Jasna Dragičević

full interview

It’s okay, it works. Hello Jasna.
Hello.

Can you introduce yourself?
Yes, so, my name is Jasna Dragičević. I was born on April 25, ‘78, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I have been living here in France for more than 25 years.

And where exactly do you live?  
I live in the [redacted] region.

Alone?
No, no, no. I live with my brother. We live together.

Did he come with you to France?  
Yes, we came together when we left our country. We both left together, all alone.

When did you leave your country?  
We left … It was at the beginning of the war. It was at the beginning … It was still the first year of conflict, in 1992. We were evacuated … I remember, I think it was either September, October ’92 and we left Bosnia, because our mother was killed during the war in Bosnia. She was killed by a sniper on the day of the Serb feast on 28 June. And after that, my brother and I lived alone in Sarajevo until we could be evacuated to get us out of Sarajevo and then cross all of Bosnia with all the difficulty of crossing a territory in the middle of the war. With two children aged 14 and 13, who are children of mixed marriages, and … To arrive in Croatia, where there was my father’s family and then fight with the French administration so that we could arrive in France where our father was waiting for us. Because my father, he wasn’t with us in Bosnia at the time of the war.

And you missed it, did you miss your father?  
I can tell you yes, of course. Already when … This tragedy had happened with our mother, well … You wanted to see the other parent, your father, and he wasn’t there. He was in Iran. That is the absurdity, I don’t know, of this situation. Already, we had been immersed in an international inter-ethnic environment for a long time. My parents are of two different ethnicities. So we, my brother and I, are the children of, said mixed marriage. And then, my father, he got this chance because he was an engineer and thanks to a company that he knew at the time, he was able to travel and worked for a French company with Bosnians in Iran, and he left in ’90. He never experienced war, my father, neither the war in Croatia, nor the war in Bosnia: no war. And I can tell you, yes, I missed him. At that time, we were kids. We were 13 and 14 years old at the time, in ’92.

What do you remember … What do you remember about your childhood before the war? When you were little?  
That’s a very good question, because when you ask me this question, it always reminds me of people who tell me about their nostalgia for their childhood. How to tell you? On the one hand, it was great because here you’re a kid, you’re just taking care of … Well you go to school, you’re going to do your homework and then you go out to play with your friends, girlfriends, whatever, but on the other hand, I also remember that we spent hours and hours waiting in line because my mother, who worked at the time for an agri-food company, UPI, has never received pay since ’88. She was getting bags of … I don’t know, potatoes, other things, but she didn’t get money. So, since there were no private shops, it was necessary to queue. It was necessary to wait three, four hours to buy one kilo of bread or a litre of oil per person. So sometimes I was waiting. Then, if I waited too long, it was my brother who replaced me and then my mother came and sometimes my mother, maybe she had to change clothes to queue again to get a second loaf. Actually, all of this happened in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, just before … the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia.  And for a while, I also remember these endless queues instead of playing with friends because maybe my parents didn’t have money because no one gave them money. The state, it was breaking up. It was a serious economic crisis and maybe it’s one of the reasons why … It pushed my father to look for a way to leave the former Yugoslavia to look for work on shipyards abroad, to be able to earn currency and have food.

So, suddenly, you, when you remember your childhood, don’t you have any particularly happy memories?  You’re talking about these queues, all this was a difficult time.
Maybe because I was a little older, because I left Bosnia at the age of 14. I was not a child, I was not a child, seven, eight years who was only playing or thinking, “What am I going to play?” I was already a teenager, so I guess I went through all the … All that a teenager goes through, those feelings, first loves, what is this world? What am I gonna do? You need to get an idea of what you want to do with your life. So I wasn’t an adult yet, but I wasn’t a child either. So I was faced with reality and became aware, perhaps, of the state of the period when we lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time, knowing that my father is of Croatian origin. My whole paternal family is in Croatia. We had really experienced the Croatian war because when Vukovar fell, they went to Osijek where my grandmother and aunt and uncle lived, and I can tell you that we had lived this war already in Croatia, whereas in Bosnia we did not think there would be a war at all. And my grandmother, aunt and uncle, they all came with their families to Sarajevo, home to be refugees. And we said, “We are the family fleeing Croatia because there is war.” And in Bosnia, everyone said, “But no, there will be no war, there will never be war.” And on the one hand, there were people who had such unconcern, “But no war will never happen to us, we are too mixed, there are too many nationalities.” And on the other hand, I lived in my family already, war and war atrocities. So … It’s not that I had only bad memories, but just before leaving the country, I experienced some rather realistic, hard things that already made me enter the adult world, despite myself, even though I was 13 … And then in ’92, I was 14 years old.

And do you remember the things you found, the ways you found to live your life as a teenage girl?  Because, I don’t know, maybe you went to concerts…  
Actually, at the time, no. Concerts no, it was — no, no, it was not possible. My mother, especially not. But with my brother or friends, we went to the movies. That was great. Maybe we had two cinemas in the city and just go, my god. Both of us, my brother and me. And then it was the time when it was MTV. So, I can tell you that at that time, we started to … It’s the appearance of videos, so we would record all the MTV shows, especially the top lists. That was great. It was necessary to catch up with the right song and then you have to record on the audio tapes. But my god, if I talk to teenagers today, or even my nephews, they don’t even understand what I’m talking about. So, no, no, no, it was great. Obviously, I lived at the time, I read, I already loved comic books at the time. So I was so fan of the time, then there were movies.

