Manja Lazarevic from Bosnia
with Farhad Omar of Afghanistan
U.Va. Students
"Children of War"
April 29, 2002

Farhad Omar: First of all, I thank you for caring enough to participate in our discussion about children of war and our personal experience of war. I cannot cover every detail and every memory I have about Afghanistan and war because my earliest memory and my last memory of Afghanistan is war.

My name is Farhad Omar. I was born in 1980 in Kabul City, Afghanistan. The first memory I had, or the first time in my life that I realized I was in a country of war, was when I was six years old. I lost my father during the during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when I was three years old and I recognized that, after three years, I lost my father in war.

Before 1992, war was far from inside the city and we were not connected directly with the war. But after 1992, the war came closer to us. I lived for several years in the front line in my house because there was no way to get out of the front line. I remember my first memory that I ever saw was the people killed in front of me. Once the rocket landed a half mile from my house, we had no workers or ambulances to carry these dead bodies so people had to take care of these dead bodies and take them out of the street.

When I was in fifth grade at school, I collected human bodies--women fingers with rings and a hat with a brain in it--in a wheelbarrow. We buried them in a mass grave. I remember once when we were in our living room and I heard the window in the glass break from a bullets coming through our house. I remember trying to look for the bullet and suddenly my aunt said, "I got shot." We didn't have anything to carry or get her to the hospital. She was in pain. One of our neighbors was a surgeon. I had no choice but to run to his house with tons of bullets raining all around me. Every single moment I thought, "one of these bullets will shoot me in my face." Fortunately I survived and got my neighbor. And I really appreciate him because he came out into the fighting to help my aunt.

The first memory I had was of war and the last memory I have of Afghanistan is war. I grew up, spent all my teenage years, learning the strategy of different ethnic groups in Afghanistan because we had no choice--no school, no college, no electricity for three years--we spent all of our time watching the war as fun. It changed as kind of fun to us because, as teenagers, we had nothing to do--no school, no playground, nothing. The violence and destruction that came from the war was not just violence. It also brings emotional destruction.

Even though the front line moved away from our house, it was still close enough to the city and our house. I remember when I was in high school, two jet airplanes that belonged to the Taliban regime showed up in the sky and dropped two parachute bombs. The parachute bomb is, in a military view, just for killing civilians and not for military bases or targets. Everyone came out to watch this parachute bomb coming toward us, where it would land and whom it would kill. As we focused on the sky and saw the parachute bomb coming down, no one noticed that the other one was close enough to the ground already. Suddenly I saw a huge mass of dust, debris and energy that you can see and feel coming toward you. So, I yelled for everyone to get down because I realized it was a bomb that exploded. When the smoke, dust, debris went away, we ran back to our school building and we saw our teachers. They looked like they did not have any blood in them--they lost all their color.

With all the fighting and war in Afghanistan, I had a lot of opportunities to join the military. I really appreciated my family, friends that supported me and encouraged me to be a student and get my degree at the University of Kabul.

It was very sad every single, time every single moment because you were never safe anywhere. You never knew whether or not anyone would be killed any second. In a few seconds you could say hello to someone and the next moment he is gone.

One day I was riding my bike to one of my friend's house and one of my friends called out, "hey, Farhad, how are you?" I stopped my bike to say hello to my friend. Just his simple hello saved me because a rocket landed up the street and exploded in less than a minute, killing ten people in front of me.

As I saw a lot of different groups and a lot of people dead, I know that fighting is the worst thing in the world, I think, because it is not bringing anything good except for a few good things for which you have to pay very high expenses and prices. Right now the reason why I am in the United States is not because of a fear of violence. My mother and my sister work for a non-government organization in Afghanistan to support women and ordinary Afghan people to reach their regular or daily needs. Under Taliban government, however, no one was allowed to work, especially women. My mother and my sister work as deputy directors for a non-government organization. They run a home of schools for girls, because the government will not allow girls to go to school, as a part of resistance against Taliban regime. Once the Taliban found out, we had to leave Afghanistan. I did not leave Afghanistan with a happy face but with tears and crying because I left my family over there. I was hopeless that I would never go back to my country and I would never see my grandmother or family again.

Tonight I am asking everyone here and everyone anywhere that please, with one voice, we can say to stop war, stop crime, stop violence. It is not good and for no reason why you are killing people. Thank you.

