80. When you say my name
Surviving Srebenica
80. When you say my name
When you say my name, Stranger though you are; When you say my name I live again. In your breath you breathe away my death. Say my name! Let me curl into a corner of your heart Not made of stone; your heart of flesh, And then I will know I once lived And my death is not in vain.
Over the last few weeks, our themes have touched on our shared humanity. In last week’s post, regular contributor, Neil Sledge, told us about why Remembering Srebenica matters and how “once you have listened to a survivor’s testimony, you in turn become a witness.” In a similar way, once I heard the phrase “You cannot unknow what you now know,” about fifteen years ago, I couldn’t unhear it.
As someone who regularly interprets English into Spanish, there are times I have had to interpret the harrowing events someone has lived through. They did not happen to me, but to interpret accurately I have to say, “I”, “my”, and “we” and “our”. Their story comes into my ears and out of my mouth and once that has happened, the story stays and I am responsible for it. It’s the same if you read someone else’s traumatic experiences aloud. At the annual Remembering Srebenica commemoration ceremony in 2021, Neil asked me to present the account of HATIDŽA MEHMEDOVIĆ, (pronounced Hateeja Memetowich). The more I prepared, the more I saw the parallels between us:
Hatidža and Julie
Hatidža was not much older than I am, and like me, a mother of two sons. Unlike me, she never got to see her sons grow up. Azmir and Almir were murdered on 11 July 1995, when the town of Srebrenica, which had been declared a UN safe area, was overtaken. On that day her husband, Abdullah, and all her male relatives were murdered:
“I haven’t just had my children killed, my whole family were killed. My two brothers were killed, my brother’s two sons, my sisters' sons were killed, my cousins and their children. There wasn’t anyone left to kill.”
Even after facing such suffering, Hatidža returned to Srebrenica in 2003, one of the first to do so. She returned to the home she had built with Abdullah, having to fight to remove the Bosnian Serb family who had claimed it as ‘spoils of war’. But for Hatidža, the place was more than just bricks and mortar:
“I could never live in any other place other than Srebrenica. I say that Srebrenica is the symbol of suffering, the memorial place is our holy place, our pilgrimage, our sorrow… I returned to live from the memories of my house. I have three trees which my youngest son planted. He was young then; the trees are big now. I live where my children once walked, I always imagine them coming; whenever I am alone, I always imagine.”
Hatidža founded the Mothers of Srebrenica Association, which supports the women who lost their families during the Srebrenica genocide. She led the women in numerous projects and campaigns, including the establishment of the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Complex and Cemetery and the civil lawsuits against the UN and the Dutch government for failing to protect those in Srebrenica in 1995.
Hatidža continued to campaign tirelessly throughout her life for justice for Abdullah, Almir and Azmir. Her powerful story challenges those who deny that genocide occurred in Srebrenica. Even though she witnessed the worst of humanity, Hatidža never gave in to feelings of revenge, and discouraged others from doing so.
“If they were to give me a whole world of Serbians to kill and told me to seek revenge for my children, I couldn’t imagine it - let alone carry the weight of the guilt because sadness and grief have remained my only friends. I have nothing more.”
After a long battle with breast cancer, Hatidža passed away on the 22nd of July 2018 in a Sarajevo hospital aged 65. Throughout her illness, she continued to campaign for the justice of the victims and survivors.
Wirral Deen Centre
The Remembering Srebenica campaign has been strongly supported by Wirral Deen Centre, where I have the privilege of teaching writing courses and where my monthly writing group, First Fridays, meets. The educational aim of Wirral Deen Centre is to welcome communities, faiths and schools together to educate and build understanding and respect.
Every year the Wirral Deen Centre community remembers the murdered relatives of women like Hatidža, by reciting the names of individuals. Men were not only killed but their bodies were dismembered and their remains scattered over a wide area, making it impossible to bury a loved one and have closure. However, each life is marked as in the picture of the cemetery below. The photos of the lines of white gravestones and the Wirral Deen Centre act of remembrance inspired my poem:
When You Say My Name
My life is but a stone now
White against the vivid grass.
Our lives are in a line now
Reaching, row on row
To where the trees grow.
We are not beneath the earth here:
Our bodies were not buried whole
But spread across the fields, dear;
An arm, a hand, a foot
Touching where the trees root.
But this is not a life, dear,
Broken into body parts!
A life is who we were here
Born to possibility and love.
A life is now and not yet seen
Not a ‘was’ and ‘might have been’
Blown to fragments blowing in the breeze.
When you say my name,
Stranger though you are;
When you say my name I live again.
In your breath you breathe away my death.
Say my name!
Let me curl into a corner of your heart
Not made of stone; your heart of flesh,
And then I will know I once lived
And my death is not in vain.
With thanks to Neil and Jane Sledge and the Wirral Deen Centre community for the photographs and Remembering Srebenica organisation for the above photo and the photo of HATIDŽA MEHMEDOVIĆ.
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I have vast experience of teaching and tutoring GCSE and A level students and mentoring for writers. Contact: julie@julielaminauthor.com