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Bosnia and Herzegovina
....I want them to see that I am still alive,
that they did not kill me, neither body nor soul... |
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Safeta, now 36, remembers a time when she was
young and in
love and so beautiful her husband
was worried about the looks other men gave her. When she became pregnant, she remembers thinking, her life was "perfect." Then Serbian forces attacked. |
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Her husband was doing forced labor the night militants banged on their door and threatened to kill her baby if she screamed. She recognized some of the men as neighbors and begged for mercy, but they marched her off to an abandoned house and raped her repeatedly. She still remembers the voice of the man who wore a mask.
No need to kill her, he told the others, when they were done. She will kill herself.
But she didn’t. Instead she camped out for days at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, successfully pleading for safe passage for her family and herself.
Today, Safeta and her family are marginalized even by postwar Bosnian standards. Her husband finds seasonal jobs. Safeta cleans homes and picks wild berries.
They fear the onset of winter. But the modest home she shares with her husband and her two sons exudes warmth and order. “I am a happy and cheerful woman because I have my family alive and well.” |
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