Talking to him made me feel better in a way that nothing else has. He offered something that no guide to living your best quarantine life, or write-up of scientists’ best predictions for the coming year, or escapist Netflix binge, or even an affection-filled group video chat could. Mr. Božović was able to tell me, more convincingly and to a more detailed degree than anything else I’ve read or heard, what we are in for emotionally. What this time will feel like and how it will change our thoughts, our behaviors, and our relationships. |
Because he has been through it. |
He was 25 and living in his mother’s apartment when the siege of Sarajevo, the mountain-ringed capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, began in April 1992. |
Hostile forces surrounded the city, cutting off its 425,000 or so residents from the outside world, intermittently terrorizing them with mortars, sniper fire and more. Sarajevo was frozen in a state of low-level violence for three years and 10 months — the longest siege in modern history. Danger lurked on every street corner. Work grew scarce. Restaurants, theaters and parks sat empty as people sheltered at home. In all, some 5,400 civilians — about 1.3 percent of the population — were killed. |
“All of a sudden the world around you has disappeared,” Mr. Božović remembered, drawing a parallel with life today. “Daily life has changed abruptly and drastically.” |
Even if violence flared only sporadically, the fear was always there, he said. Much as someone living today in New York, Milan or London might encounter death intermittently and mostly secondhand but still feel stalked by ever-present danger. |
“If you walk out on the street, you didn’t know if you were going to come back,” he said. |
But when I asked him about that time, it wasn’t fear that came to Mr. Božović’s mind. It was, to my surprise, joy. |
“When I remember the siege now, I always remember the good moments,” he said. “We had some fun. Because otherwise we would all go completely mad.” He got to know the neighbors in his apartment building. People pitched in and helped one another in ways they hadn’t during peacetime. When it was safe, he’d sneak around town to meet friends for a beer. He and his girlfriend, who was living with him in his mother’s apartment, got married there. |
One of his most cherished possessions from that time, a faded photo of him and some friends playing pool in a candlelit apartment, still sits on his mantle in Montreal, where he now lives. |
“I don’t remember being desperate,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘This is life. OK. Let’s do something with this as much as we can.’” |
Mr. Božović is not as unusual as you might think. Memoirs and testimonies from survivors of the siege often dwell on warm memories to a degree that suggests something deeper than just a desire to find moments of tolerability amid suffering. |
A variation of Mr. Božović’s pool-by-candlelight memory is nearly ubiquitous among survivors. If the electricity was working, a few family members or friends would gather to watch a movie on VHS, then debate it over coffee or beer. The pastime grew so widespread that it produced a generation of film aficionados who, once the siege lifted, made Sarajevo the home of a still-renowned film festival. I asked Mr. Božović how he found the resilience to live in the moment, how he not only survived but thrived, and what the rest of us might learn. |
His answer has stuck with me more than anything else from our conversation. For the first months, he said, he didn’t thrive and he wasn’t resilient. |
That came only once the part of him that longed for normalcy, that planned for the future, that aspired to control his circumstances had been broken. |
“It was the first winter when you realize this is going to last,” he said. “And you realize that this is your life.” |
He accepted that he could not control his circumstances, much less the forces of life and death. And he accepted that everything he associated with the word “normal” was gone; better to forget it than to pine for it. |
“It’s not that you stop hoping. You just try to make the best of the situation around you,” he continued. “It’s a gradual thing, subconsciously, it takes some time. After some time, you find yourself living. This is the way of life.” |
The danger had not receded, he said, “but at some point you stop thinking about it, and the moments you have, you try to enjoy as much as you can.” I’d heard a version of this from other survivors of wars and deadly epidemics. The political scientist Dipali Mukhopadhyay described Afghans, and herself, learning to cope with war by surrendering the sense of control — the illusion of control, really — that most of us find essential to getting through the day. |
“It’s an assumption that you have no idea how things are going to be tomorrow,” said Dr. Mukhopadhyay, “and something terrible probably happened yesterday. And that’s liberating but it’s paralyzing. It can do so many things to you.” |
Letting go of the future can be painful. Mr. Božović remembers his parents’ generation, many of whom had spent a lifetime saving for a better life, struggling with that loss. |
