Crying On One Eye

"We are alive, everything else is a luxury" - this was, not so long ago, the headline of one of the most striking war-time testimonies written by "Borba's" correspondent, Zeljko Vukovic. Soon after this text was published, Vukovic and his colleague from "Borba's" Sarajevo branch, Natka Buturovic, were accused by the several (remaining) Bosnian media, on behalf of the Bosnian authorities, of "espionage for the Counter Intelligence Service and the Yugoslav People's Army" which, at the time sounded like a call for a lynch and execution, especially since it was known that before this, the other two sides, the Serbian and the Croatian, also condemned them (albeit unofficially) in a similar way. Afterwards their reports could no longer be seen in "Borba". From then onwards the names of these two reporters could be found only in appeals and requests by numerous international institutions, forums and media to save the lives of "Borba's" correspondents and to make it possible for them to leave Sarajevo safely. There was no news from Sarajevo about Zeljko and Natka for two full months. At the beginning of last week, they unexpectedly appeared in Belgrade which made very happy all those who started, with reason, to suspect the worse. After having spent seven months in the hell of the war in Sarajevo as reporters and unwanted witnesses who were not to the liking of any of the warring sides, when first seeing their friends, Zeljko and Natka could just repeat what they persistently kept saying in their texts from Sarajevo: "We are alive, everything else is a luxury". They left Sarajevo illegally and unlike most refugees who kept arriving from this city in war convoys, "Borba's" journalists left without the permission of the Bosnian authorities. How they managed to get to Belgrade will remain a secret, at least until the war is going on. "We do not want to talk about it. Not because we would thus perhaps harm the people who helped us get out, but because we would then most probably deprive others of trying something similar tomorrow. Everything I can say is that we did not use the "good offices" of any of the warring sides", said Zeljko Vukovic whose one time brown hair became pretty much "sprinkled" with grey hairs over the past few months. "Until the beginning of September", Vukovic went on, "we managed somehow to send our texts, often with the help of radio-amateurs which was strictly forbidden. Then it was first the Bosnian radio, and the following day also the television and the newspaper "Oslobodjenje" that published the information that we were working for the Counter Intelligence Service. Before that, I didn't take very seriously the various dangers I kept coming across day after day. I explained everything by saying - it's war, all kinds of things are happening. When this kind of information - an indictment - was published, it was obvious that we could no longer send reports from Sarajevo and that our position became totally pointless and risky. It was clear to me that we could not live illegally for a long time. I was not afraid of those who came up with such an indictment, but rather of those who would read it and who could take to weapons. If someone wanted to kill me, he could have done so very easily and no hiding would have helped. Despite this, I tried to change often the place where I slept, just in case". After the initial shock, Vukovic, according to his story, decided to determine where the accusation that he worked for the Counter Intelligence Service came from. The man who signed such an explanation on behalf of the Interior Ministry claimed that he had nothing to do with it. Among the first to react was Vukovic's friend Zdravko Grebo, at the time the head of the information sector of the Supreme command of Bosnia-Herzegovina's armed forces. Grebo requested that either evidence about Vukovic's and Buturovic's "espionage activities" be made public, or if such evidence doesn't exist to take the burden of such a serious accusation, because of which one can lose his head at war-time, off the back of the two journalists. Then there appeared a text against Vukovic who was allegedly ready to escape to Belgrade with three already prepared series of articles and fabricated stories about how "he was slaughtered by Alija's Mujahedins and the Ustashi". After this text, "Borba's" correspondent turned to Miodrag Simovic, the vice-premier of Bosnia-Herzegovina in charge of monitoring the work of the Interior Ministry, with the request to provide him with some kind of protection. Four days later came an answer saying that the Government (which, by the way, didn't exist) would soon discuss "Borba's" status in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Meanwhile, Vukovic also had contacts with people from Ejup Ganic's and Alija Izetbegovic's cabinets and asked them to let him either work under the same conditions as "Oslobodjenje's" journalists or to issue him a permit to leave. There was no answer. At the time, the information about the protests by many international institutions because of the threats to "Borba's" correspondents, somehow reached