Zlata's Diary

“When we hear of wars, we hear the numbers of dead and wounded, of dates of battles, of attacks, names of places that no longer exist. We become numbed by the onslaught of cold facts, and we forget that every event touched individuals, ordinary people, children, young people, grownups, grandparents, one by one. If we listen to each and every story, or even if we hear one and imagine all the others, we can get some sense of what the extent of war really is.”

Zlata Filipović reflects on the differences between historian’s recounting of war and the stories of those who experienced war firsthand. Filipović locates her diary’s meaning and purpose in the empathy it inspires, suggesting that it remains relevant as a tool to show the real Loss Due to War, combatting the apathy that lists of battles and body counts can inspire. It is her hope that the stories of children like her will inspire better care and understanding for children living with war.

“We’re worried about Srdjan (my parents’ best friend who lives and works in Dubrovnik, but his family is still in Sarajevo) and his parents. How are they coping with everything that is happening over there? Are they alive? We’re trying to talk to him with the help of a ham radio, but it’s not working. Bokica (Srdjan’s wife) is miserable. Dubrovnik is cut off from the rest of the world.”

Zlata’s first reference to war is distant: It is a cause for concern but happening to other people in another country, so it remains abstract. Nevertheless, scattered references to Dubrovnik serve as a specter that casts gloom on family festivities and the New Year’s Eve celebrations and foreshadow the coming conflict.

“The atmosphere seems different than before. Mommy, Daddy, and our friends and family aren’t planning a New Year’s Eve party this year. They don’t talk about it much. Is it because of the war in Dubrovnik? Is it some kind of fear? I don’t know or understand a thing.”

Coming within weeks of happy school recitals and Zlata’s birthday party, the sudden sour mood at New Year’s acts as a warning that the faraway problems in Croatia may not stay distant. Zlata’s confusion and fear come through in the rhetorical questions she poses—questions her parents will not answer. The confusion only deepens her belief that politics is absurd, especially considering it is ruining her holiday plans.

“On TV I see people in front of the B-H parliament building. The radio keeps playing the same song: ‘Sarajevo, My Love’. That’s all very nice, but my stomach is still in knots and I can’t concentrate on my homework anymore. Mimmy, I’m afraid of WAR!!!”

Zlata writes this while confined to her home after barricades have cut neighborhoods in Sarajevo off from one another. This is the eve of the war, and the tension caused by the civil unrest comes through in Zlata’s use of capitalization for emphasis and the imagery of a nervous stomach twisting. Though she is trying her best to push on, she cannot deny the absence of normalcy any longer.

“Tomorrow I’ll tell Keka that you have to be brave and stay with those you love and those who love you. I can’t leave my parents and I don’t like the other idea of leaving my father behind alone either.”

Zlata references an offer from her close friends’ mother to take Zlata to safety in nearby Macedonia, which Zlata refuses. She cannot bear to leave her parents behind. Understanding the importance of The Support of Friends and Family in facing the war, she resolves to stay despite her fear.

“AND NINA IS DEAD. A piece of shrapnel lodged in her brain, and she died. She was such a sweet, nice little girl. We went to kindergarten together, and we used to play together in the park. Is it possible I’ll never see Nina again? Nina, an innocent, eleven-year-old little girl—the victim of a stupid war.”

Writing in all caps and highlighting The Absurdity of War, Zlata expresses complete disbelief that an innocent life could end so quickly, tragically, and senselessly. Only a month has passed since the war’s outbreak, and in addition to losing electricity, water, and the sense of normalcy, she is already losing friends.

“I keep asking why? What for? Who’s to blame? I ask, but there’s no answer.”

The shock and confusion of war is too much for Zlata to comprehend or process. The injustice and cruelty of the situation distort her sense of the world. The unanswerable nature of the questions she poses evokes the senselessness of this war (and all wars), as nothing can justify the destruction she has witnessed.

“They’re shooting outside. Bojana and I aren’t allowed to go outside, so we’re roller-skating in the lobby of their building. It’s not bad!”

While the war brings terror, even it cannot suppress the childhood need for fun and games. As the adults around her adapt to life under fire, so Zlata finds ways to assert a sense of normalcy and engage in activities that help her grow and stay positive.

