Siege Yields to Schism in Sarajevo

Jusuf Hasic is one of Bosnia’s intellectuals, an articulate economist with long experience as a lobbyist and writer.

But the white-haired, 62-year-old Sarajevo native is at a loss for words when he tries to explain to his daughter what life was like during the war.

“My own daughter could not understand, not really,” he said.

His daughter, Lejla Bratovic, was among the hundreds of thousands of people who fled Bosnia-Herzegovina at the start of the vicious 43-month war that saw death, unimaginable atrocity and a crippling siege of this capital. Roughly a third of Bosnia’s prewar population is estimated to have fled.

Now, Bratovic, with her husband and young daughter, is among the uncounted thousands who have returned since a U.S.-brokered agreement stopped the fighting last December and compelled national elections last month.

As the exodus is gradually reversed and Bosnians come home to Sarajevo, a significant emotional, psychological and material barrier is beginning to divide those who remained to endure the mayhem from those who by luck or connections got out.

It separates families and best friends, sometimes in subtle ways--in resentments or in stories that can never be shared.

Those who stuck it out watch bitterly as better-skilled, wealthier, less traumatized people return and, in some cases, displace them from their jobs.

And returnees are dismayed to find that their homes have been turned over to government soldiers or ruling Muslim militants; they are further dismayed to encounter a once-cosmopolitan capital now physically devastated and dominated by rural peasants.

Hasic confronted this gulf with his daughter, who left for Italy in 1992 and returned a few months ago.

He tried to tell her about walking nearly three miles most days to haul water from the nearest pump, and climbing 108 steps in his apartment building--54 down, 54 up--with heavy containers in each hand. No electricity meant no elevator.

And he tried to explain what it was like not to be able to leave the house for days on end because of artillery shelling that plucked victims from the sidewalks and market stalls. Or what it was like not to eat a fresh vegetable for months.

“Those who are coming back did not experience the tragedy of war,” he said. “They are always talking about how difficult it was to live as a refugee in Italy, or the United States or Austria. But we were living here . . . like prisoners, worse than prisoners. Nobody can understand that.”

Don’t get Hasic wrong. He is delighted that his daughter and granddaughter are back. A second daughter who also fled has not returned and does not plan to.

“I don’t even try to explain now,” he said with a shrug.

Returnees’ Memories

Bratovic suffered a different indignity, that of being a homeless refugee, rootless, an outcast. She and other returnees tell stories of the humiliation they felt at being branded savages, from the killer Bosnian race; at being asked by prospective landlords if they knew how to use toilets or appliances; at being refused work and forced to live on charity even amid the prosperity of peaceful West European capitals.

Bratovic, 33, said she nevertheless felt she had to leave Sarajevo for the sake of her child, 8-year-old Amina, who now speaks as much Italian as her native language.

“Despite the fact I was far away and had a very different life, I was in a war too, in my own way,” she said. “Those who stayed will say it was worse here, and I won’t dispute that. But every shell exploded inside me. Thousands of times I wished I was here and not there. But then I would look at my child and thank God that I wasn’t.”

The guilt at having abandoned her parents, the dilemma of wondering whether it was safe to return--these conflicts haunted her in Italy. She was in the last year of medical school when she left Sarajevo, but she could get work, eventually, only in a wood-products factory. Her husband, Emir Bratovic, never found work at all. They lived on her wages, savings and humanitarian aid.

As soon as the “minimum conditions” existed--the peace treaty was signed, the shelling had stopped--they came back.

Her father has told her a few stories--of funerals, mostly. Tears welled in her eyes when she remembered walking past a vast new Sarajevo cemetery the first time. But her father does not talk much about his ordeal, she said. Those who suffered the most don’t say much.

“Everyone is avoiding talking about the war period, and I don’t want to ask either,” she said.

Spur to Resentment

If Lejla Bratovic had a hard time of it, Emir Bratovic, who is rejoining his father’s optometry business, seems none the worse for having left. With an earring and a new haircut, he bounced into a sidewalk cafe where his wife was being interviewed and joined the conversation.

“Oh, I have such a terrible refugee story to tell you,” he said to a reporter in sunglasses. Without missing a beat, he added: “Those are great Yves St. Laurents.”

Emir Bratovic exudes a cockiness that drives Sarajevans who stayed here crazy. It is seen in some returnees whose privilege and connections spared them the war’s horrors by giving them a comfortable life abroad and then easing their reentry, and it breeds resentment and jealousy.

“A lot of my friends are coming back now,” said Tanja Susnjar, an unemployed banker who remained in Sarajevo throughout the war. “I hear them complain about how bad the city looks, about how terrible it is. . . . Do they think we wanted it that way? Like this is our fault?”

Bosnians are further split in a bizarre competition over who suffered the most.

You can never truly comprehend what it is like to live under siege, say those who stayed, to hide from the bombings and see your friends die before your eyes. But, say those who left, you cannot fully comprehend what it is like to exist as a refugee, unwanted and always a stranger.