Sarajevo. "I am sure that this international pressure and the requests of numerous reputable institutions, world newspapers and our colleagues eventually perhaps saved our lives. Even at war-time such appeals meet with some kind of response. It was nice to know that we haven't been forgotten, although there are existed the realistic danger of our decision to stay in Sarajevo "to the end" and report on what was happening there, being presented as some kind of heroism, which we didn't want, said Zeljko Vukovic. "At the time we were also taken care of by people from UNPROFOR's civilian sector whom we often informed about our whereabouts". The Sarajevo he left a few days ago, Vukovic told us, is still dying even though the bombing and destruction from the surrounding hills have stopped. If it weren't for humanitarian aid, people would literally be dying of hunger. Winter has come, all the parks, tree avenues and fences have been sawed and turned into fire- wood, electricity supplies are irregular, fires are being lit on the balconies of apartment buildings, pots have become hearths. Many live on tea and rice for days. Beans and macaroni are increasingly difficult to come by and one needs a whole fortune for a few potatoes. Everything is paid in Deutsche marks which have mostly accumulated in the hands of war profiteers. There are also much fewer of those who buy, for a mere trifle, old and valuable objects from desperate people, most often offering food in return. Packages with humanitarian aid are also bought and sold at the black market. It is soldiers who most easily come by these packages although they are not intended for them. Some of them sell packages with food for hard currency at marketplaces and in such a way that their partners, only a few minutes later, take away the packages from the buyers by weapons, with the explanation that this is illegal sales. Thus the same package is sold five or six times. Vukovic survived the first months of the war thanks to a package delivered to him at the last moment by his colleagues from Radio Belgrade's Second Program working on the program called "No one like me". At the time there was enough food in the 70-kilogram package even for his neighbors. "It is this neighborhood, which help many to survive through all these months, that has definitely broken today", said Vukovic. "The mental strength of these people has been destroyed, and the main goal has been achieved - the people of Sarajevo are definitely at their wits' end. There is no longer a whole family in Sarajevo. There is always someone missing, be it that someone has been killed, or has left forever. Most of the people of Sarajevo left already in April when the shooting started. The number of those who realized that there can no longer be any civil Bosnia kept growing by the day, so that even the most persistent ones started leaving. Only those who had nowhere to go stayed. Most often the entire family left, leaving behind one of its members, usually the oldest one, to take care of the apartment and what was left in it. It has now become clear even to them that there simply will be no military resolution and that a political one will not be found until the masters of life and death are the same people. Those who have stayed are afraid of the winter and they have realized that now most important of all is to survive somehow. Nerves are shattered, humaneness is disappearing, there are no more considerations, there is less and less reason. Everyone is afraid of everyone regardless of nationality. It is quite possible that a person will turn in his next-door neighbor with whom he shared his last piece of food until yesterday, to get hold of his stove. No one is trusted anymore. People least of all believe in salvation from the outside. The people of Sarajevo have realized that everyone is waging a war against them. There are no liberators for them. Various "liberators" have plundered, taken other people's apartments, occupied political posts and are waiting for the end of the war. For the war lords, Sarajevo is important only as a dead city. The main argument of all the participants in this war is as large a number of dead of their own side as possible and the logic - the one who has more dead, will have more arguments tomorrow to ask for weapons, rights and territories. And everyone is striving the achieve this. They would all like to create their territory and state over dead Sarajevo. The starting point in this war was that the destruction of Sarajevo destroys every possibility of living together in Bosnia. There was both strength and power for the destruction to be completed quickly. But, it is more effective when this is done little by little, for days and months, because that is the way to achieve the ultimate goal - the maddening of Sarajevo. The city is today definitely maddened. Those who did all that, continues Zeljko Vukovic, removed their families and friends from Sarajevo in time and sent them to Istanbul, Belgrade and Zagreb, accommodated them in good hotels or previously bought houses and apartments, and found them jobs in various newly-opened information