Gradually, the market opened up to … I would not say capitalism, but in fact, we felt since the early 1990s that we could have access to satellites, foreign television channels. So we’re trying to watch movies, other things. That was a teenage animation. And Bravo! Yes, I remember the German newspaper Bravo. We all went to Bascarsija to a special kiosk to buy it, because after that, you have the posters or I don’t know what with … Afterwards, you’ll say, “I got it first,” anyway. No, no, no, I had some nice moments as a teenager too (laughs). And, it was the appearance of grunge style! So I became an indisputable fan, so I had to find that clothes to dress grunge and a little metal, what. So … Which my mother did not necessarily like, but that’s it.

How do you … Did you feel the beginning of the war there, when it started, when the siege started in Sarajevo?  
My god, it’s a little while … we were a little scared. It was … We were really scared because at that time we lived, then … It was called Trg Pere Kosorica, today we call Trg Heroja, and so we lived in the towers and since our apartment and our building looked at the Grbavica stadium, and then they also looked at Vraca, the famous police school where the war in Sarajevo began, it … It scared us because we started to hear the gunfire and then, because we lived on the 15th floor, then we could see tanks, armed men on the road. We could see them out of our windows. So this is where in fact everything we heard from our uncle, our aunts, my grandmother, what was telling us, what was happening in Croatia, we lived it now.  

And you remember how you … felt at that moment when you saw that?  
It’s mostly in fact, we had to follow what our mom told us. At that time she had the first reflex: it is necessary to close the curtains, it is necessary that … Hiding, you have to, here, she began to fill the tub with water right away because she feared we would be cut off water. And most importantly, for a moment, I remember that I was really worried, because … We couldn’t go to school anymore, and I really had to take an exam. And that’s especially what upset me the most. We had our notebook that we had to get it back all the time, we had to give it to our teacher. And I had given it to my teacher and I regret today a lot because there were all my college grades in it. And in fact, in the end, from the fact that I had … The day before I had given this notebook and the war began then the next day, I was never able to find my notes again. And I remember for a moment I was obsessed, I say, “But my god, war begins, I had given the notebooks, there is an exam to pass, this is that.”

I was a little carefree, but on the one hand, I saw the armed men, I saw everyone really like pictures of a movie. There are, tanks, armed men … The bullets that, which … What do we call it? Burst with light. And I’m obsessed with my notebook and the exam I have to pass. That’s what … They’re the first … First days, first two days. And most importantly, after … Since there was an air attack alert, we had to go down to the basement and that’s where we understood that, my god, the war really starts because the basement was horrible. It was wet, it was … Oh, my god! And then we had to spend some time … During all these attacks because we were afraid, especially we were afraid we were going to be hit, since we were on the 15th floor. So, we’re really like a naked target. Yes, everyone could reach us.

Do you remember at that time, did you keep going to the movies and you kept buying magazines, watching television?
During the war?

Yes. 
No, no, it was over, overnight it was over. Because in fact, I remember the barricades started. It was at that time that the armed men appeared with the tank, then there were big demonstrations all over the city where they demanded that there is no war, the war must stop. And on the other hand, my mother, she left us both alone so she could go to work, because at one point, she was very afraid of losing the job if she didn’t go.  And she especially that. She went to Ilidza, Butmir, which … It was also barricaded, and today when I think about it, she was so reckless. Because as soon as she came home from work, there were barricades and everyone on that side could never go downtown again. So we could already have been separated from our mother at that time. And in fact, I remember my mother only said to me, “You stay home, you take care of your brother, you go out nowhere, if there are bullets, you … Like everyone else, in the basement.” Already there, my mother began to give me a great responsibility, to take care of my brother and pay attention.  

And how did you feel that, when she gave you that responsibility, were you proud, you felt you could do it, or were you a little scared maybe?  
I wasn’t thinking, ’cause …  Neither should I forget that I am a Bosnian. And from an early age, I was … I am a woman, girl already, from a young age, I was learned how to take care of the house and take care of my little brother because it is the role of the girl. Anyway, that’s another, another … Something else. But anyway, I accepted it as a duty, something I already did in the past. So it wasn’t something … But I was still scared for her. It’s mostly because at one moment, we didn’t understand what was going on. It must not be forgotten that I still had neighbors who — because everyone was talking to each other at that time — who said, “But no, nothing will happen, nothing will happen.” But my mother, she was far-sighted because we had family in Croatia who had experienced this. It was exactly the same thing. She knew that war will probably start.  

And if you want to … Do you want to talk about your mother, or do you prefer not to talk about it?  
No. Go ahead, ask me the question.

What happened the day…?  
The funny thing is that it was June 28, as I told you, it was a very important party for the Serbs, Vidovdan. It is when they celebrate the defeat of I no longer know which general in Kosovo because he had lost against the Turks. Brief. And that day, François Mitterrand arrived, landed in Sarajevo to say “everything will be fine.” And … Now, the war will stop. I only saw François Mitterrand walking in the city, in the city center in Sarajevo, greeting passers-by and … Because he came to Sarajevo, the Serbs — because at that time, from the first day of the war, there was no electricity or water anymore — but as he came, we had electricity and water and my mother, she, immediately committed herself, so “Come on, let’s go … You take the shower, you wash yourself,” she prepares to cook, so everyone tries to enjoy it.