“My mother was sitting at home and probably crying half the time, completely desperate,” he said. “She was stuck at home for four years. Not really going out or doing anything. Partially because of the location, it was really dangerous, as soon as you get out of the house you are exposed to snipers. She had a few friends in the building that she would have coffees with. We had a dog for half of it but then the dog died. That was a big blow for my mom, when the dog died.” |
He feels the pain of isolation more today than he did during the siege, he said. He sometimes sees his son, who lives away from home, but they avoid hugging. “I even miss my dentist, of all people, probably the person I hate the most,” he joked. |
I asked him whether the changes in how he thought and felt stayed with him after the siege. Were we all going to be terrified of crowds and theaters for life? Or would we rush back gratefully to our longed-for normalcy? |
It was a question, he said, that he got often from friends in Canada. |
“Four years is a long time,” he said. “You don’t really remember what normal is. So you start building it from scratch.” |
Still, he said, the end of the siege brought a kind of euphoria. People immediately, and eagerly, embraced long-forbidden joys. A walk in the park. A packed market. |
“I really fondly remember that first year or two,” he said. |
But the anxieties he had learned in order to survive persisted. Did he find himself hesitating before stepping onto the street in front of his building, one that snipers had once made into a place of mortal peril? |
“I don’t think I walked that street for months,” he said. “That lingers, that stays, and I’m sure that’s going to be the same now.” |
Other habits stuck around longer. “Even today, we still don’t waste any food. We had been hungry for a long time. Habits change,” he said. “You change.” |
Mr. Božović’s guesses as to how we might change from the pandemic are, he stressed, just guesses. But I was still eager to hear them: He’d seen firsthand, albeit in different circumstances, which sorts of quirks and anxieties dissipate, and which ones stick around. |
“Handshakes are gone. And hugs, for a long time. But not forever,” he said. |
He said he suspected that discomfort with crowds might dampen attendance at large events, like sports games and theaters, for years to come. |
“I can’t imagine how that’s going to go back, and when,” he said. “I think that anxiety will linger for a long time, and it will change how people interact for a long time. Maybe forever.” |
Later in our conversation, Mr. Božović said that the resilience and warmth of his memories from the siege, and the euphoria that followed, while real, had masked something deeper. |
“In 2006, I fell apart. It was some kind of PTSD,” he said. “I guess after I settled down, it punished me for the past.” |
It’s possible, he conceded, that while the good memories had been real, he’d been unconsciously filtering out the bad ones. “But the bad memories are deep down,” he said. “They send you to the emergency room sometimes.” |
And that was an important lesson, too, he said: “We’re all going to live with this somehow. I don’t know how those anxieties will translate, but they’ll be there.” |
Confronting those bad memories, though, hasn’t lessened the power of the good ones for him. And that’s what most stuck with me. Mr. Božović is fully conscious of the terrible things he saw and went through. The bombed-out buildings, the endless cycles of death and mourning, the poverty and hunger. |
But he is still choosing, now as he did then, to cultivate joyful memories. That photo of the candlelit pool game is still on his mantle, and it’s still where his mind goes when you ask him about living through one of the worst conflicts of the late 20th century. |
That didn’t come cheaply for him. He had to give up on normalcy, on the future, even on control over life and death in order to cope. But, even decades later, and preparing himself to go through another prolonged period of isolation and anxiety, he feels good about how he managed to get by. And that made me feel better, too. |
“We are incredibly capable to adapt to any kind of situation,” he said. “No matter how bad it is, you adapt. You live your life as best you can.”
*** If you are in the mood to read more - I have my own connection to people from Bosnia. Iowa has a long tradition of welcoming refugees from Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. When my kids were in 1st grade, 5th grade and 8th grade, there was a wave of new students from Bosnia. We were told at the time that many of them had run from burning houses with only the clothes on their backs. Bosnian families in general did very well at settling in to the community. It's too bad that there is no way to publicize the stories of refugees being welcomed and becoming part of a diverse and reasonable community. I'm not trying to sway any opinions - but, I do feel like it is easier to understand the value of helping people rebuild their lives, if you live in a neighborhood where you see that it actually works and does not diminish the *locals.* Now go look at Chuck's snowman. And prepare for winter. |
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