nodding, observing the room discreetly so that she would not notice.

He left shattered, his shoulders slumped. All the way to the town hall, where the mayor was expecting us, he did not utter a word.

Samir, Jerry, and I pass the time by listening to Beatles songs. Samir and Jerry (Dževad) play their electric guitar while I generate electricity with a bicycle. Sometimes I sing. You should hear our recordings – tragically comical!

Today Sejfo Mirvić tried to escape Rasadnik concentration camp. He was killed before he could do so.

🧵 Not all Western journalists are as compassionate as the one from the Toronto Sun. Today a John Pomfret from The Washington Post arrived.

He walked around with his head somehow raised higher than anybody else’s, attracting attention with the really huge bag he carried slung round his was it.

He approached people on the street, pompously asking, ‘Do you think the enclave is viable?’. They looked at him blankly, not understanding what he meant by that.

No more posts for this month.