The Woman Who Talks With the River

Emina wakes up at dawn every day, before most of Zvornik, a city in east Bosnia. Her day begins with abdest—the Islamic ritual of washing oneself—after which she puts on her headscarf and kat—a traditional Bosnian women’s garment that is typically colorful. She then leaves her apartment, walking alongside the river Drina to arrive at the mosque ten minutes away. The mosque is new, built where the old one, destroyed during the war, used to be. Like a few of the other regulars, Emina has a key and takes on responsibility for the mosque’s cleaning and general maintenance. This early in the morning, she is often the only person walking through the city, from where she was expelled back in 1992, at the beginning of the Bosnian war.

For Emina, Zvornik is more than just a story about war. She was born and raised there, made friends, fell in love, got married, gave birth to her kids, worked. She has found a way to live in this city: balancing those personal histories of violence with the precious memories she so attentively guards. The town changed after the war. Many things disappeared forever, and the people she used to know are no longer there, and will not return. Some died, some were killed during the war, and some were not able to overcome the past with all its pain. Once a beautiful city, Zvornik today is rather ugly, dirty, rough, and sad. Its current state is reflected in the faces of its inhabitants—crude and edgy. The river is an exception to this rule. The water seemingly takes away all the ugliness, hate, and brutal past of the peoples and their landscapes. Here you can find them sunbathing, swimming, and fishing; like nothing else exists in the world. No past, no present or future. By the river, everybody is the same. 

Zvornik was one of the first cities to fall under attack and later occupation in the eastern part of Bosnia. The city stands on the river Drina’s bank, a natural border with Serbia, and it was easy for the military forces from Serbia to enter in April 1992, including a unit led by the notorious criminal Željko Ražnjatović Arkan. Local nationalists in Zvornik and the surrounding area provided support to their bloody massacre. Only a few weeks into spring 1992, almost 4000 people were killed. The bodily remains of some of these victims are still missing. Hundreds were taken to nearby concentration camps where they were tortured, raped, and, in many cases, killed. The prosecution in The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) claimed—for several cases of war crimes—that the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina started in this area. In the end, the Court recognized genocide only in crimes committed over July 1995 in Srebrenica, a city just about an hour’s drive from Zvornik. In other parts of Bosnia, according to the ICTY, crimes against humanity were committed.

Emina and her family, including her teenage daughter and son, joined thousands of residents who left the city by foot on April 7th, 1992. Rapidly fleeing, in an attempt to save their lives, they took only essentials. They walked for days across mountains and through the woods to reach Tuzla, the city that remained free, but under constant attacks during the almost four years-long war. In refuge, Emina lived for the day when they all would return home. Finally, in 1998, she, her husband and father-in-law could go to their apartment in the building by the river. Yet, upon return, they found somebody occupying their home, and they had to live in the old family house at the city’s edge. With the help of lawyers, they got their apartment back. But, when they finally entered, they found that there was nothing left inside. The family had to rebuild their lives from the ground up. It took time, but eventually, they did it. Emina’s children built new lives and were not, and are not until today, interested in living in Zvornik, where they hardly know anybody. Her family was among the first returnees to the city, which, back then, was still a dangerous place for non-Serbs. Many people who committed crimes during the war still live in the city, including in Emina’s building. She remembers it was difficult and painful but she did not want to give up.

“They used to spit on us, to threaten us, to throw things at us… One day when we opened the front door only to find that somebody had written on it: “We will cut your throats”, she told me, recalling those first tumultuous days back home. Despite everything, they did not want to leave. With time, the threats and attacks stopped. However, this does not mean the returnees are accepted in the city today—open voice has been substituted with silence and exclusion.

Unfortunately, Emina’s husband and father-in-law soon died, but despite everything she was up against she did not want to leave the city again. Emina see’s Zvornik as the only place on earth she can call her home. Of all the memories and attachments, it is the river Drina, that Emina expressed she could not live without. Meanwhile, some old neighbors returned, mosques were rebuilt, and life continued. The city, the neighborhood, the people, everything changed. Everything but the river.

Pieces of Memories

Unlike in 1992 or even 1998, Emina is not afraid today: “What can they do to me? Nothing. They have done all they wanted, but I am still here. I am no longer afraid and do not want to leave ever again,” she tells me when I call her brave for living alone in Zvornik. 

