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SCMP Reporter

IT is difficult to talk about a normal day in Sarajevo because each day is different, depending on the shelling.

  If it is very bad - like today - I might have to get up at five in the morning and go into the cellar, which is our shelter, with my parents.

  We usually spend hours down there and I never sleep because all of us are too worried. If the shelling is not too bad I get up at about seven and brush my teeth with toothpaste that we buy on the black market.

  Then I have breakfast, which is whatever we have left from the humanitarian aid package, usually some feta cheese.

  Before the war we never had feta cheese. I had big breakfasts - eggs, ham, marmalade, milk. The last time I had an egg was about a month ago and it was bought on the black market. I was very lucky to have it because most people here have not had an egg since the war began in April 1992.

  My parents have lost weight: my father lost 25 kilos, my mother 10 kilos, but I have gained weight because I am growing up.

  After breakfast I do my homework because I can't do it in the dark at night after school and we don't have any candles.

  I am studying biology, history, maths, Bosnian language and art. My homework takes me about two hours. Then I help my mother with the chores.

  The thing that takes the most time is getting the water from the water queue; no one in Sarajevo has had running water since the war began. It takes about two hours to collect enough for the day, to wash and cook and clean a bit.

  Before the war my father was a lawyer and worked in the same building, and my mother was a chemist. They have lived in the same apartment for 20 years: it was a beautiful apartment, but now we don't have any windows left because of the shooting.

  We sleep all together in the front room, which is less exposed - my bedroom is too dangerous to sleep in. But I practise my piano in the room where my parents used to sleep.

  Everyone in Sarajevo has had to change rooms around and put up sandbags in front of windows and things like that.

  We live in a dangerous part of town - every part of Sarajevo is dangerous, but some streets are worse than others and the bridge near our house on Masarikova Street is very exposed to snipers. Also there is a Serbian artillery position above our house; so when they drop shells, they come close.

  Some days the shooting is worse than others. I've had many friends who were hurt and one of my friends, Nina, was killed. We knew each other since we were babies and she was a good friend. . . we used to play in the park together, the same park where shedied. I don't understand this war. I don't know why it started. It kills and it kills and it makes no sense.

  After the chores are done, I walk to school, which has started again. There are 30 students in my class, all my age. A lot of them lost their parents in the war and they live a tragedy. They don't cry, they don't say anything, they just try to live.

  I used to cry in the beginning of the war but now it doesn't make sense. I stay in school three hours and I like doing maths best. I also like languages. I learned English when I was four, singing songs with my mother.

  After school, I go home and eat lunch, which is rice most of the time, but sometimes beans or spaghetti. It's not spaghetti that you think of, the kind you get in a restaurant, but Sarajevo spaghetti, which is with a little tomato paste on top.

  I don't go out to play with friends in the afternoon because it's too dangerous and so many of my friends have left Sarajevo while they still could. So I either practise the piano or read.

  It gets dark earlier now but while there is still light I write in my diary. I began writing in it before the war, on December 3, 1991, and have written every day when I could about everything that happened to me: the shelling, the shooting, the neighbours.

  I write about how we got food and how cold it is in the winter, and the day that all our windows were broken. I decided to give my diary a name, like Anne Frank did, so I call her Mimmy.

  Sometimes I read back on the entries. . . like the one at the beginning of the war on April 29, 1992: ''Everyone left. I am staying here without friends.'' On May 27, I wrote: ''A slaughter! A massacre! A horror! A crime! Blood! Screams! Desperation! This is a description of Vaso Miskir Street today.''   I brought my diary to summer school and showed my teacher and she decided she would get it published. It was published here in July, and was bought by a French publisher. We signed the contract and my father typed the manuscript every day until it was finished. They say it will be published around the world.

  I write until it gets dark and then I sit with my parents in the one room. There is not much to do in the evenings. There is no electricity, so there is no music or television or lights. Candles are very expensive and we can't go out because of the shelling.

  Sometimes we talk but mostly we just sit and think. I know my parents are thinking about before the war and our house in the country which was burned down, or the vacations we took to the seaside or to Italy.

  Then we have dinner, which is usually bread and feta cheese. It's a good day if a neighbour has been able to get us some vegetables, but that is not often.

  Before the war I used to love pizza, chicken, pommes frites, sausages. Stop! That's enough talk about food.

  I go to sleep about 9pm or 10pm. In the winter I am always cold. I usually fall asleep and I like to dream about the beach or finding a place that is safe, where I don't feel scared any more.

  Sometimes I get used to being afraid. I usually sleep through the night unless there are shells and then I wake up and go into the hallway.

  If there is big shooting, I go in the cellar. Then I don't think about anything but the shooting.

 Interview by Janine di Giovanni 



A life in the shell-shocked day of Zlata Filipovic