Srebrenica
There are no tourist maps of Srebrenica. It is not mentioned in most guidebooks, nor is it important enough a city or town to be shown on many maps of BiH. You won't even find the Centrotrans Srebrenica bus schedule in the information booklet distributed by the tourist information centre.
Perhaps that was why they couldn't understand why I wanted to go.
Darsha spoke of how their eyes had followed her as she'd walked down the main street - questioningly, accusingly. She was adamant that they hated foreigners because they remembered what the Dutch had done - or not done.
"Don't go," she muttered as she lit her cigarette on the campfire, "they hate us still. I don't think they want to be reminded of it." Her playful aquamarine eyes were strangely sombre.
Srecko, a Serb as happy as his name, pointed out that the Srebrenica massacre was reprisal for a Muslim attack on another Serb village. "It's not as simple as the international media have made it out to be. There's not much to see there."
Mirza, Sarajevan and goatied Bosniak, told me to go the Jajce instead. "Why make yourself depressed? Enjoy the beautiful Bosnia that tourists like. Come, I will tell you how to get to Jajce."
But Dan, clinical psychologist who had been there as part of psychosocial support group sessions for teenagers thought otherwise.
So I went just the same, rising at six to catch the tram to the bus station in time for the daily bus to Srebrenica. The man behind the counter peered down at me through his square rimmed glasses with a look of mild surprise as he issued me my ticket.
I boarded the bus, devoid of tourists. In it sat a number of babushkas, taking respite from the chilly morning wind beneath their faded kerchiefs. Two elderly men stared impassively out of the open windows. One leant a walking stick on the arm of his threadbare jacket. The other had arms that uncrossed only to finger his flat cap. I was leaving youthful, vibrant Sarajevo for the Republika Srpska.
It was a four hour ride meandering through the hills. The bus conductor, a friendly fellow with an impish smile came over periodically to make conversation - in Bosnian, but the journey soon lulled me to sleep. I awoke twice, once when he helped unravel me from the tangle of my sleep calisthenics, and again when he tapped me on the shoulder to announce that we had reached our destination.
"Sarajevo?", I asked as I stepped off the bus, my question drowned out by the engine being coaxed by to life.
"Sarajevo?", I repeated. He laughed and pointed at the sign by the door. 16.10. I had four hours. Now I had to find where to begin.
Srebrenica is essentially one street on the side of a hill, with the town hall and bus station at one end.
The tourist information office-cum-art gallery is at the other. In between are shopkeepers staring out of their provision shops as well as the occasional restaurant. Everybody watched as I made my way up the slope.
I started by asking for directions at the tourist office.
"You want to see the spas?" asked the lady at the desk.
"No, I'm looking for the memorial and the battery factory."
"Potocari? Go out and take a taxi."
"And the battery factory?"
"Sorry, what?"
"Battery factory?"
"Sorry, I don't understand. I speak little English, more German. I cannot help you. If you want to see the art gallery, it is upstairs."
As a Bosniak island deep in Serb territory, Srebrenica was viewed as a threat to Serb territorial integrity. Beginning in 1992, the Serb Army commenced manoeuvres to have area 'cleansed'. By July 1995, humanitarian aid supply convoys were no longer able to reach Srebrenica. Soon after, Serb forces infiltrated the UN Safe Area of Resolution 819. As the situation deteriorated further, more than 20,000 Bosniak refugees fled to Potocari, the base of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). They had been promised in 1993 by the Commander of UNPROFOR that they were under UN protection and would not be abandoned. Many never found safety.
The killing of more than 8000 Bosniak men and boys which followed was the largest mass murder in Europe after the Holocaust. Most of their names are etched in marble in the memorial-cemetery complex that now stands at that site.
At first glance, Potocari is a peaceful hamlet nestled among the hills. Even the memorial with its spacious aesthetic appears in harmony with the undulating expanse of the surroundings. But turn a corner and one is confronted with row upon row of overcrowded headstones all facing Mecca - the cemetery had been built for approximately 2000, but with the frequent discovery of mass graves, more than 8000 now lie buried here.
