Zlata's Diary (2 page)

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First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd. 1994
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994
Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1995

This edition with a new preface published in Penguin Books 2006

 

10

 

Preface copyright © Zlata Filipović, 2006

Translation copyright © Fixot et editions Robert Laffont, 1994 Introduction copyright © Janine di Giovanni, 1994

All rights reserved

 

Originally published in France as
Le Journal de Zlata
by Fixot et editions Robert
Laffont
.

Copyright © Fixot et editions Robert Laffont, 1993.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-00697-9

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Dublin, June 2005

First of all, let me thank you for picking up this book. In some ways it seems like a long time ago that it was written, being a record of a conflict that many people have forgotten about and that has been replaced in our collective memory by numerous other conflicts. I still find it baffling that this diary—these scribblings of mine that I originally started writing for myself—even became a book, let alone that people are still reading it today.

I also want to thank all those who wrote to me, the large number of young people and adults who read my diary and were somehow touched by the story, who reacted to it and wrote me many e-mails and letters. I tried to answer as many as I could, but I did not manage to respond to all of them, and I dedicate this new preface to you all.

When the war began in my native Sarajevo, I always said that my life was cut into two—the period before the war and the period since the war began which I, like so many people from my country, still feel has not ended. The year 2005 marks the tenth anniversary since the war ended in Bosnia, and somehow we all still commemorate these anniversaries , remember these dates—the day the war began, the day we had our first real day of shooting, the day my mom barely escaped death, the day various friends and family members were killed, the day we got our first aid package, the day my parents and I left Bosnia, the day the peace treaty was signed. All these dates are so ingrained in me that each time such a day comes in the year, the first thought of that day is dedicated to the significance of it. Maybe that is just the destiny of a diary writer, someone obsessed by dates, but maybe it is also because the war and everything surrounding it is the biggest thing I have ever experienced, and will always remain one of the most important experiences of my life.

It is strange looking back it on it all now, with the perspective of time, with me that much older. I have not changed much. I feel happy that I am no longer sporting the haircut that still graces the cover of this book (let's face it, no one likes seeing a picture of themselves when they were twelve or thirteen—let alone on the cover of a book!). The story continues after my departure from Sarajevo and includes several cities and many new experiences. I went to high school in Paris until my family and I moved to Dublin, Ireland, in October 1995 (this year is another anniversary—my ten-year anniversary of living in Dublin). I went to school there, picked up the pieces of my childhood which turned into quite fun teenage years, and ended up going to college in Oxford, England, when I was seventeen. Getting back to school and being a schoolgirl again, something I wanted so badly in the middle of the war, happened without much difficulty—in fact, most young people who left the war and had had their educations interrupted ended up compensating really quickly and well—maybe we were all very hungry for learning. Three glorious years went by in Oxford, whereupon I came back to Dublin, earned a postgraduate degree in International Peace Studies (unsurprisingly!) and I am slowly starting my grown-up career.

I often wonder why it was
my
diary that was published, when there must have been thousands of others written in Sarajevo, diaries that were probably more fluent and packed with events more grave and devastating than those that my family and I, in our luck, escaped. Somehow, it ended up being mine, so when I managed to leave Sarajevo after two years of war, I felt a responsibility to talk, to tell the story, the truth, to let the people know. Somewhat accidentally, at the age of thirteen, I became a spokesperson for what was going on in my country. I believed that those who would hear me would do something to stop it. So many children stayed behind, continued suffering, and they did not have a chance to escape and speak out. Cold and hungry, they were being killed every day and a great injustice was happening—the total toll of dead in the Bosnian war is thought to be 250,000. My own friends and many members of my family stayed behind, and even though it was rather strange to be a spokesperson at the age of thirteen, I did it because I thought of them and all the people who were not lucky enough to have a chance to leave the war.

So I spoke. I spoke on radio and television. I spoke to newspapers. I spoke in schools, universities, at conferences and dinners, to politicians and “ordinary” people. I continued speaking even when my parents and I moved to Ireland, even when the war in Bosnia officially ended in 1995, because I felt it was important for people to hear about what it is like to be living in war, without freedom, without a normal life, with constant fear. People have often asked me whether I find it painful to recount my own experiences over and over again—wouldn't I like to leave it all behind and make a life that did not include the war? For me, speaking about the war, raising awareness about conflict and in particular, children and ordinary people caught in the conflict, is almost a physical part of me, one I wear every day like my own brown hair.

At the start of this preface, I mentioned all the people who wrote to me, and who are still writing today, telling me their thoughts on my diary, on the war in Bosnia, on war in general. These moving missives came and still come from people ranging from the age of ten all the way up to grandmothers and grandfathers across the world. I have been so overwhelmed and so touched by all of them. Their writings have been filled with questions: Where am I now? What happened to my friends, neighbors, parents? Do I still keep a diary? Do I have a new pet? Do I have a boyfriend? Do I still like Madonna and Michael Jackson? Have I ever gone back to Bosnia?