But the problem is … As we lived on the 15th floor, the water arrived quite slowly, so it was better to get water from the basement. And my mother, she stayed with my brother to prepare him to eat for dinner.  Maybe it was in the afternoon, between … Around four, five o’clock or six o’clock, I don’t remember, but you have to know that since the war began, we didn’t sleep in our … In fact, for a few days we haven’t slept at all in our apartment because it was too … It was too risky.  We were really in front of this hill where there were all these battles. So we were sleeping in front of a neighbor’s house. And I had … Don’t forget that I was a teenager, it was a bit difficult, the relationship. Well, it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, I went to get water in the basement, and when I went up, that’s actually where I heard noise … The elevator was working, so when I got up in an elevator, I felt the other elevator coming down and I heard noises, screams, other things. And by the time I’m … I stopped on my floor, I saw a lot of neighbors on the stairs. They looked at me and I only saw my apartment, the door opened with the light and the screams, the screams of my brother. And I knew, I realized right away that there was something that happened and that’s when I went to see my brother and I was told that my mother was hit by a sniper. Anyway, I couldn’t tell you how it went, but in any case, I think her body fell on my brother. My brother must have pushed my mother’s body. And then she was still conscious. She tried to crawl to the exit and my brother screamed everywhere, for help, help, help. And that’s how the neighbors came. They grabbed her quickly to take her to the military, the Bosnian army members who were downstairs to take her to the hospital.

And that’s how the two of us stayed alone. Since we were kids, we weren’t allowed to go to the hospital and because she was shot wounded, we weren’t entitled to … Besides, they wanted to avoid us seeing her and … Then, the members of the Bosnian army came to question us about what happened, especially to ask my brother. They wanted to know where my father was, because initially some hypothesized that maybe it was my father who killed my mother, that he went to the other … On the hill, maybe he did, he killed her.

And then we had to call his colleagues from his company, the manager who was quite well known and obviously gave the guarantees that … That his employee, that is, my father, he had been in Iran for two years and then it was quite suspicious, “What a man who is not of Muslim origin going to do in Iran?”   

Anyway, all this in a frenzy not possible. And in the end, everyone tries to protect us to say everything will be fine, she was conscious when they took her, et cetera. But in fact, I think they already knew at that time, that she had fallen into a coma and died during the operation. But to us they told us that the next day. And then, when they told us. Me the first thing was a little … I was a little stunned. My brother was crying, he didn’t stop anymore. Since then, he cried, cried, cried. He was really very attached to my mother, extremely attached to my mother and I was a little stunned, but in fact the only reflex was, “You have to tell my father, you have to call my father,” and so we tried to contact his colleagues at the company so they could use satellite calls, et cetera.

Then, my father, he called his family to Croatia. Then they tried, via the Red Cross, to contact us via the radios there … Not walkie talkie, what are they called radios … You know, old-fashioned, I’ve already forgotten, they call them radios … It was used during the Second World War and it lasted in our home.

And so then I didn’t know it, but I know that then it is my paternal grandmother who, along with my other uncles who were in Croatia, who were in the Croatian army, to contact those responsible to begin our evacuation. And actually … And from there, we stayed with neighbors, we stayed … I don’t even know how many weeks, all alone. My other aunts who lived in Sarajevo could not come to join us because we were the first front line and anyone who sometimes arrived, sometimes they couldn’t even return, because either we blocked the road or we could kill you. So, we didn’t want my aunts or anyone in the family to come to us either. In Bosnia, I only have the maternal family, my father’s family is in Croatia, my mother’s family is in Bosnia, and in Sarajevo or Bijeljina where she originated. 

And then, after a few weeks, we were evacuated. A Bosnian army general, Divjak, was granted permission to exit. And with a neighbor who was working at the Ministry of the Interior at that time, she gave us passports overnight, as they say. And then she left with us and with her children, because everyone tried to find a way to evacuate at that time. And so she had agreed with my grandmother, that … She will accompany us a long way, at least until the split in Croatia where then my grandmother and paternal uncles will get me back.

Finally, no, this lady she left us towards … After Kiseljak I think she left us in Vitez. I think it was in Vitez and from Vitez, a long way … We had done it all alone. And why do I say that, “all alone”? The path itself is not important, we had taken goat paths, we’ll say. Everyone in the little van, bus, vomiting because it was horrible. I remember I was the only clear-sighted one. Everyone was vomiting, because there were too many snaky roads. There were too many turns, and I gave everybody bags to vomit, and I would empty that. I was the only one who didn’t vomit with all those people who vomited, because they couldn’t stand the trip. Brief.

But the worst thing in all of this was checkpoints. Because the problem in Bosnia … Already it was not easy to get out of occupied Sarajevo, you had to go through … How many, six checkpoints of Serbs. Then there were checkpoints … First, they were Bosniaks, then they were Serbs, six, then there were Croats, until we arrived in Kiseljak, when we left Sarajevo. But from Kiseljak it’s the same thing. So it was the Bosnians, then the Croats, then the Bosnians, the Croats. Never again came back to the Serbs because they were trying to go through territories that were more controlled by Croats and Bosniaks.