“That’s how it is in war, Mimmy. Your loved ones die and you don’t even know about it. War doesn’t let you stay in touch with people, except for your neighbors. The neighborhood is our life now. Everything happens within that circle, it’s the circle you know. Everything else is remote.”

The metaphor of the closed circle illustrates the layers of loss brought about by the war. Not only are buildings falling and people dying, but contact with friends and family in other neighborhoods, once taken for granted, is cut off. These accumulated losses weigh heavily and dampen people’s hope.

“That’s how we celebrate birthdays here and try to forget the war. We try to brighten up this life of ours, a life that’s getting harder and harder by the day. Sometimes I say—this isn’t life, it’s an imitation of life.”

This observation follows a description of Zlata’s mother’s birthday. Though the adults in her life bravely assert a sense of normalcy whenever they can, Zlata cannot help but compare the poorly provisioned parties with her memory of birthdays past. Others’ play-acting merely alienates her from her own life. Still, such acts of celebration bolster people’s Hope and Perseverance.

“God, is anyone thinking of us here in Sarajevo? Are we going to start winter without electricity, water, or gas, and with a war going on? The ‘kids’ are negotiating. Will they finally negotiate something? Are they thinking about us when they negotiate, or are they just trying to outwit each other, and leave us to our fate?”

Zlata angrily yells her questions into the void that is the war, highlighting the absurdity of political posturing when the country’s people are living in such life-threatening misery as winter approaches. Her ironic moniker for politicians, “kids,” reveals her contempt for their irresponsible behavior and suggests that she, a real “kid,” actually has more sense.

“Among my girlfriends, among out friends, in our family, there are Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. It’s a mixed group and I never knew who was a Serb, a Croat, or a Muslim. Now politics has started meddling around. It has put an ‘S’ on Serbs, an ‘M’ on Muslims, and a ‘C’ on Croats, it wants to separate them. And to do so it has chosen the worst, blackest pencil of all—the pencil of war which spells only misery and death.”

Zlata tries unsuccessfully to understand the political conflicts that have divided her country. Boiled down to mere letters symbolizing ethnicities, the “answer” to her question appears more absurd than the conflict itself—a conflict that Zlata, who has lived in an integrated society her entire life, cannot understand.

“I was sad today. I couldn’t bear the thought of the trees disappearing from my park. They’ve been condemned. God, all the things my park has had to go through! The children have left it, Nina forever, and now the linden, birch, and plane trees are leaving it forever, too.”

Zlata’s association of the destruction of the trees with the death of her friend and the absence of children playing weaves together the various kinds of losses war entails. Obvious losses—the killing or flight of loved ones—coincide with less tangible ones, including the sense that childhood innocence itself has vanished.

“Auntie Irena, my summer school teacher, is still looking out for us. She brightened up our days at the summer school, while it lasted, and now through UNICEF [United Nations International Children’s Fund], she’s managed to get us thermal underwear.”

Though the war is characterized by civil unrest—neighbors fighting neighbors—in Zlata’s circle people continue to help each other and look after one another. Support from neighbors, friends, and family keeps hope alive: Because everyone in the circle is responsible for one another, they have reason to persevere, not only for themselves but for others.

“Mimmy, I’ve noticed I don’t write to you anymore about the war or the shooting. That’s probably because I’ve become used to it. All I care about is that the shells don’t fall within 50 meters of my house, that we’ve got wood, water, and of course, electricity. I can’t believe I’ve become used to it all, but it seems I have. Whether it’s being used to it, fighting for survival, or something else, I don’t know.”

Zlata’s character grows and changes, adapting to life at war despite the discomfort and fear. While it is not a typical childhood and she has had to face horrors and shoulder the burdens of adults, she adapts and finds within herself deep resilience: a drive to persevere despite the death and loss around her.

“Even the children no longer seem like children. They’ve had their childhood taken away from them, and without it, they can’t be children. It’s as if Sarajevo is slowly dying, disappearing. Life is disappearing. So how can I feel spring when spring is something that awakens life and here there is no life, here everything seems to have died.”

