Interview with a Balkan War Victim

Tito’s death, Milosevic’s presidency and Croatia’s independence all mounted to the Balkan war. Over 200,000 people lost their lives in what is known as the bloodiest war ever.

Marija Plavsa recalls the painful memories growing up during a war.

She smiles continuously as she introduces herself, revealing a set of perfect pearl white teeth. As she tucks her hair behind her ears, she unveils a youthful face. The lines on her face reveal no signs of struggle, and if I had not asked, I would not have guessed this 27-year-old even knew what war and suffering felt like.

Marija was born to a Serbian father and a Croatian mother in Biocic, a Serbian owned and populated village in Krajina, where she attended school, wrote and read in Cyrillic and played with other Serbian children.

This ‘brotherhood and unity’ of Yugoslavia crumbled when Biocic got bombed in February 1992. “Our life changed completely”, the smile fades from her face. Her school was bombed, as was her parent’s retail and bar business which once made them the richest family in Biocic and surrounding villages.

“Every so often, sirens would go off and everyone would run to the neighbour’s basement. There were at least 20 of us in a tiny, poorly lit room. All that kept us warm for six months was a tiny stove in the corner of the room.” As she talks, she makes little eye contact, and often stares in the distance, pausing the more she remembered. “There was nothing to do in the basement. The older generation told stories while the younger amused themselves with cards”.

As a child, she did not understand what was going on, why dead bodies surrounded her or why her mother no longer let her play in the field. She quickly learned to associate any sound of a siren with danger, people running and her mother panicking. “I would scream every time mum or dad left the house, there was always fear that they could be hit [by a grenade].”

Before the war, her father owned a grocery store while her mother manned a bar. “I would go to my father’s shop and stock up Kinder eggs and Haribo sweets”, she briefly smiles as she lights a cigarette. “When the war began, sweets became a pure luxury, they were non existent. Instead, we dipped our fingers into small pots of jam we used to occasionally get from the army and fruit was only given to us when we were ill.”

But, today, there is not a sign of resentment as Marija explains having nothing made her appreciate everything. “I remember the joy all of us kids felt when a soldier handed us a few marbles. Six of shared and cared for these marbles as if they were a pet and all my toys and dolls didn’t matter anymore”. She says the war ironically brought about unity. “We were all in one basement, nothing to do, if anyone got hold of food, it would be shared out”.

Things became bitter as the Croatian army continued to throw grenades on to the village. The whole village pointed a finger at Marija’s mother, the only Croatian there. Everyone became hostile, even the women whom she once drank Turkish coffee and gossiped with associated her as an Ustasa (Croatian nationalist). “The conditions forced my parents to divorce. Grandparents could not accept having a Croat in their home and my dad naturally sided with them.”

UNPROFOR (the United Nations Protections Force) was doing its last round of “Croatian pick ups”, around the Serbian areas of Croatia, the day Marija’s mother was forced out of the village. “I remember my mum packing my suitcase as my dad was shouting refusing to sign the papers to let me go with her. To him, I was Serbian and belonged in Biocic. It was only when mum came close to suicide that he reluctantly gave in.” Marija’s voice begins to tremble as she remembers leaving for Split, having to say goodbye to her father, “I was told I was never going to see him again and I had no sympathy from my mum.”

It was a lonely time for Marija who got bullied for having a Serbian father in Split.

She was failing in school because she could not read or write the alphabet, and was referred to as a Cetnik (Serbian nationalist) by neighbours, shopkeepers and even by the Catholic church she desperately wanted to be a part of.

“In Krajina, I was an Ustasa, but in Dalmatia, I was a Cetnik, there was no safe ground where I was just Marija Plavsa”, she says, clenching her fists to her chest, feeling of desperate to be accepted.

She now lives in London with two children and visits Croatia ever summer. It is a different place now, people have moved on from the war. “Those same people who once didn’t let me walk the streets, beg to have coffee with me.”