I reached Potocari just as the French ambassador and his family were about to arrive. The tiny museum on the compound had been unlocked in anticipation of their visit and I slipped in undetected by the curator. On the walls were photographs, close to life size, of the exhumation of mass graves, the torture implements used on Bosniak prisoners, and the little things they brought to their deaths - a prayer book, photos of family, the Koran, a decapitated doll.
I stepped out of the air-conditioned room and into the blistering heat. The ambassador's car was pulling up in the driveway and I crossed the road to a little stall that sold religious items for prayer and dedication. The fragile young woman did not understand my English, gesticulating in exasperation in the direction of her flowers wilting in the summer shade. She ran out of the stall, leaving me to worry that I had startled her excessively with my insistent questioning in a foreign language. A few minutes later, she returned with a well-groomed man who looked like he'd just arrived from the city. She muttered something in Bosnian and I caught the word Ingleski - English. She was asking him if he spoke English.
"Hello! What is it you're looking for?", he asked.
"Oh, you speak English!"
"I have to in my line of work. I work for the diplomatic service. Just drove the French ambassador and his family here from Sarajevo."
So he had just come from the city.
"I'm looking for the battery factory."
"It's right over there. You can't miss it. Just walk straight down this road and turn left."
"Is there some kind of procedure I must know about to enter?"
"No no, it's pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago. You'll be able to get in, no problem. Where are you from by the way? China? Korea? Japan?"
"Singapore. Thank you very much for your help."
As you pass the battery factory on the road from Potocari to Srebrenica, you will notice no visible indication of its former use. Returning the way I had come, I turned left as instructed and walked slowly towards the building with walls that had collapsed and their frames rusted. 20 metres from one of those walls, I felt something wet and slimy sliding along my calf. A dog had taken an alarming interest in my ankles and snarled menacingly with every step I tried to take whether towards or away from my intended destination. I deeply regretted not paying the 150 pounds for rabies shots at the John Radcliffe Hospital back in Oxford and continued to attempt to inch away from my canine adversary.
A shrill whistle resonated across the open field. The dog froze and began whimpering softly before slinking away in the direction of the sound. In the distance, a tall man in overalls was beckoning me towards him. I waved back. He waved some more.
Hesitantly, I picked my way across the field, keeping a lookout for the dog. It stayed by the man's side, never moving, tail firmly between its hindlimbs. As I neared him, the man turned around and started walking, then stopped and motioned for me to follow him. Wordlessly, I did, and the dog followed us both at a safe distance.
We climbed through a broken window into a small room.
"Srpski.", he said, almost serenely, pointing at the graffiti on the wall.
In July 1995, Serb soldiers had infiltrated the compound to rape and to kill while the Dutchbat watched. This must be what they did in their spare time.
We climbed back out of the room and went up a flight of stairs into another series of rooms.
"Holland.", he said, his voice again dispassionate.
These rooms would have been the soldiers' quarters of the Dutchbat, 600 soldiers whose supplies dwindled over the course of 1995 as the Serbs tightened the noose around Srebrenica, launching attacks from nearby hills, destroying supply convoys. Eventually, soldiers who left the area on leave were forbidden from returning. By July that year, only 400 remained.
Perhaps this is how the Dutchbat kept their morale up.
The VRS Drina Corps later took several Dutch soldiers hostage, threatening to kill them and to shell the entire compound packed with tens of thousands of panicked civilians unless NATO ceased air-strikes on Serb bases.
NATO complied.
My guide's face was as he traced a path from one Serb outpost to another on the map painted on the far wall.
Several hundred soldiers with severely depleted supplies of food, medicine and ammunition had been surrounded by thousands of Serb soldiers. Reinforcements from the UN and NATO were not forthcoming. The Dutch hadn't had much of a chance.
The dog began to whimper and paw at the ground. As if roused from a dream, he brought us down a different flight of stairs and into a meeting room. On those walls were colour photographs of the Tuzla column - the several thousand young men who chose to make a run for freedom in Tuzla, 55 kilometres away. Starvation, exhaustion and Serb forces ensured that the vast majority did not survive.