Suffering an illness and the boredom and fear of a long cold winter without electricity, gas, or safety, Zlata begins to lose hope. Personifying the city, she sees only death in the shattered glass and mortar craters; the arrival of spring, usually a time of joy, is anything but. At nearly a year into the war, her resolve begins to weaken and her entries become more ruminative and dark.

“There are empty apartments, belonging to people who have left Sarajevo, and they could give the ‘homeless’ a roof over their heads but things seem to be getting complicated. Some people are being moved in, and some people moved out. They’re replacing one tragedy with another. How awful all this is. I really don’t understand a thing.”

Again, Zlata struggles to fathom the absurd predicaments brought about by the war. She is stunned by the irony that city officials would cast refugees out of homes to house other refugees, a move that she feels piles loss upon countless losses.

“It’s been a year since then, a year in which every day has been May 2. But here I am still alive and healthy, my family is alive and well, sometimes we have electricity, water, and gas, and we get the odd scrap of food. KEEP GOING. But for how long, does anyone really know?”

As a diarist, Zlata has an affinity for dates, and the anniversary of the first day of shelling is a day she cannot ignore. Considering her life over the last year, she manages to remain cautiously hopeful even while wondering how much longer she can persevere amidst the death and loss.

“Apart from the letters, we leafed through the Bosnian language dictionary. I don’t know what to say, Mimmy. Perhaps an excess of the letter ‘h’, which up until now was looked on as a spelling mistake. What’s to be done.”

An obscure reference to those outside of Bosnia, this entry refers to the division of the country by ethnicity—so total that even spelling conventions and grammatical rules become a point of contention. The letter “h” in many Bosnian words is a holdover from Ottoman times that someone felt important enough to codify during the war. To Zlata, the new dictionary is another absurdity, a “solution” that does anything but foster the only sensible thing in the world to Zlata: peace.

“Now these maps are being drawn up, separating people, and nobody asks them a thing. Those ‘kids’ really are playing around with us. Ordinary people don’t want this division, because it won’t make anybody happy—not the Serbs, not the Croats, not the Muslims. But who asks ordinary people?”

Zlata reflects on the absurdity of the ethnic hatreds prolonging the war. To her, a child who has lived in an integrated city her whole life, dividing the country by ethnicity is a fool’s errand, and her ironic reference to those in charge as “kids” conveys her frustration with the situation.

“I saw Ismar Resic. He was in love with me in fourth grade but ‘cooled off’ in fifth. He sat in front of Mirna and me. He was small, Mimmy, smaller than me, and now he’s 5’7” (100%). He’s enormous. And you should hear his voice. Deeeep! And it’s breaking, it must be puberty.”

Just as Zlata is growing, so are her classmates. In a moment unlike others in the diary, Zlata reflects on how far she and other survivors have come, growing up as they must during the war. Despite the dangers, terror, and suffering, children are maturing every day, and this chance encounter is tinged with hope; Zlata is implicitly impressed that one so small could grow so tall even under the worst of conditions.

“Letters are all I’ve got left of my friends. I read them and they take me back to my friends.”

One of the most difficult losses for Zlata is the loss of friends—both those who have died and those who have gone abroad to escape the war. One of the biggest impediments to her development as an adolescent is the lack of carefree socializing with friends, and though she has their words of encouragement in letters, the hope the words bring cannot dispel her loneliness.

“Sometimes I think it would be better if they kept shooting, so we wouldn’t find it so hard when it starts up again. This way, just as you relax, it starts up AGAIN. I am convinced now that it will never end. Because some people don’t want it to, some evil people who hate children and ordinary folk. I keep thinking that we’re alone in this hell, that nobody is thinking of us, nobody is offering us a helping hand. But there are people who are thinking and worrying about us. Yesterday the Canadian TV crew and Janine came to see how we had survived the mad shelling. That was nice of them. Really kind. And when we saw Janine was holding an armful of food, we got so sad we cried.”

In an outpouring of support, friends and even journalists visit Zlata’s family after a night of terrible shelling. While there is little they can do to help the family and the food they bring is a meager offering, the kind gesture reminds Zlata that though she often feels alone and forgotten by the powerful, there are people who care. This realization fills her with hope and gratitude.