Casemate at Pale

I am a Yugoslav, father Montenegrin and mother Croatian, born in Sarajevo, and studied in Belgrade; I am not a member of any political party, I have friends and relatives in all six former republics of the former Yugoslavia. I am saying this for the last time and plea never to be asked about that again, since during my 25-day-long forced stay at the famous Pale this was the information in my curriculum vitae that needed to be explained most. Everybody there was puzzled by my surname (very common among Serbs). "You must have done something", they used to say bursting into the dressing room of the Youth Sport Center I was locked in day and night, wearing different uniforms, armed, hostile, and suspicious, asking questions about my ethnic background and national affiliation. The rest they either already knew or did not care to find out, and most of them reproached me for declaring myself as Yugoslav.

It all began on May 24 (...) when a familiar voice told me over the phone that from then on I was on his territory, flavoring his message by heavily cursing my Ustasha mother. It was my young colleague's voice. Another colleague of mine, a Montenegrin, married to a Muslim, got the same message. Obviously, ethnic mixing is out of fashion, and you can be found guilty by either side, especially if you fail to declare yourself in favor of one of the sides (...) Although I knew there had been cases of "taking away", arresting and interrogating people in different parts of town held by this or that militia, despite the warnings of my closest friends, I never thought it would happen to me (...) Why should I leave my apartment, the neighborhood I've been living in for the past twenty years, just because somebody who came from God knows where thinks he has the right to threaten me? I guess this is how (...) many others - known and unknown - thought, and now their families are sending messages to them through an SOS program on the radio and TV, not knowing where they are, whether they're OK, whether they're alive (...)

Most of the people from Sarajevo found themselves caught in their homes, in the hope that the leaders will come to an agreement and that the madness will stop. We even reproached those who fled the city in mid-April, although even then only food to be had at the city's green markets and in the shops were nettles, chicory and pasta. We became better friends than ever. Many of us met our neighbors for the first time this April (...) We sat and waited (...) They came in the end and took me in unknown direction, and even today I don't know why. They never told me, not even during the interrogations and 25 days of imprisonment at Pale. In the dressing room turned into solitary confinement for my benefit, wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a small wooden bench, I tried to find out the reason why. I used to start from my first interrogation and the eight pages long statement I made with the assistance of a very fair interrogator, which I signed and initialed.

He first asked me about my contacts with Stjepan Kljuic (the former leader of the Croatian Democratic Union in Bosnia), member of the Presidency of - they said - the "former" Bosnia-Herzegovina. He showed me a photograph of Mr. Kljuic and myself taken on the occasion of an opening, in 1991... Do I know this person, or that one... Why didn't I try to send the last wages we received in March to my colleagues who left Sarajevo before the shelling? Did I fire Serbs who declared themselves in favor of the "new" Bosnia? He asked me about the colleagues who were coming to work during the first days of the shelling; about those whose apartments were searched; do I know where this or that professor is...

After an hour of interrogation my interrogator also felt embarrassed. I could see he was trying to help me give the most convenient explanations which would harm me the least, although I still didn't know why I was there. What is my crime I and what has my work at the University got to do with war and politics? I also failed to figure that out the previous night, when I had a "preliminary talk" with a bunch of robust and angry guys after they took me from my apartment. Among them was my childhood friend who gave me the rough edge of his tongue for allegedly being friends with one Enver Dizdar, a journalist, and - he claimed - the son of a notorious Ustasha. Another one wanted to beat me right away, and later even kill me, because he didn't like the way I looked at him. I was saved by the leader of the group, a former student of mine, who warned them that one of my colleagues told them that they must not hurt me and that I am to be brought to Pale in one piece. Jesus!

I was told later that Radio and TV Bosnia-Herzegovina raised a big fuss over my disappearance and that my friends know where I am, which from now on makes them responsible for my safety. Another interrogator told me he would let me go right away, only it was safer to include me in an exchange scheduled for the next day.

I had already heard about the "exchange": one side picks up somebody whom they judge to be of value to the other side, and vice versa, and then they agree on how to swap them, like a sac of potatoes for a sack of onions. The crazy thing is that to one side you're a hero and a martyr, and to the other - a despised enemy. I had a feeling that something would go wrong with the exchange, and I was right. I was kept there for another 24 days. Apart from the accommodation I've already described, I was provided with one ever decreasing meal a day, which in the end consisted of a piece of bread with margarine and pate in traces; I could use the toilet with an armed escort, if the guards are in good mood and willing to unlock the bars that separated my part of the jail from the Muslim part, there was a mouse that would cross my cell from time to time, and, what was most difficult to bear, I had to go 25 days without a shower. And the maliciousness of the visitors, the militia men, the soldiers, the members of the task forces... who never failed to tell me that they were gladly putting me up for exchange, but the Muslims didn't want me...

I want to forget those days as soon as possible, and return to Sarajevo as soon as possible. Sarajevo is my town, my friends, my students, my colleagues of all nationalities are there. I never knew there were so many of them who care about me until they started calling me after I left the Pale casemate and told me how they intervened, begged and asked my jailers to let me go. I will go to Pale as soon as this becomes possible. I will try to find my guards who secretly gave me cigarettes and half their meal. I hope they survive this madness. Just like my Muslim fellow prisoners on the other side of the bars, who were beaten by one shift of the guards, and fed by another. And Sanja, a ten year old girl, who came to share her chocolate bar with me...