itself, which threatens to become an all-encompassing feeling. And so a new fear emerges, which is not cowardice, but a fear that one might lose one’s fear and become a hero. And then the fear appears anew. (F. Trtak 1996:29, my translation)
People developed various techniques for dealing with snipers and shells, but there was really not much to do about it in practice. Strength lay in the belief that you could survive.
For instance, people did not look at the sniper positions all of the time. Indeed, some people never looked, on the theory that if you looked at them they would shoot you. Others cast a confident glance toward snipers when passing the dangerous places to show that they were not afraid. Some thought that it was wise to go firmly but not too fast, in order not to provoke the snipers by showing fear. Others thought that it was better to speed up a bit, or even run if necessary, in order to show the snipers that they were aware of them, which would satisfy the snipers and keep them from shooting. All these strategies were equally futile in terms of avoiding getting shot; they helped people deal with being in a situation that was beyond their control.
A young woman described her reactions to the constant threat of snipers while moving about in the town:
Every day I used to pass one part where a sniper was shooting all the time. I don’t know if it was because of pride or some sort of obstinacy and stubbornness, but I didn’t want to run…. It often happened that I looked toward the hills like I could see whether he was going to shoot or not. [laughter] As if, to see first, and then I could hurry a bit, then stop, and so on…. Only when I heard shots all the time would I stop, and then again that instinct would start working, so—run as fast as your legs can carry you!
To run or not to run became a question of pride and humiliation. Like many Sarajevans, at some point in the war my host felt humiliated because he was being forced by some “primitive maniac” (that is, a sniper) to run in his own town. So he stopped running. He went firmly, with his head held high, straight over the most dangerous crossroads, feeling good because in this way he restored his dignity and showed the “primitives” that they could not break him. And so he continued for some time, until one day, in the middle of a dangerous crossroad, he came to think of his daughter in exile. Suddenly he was struck by the thought of what pain it would cause her if he got killed—and he ran as fast as he could!
To realize that one’s life or death was out of one’s hands could cause depression, and people had to ignore this fact in order to get on with their lives as best as they could. To lose control over one’s life to some unknown person’s whim was an utterly humiliating experience. To reassert some sense of control, at least to choose whether they would live in fear or not, enabled people to regain some pride.
I remember how all of us in a Zagreb NGO in 1993 were amazed to meet a refugee who had come directly from Sarajevo to the headquarters. The man was wearing a perfectly white and ironed shirt with a perfectly new and proper tie: he was not exactly the picture of refugee we expected, since we were aware of the shortages and knew that he had come through the tunnel. A young woman in Sarajevo explained:
The war did not affect my way of dressing…. It could be 15 to 20 degrees below freezing outside and 8 below in the room, but I had to wash my hair each time before I went on duty, so that my hair was clean when I worked, so that I was fresh, so that my lab coat was always washed and ironed, so that I wouldn’t go around untidy. It was probably a way of fighting back. During the time of the worst shelling and lack of water and gas and electricity, when the conditions were really miserable, I noticed that people were clean and ironed, and tidy. It was so during the whole of the war.
People struggled, not so much to maintain some prewar standard of decency, as for emotional and moral survival in the face of overwhelming degradation. Sarajevans were unable to prevent the decline of living standards, but they could still choose to look like citizens of a European city. In that way, they tried to take decisions about how to live their lives into their own hands.
The darkness of long winter nights was one of the most difficult disruptions Sarajevans had to cope with. A young woman’s account from September 1994 describes how people were thrown back on themselves:
The worst thing is that it gets dark early. You see already now—it is dark at half past seven. Eight o’clock, and there is no electricity. Terrible. You don’t know what to do with yourself…. And there is shooting … you can’t go anywhere…. You can’t read, you can’t do anything. Like, you strain yourself to read by candle, you lose time, and then you go to sleep at seven, eight….
As soon as I started thinking of what was happening to me, what I could have done, what I didn’t, what I could and what I couldn’t, I would fall into a crisis. And that leads nowhere. And then it is better not to think about these things, but just go on, as long as it goes.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, alone with their thoughts and sounds of explosions outside, Sarajevans were imprisoned by darkness. Fighting off this sense of isolation and utter powerlessness demanded great inner strength. Memories of prewar life were a double-edged sword: they helped people escape from the wartime destruction, yet thoughts of the life they once had were painful. An old Jewish curse captured the pain of loss: “May God let you have, and then not have.”
A cultural worker of Sarajevo evoked the words of Dante as well as the music and words of the Hebrew slaves in “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s Nabucco, where the destruction of the beloved land and the tormenting memories of the better past, including dear ones now far away, end with a plea to the Lord to “inspire a harmony that we may have the strength to endure”:
The long winter night starts at 4 PM. It is cold in the room and there is only one flickering candle light. One cannot read and that which one writes is illegible the following day. The thoughts come to a standstill and continuously go back to the past, and one realizes that Dante was right when he wrote: “Nothing is so painful as to in misfortune remember the happy moments.” You get overwhelmed by despair and escape to bed from the ‘Choir of Hebrew Prisoners’ in Verdi’s Nabucco: “Go, thoughts, on golden wings….” You cannot sing, cannot hum, but you feel a need to sing out loudly, so that everyone hears and joins in the song. When the eyes fill with tears the catharsis has come to its end. You get used to the idea that the following day shall be the same and you prepare yourself for the sources of happiness that are going to be found in small changes. And the melody of the Hebrew prisoners’ choir resonates in you, for you. It does not take much to feel happiness the following day: a look from a neighbor and it is a triumph if the fetching of water goes a quarter of an hour faster than the day before. (F. Trtak 1996:29, my translation)
The most intimate thoughts, coming when imprisonment by darkness left people nothing but the freedom of mind and soul, could find expression in something larger than the vulnerable individual life: a connection across time and space, a sense of belonging to humankind, which is achieved through art.
Magical Thinking
People coped with life conditions beyond their ability to control or even comprehend through magical thinking and small private magic routines, another “childish” solution to an objectively unbearable situation. I was surprised to find myself engaging in magical rituals. The first time I was on my way to Sarajevo, my grandmother, who had never read horoscopes and certainly did not believe in them, said that my horoscope was good for the period I planned to remain there. Although we acknowledged our skepticism with a chuckle, we were both glad that the horoscope was propitious. Knowing there was nothing practical I could do to improve my security, I also looked for a protective amulet to take with me. I did not find one, but when I left Sarajevo I realized that the shoes I had worn were the same ones that I had worn during my visits to Croatian and Herzegovinian front lines in 1993. From then on, I wore my anti-sniper shoes every time I was in Sarajevo.
Many
