My name is Dina M. , a girl from Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina just a few years before the war started against our Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.
Re Item 1:
My little children book "Patuljak vam prica" / "Dwarf is Telling You Stories", by
Bosnian children’s author Ahmet Hromadzic, is very special to me as I turned to it throughout my traumatic war time childhood that I experienced between the age of 4 and 7 . If you could flip through it you would see the scribbles all over it:
http://tinyurl.com/300-Dina-M-book
But 3 pages, 66-68, of one story, “Djecak i ptica” / "The Boy and the Bird" are white-clean, http://tinyurl.com/300-Dina-M-book-story , and it goes like this:
“Little boy fell sick and he dreamed of a major strawberry from a far away field which has healing power. A little bird heard his wish and travelled to the far away land to get him that magical strawberry. The boy ate it and instantly felt better. The little bird disappeared, never to be seen again. The boy never forgot the bird and what he did for him”
I relate to this story because throughout the war time, there were people who helped me and my family but afterwards disappeared, never to be seen again.
Re Item 2:
An earring from my “nana” [granny] who I lost in the first year, in 1992, of the war of aggression toward us.
This earring represents a tragic memory of my loss: my [maternal] “nana”, my “djed” [grandfather],and my then 32-year old “dajdza” [maternal uncle], their son.
In August of 1992, my “dajdza” was killed by a mortar shell fired by Serbian aggressors, from across the Bosnia river [photo http://tinyurl.com/300-Dina-M-item3-photo-scenic ]. Three months later I lost my “nana”. She died of sadness for my “dajdza”, her son. This earring is the only thing I have from her and it is a reminder of the pain I witnessed in her eyes after the killing of my “dajdza”. Simlarly, my ‘djed” passed away soon after that, too.
This earring also remind me of the strength, because I remember how strong my mother was after losing her closest brother, her mother and her father in a span of less than a year. This earring not only represent my mother’s strength but also a strength of the Bosniak people as a whole. We will keep going and fight for the Justice and Truth no matter how much pain and sorrow we carry inside.
Re Item 3:
Photo from my grade school.
This photo is the only memory of real childhood for me. It was taken a bit after the war, in school that holds deep significance for me. I was not able to go to this school during the war because the 1st floor was used for humanitarian aid and the 2nd floor served as a morgue for our killed Bosniak defenders.
One of my most scarring memories takes me to this school. Instead of studying and playing with my friends, I almost lost my life from the bomb which hit the school. I only remember huge detonation and someone picking me up and throwing me into a stairwell inside the school. To this day I do not know who that was but he saved my life . Once I started attending this school again I was able to play with my classmates and feel like a real student. That was my childhood in my Bosnia and Herzegovina during a war of aggression toward us.
Re Item 4:
A scenic photo: http://tinyurl.com/300-Dina-M-item3-photo-scenic
This is a view from my childhood home yard, facing the Bosnia river and the hills across the river, from where Serbian genocidal aggressors attacked us.
As a child I liked to play in this yard because I felt like this view inspired my imagination.
One day while I was playing near the tree, I felt something passed over my head and hit the tree. When I looked up I saw a bullet hole in the tree. It hit directly above my head. I was aware what that was and tears instantly ran down my face.
It was panic. My paternal grandfather picked me up and took me to the shelter.
Yet another 'vignette' from my so-called 'childhood'.
Thank you for reading my story.