Fikreta
from Tuzla

I came to Pijuk…to get food…Rasim Limi and Merima Sandžić… they went to Džemat, I walked alone through Kućište, barefoot, on my toes looking over my shoulder, making sure that no leaf could be heard. I was so careful that my heart beat a hundred times faster because I was afraid, of walking alone through the forest. 

When I got near my house, I went out onto the road. On the other side I found my father and we hid there in his hut. He asked me where my mother was, I said she had stayed in Cerska. My mother and I had gone there together and only met again later. We were separated in Susica, and for three years no one knew anything about anyone. Fear and terror. Later my mother received the news that I had been killed, someone came and said that they had slaughtered me.

In Cerska we had nothing to eat. I had come home to pack something and the others had gone to Džemat—we all wanted to return the next day to bring food. Father said that no one would come, everyone was hiding in the forest.

Then we went to our house, he said we would prepare food, slaughter a sheep. We will load it on the horse and go to Pijuk to get more food, flour, etc. He started to prepare everything with his uncle. They slaughtered a sheep, packed it up, that’s when the shooting started. When I looked up at the hills, there was an army. There was nowhere else to go. We were surrounded…and then they caught us all. I was captured too. They told me to go and call everyone, father, uncle, I should call them by name. They captured aunts, people, children, women from our neighbourhood… they told me to come down, and I went to my house, the house was on fire, it was on fire. I called my father… There was a brook and a hornbeam, I saw him running down and I ran after him…yes.

And from below he was fired upon, cutting him in half, so that only one leg was still attached to the hornbeam…when I saw that, I screamed and called him ‘father’…I fell, I fell on him. At that moment I didn’t know what had happened, nothing…I just felt someone pulling my hair. And I see a man as if through a fog, I can’t see his face. I don’t see his face, he was all masked, I only see his eyes, the gun is in his hands, they’re in his hands. They are in gloves; his fingers are naked, black gloves. He tells me to leave, he shouts, he curses ‘you Balija (a slang name used as an insult for Muslims from Bosnia), motherfuckers’, he shouts, ‘We’re going to kill you all!’ 

I was so lost, at that moment I didn’t know what was happening, I…when I saw my father, I fell, I lost consciousness. They shouted at me: ‘Do you now know where Hasib Kolarevic where he hid the gun?’ I said I didn’t know. They shouted, ‘You’re going with us to Hasib’s house!’ and we entered the barn…he told me to climb into the attic, he followed me and held the gun. Downstairs there was a calf in the barn and he shouted at me: ‘You see this calf, I’m going to slaughter you here like this calf, if you do not tell us where Hasib Kolarevic hides his rifle!’ ‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. And when we went outside, one of our men tried to sneak into the forest to escape. He spotted him and fired a shot.

Far above, I see again the aunts who were captured all sitting on the hill…I came to this hill, the rifles were lined up, the Serbs were sitting down to rest, and I, still a child at the time…I looked at those rifles and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to take this rifle…and I will kill them all.’ …I didn’t care what was going to happen to me, it was was so hard for me when I saw my father, I was so tired of everything.

I wanted to take a rifle, grab a rifle. Mother said later that if I would have done it I wouldn’t have survived either. But it was as if me, ‘don’t do it’… We went to Ivan’s house, I was barefoot, I had nothing to wear, I was scared. I saw Mile Rebic, my neighbour, with a gun. He was standing there and asked me, ‘Where are you going?’ I said I was going to Ivan’s house. ‘Go in there, to Ramo’s house, find something to wear.’ When I got there someone had locked a dog in the closet, I got scared like a little kid. I opened the wardrobe, the dog whimpered, I was scared. I’m dying, I thought, I was shaking all over. I came out and went to Ivan’s house, women, children, screams, everything, everything was burnt, it seemed to me that there was not even a cat left, they captured and killed everything, even dogs in front of the houses, just everything.

We were sitting in Ivan’s house. Children were screaming, crying, some people came, Zoran from Piskavica, Vojin, came and took my aunt to test a sniper, he told her to go fifteen metres forward… Her children were small, they started crying. Someone told him to let her go and ‘Don’t shoot her, you see that the children are crying, we can cope with them in another way.’ When the aunt returns, she says, facing him, ‘We were neighbours until yesterday and today you kill us.’

