When Elephants Fight (12 page)

Some days were better and some were worse. On the bad days the snipers seemed to fill the air with bullets, and the shells were falling so quickly that there was hardly a gap between the explosion of one shell and the next. On one terrible day, over twenty thousand shells fell on the city.

On the best days, Nadja was allowed to venture outside, sometimes with her parents and sometimes just outside the building with her friends. That didn't happen too often. All of the children were pale because they mainly stayed inside.

Today had been strangely quiet. Nadja's sleep had been solid, undisturbed by shelling. There had been no explosions since she woke, and the radio hadn't reported any snipers in their area. There was beautiful sunshine pouring in through the kitchen window. Could today be a day she could venture out?

“Mama...could I go outside today?” Nadja asked.

Her mother didn't answer. She looked anxious and scared.

“It's quiet and I won't go far...just outside...just for a few minutes.”

Nadja's father had just gone out. It was up to her mother to make the decision alone.

“Please!” Nadja pleaded.

Her mother wanted her safe but knew that she couldn't keep Nadja inside forever.

“Just for a moment, all right?” her mother said.

Nadja raced out the door and down the stairs, taking each flight more quickly than the first. She felt like she was flying down the stairs. She ran outside and just stopped and stood there. The warmth of the sun against her face was so good. She felt like she was drinking the sun in through her skin.

Then everything changed. She wasn't sure if she heard the shell first or felt the vibration or was blinded by the smoke and dust that engulfed her. She staggered backward, rubbed her eyes and looked up. The front of her building was hanging there—a shell had hit her building! For a brief second she stood there, her mind not able to believe what her senses were telling her.

Then she ran for the building. She staggered forward, screaming, and then felt a sharp pain in her legs. She reached down...there was blood! She had been hit by the shrapnel! She kept running, reaching the door to the building and throwing her arms around a neighbor who was standing there.

It was like the whole world had changed. She was on the ground, and there was so much confusion. Dozens of neighbors gathered around her. Somebody pressed some towels against her leg to slow down the blood flow.

She could hear voices talking and screaming and crying, but she couldn't make out what they were saying as she started to drift in and out of consciousness. Then from all the voices she heard her father. He picked her up in his arms and pressed her tightly against his chest, her blood seeping into his shirt. Father and daughter were placed in a neighbor's car and rushed to the hospital.

“Dad, please don't let me lose my legs,” Nadja whispered.

He held her tighter to his chest, offering her comfort, reassurances that he couldn't possibly know.

They arrived at the hospital and her father carried her inside, where Nadja was taken by a nurse and placed on a stretcher. All around her, on stretchers, and even lying on the floor, were other people who had been wounded—those waiting to be treated and those who were beyond treatment, those who were dead. Everywhere was chaos: people screaming in pain, crying, doctors and nurses rushing around trying to save the lives of those flooding the hospital.

Nadja tried to remain brave, but it was so hard waiting, not knowing, scared, fearful that she might lose her legs. She had heard about this happening to people. She knew what was possible.

Finally a nurse and a doctor came. They cut open her pants and examined her legs. The pain was so intense, shooting throughout her body. People around her were crying out in pain. She bit down on her lip, trying hard to stop herself from screaming out. Nadja looked down as her legs. She could see blood and places where the flesh had been ripped open. She could feel the pain. She could hear the screams and cries. But none of it seemed real. It was like she was watching it all happen, but that it wasn't happening to her, that it wasn't her life and legs that were at stake.

The doctor examined her legs. He said things to the nurse, things that Nadja didn't fully understand. What she did understand was that pieces of the shell—shrapnel—had penetrated her legs.

Nadja knew all about what could happen. She had heard about people who had been hit by shrapnel and had had to have their legs amputated—cut off. That was her greatest fear, even more than dying.

The doctor looked up at her. “You are a very lucky girl.”

Nadja couldn't understand how he could possibly think that she was lucky. Unless...

“They all missed the bone. We'll clean the wounds, give you a tetanus shot and bandage you up, and we hope you'll be fine.”

Now she wanted to cry for a different reason.

The doctor probed around in the flesh, cleaning the wounds. Nadja tried not to move or cry out, but the pain was tremendous. She lay back and stared up at the ceiling and prayed for the time to pass. Finally, after what seemed like hours but had been only minutes, the doctor complimented her on being so brave and left the nurse to bandage the wounds.

As she lay there, she looked down at her newly bandaged legs, and little red spots began to form—blood seeping through. She knew that the worst was over, but there was a long road ahead of her.

Nadja recovered from her wounds. It was a long slow process in which she needed to be given constant love and care, and had to “learn to crawl and walk for the second time” in her life.

Nadja remained living with her family from the start of the siege of Sarajevo on April 6, 1992, until August 28, 1995, when she was smuggled out of the city, first going through a tunnel and then by truck, under the ever-watchful eye of snipers. She traveled to the United States, where she began living with an American family that had agreed to care for her. She left behind her family, her country, her culture and the life she had known. She had lived through one of the longest military sieges in history.