Emina is a tiny woman but very energetic. She moves fast, even though she is in her mid-70s. She is in good health but lonely, and when she finally has a chance to talk to somebody, she tries to compensate for the time spent in silence. Her kids and grandchildren occasionally visit from Sarajevo, but most of the time she only surrounds herself with their photos in family albums and small frames throughout the apartment. She is very careful and gentle with the albums while showing me page after page. She introduces me to people in the pictures while telling small stories, fragments of memories, that are sometimes confusing, sometimes clear. It is hard to connect dates because she often mixes what was before the war, during the war and at times after the war. She is not losing her memory. To the contrary, she has too much to remember and is eager to talk to somebody about it.

Emina regularly meets with a group of women in the mosque or at someone’s home. All of them are returnees in Zvornik. They take care of each other. Sometimes, they travel together to nearby villages and cities to meet other women with similar fates. Often they go to Srebrenica, where in July 1995, over 8000 men and boys were killed in just a few weeks, and where the majority of returnees today are women who live alone. They all had to leave their homes, cities, and towns with young children in their early 30s or 40s. Some went through hell and back. Like Emina, these women are fighting for their memories and stubbornly refusing to abandon the places where they once were happy.

Every day, after the morning prayer in the mosque, Emina returns home, makes herself a coffee, lights a cigarette and goes to the window with the best view of the river. She puts a small pillow at the window sill to lean on something soft while drinking and talking with the river. “E moja Drino” (O my Drina) is how she addresses it, and Drina listens while she recounts what is happening in the city, the mosque, and her life. They share memories about the past—the beautiful and scary parts. Unlike when talking with me, she does not have to explain and be careful about dates, names, and places from her life, Drina understands and remembers. 

Brothers from Syria

In the summer, the river is shallow but still fast and has numerous vortexes. Its color is bright green, reflecting the mountains she flows between. Back in 1992, bodies of people who were killed in Zvornik and nearby cities were thrown into the river. Many were never found. The river took them away. Some would say that the Drina is a floating mass grave, not only because of what happened during the last war but also because of what is happening today.

In 2018, several cases of heavy police violence by the EU border police, that even led to death, changed the Balkan route away from Serbia. After that, the difficult terrain in Bosnia became preferable for migrants in order to reach the walls of EU. Still today, thousands of people have to walk over the mountains and across the rivers. Carrying mainly the hope that one day they will be able to find a home, wherever that will be. Fortress Europe makes this road extremely difficult and dangerous for them. Drina has taken many lives of these migrants. 

Emina can sometimes see people crossing the river through her window. Some do that in broad daylight, some early in the mornings, and some at dawn. The river sometimes pulls in those wading through the water, and they have to fight to get out. Others fall from the bridge. Emina is there to help, if and when needed. She sees people walking through the river in a human chain, holding each other’s hands. Or crossing when the river is deeper, in small, plastic boats, which are not suitable for crossing. Drina is tricky. It can only take seconds for the stream to get hold of even good swimmers. The water is cold even on a 40 degrees summer day. In the winter, it is so cold that not even the locals would dare to enter it. The police sometimes ignore people crossing the river, while in other cases they push them back into the river. Some were badly injured, some even killed in these pushbacks. Others make it back to Serbia only to try again. As many times as is needed to make it.

Some cross over the iron bridge. Citizens of Bosnia and Serbia can cross this bridge only with their IDs. Migrants must cross under the bridge, hanging onto the iron construction only by their bare hands. Like anybody else, she can see them crossing, falling, and being injured. If that happens, Emina calls her friends, and they go to the city hospital to ask about migrants who were brought in. They then take care of them; making home-cooked meals, washing their clothes, or just visiting and talking. None of Emina’s friends speak any other language but Bosnian, but somehow, they communicate with all the people coming from all over the world. People from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Bangladesh, Cuba, and many others who use the Balkan Route. They recognize each other’s pain and hope. It is like talking to Drina: “It is all, my dear, just life. And we never know how and where one will end,” she tells me when I ask about her encounters with the migrants.

Sometimes, people from the hospital come to the mosque to look for Emina, asking her to visit migrants who are brought in. That is how she met Abdurahman and his brother Mohammed in 2020. Abdurahman lost both his legs on the train tracks while walking in the night close to the border on the Bosnian side. Having not heard the train coming he didn’t have enough time to jump from the tracks. The brothers came all the way from a small Kurdish village in Syria. Abdurahman was nearly 20 when he met Emina and her friends who used to visit him in the hospital every day. Mohammed lived in Emina’s old house, the same one where she hid after leaving the flat in the city center. After the brothers, many other migrants have stayed with Emina’s and her neighbors’ help. After some time, Abdurahman was transferred to the capital Sarajevo, where he finally got his prosthesis.