But the worst thing is that even if we had an exit authorization, the problem was our … Either our family name or it was our first name because our last name was either too Croatian or too Serbian. It depends on who the interpreter is. And our first name Jasna and Zlatko was not either Muslim enough or not Croatian enough, so in general, we always try to say, “My brother is sick, we just … they have just killed our mother,” and we try to play on our age. But despite the fact of our age, they wanted to question us. And always, second question is “how much money do you have on you?” We didn’t have any, and even if we had some, we hid it well. No one thankfully searched us and they believed us on word because my brother, it was seen on our faces that we were a bit overwhelmed when you have gunmen coming into the bus, looking at exit permits, then ask you questions, and with Kalashnikov behind, you’re overwhelmed. You will always tell the truth, even if at that time I don’t know if they saw on our faces whether we were lying or not, saying no, we didn’t have money. We had very little, but we had already spent quite a lot of money to get us out of Sarajevo. Because of course, it was … This evacuation was organized, but we had to pay the price. My brother and I think it was in Deutsche mark, but was it 2,000 Deutsche mark or not? I know that all my parents’ savings have gone into my brother’s release and me.

And when we got to Split, we all arrived alone, my aunt waited for me. She’s my aunt on my mother’s side, she is from Bosnia and then there was my uncle, my father’s twin brother and another uncle. He was one of my father’s first cousins who waited for us, who was a former senior officer of the Croatian army. So it was thanks to him that we could also cross Croatia without any problem because they had the authorizations, because, in relation to his position and then … We were able to arrive, and we stayed in Croatia anyway almost a month, because France asked for a visa application.

France was not like Germany, Austria or Sweden, which had opened borders to former Yugoslav nationals. No, it was asking for a visa application, and for a visa application, that means you must have a guarantee …  Anyway, my father, he must have managed to find ways to get us visas. And it was that in September ‘92, when we landed at Orly airport, we saw our father for the first time in a year and a few months. And what most surprised me seeing him — already he was very skinny — but it’s mostly … Her hair was completely white. He has … I think that —in relation to this whole situation, what happened with our mother and we were all alone — my father, his hair, was completely white. He was, what, 42 years old at the time. My age today.  

And it shocked you at that time then?  
Yes, it shocked me, my father … Because … It already started a little bit, it was not a black black, good, in short, it was seen, but there it was completely white. And that was mostly it, because it’s not like today, we didn’t have WhatsApp, Viber or anything else. We could at least have images, or perhaps today’s migrants who have media, rather from the 21st century. We were still in the 20th century. It was the landline phone.  Dial-up, it didn’t even exist. Wi-Fi, but what Wi-Fi? Nothing. It was … My father for us …  When he called us from Iran, we had to make the appointment during … A month before, and then he went to an I-don’t-know-what office to call us. And then we were talking about, 10 minutes together, that’s all. It was … Well, it was still ’92, it was not yet the 21st century and today’s technologies.

And do you remember how you felt when you arrived in France?  
I was extremely happy because I saw my father, because we were together. That’s happiness, because we found a relative. We were no longer considered orphans because until then we were considered orphans. We were all alone. The two of us had to fend like big ones. And at one point, you see your father, you say, “That’s it, there, Dad’s here and he’s going to take care of everything” what. It was a relief. I wasn’t looking at France as France. I looked at France as a country where my father is. And here I join him. That was the most important thing. But of course, after a few days, we went immediately to see the Eiffel Tower, we were still in France.

And what did you think, exactly, in those first weeks, the first months? What did you think of France? From [redacted]?  
Yes, I remember very well. Because in fact, I have not forgotten that my mother was killed the day François Mitterrand arrived in Sarajevo. And to crown it all, that I come to the country — I’m not saying that it was François Mitterrand who was responsible, no, but I also know that François Mitterrand, he made a statement that Bosnia and Herzegovina should not be an independent country, it had to stay in Yugoslavia because, having too many small countries is not good, in short. At the time, I did not like what he said about Bosnia, which still voted for independence.  

And on the one hand, it happens that day, so we kill our mother and now I’m in France, in this country that has not shown much … How to say, of support for Bosnia, to its fight, and because … At that time, I had already understood that France also maintained this arms embargo so that Bosnians could arm themselves to protect themselves against the Yugoslav army and paramilitaries. So, initially, it was mixed. On the one hand, you have all this beauty, this city of eternal love, of eternal light, because already, at the time, I knew what [redacted] was like. And on the other hand, I am still in a country that does not support my people and the country that … Who exactly is … Paid in blood its independence. It was pretty mixed, I’ll say.

You were a little angry, so sometimes … When you say “mixed,” sometimes you were happy, and you were also angry?
Yeah, we can say that a little, yes. On the one hand, happy because I’m safe, there’s no bombing, nothing, and on the other hand I was angry because it was … It was France, which, still openly, did not give me the support. Not to me, but to my people and my country.  

