PEOPLE EAGER TO GO HOME

AIM ON THE SPOT: JUSICI

AIM Tuzla, October 9, 1996

When I saw for the first time on television women of Jusici, in fact, an old woman crying on the ruins of her former home, I felt an urge to give her some of my mother's dishes. She was saying: "Let me be on my own, even if I had nothing, not even a single spoon". I grew up with the story of my parents, proletarians, who started making their home after the previous war also from a spoon.

A few days later, by pure chance, without having followed all the details of their moving in, moving out, collecting and filling out forms (all I know is that at a gathering in Sarajevo Holiday Inn devoted to protection of human rights, I constantly had the vision of the crying old woman), I started on a trip to Jusici with my colleague, Vehid Jahic. It was a Sunday, there were no performances on the program of Theatre Festival Tuzla '96, (a theatre from Western Mostar had not arrived, although they had a reserved night for their performances just like the theatre from Banja Luka, which also failed to come), so guided by a journalistic instinct, with AIM press card, I started for the first time from Tuzla towards Kalesija. One of those ugly, cold, rainy days, seemed even gloomier while tractors loaded with wood passed towards or in front of us. All the drivers were in, very shabby combat uniforms - in these parts, the uniform (they say it was the same after the previous war) is still prestigious. Mostly, for the poor people, of course.

Kalesija resembles entrances or exits from Mostar and I cease to have a feeling for reality any more. Like many others, I live in two parallel worlds. The former and the present, whose film does not seem to have an end. Vehid is waiting for the hill called Vis to emerge on our right, from where Karadzic's men aimed with their guns at the entire district. I remember the story about passing at night by narrow village roundabout roads, by way of which the road still leads to Jusici. I have no time to remember the names of the places we are passing through. After almost an hour of dangerous driving down the narrow road, the driver avoids a crash with a local inhabitant who crosses on to our side of the road in a curve, and then stops the car and yells: "Where do you think you are going, may Tito screw you!" This curse became a favourite one as of spring 1992 in this space.

We arrive at Selimovici, in the vicinity of which was the demarcation line before Dayton. When they were forced to pass to the Serb entity, they cursed both the state and Alija... The "line" was moved so that they have remained in the Federation. Now, next to the last house, a not yet completed one-storey building without windows and doors, an improvised settlement under tents comes into sight.

Mud up to the knees everywhere, it is damp - water has penetrated into thin mats - sponge covered by linen. In front of the tents, black ugly stoves which burn wood - donation, God knows from where. Probably a "present" from someone who in mid winter distributed to pensioners in Sarajevo gas heaters designed for camping-trailers.

People from jusici do not think about it. About a hundred of them, mostly women, are waiting to hear the command

• March! They have spent three days outdoors, persistent, ready to meet all demands, just not to be forced to go farther away from their Jusici. Mostly they are women whose age is hard to tell. They share the same troubles. They are used to journalists, so do not pay much attention to us, and speak about themselves in a way which is hard to describe. There are no accusations in their voices, no hatred; they speak about the most terrible things as of something ordinary, everything begins and ends with a single sentence - "I am going back to my own, even if I have to die for it", or "If they want to take me away from Jusici, they will have to kill me for it!"

Among them is a man who has come to encourage them and one can immediately see that he is not from Jusici, he says he is their neighbour. I approach a man who tells me:

"My blood-brother Hasan Bijeli from Gorusa gave me this door" (Probably this is not the real name of the village, but I could not understand him, he did not have a single tooth.) "As soon as he heard that I was moving back into Jusici, he called me immediately, come Ramo I will give you a door, there it is, the women are sitting on it. I took it up to Jusici, seven days ago, they did not let me import it, now I am taking it back again. I think now I can import it, they have allowed because it is construction material".

* Will you have where to put the door?

"There will be. I will put it just like that, under the sky!"

Further away, sitting on a mat after return from Sicki Brod, a nice woman holds a granddaughter in her lap:

"She is my daughter's. My daughter is married, but the little one is with me. I have brought her up. Ever since she brought her, she will not leave me. She is also going to Jusici!"

* Where was she born?

"She was born in Tuzla, she is going for the first time, she's never been to Jusici before."

* But have you got the papers?

"I'm going, no matter whether I'll get the papers or not, who can forbid me to", Muska Islamovic says, pointing out her sons Semir and Selvir. "I don't even have a cooker, but they must give me a cooker, I don't know whether they'll give me a cow though".

The other women urge her to tell me how she attacked IFOR soldiers when they were banishing her from the village:

"He took me by the arm, like this, and started to turn me back. I tell him - don't you take me by no hand. You mustn't touch me! He pushed me, and then I had enough. I was carrying the stove on my head, threw it at him and cut him like this, all the way down", she tells me through laughter. "And the one from the transporter - I tore out his casette and all the wires!" She laughs again and explains that "they called us to come out, the passed once, twice, and then I told the women -let us stand in the middle of the road".

* Did you meet any of your former neighbours?

"There are Serbs, they caught me, detained me for a whole hour. I had gone there, had some gold of mine, to take it. I took a hoe to dig it up, when they yelled at me: Fuck your mother, what do you want! Fortunately, I struck only once with the hoe and they threw me out immediately! There were about thirty of them with rifles. A neighbour cursed my mother, but I replied immediately - Fuck your own mother!"

Women laughed again. A man approaches me, having seen that I am writing something down. He stood there talking without a wink. His name is Mehmed Ibrahimovic, he came from Hungary, but had spent the war in Belgrade where he had been working at the time. (A lot of people worked in Serbia before the war):

"I was born in 1934, my father's name was Hasim. I had a wife called Hata. I went to Belgrade, she stayed here in the house, she was sick, and remained here. My sons had fled up there, into the forest, and then crossed over, on the second or the third day, came here to this village, down the field, then to Vitinci... She was left alone, they killed them all, 38 men and two women... When I came the other day, you see over here, the first house, you see up there, I found her braid and a some of her hair. I must bury it when things get better".

Until the departure of this convoy of tractors and some sacks of flour, plastic cans of cheap jam, a box of biscuits here and there... a little over an hour is left. I decide to try to cross into Jusici. At the check-point, Russian soldiers. They speak nothing but Russian. AIM press card is of no use. While we are arguing, a soldier is gazing at us from the trasporter. I do not know why but he reminds me strongly of that soldier from the former JNA who in that March, at a Sarajevo suburb, from a trasporer explained an UNPROFOR soldier that if the citizens refused to step back he would start shooting!

I return a few kilometres to Selimovici. The line of people and vehicles is ready to start. I push my way through and listen to Nekir Islamovic, a very young, good-looking President of the local community of Jusici reading the list of those who can start on their way immediately (61 families), and another list of those who must wait another day or two:

"Please, those that I read from the first list, have all the necessary papers. Those from the second list cannot remain in Jusici tonight. Don't worry, within three days, all those who applied will be issued approvals to return. Please, make it possible that everything passes in order!"

I can see that they are all listening to him, they trust him after all. Fadil Banjanovic who is at the post of director of the office in charge of return of banished persons from Tuzla-Podrinje Canton is also here. They say that he enabled more people to return to their homes than all those working in over fifteen various offices, committees and departments. He speaks in simple words:

"Nekir will be the first to go, when you reach Jusici, don't make problems, don't provoke anyone. Be hospitable even when Serb police and IPTF come. The most important thing now is to return home!"

They start on their way, seen off by their hosts from Selimovici. I follow them with my eyes and do not know what exactly I feel. A person somehow becomes numb, insensible, running away into those two parallel world...

NADA SALOM