A small group of local people from different parts of the country got together to help migrants, together with the local charity Pomozi. Together, they took Abdurahman under protection and care when the state and international organizations failed to do so. They collected money for his prosthesis and found doctors and medical care as well emotional support. It took some time, but when he relearned to walk, the two brothers took the dangerous route over the mountains and rivers, across Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia, reaching Austria, where they finally obtained asylum.

In Bosnia, it is often impossible to get asylum due to dysfunctional institutions in a state that until today—30 years after the peace agreement that stopped the war—remains the only semi-protectorate in Europe. This status gives unlimited power to the international community represented by a number of Western countries and, at the moment, led by the EU and the body called the Office of the High Representative. The High Representative (HR) is usually European, appointed through a non-transparent process, and approved by the UN Security Council.

When Abdurahman left the hospital in 2020, Emina and her friend asked the doctors to give them his cut-off legs. I asked her why: “It is part of him; it cannot just be thrown away, destroyed, after everything he went through. And somebody needed to say the prayer over it. So, the two of us took it, brought it to my garden in the suburbs, and buried it under the apple tree. Now we want to mark that place, just a small mark, to remember what happened.” She took me to the garden in the back of her house at the hill above Zvornik, where Abdurahman’s brother lived while he was in the hospital. There are apple, plum and quince trees, some grapevines, and a special kind of rose used for making juice and jam, džulbešećerka as we call it. She showed me the place where they buried the legs. She whispers when talking about it, unsure if what they have done is legal, but she is convinced it is humane and right. And there is hardly anything one can tell them.

In 2024, a humanitarian organization took Emina to Vienna to see Abdurahman, who now has a wife and a kid. They both cried and talked in a language only the two of them could understand. When I asked her to tell me more about this encounter, she turned her head away, her eyes filled with tears, but she said nothing. It was as if she still could not find words to talk about this episode of her life.

Reminders of War and Hate

Emina lives off her modest pension, some 300 euros a month. Far from enough, especially in the winter when she has to pay over half of it for heating. She does not want to ask her children to send her more. “They have their lives; I am OK. I have what I have,” she says. She finds her way. The most expensive thing she spends money on, a small luxury, is cigarettes. To save, she buys tobacco and rolls her cigarettes or buys pre-rolled from street vendors. The rest goes to food and medicine. 

Yet, even though she has little, she loves to share. Emina enjoys having guests. So eager to have somebody to talk to, she will wait for her guests in the front of the building where she lives and take them up to the 12th floor by the elevator. She started talking as soon as I met her. She talks fast, making minor remarks about what we see or small jokes. It feels like we have known each other forever. For every guest, she makes small presents. It is something she has in her house. It can be a piece of homemade cake, a flower, or some old souvenir…. Anything.

“This is so you do not forget me,” she says when she gives me a small bright blue pouch with a Flower of Srebrenica in it, a symbol of remembrance of genocide, and a small bottle of perfume somebody brought to her from Mecca.

The building is covered with reminders of war and hate. A big graffiti about Ratko Mladić, a war criminal sentenced by the ICTY, is on the outside facade. The swings in the front of the building are colored like Serbian flags: blue, white, and red. There are flags of Republika Srpska everywhere around. One of the neighbors, the one Emina can see straight from her window, put up a flag on the balcony. “I know this one is for me. But I do not care. For me, it is just a flag. If that makes them happy, let them be,” Emina answers when I ask her if she is bothered by all this, “I know who I am, and I know who they are. The war is behind us. I think it is harder for them to see me because I know what they have done. I did nothing. No reason to feel guilty or anything.”

Most of the time, she does not even lock her front door. She is sure nobody will do anything. “I want everybody to know that I feel comfortable in my house and my city.”

She talks with the river about life in the city, herself, her kids, the past, the present, like with a best friend. When sad, she shares it with Drina. When happy, too. Drina is the first to know what is happening in her life. The river knows her fears, her dreams, her truths. Emina took me to places she loves. Everywhere we go, we can see the river. Emina always takes a moment to look at Drina and take a deep breath like she breathes the river.  

Emina walks me down to the front of the building to say goodbye. While driving away, I see her going towards the city, to the mosque. A tiny woman with a headscarf walking through the gloomy crowd in a dirty city where people still insult her on the streets occasionally. “They threw things at me from the windows while I walked through the city. They always missed. And then, they just stopped. I ignore them. It is their problem,” she told me fearlessly. I see her in the crowd and feel her energy as she shunts the light into a dark city.