THE SILENCE OF WAITING

Our father went to the front line in two-week rotations. Soldiers were exchanged every fourteen days. Whenever the trucks arrived back in the village, families gathered in tense silence.

We searched the faces stepping off the trucks, holding our breath, praying. Every safe return felt like a miracle. Every missing face felt like the end of the world.

Often, the silence was shattered by a mother’s scream. Everyone knew what it meant. Her son had not returned. He had been killed.

Our father rarely spoke about what happened behind enemy lines. He kept those memories locked inside. But once, he shared a story.

He said that the front line between Serbian and Bosniak forces was separated only by a cornfield. For some time, there were no attacks. The silence was unusual and heavy.

One day, he climbed out of the pit where soldiers spent their rotations and ran through the field. He wanted to gather as much corn as possible to bring home so we could grind it into flour and have something to eat.

As he moved between the stalks, he suddenly came face to face with a Serbian soldier doing the same thing.

Both men froze.

Two declared enemies, dirty, exhausted, and hungry. Both are trying to feed their families. Both pretend to be brave while carrying fear inside.

They stared at each other, then nodded. A silent greeting.

Hello. I see you. Today, we will not kill each other.

They continued picking corn.

Not soldiers.

Not enemies.

Just fathers trying to survive a war they never asked for.

Politicians start wars. Ordinary people live through their worst consequences.

That day, my father walked twenty kilometers carrying fifty kilograms of corn. He left early in the morning and returned near midnight.

WHEN THE SAFE ZONE BECAME A TRAP

In April nineteen ninety-three, Srebrenica was declared a United Nations safe zone. The words sounded like protection. Like promise. Like relief.

By July nineteen ninety-five, that promise collapsed.

The forest closed around the town like a fist.

There was nowhere left to run. Ratko Mladić entered Srebrenica as if he owned the silence. He handed out candy to children. He spoke softly to women, assuring them they were safe. For anyone who knows what followed, his smile freezes the blood.

Behind him, soldiers prepared the killing fields.

THE LAST PLACE TO HIDE

Thousands of people crowded into Potočari. Mothers clutched their children. Fathers whispered final words they hoped would not be their last. Fear moved through the crowd like a living thing. Then the separations began. Men and boys were pulled away. Women and girls were forced onto buses. Screams filled the air, but the engines drowned them out. The forest became a grave. Only the trees knew what happened there.

 

BUSES ARRIVE IN OUR VILLAGE

That same day, buses arrived in our village.

They carried refugees whose faces were gray with exhaustion and shock. Their eyes searched desperately for familiar faces. People stood by the bus doors trembling, hoping for a miracle.

Miracles were rare.

Very few found their loved ones.

Stories spread in whispers. Columns of men in the forest. Mass graves. Bodies of boys. The words were too heavy to speak aloud.

Srebrenica became a wound carved into the world. And a wound carved into our childhood.

We were too young to fully understand what had happened, yet old enough to feel its weight settle into our bones. Something fundamental broke that summer. Trust. Safety. The belief that someone would come to save you.

From that moment on, the word safe no longer meant anything.