Then they took us to Sušica, there were so many people there, you couldn’t throw matches, it was so crowded. Then Dragan Nikolic came, he said to me, ‘Why are you crying?’ I told him, ‘You killed my father.’ He told me: ‘We will kill you all.’ I cried, I sobbed as he hit me on the back with the butt of his rifle. And I kept silent. What was I supposed to do? The one I saw most often was Dragan Nikolic. He was everything in there, he gave orders, he told who should do what and where. One time Dragan Nikolic came in and shouted at me, Zikret and Meho Sinanovic to go to Sušica to rob Muslim houses. He said, ‘Gold, money...whatever you find, You bring it here.’ And we went from house to house, everything was turned upside down. We searched and couldn’t find anything. I said even if I wouldn’t take it with me, I’m not going to take anything with me, I’ll just walk around. I said to Zikret, ‘What do you think, let’s escape from here.’ ‘We have nowhere to flee to. We are surrounded.’ Yes, that was all. ‘Let’s go back,’ he said, ‘whatever God wills, it will be.’

And we came back with nothing. ‘Did you find anything?’ ‘Nothing.’ They examined us: ‘Raise your hands, unbutton this, unbutton that,’ he searched down to our underwear to see if we had hidden any money, anything hidden in our trousers. ‘Open your mouth,’ they were looking there for gold.

Yes...we watched them kill and I saw Galib Muslic when they killed him and others.

He was beaten. I said the man had a healthy heart that he could take so many blows, and in the end he ended up on the Pelemiš, to be torn apart by horses. One leg was tied by a horse with a rope and the other by another horse, he was torn apart by horses, alive.

We spent twenty-two days there, watching all kinds of murders, kidnappings, rapes and killings, we had nothing to eat, we lay on the concrete…

I will never get the image out of my head of Chetniks taking me from the camp to that house. And when we got there, I went inside, I went up the stairs. The Chetnik said: ‘Go in there.’ He told me to undress. I was standing there with tears running down my face. I had no more words, I was not allowed to say anything. I was shaking. He tore everything from me, he raped me, he told me… He told me: ‘Listen to me, the other man is coming too.’ I passed out. I don’t remember what happened. The other man came in and he told me to do it to him. It’s hard for me to tell this story. 

He ordered me to do it, I had to do it. It was a matter of…death or life, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was in…in their hands. 

When I was brought back, I was lost. I entered the camp, I saw no one, it went dark before my eyes. I fainted again, I felt sick, nauseous, I can’t explain it to you, my body was shaking. My whole body was shaking. I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling, my hands were trembling with fear. I came there, I couldn’t tell my mother (at that time also in Sušica) couldn’t say anything immediately. She saw that I was not well, she saw that I was going mad. I sat down next to her, I asked her for her Turkish salvar (traditional loose trousers) and told her what happened. 

I told her not to talk about it because they told me, that I shouldn’t tell anyone and if anyone asks me what happened I should say that I was brought in to make coffee… Yes. When I was asked where I had gone, I was to say that I had gone to make coffee for their army. 

And then they took me out the second time…

Again, I couldn’t tell my mother straight away what had happened. She saw that I’d lost my way, that I’d lost my train of thought. She asked what was wrong and I whispered to her to be quiet, not to talk, and that they had raped me. 

And she started crying and I told her to shut up, not to cry, someone would notice. Someone would come in, and she would have to tell them what she was crying about, and then what would they do — worse. I still have nightmares, mostly I dream of running through the woods, that’s my eternal dream: to run, to hear the sounds, the cries of women, of children...the screams of the women, the children…that’s what I remember most, and running in the woods. And everything else…when I sleep at night, it’s as if I’m falling from the sky…from above. And they chase me, they run after me, I run, I run, I can’t get away, and I start screaming in my sleep. That stays with you for the rest of your life. You can’t erase that…the things of Pijuk will never leave my mind. It is engraved, I was then fifteen years old. 

I saw what I saw. That was it, scare and horror.’