Manja Lazarevic: My name is Manja and I am from Bosnia. I lived through the civil war from 1991 to 1995. I lived in Sarajevo, which is one of the most affected towns by the war and I lived also in one of the worst parts of the town, which was by the airport.

I remember the first day that Sarajevo was occupied by the Serbian rebels. It is kind of difficult to explain, if you guys do not know, the fighting was between Muslims, Croats and Serbs and it was pretty much just their religions. Croats were Catholics, Serbs were Orthodox, and Muslims, of course, were Islam. What happened is that the Serbs pretty much took over the whole city of Sarajevo. They had the advantage of taking the National Yugoslavian Army and have all the weapons and power to take over the city and pretty much destroy it.

I remember watching the first day from a window. I was watching the airport and suddenly all these tanks started coming in. I was a little child--12 years old--and did not know what to think or what was going on. I heard my parents say that the Yugoslavian Army was coming to rescue us while the country was still in a bad economic crisis. At that moment I just heard the grenade fall down and it threw me up against the wall. I remember my dad picking me up and running everywhere. I did not know what was going on. But that was the least part of the whole experience.

Soon our whole neighborhood was getting occupied by the Serbs. They did not have mercy at all. They were occupying everything, killing everybody, killing children my age. I saw a lot of friends of mine get killed right in front of me. They were little kids and did not have anything to do--I'm sorry. It still gets to me after so many years. The whole neighborhood was just burning in flames.

Soon, my house also burned down. I remember that before my house even burned down, my mom and some other women and children went to the soldiers at the airport to protest and say, "look, we're just innocent people here. Why are you shooting at us?" And they would say that there is someone attacking us from there and we are going to destroy it. I remember his words still today--that it was going to be Code Zero: "That whole neighborhood is going to be destroyed and all of you pigs are going to die."

All we could do was just go back and try to figure out what we could do. Everything was shut off. We did not have food, transportation, electricity--nothing. So when my house started burning we were in the basement hiding and what happened is that, the smoke was coming in the basement and it was choking us. We had to get out, but it was so hard because there were so many grenades and bullets flying out. It was almost to the point where if you even put your finger out it is going to get blown up because there was so much fighting activity.

We somehow escaped and I remember running to the other house and my dad was telling me to run zigzag because maybe a sniper was going to get me. He was telling me that he was going to help me and watch me. I ran and somehow we all made it to the next house--nobody got us. I pretty much just watched my house burn down. Everything we had burned down completely. We did not even have a change of clothes. It hits you. One moment I had everything and the next I had nothing overnight. Overnight. It was just a horrifying thing to see.

When we were hiding in the basement I was counting grenades for fun: "thousand and one, thousand and two," and just hoping that one of those would not fall right in the house where we were hiding, which was very possible because all the neighborhood was in fire.

We had a little radio that we could listen to with our last batteries and I remember specifically the day they were saying the Serbs were coming and they are cutting off heads, they're raping children and kids. There were so many girls raped my age and it was so terrifying because you did not know what was going to happen. The men were trying to organize to defend themselves, but all they had was knives. They could not defend against tanks with knives.

I remember one day it was a bright day and we did not hear any sounds of grenades or anything and that is when we all got out after three months of being totally enclosed in the basement. We tried to get some flowers, even grass, to try to eat. As soon as we got out there were a bunch of people and someone must have called in because the grenades started falling. If it was not for this boy that was an inch taller than me, I would have died right there because he was right in front of me and he took the bullet in the chest. It would have been my head. I think he died because they carried him away and I have never seen a person so white. At that time a lot of people were killed and injured and I saw that right in front of my own eyes. The bodies were piling up because the medical ambulance could not come to help us out.

Not longer after that we found out that my Grandmother was killed by a grenade. She was an innocent woman. She was a very religious Muslim and a Serbian grenade pretty much tortured her.

The worst thing about me, about my situation, is that I am from a mixed marriage. My dad is a Serb and my mom is a Muslim, which is the story of so many Bosnians. Bosnia is so intermixed. Whatever idiot ever thought they could ethnically cleanse Bosnia--it is not possible. It is so intermixed. People can go against their wives or husbands because, ethically, they are so intermixed. You cannot just turn suddenly and go against everything. You have lived together for so long. Pretty much what happened was that kids like me were not accepted at all in Bosnia because I did not belong anywhere--I was neither a Serb nor a Muslim. I was just a mixed child. And the Serbian leader, I do not know if you guys know him, Carevich, said that all the kids from ethnically-mixed marriages needed to be killed because they do not belong anywhere. So, I had the fear if anyone might find out.