Well, here are some answers. After we left, the war went on for two more years, which I did not record, but maybe another girl who stayed behind did. Everyone mentioned in the diary remained in Bosnia, although eventually my uncle Braco, my cousin Melika and my best friend Mirna managed to leave Bosnia and all three of them came to live with us in Paris. When the war finished, my parents, Mirna, and I went back to Sarajevo as soon as our school year was over, in the summer of 1996. That was when Mirna returned to live in Bosnia with her parents (and she has just graduated as an architect there), but my parents and I came back to Dublin. Since then, I have returned to Bosnia every year, every summer, like thousands of other people who left during the war and became citizens of new countries. I still keep a very close relationship with the city and this is something very important for me.

My grandfather unfortunately passed away just two weeks before the peace agreement was signed. My grandparents did not have any gas or electricity, he was cold, got pneumonia, and passed away without ever knowing the war had ended, which makes it twice as sad. My grandmother is still in Sarajevo, and I look forward to seeing her every summer. As for my taste in music, this has changed somewhat, although shouting the lyrics of Madonna songs from 1991 still makes me very happy. Since Cicko (my canary) and Cici (my cat), I have not had any more pets, but I hope I will one day. And yes, I have a boyfriend, a most wonderful guy called Tobias, with whom I have grown and learned a lot.

When my diary came out as a book, I felt a little strange going back to keeping a diary again. There was also so much that I was experiencing, starting a new life away from Bosnia, away from war, so I stopped keeping a diary for some time. A year or so later, I had a bad day, I felt sad about something, and as soon as I was bothered, sad, or worried, I knew where to turn to first—the diary. And it is still here today, as a confidante, a way of getting things out of my heart and my head, a way of getting some perspective on problems and ideas. Everything feels so much different and easier when it is externalized on a blank page that does not judge or say anything back. I think it was really important for me to have written during the war, because in the madness that was around me, in the uncontrollable fear and uncertainty, the only space I had that I could truly control was writing in my diary. I realize today that it helped me keep sane, as well as remaining a record of a very strange time in my life, and in the history of my city and country.

There was also a strong will to live that drove me to write. I can see that will now, not only in the fact I was writing, but in how my family and our neighbors endured while living in the midst of death, keeping birthdays and marking holidays, exchanging presents and sharing jokes, adopting pets and making new friendships—even in the middle of the war, in a time of absolute uncertainty. I realize that our little unit of “the neighbourhood” was very special, since not everyone was so lucky to be able to find the will to re-create life even when there was so little— almost nothing—to create it with. Sometimes the feeling of that will to live is so strong that memory plays tricks on me—I sometimes forget the shells, the death, the cold and the hunger, and remember that strength and the huge warmth of humanity that I experienced. When I leaf through the pages of the diary, I remember everything else too, as it really was, hard and cold and dark. What is strange is that everyone who is in this diary, as well as many other people, have told me they use the diary to remember not only the time of war, but also to remember that humanity and strength and to remember Sarajevo and Bosnia the way they were before the war, which makes this diary not only mine, but something that belongs to many people who experienced this war: it also belongs to my city. Some friends even use it to remember a birthday of a friend—at least in my diary, the date is always accurate!

The diary itself has had a life of its own beyond me—first by being published and read by many people and even to becoming a ticket out of war-torn Bosnia for my parents and me. We left at a time when no one could leave Sarajevo, not even the people who were very sick or wounded, and the only way this happened for us is because the diary got out into the world, and it extended its arms and brought my family out with it, too. People who read it today sometimes see it as a book, and me as a character in that book, who is eternally in a war and eternally twelve, which is sometimes strange for me to deal with. I am not a character in a book that is frozen in time and space, that is immutable; I am a true living person. What I find most strange is that the diary has also had a life beyond the war it describes and that my story endures even after ten years of (relative) peace in Bosnia. The only way I can explain it is that it is no longer a story of a girl from Sarajevo, but a story of a child growing up in war, of a child without a childhood, and is therefore symbolic of so many others.

While I was in the war, I was experiencing one side of that reality, the much harder and more difficult side. Upon leaving for Paris, I started another chapter of my life, that of a refugee, migrant, someone who no longer lives in her country of birth where she thought she would spend her whole life. This challenge is not comparable to the hardship of war, but is a difficult process all its own consisting of learning new languages, finding new friends, starting from zero in every aspect of life. It is relatively easy for young people, but for people my parents' age and older, it is much more difficult. The question of belonging is complicated even when you go back to your country of birth—even though I have been living in Ireland, I will never be fully Irish, just as I am no longer fully Bosnian since I have been out of Bosnia for twelve years now. In two years, when I am twenty-six, I will be marking yet another anniversary—that of a split straight down the middle of my life, with half of it spent in Bosnia, and the other half outside of it. I have often wondered what I would have been like if there had been no war, or if I had never managed to leave Bosnia, never lived in Paris or Dublin or Oxford. Would I have survived? Would I have been the same person I am today? Would I like the same things I like today, or would everything be completely different? This is a question that so many people living in the world today as refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, exiles—whatever they might be called—are asking themselves. I know a lot of people end up living outside of the city or country of their birth, some people even move around a lot, but for those who escaped war or poverty, it is different—we never left in search of a better job or nicer climate—we left because we simply had to leave, and we were lucky that an opportunity presented itself for us to realize this. Starting again, adapting, learning about belonging and identity are other stages in the string of experiences of war, something we perhaps forget about for those people who were lucky enough to have survived and escaped.