Did you think a lot about Bosnia? What was going on there, did you watch TV a lot?  
I watched TV all the time, even though I understood nothing, because at the time, when I arrived at 14, I spoke German and English. To be frank, then. And, since we arrived already in autumn, it was … The school has already begun, so we had an obligation, in France, it was compulsory, of course, compulsory schooling. Well we started much later, almost in November, December, I remember, but whatever.

I watched TV a lot and every time we saw pictures of Sarajevo because that’s mostly where there were journalists. We didn’t understand anything and we could only see the images passing through. And I was trying to keep up with that. That’s why, like at the time, we lived … We lived in a hotel in La Défense, which is still the business district of [redacted]. There were many kiosks where there were foreign newspapers, especially American or British newspapers, which they wrote much more about Bosnia than the French newspapers themselves. And that’s why actually … There were a few vendors who already knew me and they allowed me to browse newspapers, even though I was young enough, only to see if there was anything about Bosnia.

And how did you feel when you read that?  When you read what was going on etc.  Were you nostalgic?  Nostalgic it’s a big word, maybe after the war or I don’t know … How did you feel in relation to your home country?
I had a feeling of guilt. Because I went out, I’m out of this crap. I have to use that word. I am not anymore in this hell in which my family, my friends continue to live. I had left everything. Yes, I had a feeling of guilt. That’s mostly what I had. I was … It must still be borne in mind that I was 14 years old.  So, this is the age when we’re a little quick tempered, we have ideals, we want to fight, we want this. I wanted to fight for Bosnia, but I wanted to … I don’t know, but I know I was guilty. Guilt because I, now, I’m…  I’m out, there’s no more bombing. I can go to the toilet whenever I want, I can use water whenever I want, I can eat whatever I want and my family, my friends stayed and they don’t have any of that. I had huge feelings of guilt.  

Do you know when this feeling of guilt disappeared?  
With the end of the war. It’s actually … My father allowed me to go. I had just been 18 years old. It was a bit complicated because, in fact, my father was protected, a political refugee. But at the end of … a lengthy procedure, he had to appeal because OFPRA at the time did not grant it because he was born in Croatia.  There was absolutely no looking at where he had spent his life, where did he get married, where he founded his family, where he had an apartment, that is, in Bosnia, in Sarajevo.

In short, he had it, therefore, by appealing — at the time it was the Appeals Board, now it is the CDA. But then I got … I got, what’s called … a travel document at my 18 years old and … and my father allowed me because I begged him to go to Bosnia, because I wanted to see my maternal grandmother. She was the one who raised me. We knew that my mother’s family paid a heavy price during the war. They lived in Bijeljina, they were chased by the Chetniks, by the Arkans. It was horrible everything they had gone through. My uncle, he went through the concentration camp, so they were refugees in Tuzla, we knew it after, but it’s mostly that I wanted to know about my maternal grandmother, who stayed in Bijeljina all …  during … throughout the war.

In the end, my father authorized me, but on one condition, that is, he will take me to Italy, to Bari, and we agreed, my brother he will go with me. We got off, so France and Italy by car and took the transport, the boat from Bari to Split. But it was still in ’96, just after the war and when we arrived there, the Croats did not allow my brother to enter the territory, because my brother … my brother was 17 years old, he was still a minor but they were afraid he would go to Bosnia, take arms and fight … fight the Croats. In short, it was a grotesque situation.

And even if my aunt … I was allowed to … In fact, what was the problem was: I had a travel document in which it was stated that I am a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina, my father had a travel document in which it was stated that he was a refugee from Croatia, and my brother had a travel document indicating that he was a refugee from the former Yugoslavia. So we’re all members of the same family, but we have … So I was allowed to travel anywhere except in Bosnia and Herzegovina, my father in Croatia, but my brother, he had a ban on travel throughout the territory of the former Yugoslavia, from Slovenia to Macedonia.

At the time, as I was 18 years old, since my father was Croatian, I was able to have a Croatian passport, but which was for very short time. And that’s why I was able to enter Croatian territory, but not my brother because he didn’t have one. And they did not allow because they said, “He is 17 years old, he will take arms and fight the Croats.” My brother didn’t even want to go to Bosnia. He was supposed to stay in Croatia for a month, wait for me to go to Bosnia and see what’s going on and come back. But my father he was not with us, he was waiting for us in Italy because he, my father, could not enter, because he cannot enter Croatia, his country of origin. Anyway, strange situation. Fortunately, my father waited for us, still in Italy, that everything is fine because since they did not allow my brother to enter, they told him he must return. So he went back by the same boat in the night, so my father picked him up, so they went back to Paris, but I’m …  So I was in Croatia, and then, after two days in Split, I left for Bosnia. And I took the bus. And that’s actually, so we’re in ’96, we’re barely five, six months after the Dayton Accords signed in December ‘95.

