On wars and children
This is a story that has been sitting in my “drafts” folder for a very long time. I would check on it from time to time, but I never had the courage to hit the “publish” button. It’s too personal, and it’s still too painful.
And then the war in Ukraine started. Videos that showed children suffering, sitting in shelters with their worried parents, sirens announcing airstrikes — all of that quickly brought me back to the late 90s, when I got to see it first hand. My heart broke. For the young couples just starting their married lives, for elderly who were planning to enjoy their retirement, for working people who were building their careers, for pregnant women, for patients in hospitals awaiting treatments, for soldiers and men who aren’t soldiers but still went to fight… all of their lives changed over night, without any warning. But most of all, my heart broke for the kids.
I heard that the war in Ukraine started while I was visiting my family in Serbia. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. Especially as I was sitting in the same room as 22 years ago when we got the announcement that the bombing of Belgrade will start. I remember asking my mom what does bombing mean and if they will throw bombs on our building. She said she didn’t know.
Since the late 90s, I moved to and from multiple countries, and met countless people. What most of them saw was a white woman, with a common name, Slavic sounding last name and a decent English accent. What they usually wouldn’t know is that my life, just like the lives of many of my friends from back home, is divided in two periods: before the war and after.
And before I go any further, just to make myself clear — this is not a political text. I am not discussing why and how any of these wars started. I am not exaggerating the severity of the war I experienced or diminishing the severity of other horrible wars. The point isn’t the war itself. What I want to talk about are the consequences that wars have on future generations, who should be working to make this world a better place. I have the luck and privilege to still be here and have the ability to tell the story from the perspective of a nine year old girl.
It is not an easy story to tell, but I feel like I need to, because this aspect of war is oftentimes forgotten. In the context of wars, articles that are served to us talk about death and consider the survivors and those who managed to escape lucky. And in this day and age, when the world is starting to understand that everyone experiences this life from a unique perspective, children who survived wars must not be forgotten. Their lives, that are just starting, are forever marked by this horror.
As for the 1999 bombing of Serbia — a lot of my friends and peers would tell you it was “no big deal”. That’s how we were taught to think about it. We didn’t go to school for three months, we were allowed to play with our friends outside our houses as long as there were no sirens. The sirens were sort of an air signal that was there to warn us that planes were nearby and could throw bombs anywhere, anytime. When the signal came on, regardless of where you were, you would have to run and hide in the shelter. Sometimes, it would happen in the middle of the night, so you jump out of bed and run. All the lights would have to be off as well, which would mean running down the stairs and to the shelter with a flashlight.
Sometimes, you were in the bathroom (she was my younger brother’s age and no one went to jail for her death – she was simply a war victim). Hearing the death count in the morning news along with the images of destroyed but familiar buildings was a daily routine. Understanding why and what is happening was a whole different story.
Days leading up to March 24th are when a lot of my friends start thinking about this. There are some yearly Instagram and Facebook posts involved, honoring the memory of all who died. I always remember the first air signal we heard and how my grandma didn’t want to go to the shelter. Her logic was that she already survived WWII. My brother was three years old and I remember we spent the whole night in the back seat of the car in the garage because the shelter was still not ready. I also always remember when a building less than 5 km away from our flat was bombed — the sound of destruction will never leave my head. I still get the chills when I hear fireworks.
For me, the obvious physical consequences were minimal — I only lost a lock of hair from stress and it never grew back. The less obvious ones became obvious once I moved to Germany for my doctoral thesis and later on to England with my partner. First, there is anxiety. It is always present, especially when life feels okay, because I know from experience that everything can change in a second. Then, there is jealousy. Towards peers who didn’t have to deal with this in their childhood and who remember the 90s fondly. I ask myself more often than I’d like to admit — where would we be if we didn’t have to live through this? What would our lives look like?
Lastly, there is this really strange anger that doesn’t fit my generally calm personality. Anger for every minute I lost waiting in lines to get yet another visa which would allow me to travel when I was younger or to live abroad as I got older. Anger for every “other passports” line at the borders, even in neighbouring EU countries, which is always longer and slower, because people like me need to be checked additionally. Anger because I was and remain powerless to change anything. Anger because I never did anything to “deserve” it in the first place.
Finally, I want to repeat that I am aware how privileged I was and still am, because so many other kids had it so much worse. Not only in Serbia and surrounding countries, but in countries around the world that were affected by wars in the past 20+ years. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen to name a few. I cannot imagine the horrors they experienced. I cannot imagine the horrors children in Ukraine are now experiencing.
All of us simply lost the genetic lottery. We were born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. You can google any war you want and read about reasons behind it, political and military strategies. But remember that kids who had to live through it, had no say in it and no choice. Being completely powerless, we just feel the pain. That’s a part of history that doesn’t get captured, except in numbers of survivors. And time, health and opportunities that are taken away from us will never come back. Meanwhile, the trauma stays forever.
