the evening some guests arrived again, a man, a woman and two children. Since they were small children, I didn’t want to hang out with them. My brother and sister played with them, and I went to the living room to sit with my mom.
I had a strong need for my mother, her attention, her love, her embrace. Father didn’t like seeing our mum hugging us. Feeling close to my mom, I relaxed and took food and snacks from the table that were there for the guests only. Father just smiled. I didn’t recognise his emotions.
I thought he was looking at me with love because I was eating. But no! His face was burning red. He could not hide his anger. When the guests left, something my father was waiting eagerly, he pulled the army belt out of his trousers and started beating me, and saying:
- You fucking bitch. This will teach you not to take food of the table when there are guests.
I promised that I would never take anything of the table in the presence of guests. My father was extremely upset and my mother was preparing our bed for sleeping. I remember there was always plastic film beneath me so that I wouldn’t wet my bed.
Not a single night went by without me wetting it. I also remember when I was a bit older, I would unconsciously, in my sleep, wet the bed every time I was frightened. And when the morning came, both dad and mom would criticise me. They would ask for how long I was going to wet the bed. “You’re already a big girl, aren’t you ashamed?” I was ashamed, but I couldn’t control it. Often, my sister didn’t want to sleep next me, she’d cry and say:
- I don’t want to sleep next to her, she’ll pee all over me. I was very sad. I just couldn’t understand why I kept doing that, and why I couldn’t control it. I didn’t know the reason, and no one was there to help me.
I spent my childhood with only two girls who were willing to play with me. They were Sanela and Alma (I am still in touch with them, we talk with each other occasionally, although each of us has a family and their own personal obligations these days. More than 20 years have passed since our hanging out and our goofing around).
I know I was a mischievous girl. My mother told me that I was very hyperactive, and that I often quarrelled with other children.
One day I found out that we would have to move to another place soon, that we had been evicted because someone had bought the flat we lived in. I was sad, because I spent some beautiful moments there. I don’t mean with the parents, but with the kids I liked. Just before leaving, I met a wonderful family who moved into the same building. There were two twin sisters in the family: Jasmina and Aldina. Their father was killed during the war and they were a martyr’s family. Sometimes I envied them and was jealous because they lived without a father, only with their mother. At the time, I thought almost every father was like mine. Yet from the stories they told me I realised that they had a wonderful father, whom dear God chose to take for himself. My father was alive, but I was miserable because of it.
Few nights before we moved out, some man and my father were sitting in the living room, drinking. My father was very drunk. There were various weapons, rifles, bullets, bombs and other firearms in front of them. He played with a bomb ring, saying he would kill us all. It was a game for him. Until then, I had never felt greater fear and panic. Mother was terrified, and that man told him not to play with such things, because it was life-threatening. Naturally, my father always hated when someone told him what to do or what not to do, so he got even angrier and cursed. He went out on the balcony and fired his rifle, and threw a bomb from the balcony in the middle of the night. The neighbourhood was terrified and fearful. The police did not come, not even to warn him for harassing the neighbourhood. When that hell was over, we were all still alive, thank God.
The day of our moving also came. Terrible feeling. It was very difficult feeling for me. What I regretted the most was what I was leaving behind. Although, in 1997, I was a little girl, barely nine years old, I had a crush. He was a little black-haired boy who, naturally, didn’t even notice me. Father and mother were packing our stuff in the flat, and we helped them with that. He took down everything that could possibly be removed from the flat. The flat we moved out of was left in very poor condition.
I thought the new address would be some new turning point in life, maybe a happy start or a change for the better. Unfortunately, our hell continued. We moved to the address ‘Ceravacka hills no. 12’, to a huge house with two floors, plus an attic belonging to a Serb. We lived on the first floor, actually, the ground floor. The Ogresevic family also lived in that house. They had three children, two boys and a little girl. On the one hand, I was happy because they were kids of my age. We often played behind the house with mud and cans that we found in the rubbish or secretly took from the house.
I always thought that I had a normal life and that everything that happened to me, the beatings and turmoil was normal and that everyone lived like that. It was something natural for me, because I didn’t know of a different kind of life. It was only then that I realised that I was wrong, because these children, my neighbours, received tenderness, love and attention from their parents every day, even without beatings, and I realised it was them who were truly happy. It was then that I realised that there are good and bad fathers. We, my sister, brother and I were not hungry. My father provided us with food, sometimes even bought toys, but I was not happy. I didn’t want toys, I didn’t want anything, just love and attention like the other kids had. Every time I saw a happy couple walking down the street, or children being hugged by their parents, who cuddled and looked after them, jealousy awoke in me. Mum was not allowed to kiss or hug us, her own children, in his presence, because his reaction would be violent. She would hug us when my father was not there.
One day, dad got a call to report for serving a prison sentence. They were preparing us for this news for days. Our father told us that he was drunk in a tavern and that a man, also a drunk, had insulted him. My father had a gun in his pocket. He said he pulled the trigger and fired a bullet, wounding the man. Earlier, my mother told me that my father had spent nine years in prison. He was also in the Correctional Facility in Zenica.
Mum’s sister lived in the USA. My parents planned for us to go there with her husband. We even received a letter of guarantee which we were supposed to go to Zagreb with. At the time, it was not difficult to go abroad. There was no end to my happiness. How ecstatic I was at that moment.
I thought to myself:
- My God, thank you for a new chance.
As always, my happiness was short-lived. Mother and father told us that it wasn’t possible for us to go to the US anymore, even though they prepared everything. They didn’t give a more detailed explanation. I was disappointed and very sad because I dreamed about the magical USA.
Father turned himself to the police the next day. He was taken to the nearest prison in Bihac in Luka. He was gone. There was peace and positive energy present in the house. I wasn’t even aware he was not there.
With him being gone, spring arrived. I felt as though the sun warmed my skin, and I also felt my mum’s peace in her soul. I asked her why she didn’t leave dad when he treated us like that.
- I can’t my dear. What if he found out? He would kill us once he was out of prison.
My mother explained to me that she had already had one marriage and that she had a son from that marriage, our half-brother N. She told me that she never wanted to leave us at any cost, and that she was forced to leave her first son with her ex-mother-in-law. She would always talk about what people would think and say if she left her children again. She said the grief would be the end of her.
On one occasion I asked her:
- Mom, why doesn’t our brother N. come and