Nadja is now twenty-nine years old. She lives in Canada with her husband. She wrote a compelling book about her experiences called
My Childhood Under Fire
(Kids Can Press). Along with her writing, she is also a performer and public speaker, and she presents at schools for audiences of all ages about war—and more importantly—peace. She is a champion for the rights of children. She can be contacted to arrange visits at
[email protected]
.

The country of Bosnia-Herzegovina sits in close proximity to the centers of the large empires that have dominated Europe through the last twenty centuries. As such it has been under the domination of one empire or another for the course of almost its entire history.

The Roman Empire, centered in Italy, dominated the entire Mediterranean for hundreds of years, ending in approximately 400 AD. During the time of the Roman Empire, Christianity spread throughout much of the region, including Bosnia.

With the decline of the Roman Empire, another power emerged from the east—the Byzantine Empire— centered in Constantinople. This empire, which was dominant for close to one thousand years, also spread its religious belief system, Orthodox Christianity, which was in competition with the Catholic faith of Rome.

The Byzantine Empire started to falter, and there were competing powers, including Serbians, Croats, Hungarians and Venetians, all of whom, at different times, had influence in, or over, Bosnia. For brief times between these influences, Bosnia had varying levels of independence.

The periods of independence and domination by local powers ended in 1463, when the next great empire, the Ottoman Empire, expanded westward into Europe, defeated the Serbs and made Bosnia a Turkish province. With this conquest came yet another religious influence—the Muslim faith.

Ultimately the power of the Ottoman Empire declined, particularly in Europe, and in 1878 Bosnia-Herzegovina came under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This change again allowed greater European influence, as well as Christianity, to become more dominant. The resentment felt toward this domination came to a head with the assassination, in Sarajevo, of the heir to the throne of the empire. The entire continent was thrown into conflict, which became World War I. At the conclusion of the war and the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was another realignment of power.

A panoramic view of Sarajevo illustrating the vulnerability of the city to attack from the surrounding hills
.

The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created and Bosnia-Herzegovina became part of that monarchy. This country, whose name was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, remained independent until it was invaded and conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II.

At the conclusion of this war, and the defeat of Nazi Germany, all of Europe was reformed. During the reformation, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia came under the control of the leader of the resistance movement, Joseph Tito. Tito, whose father was Croatian and his mother Slovenian, brought together six republics, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro, and two provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, to form the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Under his iron rule, he was able to keep ethnic differences
and national sentiments in check and created a pan-Slavic country.

The conclusion of World War II was also the beginning of a further conflict, which was called the Cold War. This pitted the forces of Western Europe and capitalism and democracy, unofficially led by the United States, against Eastern Europe and communism, led by the Soviet Union. These two armed forces became NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While the two forces never engaged in armed conflict, they engaged in an ideological war around the world. Although Yugoslavia was communist, Tito maintained independence from Soviet domination. He was able to maintain this country, while also limiting the outside influences of both Western Europe (democracy and capitalism) and Eastern Europe (communism). With his death in 1981, the country began to unravel.

The ethnic interests and national sentiments continued to rise within the different republics. With the end of the Cold War between the East and West, the desire for independence by the different republics, which had been escalating for the previous decade, came to a boil.

In 1991 two of the republics, Slovenia and Croatia, voted to leave Yugoslavia. There was opposition to the attempts of these two regions to leave the Federation. Slovenia was 90 percent Slovenian with the remaining 10 percent representing many other groups, including a small minority of Serbians, and the separation was accomplished with a minimum of violence.

This was not the case with Croatia, where there was more ethnic diversity, including 12 percent of the population being Serbian—the dominant ethnic group within the Federation. Croatia became involved in a substantial war, with the minority of Serbs within the Croatian Republic being supported by the armed forces of Yugoslavia, who were primarily Serbian. There was a war lasting over four years with minority Serbians either fleeing or being evicted by force from Croatia, and the Serbian army exercising its force and power in the ongoing war, trying to bring Croatia back into the Federation and drive Croats from territory they believed belonged to a greater Serbia.

In January, 1992, the Republic of Macedonia became the third republic to declare its independence from the Federation.

In April, 1992, a vote was held in Bosnia-Herzegovina to determine if they should become the fourth
republic to leave the Federation. The members of the country who were Serbian boycotted the election, refusing to vote. Those who did participate in the referendum overwhelmingly voted to leave, and independence was declared.

Of all the republics of the Yugoslavian Federation, Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most ethnically and religiously diverse. While there are different accounts of the breakdown of the population, there was no group that formed a clear majority. Of the close to four million people in the newly declared country, 48 percent were Bosniaks, 37 percent Serbs and 14 percent Croats. These groups, for the most part, belonged to different religious groups, with the Serbs being Orthodox, the Croats Catholic and the Bosniaks mainly Muslim. To further complicate the situation, these groups, which had previously lived in relative peace, were not limited to different geographic areas of the republic but were living side by side throughout the country.