After finding out that my Grandmother died, it was really hard but we had to try to focus on surviving. There was no food. Our specialty was water and flour for so many months to eat. We did not have anything and were running out. Death was pretty much looking right at us. I pretty much was saying that it was coming.

My mom and I got out of Sarajevo and, luckily because my dad had a Serbian last name, we were able to go through the Serbian part. This was still the beginning when women and children were allowed to go out but we had to leave my dad. That was really hard--not knowing if I would ever see him again. And I was a daddy's little girl, so it was hard.

We pretty much just walked through the middle of the town just waiting for the sniper to hit us when we were trying to get out. Some of the Serbian soldiers were extremely awful to us. They were saying how we were pigs and how we should be shot. I seriously thought we were going to get raped because they were looking at us an making sexual comments.

It took us three days to get out of Sarayjevo because the routes were closed and everything was destroyed. It took us a long time to get out through mountains and different routes. The van broke and so we had to walk through the mountains in the mud and the cold. We were also transported with a meat transporter--a freezer--and they enclosed us in their and transported us. The driver was nice enough to open the door sometimes to let us get air and get warmed up. The meat was not in there, but it was still nasty and cold.

We got out and were at the Serbian part. This was really hard because my mom is Muslim. Not only did she have to lie about her name and where she came from, but we were treated horribly like the lowest insects. No one really cared about us or wanted to help us out.

Soon after that, my dad went through a huge, horrible cleansing in Sarajevo and he was in that neighborhood. He got shot in the leg and survived. That was actually one of the things that helped him get out from Sarajevo because, if he had not been injured, he would have had to stay and fight. The Serbs actually captured him and called him a deserter because he was not for them. Many people like that were in Bosnia. They did not consider themselves as Serbs, Muslims or Croats. They just considered themselves as being citizens or people of Yugoslavia or citizens living all together. He escaped because he was injured. That was when we met with each other. I remember the day when he came. He looked like a skeleton. I could not recognize my own dad. He had this huge injury and was barely walking with his leg. But it was a relief just to see him.

The whole outlook of the war, with these few things I have told you, is that it really was very harsh to go through these few things. First of all just the physical pain. I had glass in my body from the grenades that shattered the windows. I saw so many things. It was really hard but it was something that I think helped me also in growing up. I skipped childhood and, even to this day, I notice the things that I skipped. I miss being a kid, sometimes, because I think I missed that part because I had to grow up, realize the situation and survive. But I really learned from it and I think that this is the way that everyone should live through horrible things--you have got to keep your head up. You have got to be strong and see that you lived through this and that you are alive. I did not end up in a concentration camp, I did not end up being raped, I did not end up being killed or shot. I have got to look at it in a good way. This will just motivate me to work harder, to be the best that I can be. This will motivate me to come to the University of Virginia. I was working hard for grades, trying to play sports. It has motivated me through my whole life to say, "look, I have been through so many worse things that I am not going to let little things bother me or get me down." It has really helped me to be more patient and to be more broad about views. It has just helped me to be more determined. I really think that this experience is a valuable experiences.

We can all relate to the situation that happened with 9-11. We were all just innocent people who were attacked for no reason. You just sit there and ask, "why me? What did I do? Why do I have to go through this?" This is why it is important that we all understand what people go through and sympathize with them and, if nothing else, just be like, "we're with you." I think that the world is really involved in everything. It is important to know that one thing affects the whole world. In Bosnia, all of Europe was involved. It affects other countries, people, the mentality of people, the government, the economy--everything. I am really thankful that I came here and that people are being so generous to me. It is amazing. I really was thankful for everything and the people who are helping me learn who I am and giving me support. I also thank my boyfriend. He really helped me out a lot. And thank you guys for listening. I hope that you can learn from some of my experiences and really put it in perspective with things that you do not learn, see or experience right away. They are there. It can happen to anybody, to any country and just keep your head up . . . that is all we need to know. Thank you very much.