Minella

Bosniac from the northwest of Bosnia. Born in 1985 in Banja Luka, but grew up in Projedor (Čarakovo). Nowadays she lives in Lyon.

What is your first memory of the war?

At some point I started to hear people around saying: “Be careful”, “Put white sheets in your windows”, “Hand over all weapons that you have”. I didn’t understand anything, because I had never seen a weapon before and I didn’t know who we should hand them over to. Evenings, the men were watching over. On the radio we heard that some places were bombed, but we didn’t know who did all that. Everyone was saying: “It will not come here”. But my mum understood and she said to my dad: “We have to pack our luggage and leave because something evil is afoot.” My dad definitely didn’t want to accept that. And then I remember one day when we went to hide. In our house there was a room, a garage and a summer kitchen. All the people from the village hid there. We were holding each other’s hands, we heard the bombings. And I remember my uncle, who was not much older than 20 and just finished his military service in the Yugoslavian army. He also understood that the conflict was afoot. He said to my grandmother: “If I have to die, I don’t want this to happen here, in front of the house”. One day he left, as a civilian, and the second time we saw him, he was dead. That was the first member of my family who was killed. From that moment on everything changed. That was in April, 1992.