Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

The men were consequently simmering with anger and frustration.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

As were the children, their fathers away, perhaps dead in the fighting, with no word from one year to the next.

 

 

A strange metamorphosis began to take place. Both Bobby and I recognised that after working in the camp for over a month we had begun to assimilate the mindset of refugees.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

It is hard to put this precisely into words, but it informed subsequent decisions which otherwise we might have made differently.

 

What also happened is that the children began to focus their anger, resentment and sense of loss on me. When on one occasion I got separated for an hour while we were walking in a dense wood, by all accounts the children became unreasonably distraught. They were both relieved and angry when I reappeared. I had made the error of trying to take a shortcut through dense undergrowth after falling behind so I could relieve myself, only to find the woods much thicker than I was used to.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

As Bobby pointed out, sometimes things that seem on the surface to be random aren’t random at all. Our understanding of the unvoiced trauma was from this point deepened by our observations of their complex reactions to seemingly straightforward situations.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

At this point we had been out of touch with our Warchild friends for 6 weeks. When we finally managed to establish contact, we found that the person who we'd arranged to rendezvous with in Sarajevo had recently been trapped there during a period of intense shelling and could not face going back.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Warchild wanted to cancel our trip. We told them we were going anyway, with or without their support. They capitulated, and Nigel Osborne agreed to meet us at a flat he sometimes stayed at in the old part of Sarajevo by the covered market, owned by the sisters Misha and Yasna.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

We made our way to Zagreb, and thence to the headquarters of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) to request blue cards and a flight into Sarajevo on a Russian transport Plane. These blue cards were the equivalent of a passport, without which free movement in and out of Sarajevo was impossible.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

On arrival in Sarajevo we quickly learned to conceal these, as most of the population - over 400,000 strong - did not posses them. An average of 8 citizens were being killed by Serb snipers every day. Over 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995 in this way, over 2000 of them children.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

At the same time, on average a new NGO (Non-Government Organisation) was being set up in Sarajevo every single day. The UNHCR did not approve of these, and were rather begrudging in their support. Perhaps this explains why their representative did not point out that it is mandatory to wear a flak jacket when flying in and out of Sarajevo - a fact we did not discover until after we were in the air. Fortunately, no one had bothered to notice.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

To my surprise I found that the UNHCR were largely despised by the Sarajlije, which is the name the people of Sarajevo give themselves, and which transcends ethnic boundaries. (Misha and Yasna were Bosnian Serbs for instance, but Sarajelije first and foremost)

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

The reason for this negative perception was simple: while the local citizenry braved the snipers, UNHCR staff moved safely around in APC'S wearing flak jackets and helmets. But most importantly they had standing orders never to put their own lives at risk. Consequently they had strict instructions to ignore children dying of sniper bullets lying in the road.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

This may account for the warm greeting we got from Misha and Yasna when we turned up unannounced on their doorstep.

 

The previous night we had been in Zagreb, trying to change our UK traveller’s cheques into dollars or deutsche marks. We had learned too late that these were the only two currencies accepted in Sarajevo. We assumed that we would have no trouble exchanging currencies in such a cosmopolitan city. But every hotel and travel agent refused us. Finally, exhausted, we came to the venerable old Palace Hotel, perhaps the most expensive hotel in the city at that time, and by far the oldest.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

We felt like refugees in truth when we turned up there. At the reception desk, we explained our plight, and we were told that it was actually illegal to exchange currencies at that time. Anyone doing so was liable to arrest. But when we explained that we were booked on the morning flight to Sarajevo they took pity on us. "Come back later" they said. And we did so, to find that they had had a whip round among the staff so that we could exchange our useless cheques. "Good luck" they said.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

So after surmounting many obstacles we finally found ourselves disembarking at Sarajevo Airport.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

This was probably the most terrifying experience of my life. We were aware that the surrounding hills were full of Serb troops who regularly took pot shots, and here we were in the middle of an open runway with no cover in sight. It as at this moment that I realised that Bobby was between the hills and myself. I am 6 foot, she about 5 foot nothing. So I rather self consciously switched our positions and I don’t think she even noticed. "Gosh, those hills seem very close" she said, with a nervous laugh. Meanwhile I tried my best to suppress the urge to sprint for the barricade of sandbags surrounding the airport building.

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

We then had to get into the city proper, a good 5 miles away, down what was known as "Sniper Alley"

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But there was no public transport - the buses and trams had been burnt out long before.

 

"Sniper Alley" (Bosnian: Snajperska aleja) was the informal name primarily for Ulica Zmaja od Bosne (Dragon of Bosnia Street), the main boulevard in Sarajevo which during the Bosnian War was lined with snipers' posts, and became infamous as a dangerous place for civilians to traverse.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

The road connects the industrial part of the city (and further on, Sarajevo Airport) to the Old Town's cultural and historic sites. The boulevard itself has many high-rise buildings giving sniper shooters extensive fields of fire

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mountains surrounding the city were also used for sniper positions, providing a safe distance and giving an excellent view on the city and its traffic.