You’re 18?
I’m 18 years old. And in fact, that’s where I see the state of the damage. I saw Mostar. Mostar wasn’t Mostar, it was Hiroshima. That impressed me so much. My god, they razed this city, very beautiful city, they completely razed it. But that was, obviously, always passing in Bosnia and Herzegovina I saw traces of war, because it was still recent. Mostar, my god, and then, the closer we get to Sarajevo … but my god there! There, it was … It was horror, because we really saw everything was burned, the houses burned, carcasses, tanks, cars, all military devices. And in Sarajevo, half a city destroyed, half a city destroyed including our apartment, of which our building in fact, is a … It’s a complex of four buildings, and besides, when we were … We got out of Sarajevo, so what was it? September, I don’t remember, it was September ‘92 … A few days later, our building was so bombed that everything was set on fire. So we were lucky enough to leave while it was still … And now, when I came back, I found but … Nothing, actually, I climbed to the 15th floor on foot, because … The elevators didn’t work and in fact, there were not even external walls. And in fact, between my apartment and the neighbor’s apartment, there was a huge hole of… Fighter plane shells. And then I saw the rest of the city, burnt houses, burned buildings.

Well, that was the first contact with my hometown, Sarajevo, and then I knew my grandmother was alive.  And of course, that was another procedure. So we had to come to Tuzla, another Bosnian city. As at the time, there were still peacekeepers, it was necessary to register. It was my aunt, my mother’s sister, who did everything. She registered with the Russians and Ukrainians because they were responsible for this part of Bosnia and who, then with the UN bus, we could go to Bijeljina and then it was then, with her, that I went, I went to see my grandmother.

My grandmother, when she had seen me — because for her I was a kid and now I am an adult — the first question she told me: “Did you get married?” I say, “Is that all you have to ask me as a question after four years of war?” No, but I’ve heard from her on the phone before, but this is the first time she saw me. I was so happy to find her, she was very small, she was so skinny. She was so much older. She was beautiful in face, she always looks a little young, but she was alive what … In a heap of rubbish because of the fact that she was Muslim and she stayed in this city, many … they burned a lot of her … Some, what they call it, furniture … Not furniture, how would I say? I’m trying to say, you know auxiliary houses, there’s a main house, and you always…

Cabins?
In fact, it’s an old-fashioned house, as we did in the old-fashioned way. So, you have the main house, you have the huge garden and in the garden you do … You always build a kind of small house bedroom that serves you kitchen, which serves you as a storage room.

Some kind of hut.  
Yes, we can say that. And all that was destroyed, all of it was burned to send her the message that she was a Muslim and she had to leave. So, you see this lady, in this house where I grew up, I spent quite a lot of my childhood and the rest that was completely destroyed and burned. That’s all.

So now you told me a little how you felt when you came back to Bosnia and … When you came back to France next. When you returned to France after this first time, that first return to Bosnia, what did you think then when you returned to France? Did you think, “I’m home now, here’s home”? Did you miss Bosnia, you wanted to come back?
I wanted to come back. In fact, I gave myself a mission: I absolutely wanted to do justice. And I was 18 years old, that was the time when I had to take high school diploma — because I actually arrived in France, so I was a little late for schooling because I had to learn French.

Anyway, so, I already knew I was going to study law. I absolutely wanted to do justice. Maybe I can’t take revenge by taking weapons to fight I-don’t-know-who. I couldn’t do it during the war, but in any case, I’m going to try to “get revenge” in another way, by doing justice to those who … those who lived through this war and who were the victims. I was more than sure. That was really the feeling that this trip gave me, that first contact with Bosnia, immediately after the peace agreements and contact with my family, and all that I had seen. That reinforced my feeling of wanting to go back. But maybe not return right away, but in any case to want to do justice by other means than by war or taking arms, but really by … By doing things well for people who have experienced this war.  

It’s very interesting. What exactly did you do? Have you studied law?  
Yes exactly. Because in fact, when I get here — I think most people who have experienced war — I wanted to do medicine. And as here in France, when you are in 3rd, you had to do an internship or at least be somewhere for a week, even if I did a general high school, I didn’t do professional high schools. I spent a week at the Georges Pompidou Hospital and it’s actually when I realized that here, it’s not necessarily war medicine. War medicine is in my country because it’s war. Here, this is the medicine of another type. At the time, I was mostly assigned to a department where there were elderly people and I, perhaps because I was young, I immediately wanted to help someone. I still didn’t understand that, in fact …  Healing, maybe even elderly people, at the time, it was really very, very old people … You have to relieve them, also their pain or something else, I wanted to immediately relieve someone, fix it, and “go, let’s go.”  

And so afterwards, I realized that maybe medicine is not necessarily for me. Because me, what I wanted was to learn medicine to repair. And then I was in this questioning, but it’s right after this … And then, after a while I had already had … decided that I wanted to do law, but that really reinforced my feeling and I enrolled in law and I am a lawyer today by training.  

And you worked on issues related to the Balkans and the war in Yugoslavia?  
Yes, quite. It was at the end of my master’s degree that I returned to Bosnia and worked there for international organizations. Initially, it was just working on the subject of war criminals, and then, over time, it was the destruction of the remaining weapons … that remained after the war, and then it was the fight against corruption and money-laundering. All the themes that make a problem of a country, not just Bosnia but in general, when they emerge from war. All this transition they’re going through. So, yes, on the other hand, I think I did…  I’m trying to do what I thought to myself when I was younger.  

