Belgrade, May 9th 2006
Dear Laura Bush:
Let me tell you what happened to me recently.
I sat on a bench between two women, of my age and
your own, while a film was screened inside a
courtroom. It was a documentary film, showing the
execution, minute by minute, of the sixteen year
old sons of these women. These contemporaries of
ours lost all trace of their sons ten years ago.
They were asked to watch the footage and to identify
their missing sons. They were told that the images
were cruel, and were begged to be brave for the sake
of truth and justice.
The dignified women accepted the task, and,
dressed in their Muslim peasant clothing, they came
from Srebrenica, Bosnia to the Belgrade special court
for war crimes.
They sat on that bench behind the
living killers of their dead sons, and, with tears and
sighs, they said: yes, that is my boy. The second one
from the left. The one that is kicked on the ground,
beaten on the head with the machine gun, whose jeans
are torn. The one who is denied a last glass of
water. The one who is shot in cold blood by a squad
of six muscular fully dressed soldiers: because
of their religion.
I heard not one word of hatred, nor curse of anger,
from those women. I was sitting among them in my
modest attempt to be their support, but my true motive
was to deal with my own personal sense of guilt and
duty, because those marauders were killing them IN MY
NAME, and I could not stop them. Those
soldiers called themselves Serbs. They claimed
they protected my homeland from those who were not
Serbs.
Now, those patriots, as they still call themselves,
had their women sitting along with the rest of us, on
the benches of the war crime tribunal. The mothers of
their own children. Some of them said they were sorry,
some didn't. And their women were sobbing too during
those 40 minutes: a reality show beyond Shakespearean
tragedy.
When the film was over a mute silence erased all our
differences.
I looked straight into the face of a
Srebrenica mother after the lights were on: wrapped in
her green Muslim shawl, she was telling me with her
watery eyes something that I felt but could not put
into words.
"I just want to see their faces," she told me.
She turned towards the bench where the six
indicted were sitting, and she stared at them. They
hung their heads.
And then words of a Serbian folk poem
sprang to my mind. It is from the 13th century, one
troubled time among many times including our own, and
it is called "The Death of Mother Jugovic". It is the
farewell song of a woman who lost nine sons and her
husband in a battle against the Turks. Her heart
breaks silently when she sees her son's hand, brought
back to her by a raven.
I remembered an American mother whose son
was recently killed in iraq. Her father was killed
in the Second World War, and her grandfather in the
first one. She said to me: he, my son, went to war
after September 11, like a fool, believing he was a
hero.
I think of sons and husbands and brothers in former
Yugoslavia who survived the various wars. They were
not called fools or heroes, but simply deserters and
cowards. In Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia, many
sons, brothers, husbands are dead. They often have no
names to their graves. What do we call these men
then? Mass heroes in mass graves?
I am a mother to all of them. Not because I gave
them birth, but because of the world that you and I
must share. Self-righteous heroes wield weapons in
times of war, and when the time inevitably comes, it
is us, the Other, the women, who collect the rubble
and identify the bodies. The war and the courtroom are
the same world at different times.
My life was changed by this experience. You are
not my First Lady nor your husband is my President,
but the courtroom of history awaits anyone whose
decisions become a question of life and death for
others. I wish you had been inside that courtroom
with us all. Believe me, that privilege would have
been a life-changing experience for you as well.
– – – – –
Jasmina Tesanovic is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com.
Previous essays by Jasmina Tesanovic on BoingBoing:
– Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
–
Scorpions Trial, April 13
– The Muslim Women
– Belgrade: New Normality
– Serbia: An Underworld Journey
– Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
– Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
– Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
– The Long Goodbye
– Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
– Slobodan Milosevic Died
– Milosevic Funeral
– Link to previous posts about Jasmina's work.