For many of the Bosnians who remained, postwar adjustment is complicated now by a kind of malaise, psychologists say. They have lost the focus that raw survival gave them during the war, yet peace has not delivered the instant employment and renewal they expected. They wonder what they were fighting and dying for.

And suddenly, lost neighbors and relatives reappear.

Bosnians slowly started to return after the peace accord was signed Dec. 14. First they waited out the winter snows; then they arrived on exploratory missions to test whether the peace was for real. By the summer, thousands were returning, especially families who wanted to be in place for the opening of the school year last month.

Many others chose to wait for the outcome of Sept. 14 elections that, in the end, reinstated the same nationalist political parties that led Bosnia to war.

Uncertainty still clouds the future, and there is no guarantee that peace will last. There are no reliable figures for how many people have come back.

The Bosnia that returnees find shows physical signs of recovery but also deep wounds that have not healed. More than three-quarters of adults are still out of work, and wartime loyalty, political pull or Islamic fervor seem to be the main criteria for success.

One of the most jarring problems for returning Bosnians is the confiscation of their property by the Muslim-led government, which bestowed it on its most loyal supporters. By doing that, critics say, the government furthered and capitalized on the divide.

By placing mostly rural, Muslim refugees in the homes of people who left, the ruling party shifted Sarajevo’s demographics to solidify its base of support, and--with municipal elections scheduled for late November--it has stubbornly refused to allow rightful owners to reclaim homes.

Home Given Away

Paula Baci’s homecoming was less than auspicious. Upon arriving in Sarajevo after a four-year absence, Baci learned she was dead.

That helped explain why a government soldier and his family were living in the apartment she had left behind. Naturally, she wants her place back. And naturally, the soldier believes that he deserves the apartment.

After all, he stayed and fought. She escaped.

Baci, who is 80, was receiving medical treatment for a painful back condition in neighboring Croatia when the war broke out. She could not have returned even if she had wanted to.

City housing officials soon ruled that she was dead and awarded her apartment to an army man. The government repeated that practice tens of thousands of times, though a death notice was not required. Usually the absence of a family, even if temporary, was enough to cause the seizure of property.

Baci has been thrown into a legal morass that she has trouble grasping, but she is determined to fight to regain her home. She has nothing else, she said; the search for home was her reason for returning.

Sarajevo-born and widowed, Baci watched the war on television in Croatia and pored over friends’ messages delivered by the Red Cross.

She knew enough to expect her city’s gutted buildings and shattered streets. She was stunned, however, to find so many unfamiliar faces--the result of an influx of mostly rural refugees driven from homes now in Bosnian Serb hands.

“It is sad that it is not the same Sarajevo that it used to be,” she said. “All of my friends [who stayed] have welcomed me, but on the street I [do not] run into anyone I know. Among my circle we have proven we are still friends, but there are fewer of us.”

One of those friends, 76-year-old Zagorka Mujagic, stayed in Bosnia and is now giving shelter to Baci while she struggles to recover her home. She weeps when Baci pauses to thank her, again, for her hospitality.

Debate Over Rights

Sejfudin Tokic, a baby-faced legislator from an opposition political party, was fielding calls the other night on a television phone-in program. The issue under hot debate was rights: Who has more of them, those who stayed or those who left?

From the tone of the callers, the squatters clearly felt entitled to property they inhabited during the war. As for the cowards and traitors who fled--to hell with them.

“We have more right to stay here,” cried one angry caller. “My husband was killed in this war. Does that mean my kids and I are out on the street because someone who escaped four years ago wants to come back?”

Tokic, whose office is handling more than 400 property claims by returnees, acknowledged that such emotion runs strong. He believes that the divide is cleaved most deeply by the presence of the rural refugees who now live in Sarajevo, largely in homes that do not belong to them.

The native Sarajevans, he said, welcome their former neighbors home with open arms.

“People like to see the arrival of neighbors because we see it as a return to normalcy, to a prewar time,” he said. “It says: ‘It’s over. The normal life starts again.’ ”

In addition to that emotional gratification, he said, is the practical need for doctors, lawyers, teachers--the professionals and intellectuals who have been absent.

Still, Tokic said, war experiences create bonds, and those who stayed share sorrows, convictions and familiarities that others cannot fathom.

“It will be difficult for those who were outside to connect with those of us who were inside,” he said. “You go out for drinks with friends, and everything feels like the period before the war. And then suddenly someone mentions a small detail, some joke, and those of us who were here, we all understand it. Like the recipe for a war meal, or a kind of booze we made during the war.

“It is not an intentional attempt to divide; it just shows up by itself,” he said. “It has to be overcome. People can overcome it. I’m sure they will.”

As she contemplates whether to return to medical school, Lejla Bratovic also believes that the divide can be crossed.

“I can’t blame anybody for leaving or staying. Everyone has different reasons,” she said. “Sometimes I feel guilty because I left. But then sometimes I feel like it was smarter to go. I would have been one more hungry mouth to feed, one more person to protect, one more victim. . . .

“Of course, if everyone had the same philosophy, there would be no city left.”