He gently pressed something into my hand. It was a booklet of facsimiles of official correspondence and contemporary press reports from between 1993 to 1995 published to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide.
I thanked him in my best Bosnian, and I saw the slightest hint of smile cross his lips before he turned away. It was time to leave the building.
He invited me to sit down outside his office and offered me a cigarette. I declined, and attempted to ask him several questions in English. He didn't speak Ingleski he replied, only German and Bosnian. He had worked in the memorial-cemetery complex for several years now, and he was a Bosniak.
"You're a Christian, aren't you?" he asked, staring at my cross. I nodded and waited for his reaction. There was none.
I paused and enquired about his family in broken Bosnian. He told me how his father had been shot with the old men and young boys right here by the battery factory, and how his brother had died in the Tuzla column, about how they took young men away in buses before killing them with the Dutch soldiers standing by, about the hills and the ambushes there. His sister had refused to stay and had moved to Holland. Only he and his mother remained in Srebrenica. He turned my attention towards a nearby sculpture, of the stylised figures of two women - one cradling a babe in her arms and looking sadly at her other child, the other with a finger pointing despairingly at the heavens. Engraved at its base in Bosnian: "The Mothers, Women & Children of Srebrenica"
I pointed in the direction of the cemetery, then the battery factory and with my very rudimentary German asked, "Warum? (Why?)" He shrugged and stared into the hills, before turning the tables on me.
"Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing in Bosnia?"
I told him, sketching words what words I could and miming the rest. He nodded as if he understood. He took the pen from my hand, wrote a series of numbers on the sheet of paper - his birthday - and passed me the pen, expectantly. I did the same. He picked up the sheet and smiled. "Your birthday is coming, you're young," he said pointing my numbers on the sheet. He was only 31.
At the mention of my birthday, I became fully aware, for the first time in several hours, of the present.
"Today, fighting between Serbs and Bosniaks?" I asked. "Samo mallo," he replied, "mallo mallo (little little).". I smiled and thanked him, and as I shook his hand I asked if he would let me take a photo of him. He agreed. I showed it to him. "Not bad," he joked, and on that note we parted.
It was just past 2.30 pm and I was still in Potocari. I ran to the main road. Still shaken and unable to afford another taxi back to Srebrenica town, I stuck my thumb out gingerly. Surely somebody would give me a ride.
Several minutes later, I broke just about every rule possible regarding solitary travel for women: I climbed into the back seat of a two-doored car with two beefy young man blasting music from their speakers. They spoke no English and the only word which seemed to link us was 'Srebrenica'.
The ride was uneventful and they dropped me off outside the bus station. There were still 80 minutes to my bus. In need of some quiet, I climbed the hill to sit in the garden of the Serb Orthodox Church overlooking the town.
I closed my eyes and tried to pray as images of the hours before this flashed before me. It was unreal, and so unfair. The hills around me, previously expanses of undulating beauty now seemed full of hidden secrets - mass graves, painful last moments, witnesses to the very human capacity for perversion. I fingered my cross questioningly.
But it wasn't about religion. Serbs and Croats fought each other - both believe in the same God. Allies fought among themselves - the Croats and Muslims battled each other, too. The lust for power knows no theistic conventions. I buried my face in my hands and prayed fervently.
I am not sure how much time had passed before I looked up again. From where I sat, I could see the mosque and the Catholic church. It is easy to forget that for centuries religious harmony was a way of life - even in Srebrenica.
I turned on my camera and panning the scene, observed the landscape through my viewfinder, as if placing the machine between myself and what I saw would somehow distance me from my physical setting. I fiddled with my zoom and peered sadly at my screen.
Then something caught my eye: on the hill behind the Catholic church, was a small Muslim cemetery. I pictured the hymns of the faithful comforting the living and the dead - there was a resilient beauty to how both faiths saw fit to place in such close proximity a sanctuary on earth and a resting place for all eternity.
I was ready to go.
*
Dan's thoughts on his visit to Srebrenica are here
