Selma

Bosniac from Sarajevo. Born in 1985, left Bosnia and Hercegovina during the war and fled to the UK in 1993. She graduated at Linguistics Department in London, and has started to work as translator and interpreter.

What is your first memory of the war?

Yeah, I remember very clearly. On April 4. it was my brother’s birthday and he was have gonna party that day. And I remember something strange was going on: here all those talking about it, some bombing had already started. Everything was just very strange, cause I thought it was supposed to be my brother’s special day, we were going to 2 other birthday parties, cause my brother had 2 other friends who had birthday parties on that same day. One of them was another Muslim-Bosnian kid and the other one was Serb. I think my mum was trying to get hold of one of the families for the celebration and they just disappeared. So it’s very strange. That’s when the whole confusion started. And it was also a week before my birthday.