pools and centers throughout the world or made it possible for them to be war profiteers, to trade with weapons, oil and who knows what else. At the end of September around 1180 inhabitants of Sarajevo had diplomatic passports, including various aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers who never had anything to do with diplomacy. Whenever hearing that a certain person who is important for the "national cause" was made the director of some kind of information center somewhere in the world, the desperate people of Sarajevo who still consider themselves to be "successful failures", usually collect enough strength to bitterly joke and say - "good, that's where we need him most". In the Sarajevo experiment with people - and there have been few such cruel experiments in the history of civilization, stresses Vukovic - nothing is left to chance. Every opportunity to show the people that they can no longer live together is skillfully taken advantage of. The convoy with old and sick people (around 6000) who were getting ready to leave for Belgrade was also used for this purpose a few days ago. The convoy was several days late in departing because, first of all, there allegedly weren't enough buses, then drivers and finally guarantees for a safe journey. The potential passengers were exhausted by the uncertainty, mistreated and left for several days without even a cup of tea. About a dozen of "organizers" of this journey often used even physical force. Finally it all looked more like a deportation than a refugee convoy with sick people who were in no way responsible for what has been happening in Sarajevo over the past months. For those who barely managed to get a seat in the buses of salvation and for thousands of people who saw them off, the message was more than clear - there can be no living together anymore. "There is no longer anyone to defend Sarajevo from such outbursts of inhumanity", said Zeljko Vukovic. "I saw with my own eyes that many Muslims were also abhorred by the mistreatment of the people in the convoy. At the same time, on the first day, the Sarajevo media reported that the convoy had left for Belgrade, then on the second, they corrected themselves and said that there was some kind of standstill, while on the third and forth day, they didn't even mention the people who spent night after night sleeping on the floors of the railway station. Along with all the misfortunes that have befallen it, the city has also practically been left without its intellectual nucleus. Only here and there one can find people who, in that war madness, have managed to retain their backbone and preserve their intellectual honesty. However, those who are able to cry only on one eye prevail". Over the next few weeks our collocutor will try to tell the story about his seven-month long experience as a war correspondent and one of the important witnesses and chroniclers of the dying of Sarajevo, in a book in which even some foreign publishers have expressed interest. Like most refugees, Zeljko Vukovic has started off his new life with only one bag. From his apartment on Kosevo hill which was destroyed by a grenade, he managed to pick up, in a hurry, mostly papers and notes about the war, a Barbie doll and an album with pictures of his nine-year old daughter whom he hasn't seen since May 1st. Used to the fact that everything except life is a luxury, he will try to save something from the next few salaries he gets from "Borba" in order to buy a train ticket for Copenhagen where his wife and daughter are currently living in a refugee camp.

Nenad. Lj. Stefanovic

People

Many people who were once the soul of Sarajevo, left the city over the past few months. Various, often monstrous news, kept coming from "reliable sources" about those who had stayed. Thus, one could read that famous Sarajevo author and screenwriter Abdulah Sidran had taken to arms and that he has blood on his hands. "Abdulah Sidran is not his old self, but he did not take to weapons", said our collocutor. He regularly writes for "Oslobodjenje" and he recently became a professor at the newly opened department of dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. Similar information could also be heard about the one time famous Yugoslav basketball player Mirza Delibasic. "Mirza, said Zeljko Vukovic, has been, for a long time, in Moscow where he left with the help of the Children's Embassy". One could occasionally read in the Belgrade press many bad things about the one time soloist of the band "Indeksi", Davorin Popovic, who, allegedly, became one of the leading "Ustashi" in Sarajevo. "I met him several times and I haven't noticed that Davorin has changed", said Vukovic. Probably the greatest amount of lies has been written about actor Josip Pejakovic who was said to have, as soon as the war started, "done away with his Yugoslav-oriented ideas and personally tortured Serbs in camps even using dogs for this purpose". "That is a total lie", said Vukovic. "It is only true that Josip formed his own military units for protecting the cultural monuments of Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.