It’s beautiful. And did you feel, precisely, that you were doing justice?  
Yes and no. Yes and no, because, in fact … I have worked for the international community that … And it was over time that I realized that perhaps the international community did not have an opinion … Fairly firm on the subject, and because you don’t necessarily have a firm policy, an exact idea of what you want to do, you can only do things half-measure. And that, for someone who wants justice, it’s not necessarily acceptable, we’re happy with that thing.

On the other hand, when I look, certainly I went back, I tried to really … to do justice as long as I could, but on the other hand, I think I did another … another process that is important to me is doing, what we call it …  mourning. Because, like I told you earlier, my mother was killed. They took the body, I never saw it except when I said, “Here, okay, I’m gonna go get some water from the basement,” that’s all, that’s the last word and it wasn’t necessarily with a kind tone, it was a bit like we had a little fight … And in fact, then we couldn’t go, and my brother and I couldn’t go to her funeral. And in fact, the fact that I returned to Bosnia, I was able to do this process, that is, knowing where her grave is, to mark every birthday, to go to the grave, clean it, do whatever it takes. And do it — make sure that I accept my mother’s grief and go over that time. That, too, was an important thing, it was my personal work — I think — on myself, now that I’ve been thinking.  I don’t think I … that I was thinking that back then, but now when I step back, I think I was doing this. And on the other hand, I was trying to participate in something that will rebuild my country and bring justice to those who needed it.  

It’s very interesting. Today, you tell me you’re working at [redacted].  
[redacted] Yes today, I am translating [redacted], and also in the medico-social field. Sometimes in prisons, sometimes … Anyway, everywhere. And I translate either my mother tongue, that is Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, but I also translate into English. I translate for asylum seekers who come from all over the world, especially from English-speaking West Africa, but it can be elsewhere too, from English-speaking Africa, English-speaking Asia. Wherever we speak English or in general, or … If people want to express themselves in English. I reflect the sufferings of people who come from around the world, who are going through — who are going through either the same events I had experienced while being small, that is, fleeing war or because of their nationality, or political opinions or religious opinions. But I also have contact with others — other categories of people who are also victims of human trafficking or sometimes really migrants because of climate change, which is another issue of the 21st century.  

Does this work allow you to … Does that give you strength? Or do you think it’s very difficult for you, as a refugee, to listen to other refugee stories? How do you see it, your role as an interpreter?
Initially — initially, it wasn’t too much trouble for me. I said to myself, “OK, I had experienced the same thing.” But over time, it starts to weigh me very heavy. Because in fact, because I translate these hard stories — because I never have anyone who comes here to France to ask for asylum because he had won the lotto or had a happy event, it’s always extremely painful things they tell — and we, interpreters, when we translate, we are forced to translate into ‘I’. Because all we are translating is recorded, and it actually helps, protection officers and all those who are then forced to listen to these interviews, to type … Also to type in ‘I’, because it is in fact the voice of applicants, the voice of migrants, asylum seekers that we translate. And the worst thing is that, in fact, I … The fact that we have to translate ‘I’ — “Yes, I got raped,” “Yes, I had to run,” “Yes, I was shot,” “Yes, I was beaten,” something else … So, by having these kinds of things translated and saying ‘I,’‘I,’‘I,’ I feel like I am reliving with them not only their suffering, but what I had experienced in the past. I’m not saying — no rape, et cetera, but this pain, this despair and that thing, now I feel like I’m not allowed to leave behind everything I had experienced during the war. Now I always come back … It turns in circles every time, everything I had … Everything I’d been through. So this work, certainly, is humanly enriching, but it is not necessarily done for former refugees, because it reminds us too much of our history. And it takes us back.

But how do you look forward today? Do you have things that allow you to look forward, passions, I don’t know … Or things you do outside of work, too?  
I don’t know. People maybe, ever since … Since … Has it been since the war or not? Anyway, they tell me a lot that I am altruistic. And it’s true that I like to help people. Nor should I forget that I am a lawyer by training, and today I feel that no matter where you live, you have to be a lawyer for everything. Because you want to have contact with the administration, you have to be a lawyer and you have to write letters. You want to go to the doctor? Certainly, you’re not … You’re sick, but at some point, you have to use legal vocabulary to search for your rights. In short, so I try to use my knowledge to help people, volunteer, who live here in France and who need, perhaps help with administration. And this is something that made me understand also that I absolutely love my job. I like the fact that I do … that I have a legal background, and I want to go back to the legal world because that’s actually, really where I feel like I can help. Certainly, as an interpreter, I am the voice of those trying to express themselves, but I as someone who had passed all these steps, I think I can contribute more by using my legal skills to help. And also, how to say … Since I had this field experience with international organizations, …], when I was in Bosnia, I know very well what is happening on the ground and … Sometimes I feel that the headquarters of these organizations are not aware of the realities on the ground.  And that’s why now I have another ambition — and that I’ve had it for a while —  is that I really want to use all this knowledge to go find work, to get into the headquarters of these organizations and absolutely try to … to introduce my experience into the policies, in the strategies of these organizations on the ground. And that’s something I want to work on. I am such an age where I think I have gained a lot of experience where I can afford to give expertise on this kind of subject. We’ll see.

