il paradiso the flight to/ from Tuzla, 2003

a multimedia installation in the bunker at Berlin Alexanderplatz
02.10.03 -.02.11.03

tapescript from audio CD in the installation:

woman's voice, (English with a Yugoslav accent)

I am from Bosnia. From Tuzla, a city in the north east of the country...
Now I have been here in Ljubljana 2 and a half not yet three years. I
am lucky I have family here, and I am studying at the university...
(pause)

Yeah, it's strange. no one really expected there would be a war. Even
in 1991 when there was the war here in Slovenia and in Croatia, we
never thought that it would happen in Bosnia which - looking back -
was really stupid! really naive... (pause)

I remember in the early 90s some people started taking sides, becom-
ing nationalists. most people still thought of themselves as Yugoslav.
My boyfriend was Bosnian Serb from Tuzla. In the course of a few
months he suddenly became really nationalistic: he started arguments
with friends of ours who were Croat.

He was my first boyfriend and we had been together since I was 16.
When we finished high school we went to Budapest together for a
week on his motorcycle. Now he was starting fights with our former
classmates, even with my parents. and we broke up….(pause)

He left Tuzla and went to Belgrade, and... I remember... he called me,
just before the war started. He said bad things would begin to happen
and he wanted me to come to Belgrade. But I didn't want to because I
felt at home in Tuzla, … in Bosnia.

At that moment I felt he was really weak. He fled and I stayed. But I
had many problems in Tuzla because of him: people still thought of
me as his girlfriend……..(pause)

Because of my good English I got a job with the ICRC as a translator.
It was difficult because at one point the Red Cross left Tuzla, because
the situation there became so bad. The city was being bombed every
day. Many refugees were flowing in… you know, now it's twice the size
it was before the war. and then after some time the red cross came
back. and I got back my old job as a translator…(pause)

I still had problems with some people, like in our building, because of
my ex-boyfriend…

My mother is Slovene, and my parents wanted to get me out of Tuzla.
So I explained my situation to the Red Cross and they arranged it for
me that I could leave. So in autumn of 1992 I got on a bus and that
was the last time I saw my home town. The bus left in the late after-
noon, and we drove a large part of the way at night without head-
lights….. (pause)

It was strange to be on the highway to Sarajevo on which I had been
on many times, we were the only ones on the road in total darkness.
The mountain sides above the highway were sometimes under enemy
control.

We left the highway and went on small roads. after a few hours the
bus stopped and we waited for the morning light. It was explained to
us that we had to walk over the mountain about ten kilometres where
another bus would be waiting for us.

Part of the highway, I guess, was too dangerous to travel on.

I remember climbing up a mountain in the morning, it was cold and
the air was fresh. some people were older and it was very difficult for
them. half way up the mountain there was a village. the people came
out to watch us, and it was rather strange…. I noticed that the village
had no electricity. there were no roads to the village…. Here I was,
perhaps only eighty kilometres from the city where I grew up. A city,
like any other in the modern world…. and here was a village out of the
17th cent. I had lived all my life in Bosnia and didn't know such places
existed. it was like another world….

.....anyway, we continued on and it got warmer...
and in the afternoon we arrived at another road where another bus
was waiting for us.

We travelled on, and then stopped for several hours. when it got dark,
the bus continued like the night before without any headlights….some-
times we were on the highway, but usually we were on small roads. It
was very strange in the morning, you know, the landscape in Bosnia
can be very beautiful... it was a strange mixture of beauty and fear...
(pause)

Several times we heard grenades falling. After the third night again
travelling, we came to Croatia and it took several hours to cross the
border…. and I remember when the bus arrived into Split. it was a
morning… and Split is a very beautiful city for me, you know... you can
smell the ocean when you come down from the mountains, and the
city is very white. and we were all very exhausted…(pause)

I had an aunt who lived in split. and I stayed with her for a few days
before going on to Ljubljana. but I'll never forget those days in split...

Of course, I had been to split many times before the war. but now
was different… Split was something really amazing at that time with
its marble old town. it was a kind of a Casablanca, you know, like in
the movie... full of refugees and foreign TV crews… and of course after
six months of living in a city that was bombed almost every day, it
was something really special to be able to walk around and know that
nothing bad would happen to me.