A child of war in Sarajevo, Jasminko Halilovic travels from his hometown to Kyiv, Gaza and Syria to visit the bedsides of children caught up in the extreme turmoil of armed conflict. And while others, from the founders of the Red Cross to the organizers of modern humanitarian operations, shelter, feed, treat and try to heal their wounds, he delicately keeps an eye on their memories.
Halilovic was 4 years old when the siege of the Bosnian capital began in 1992 and 8 when it ended. His worst memory of those four years of war was learning from the television that 10-year-old Mirela, his "secret lover," had been killed in a city street (along with 643 other children at the time, out of the 11,541 killed during the siege). After the war, Halilovic moved on, like almost everyone else. An entrepreneur, he began working in marketing, tourism and catering at the age of 16. Ten years later, at 26, with a little money in his pocket, he wondered what he wanted to " do with [his] life."
The war may be far away, but it kept coming back. "Conversations about our childhood usually took place late at night, among friends," said the young man. Expressing that apart from rare books – notably Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo by Zlata Filipovic – children's views of the war were nowhere to be found, he launched a call for testimonials on social media, with this question: "What was childhood in war like for you?" The stories poured in, and the project became a book, War Childhood, published in Bosnian in 2013 and then translated into several languages.
The issue surrounding children's testimony does not concern historical facts. Even if their recollections are no less reliable than others, children are not necessarily aware of the context and do not always relay accurate information. On the other hand, their testimony is blatantly true in the sense that it is raw and straightforward. Children are generally unencumbered by ideology or political conviction, as in the collection of children's war drawings assembled in France by Zérane S. Girardeau's Déflagrations organization. These drawings, like the collection at Sarajevo's War Childhood Museum, represent humanity to the bone.
In War Childhood, the testimonies, no longer than a sentence, are very simple and very accurate. "My war memories are of playing with my collection of bullet casings instead of real toys" (Zana). "As they hoisted me into the ambulance, I asked my father, 'Will you be angry with me when I get home?"' (Alen). "I remember the red sky as I tried to see the stars through the window" (Minela). "I imagined a secret door behind which there would be a bulletproof room, electricity and water and even a refrigerator that was always full!" (Bruna). "Buying the sweetest creature of all, a little dog, in exchange for five packs of Drina cigarettes" (Lejla). "A flash of lightning, a bang and... Sanjin, Belma, Senad, Almir, Nihada, Velida, Sinanudin. The end of children's games, forever" (Elma).
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