A beautiful Christmas
Tree sits prettily to her left. She smiles, and in seconds, I feel myself
smiling widely too. Her cheerfulness is contagious, and I’m left feeling that I
know that she is definitely going to leave me inspired by the end of our conversation.
Kristina Seslija
survived the war in Bosnia.
No matter what
generation you belonged to, you will know enough and more about the horrors of
Bosnian war as it unfolded, especially in suburb the city of Sarajevo where
Kristina lived. Four years of war and many later, Kristina picked up pieces and
resumed living not just for herself, but for the people around her, as she
worked as a peace-builder to reconcile differences that allowed for the war to
take place. What follows is her story, in her own words.
I lived through the entire four years of the
war in Vojkovici, suburb of Sarajevo. In the years that followed, I found
myself in a spot where I couldn’t talk about the war and everything that
happened for as many as five or six years after. I couldn’t stop crying every
time my mind went back to all that happened.
I am from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I had the
chance to study in the United States of America. I learned through my many
experiences in life that it is not just important to talk about one’s
experiences, but to also listen, to listen unconditionally to the experiences
of others. There is no one truth about war: there is no good, no bad. Everyone
suffers equally. When there is war between two sides, it is foolish for people
to think that one side is privileged or is enjoying a plush life. The fact is,
both sides suffer, and suffer equally, as my story will tell you.
My story starts with 1992. I was a senior in
High School, and all I could think of back then was the prom. I loved to dress
up, I loved going out, and I was looking forward to the prom and the thought of
who I would be going to prom with was something that I enjoyed toying with in
my mind. But there was no prom: war started a month before prom. I lived all
four years of the war in Sarajevo. It is very hard to really justifiably
explain the horrors of war – but it is still so unbelievable even now, to me,
how easily war changed our mind, and how much hate it had inculcated within
everyone, me included. It was so easy to take sides, to hate and to be hateful
– and I was one of those people who fell for that. The war was against the
people on just the other side of the road – these people were my neighbours,
they were familiar faces – but there is something about the mob mentality of
the war that sort of gets you to fall in line with it. Most of my stories from
the war are in line with the major narratives that the world has heard of,
already – so I am going to talk about what it felt like to survive after war,
and to pick up from where life left off.
The four years of war that I faced, as I said,
was no different from the mass narrative that emerged. Every day, there was
shelling. Every day, we heard of family members being killed, of someone or the
other being raped or abducted. It was the same story every day, but a different
face and a different name was put to it. We just looked forward to moving from
one day to the next, to survive for the next day. And somehow, war makes you
capable of surviving and making do with what you find. You invariably find
something to eat, something to clean your body with – and you just try to stay
alive. In those days, I remember, the dominant thought sometimes was that I
would give anything, anything for a scoop of ice-cream or a slab of chocolate,
or even a wad of chewing gum. It was terribly sad when three years later, life
returned to normal and I found myself simply puzzled. We didn’t have
electricity during the war, we didn’t have any of the things we take for
granted in peacetime. So when it all came back, I found myself wondering what
to do with all of these things. It was tough to live in a civilised world when
all that you were surrounded with was war.
During the war, I did everything I could to
survive and to make sure that my loved ones survive. I was 18 when the war
started. I remember driving a bus filled with women and kids, including my
mother and sister. All I remember doing was driving with a mission, a mission
to take this bus load of people to some place that was safe. I didn’t know if I
would ever see all of these people again, so my determination was to simply to
reach safety.
I got married during the war, I was pregnant
during the war and I delivered my first born during the war. When I was
pregnant, I saw a little boy run to his father to hug him as he was going to
war. I remember thinking to myself, wondering if my children would know or see
their father – my husband. Thankfully, war didn’t take him away from us.
After the war, something made me want to go to
the other side and check on the people on the other side of the fence, the side
that “we” were at war with. I joined an NGO, which allowed anyone to hop on
board. It didn’t matter what side you were on. While many people of my
nationality would work for the people on our side, I decided to work to help
the people of both sides. It was such a hard
time. I would go out on the street that separated both sides of the war. If I
encountered just one person or maybe two at the most, they would pitifully ask
me if we had jobs to offer, means of livelihood to share with them. But if I
encountered a group of people, they would call me a traitor as I was from the
other side. They would know from my name that I was not of the same ethnicity
as them. The people of my own nationality would also call me a traitor, telling
me that I was working for the enemy. They would go to the police and bring them
over to my place, to interrogate me and to have me subjected to examination for
the reconciliation work that I was doing.
Many people asked me what changed within me. I
had this hatred one day whilst the war unfolded – but did that go overnight, to
change to become the face of my initiative to reconcile the differences? Well,
I don’t quite know how to answer this question. I guess during the war, the
mob-mentality element tends to make one fall prey to the atmosphere of hate
that prevails. But after the war, what really interested me was to understand
and empathise with the other side. It was very important to me to break down the
stereotypes that we tended to build about the “other”, the very factor that
drove us apart. When you break the stereotypes and go across to the other side,
you see the similarities that actually bring us closer. You see that the other
side is just like your own: every face has a name, every name has a story,
every person hopes for a better future. You see that they are also hungry, sick
and tired, they miss their family, and have even lost members of their family. Suffering
was common, and our aspirations were common. And yet, we were fighting. We can
help each other and grow together – why fight for something that we all aspire
for in common? I won’t say that the change in me happened overnight.
Reconciliation efforts went on from all sides.
At the higher levels, politicians and members of the municipality worked to
reconcile differences. But the thing is, if the higher level can keep the grass
root in ignorance by withholding information, it would be easy for them to
manipulate the masses to their advantage, and that was what wound up happening.
At the grass root level, efforts like mine met with a lot of opposition and
name-calling. People called me a betrayer, a traitor and a person who was
unfaithful to her own kind. The fact is, though, all I wanted was for a
peaceful place for my children to grow up in.
With time, a lot of people began to see the
logic behind the efforts. I currently work for Fondacija Mozaik, a PRO-FUTURE
project that is backed by the USAID. Before that I worked on project leaded by the
Mozaik Foundation on “Women’s empowerment”. The overall
objective of the Program was to fight poverty and social exclusion by enabling
and accelerating economic development of rural population through the creation
of a market driven, business like model capable of long term sustainable
growth.
Today, when I look at the young generation, I
am disheartened. Eighteen years after the war, I see that children are being
raised with more hatred than there was during the war. And this hatred comes
from the things they hear. They hear these stories of atrocities and they are
more than willing to wage war. But the fact is, those who survived war will
never want to pick up a weapon to kill. I worry for the future generation. It
is important that they should know these stories, yes, but act on them with
peace and reconciliation, not a willingness to wage war or fight more.
Reconciliation is very, very important. It is
not that only I am doing this work – there are scores of organisations and
individuals that are making it happen at many different levels. It is sad that
we live in a world where even siblings don’t talk – divided by such mundane
things as land or even ego. My idea of reconciliation is not to hug everyone
and to just live in love and peace. It is a lot more than that. It is about
talking about the things that are important. It is about talking, engaging and
respecting each other and the differences we each exhibit. It is very important
to be able to hear each other, and to respect each other. Let our differences
be – let us agree to disagree, and let us respect each other enough to hold our
own views about things. If we can really do that, true
reconciliation is possible.
Check out the Foundation Mozaik here.