So could you say in the quote, my dream today … Because that’s what you just said, no? What would your dream be today?
So this is really a difficult question. No, my dream today is indeed, it is to see people … No, my dream today is to see me use all my knowledge to help people, because I know that, at the beginning and when I arrived, I hadn’t had one. It’s sad, but maybe it’s the last word. It’s … Indeed it was extremely hard, arriving in this country not speaking the language, well it is another time, there was no internet, there was no online translators, nothing. And some people couldn’t help you because well, we can’t say that … In France … There were great people, it was thanks to some people that we were able to do a lot of things in this country, integrate, become French. But on the other hand, we always had this block of people who did not want to help us because either we did not speak the language or we were not of the same cultural background and we did not understand the codes of French society.  And that’s why I want to use all my knowledge to help those who need it.  

It’s very beautiful. You talked about it, but … Your dream before. You were talking about medicine, that’s it.  What was your dream before the war?  
Actually, I had two. Before the war broke out, I wanted to be a stewardess. Why? Because precisely, I love foreign languages and I love flying. I love to travel. I already wanted to travel. My dream wasn’t necessarily to come right away to [redacted], France, it was Cuba. I don’t know why I was obsessed with Cuba, well, anyway. And New York. Maybe it’s thanks to MTV, I don’t know. London … No, I wanted to be a stewardess, because my mother told me, “She’s the only person who speaks so many languages and travels everywhere,” perfect. I know my mother wanted me to study as a pharmacist, OK … But with war, I really wanted to do medicine and in the end it was all that happened during the war that made me understand that it is rather law for me and that — willingness to help, to bring justice to those who need it.  

Great, thank you very much Jasna.
No problem. Thanks to you, Mirza.

Yes, so, Jasna, you told me your mother was Bosnian, Muslim, right? And your father was Croatian.  Was it difficult to come from a mixed marriage?  When you were younger and maybe during the war?  Well, how … How were you perceived and how did you perceive that?  
Actually when we were kids, we loved it. Because in fact, you have Bajram, you make money, they give you cakes, and then when there was Christmas … No, not Christmas, Easter, we were given so many eggs, and … Well, my paternal grandparents, even though they were of Croatian origin, they weren’t necessarily believers. They were communists, so … But they tolerated all the holidays because the holidays were the occasion to celebrate. But it’s true that … That was in my youth. We loved it because I had two different cultures and I wasn’t even conscious, but it’s during the war when there was the sad reality, and even before, just before the war, because it started already in classes, at school, people — the students split.

“Yes, you are Bosnian, you are Serbian and you are Croatian, you are with us.” But the worst thing was during the war. Because during the war we didn’t belong to anyone, and at that time, everyone had to be ethnically clean. I was not real Muslim — because my first name Jasna and that of my brother Zlatko, they were … They were rather international, that is, they were … There were some in each of the ethnic groups.  But “Dragicevic” is either Croatian or Serbian, it depends on who interpreted it. So in the middle of the war, I had to justify myself. “Yes, Dragicevic, ah yes, my father is Croatian,” so we had to always prove, “Here, you see, so my father’s birthplace is Zagreb, so he’s not Serbian.” And then, afterwards, with the Croats, we had to prove that he is not a Serb, and then we had to prove that we are not Muslims. Why are we Muslims? Because we were born in Sarajevo. It was mind-blowing. So, we were 13, 14 years old when we became orphans. We were questioned by all the people where we come from, to find out if we will get humanitarian aid, will we have … I don’t know, the right to get out of the country? And then, at checkpoints then … During the war, we realized that, in fact, we are not a category … We don’t belong to any category, and we had actually become the common enemy of all those people who did not love each other, I mean … All because of a name and first name.  

And so you were feeling like the enemy?  
I felt excluded. I was … I wasn’t necessarily the enemy because I was a minor, at the time I was still young, but I felt excluded. And all these questions … Because it’s right away, because of the fact I was a minor, I was a kid, they focused on my father and my mother. “Ah your mother, who is a Bosnian Muslim, did your father kill him?” But my God, but … Here, these kinds of questions I thought I never had, I only had it during the war, but you have to know that it was really during the war. After the war, it’s something else. After the war, I also experienced this in Sarajevo, because … In fact, they wanted to know if I was one of those from the other side, and could my father have bombed or attacked the city? And that was hard to accept it, that’s why actually … Perhaps when I arrived I was angry against France, but it was thanks to France that I accepted my diversity. I was so proud of it, because in France I was not asked what origin I am. Of religious or ethnic origin. For them, okay, I was of foreign origin: Bosnia, Bosnia. I was not asked, “Your father this, that, et cetera.” And France … The more — the more I lived, the more I integrated, the more I had no problems in my life. Whereas in my country of origin which … I had experienced atrocities, to which I wanted to give everything because I wanted to do justice and something else, I was also blamed for my origin, my name and first name, and I know that many other children like me, who are … who are the fruit of mixed, inter-ethnic marriages, today it is quite difficult for us. Or … Either you have to choose your side, or you don’t choose it. And for me, maybe a loophole was that I became French. So for them I’m a Frenchie, right, so I’m a Frenchie, not … Well, Bosnian, with a Bosnian mother and Croatian father. No, I’m a Bosnian, that’s all.

Interesting, integration in France has allowed you to overcome the notions of identity.  
Exactly.

That’s good.  Okay, all right, thank you Jasna.
Thanks to you.