The woman whose letters were a beacon of light in Mostar, during 1992-1995 war

NEWS 28.07.202214:21 0 komentara
N1/Enisa Babović

The letters she wrote during the war, during the conflict between the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) in Mostar, were published by Radio Mostar. It was a hope for respected citizens and a voice of reason. The series broadcast on Mostar radio was called "Enisa's corner".

The Mostar-born Enisa Babovic said she had a wonderful childhood with her parents Abdulah and Zejna, two brothers and a sister. Raised not to hate, they carried their parents’ love throughout their lives.

She graduated from school as an excellent student, and after that, she also graduated from the Faculty of Economics.

“I thank my parents for raising us to help and to see who is a good person, not their nationality. That was the motto of our life. We met regularly at our family home where we hung out with friends,” Enisa said.

N1/Porodična kuća

Remembering the images from the beginning of the war in BiH, she said that the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) was something that there was no doubt about. “There may have been problems in the state, but there couldn’t be any in the army. That's how we're taught.”

She waited, she said, for that army, to turn its weapons on its people, which was unimaginable.

Killing of her husband and mother

“It’s the army that I trusted as a member of the League of Communists. I told myself this will stop. I lost my husband who was killed by a shell in 1992 from that army,” she said.

With her younger son, who was 15 at the time, she was in an apartment in 1993 located on the right bank of the Neretva river, across the street from the Police station. The older son previously moved with UNPROFOR to the left bank after the conflict in Vranica.

“I had no doubts until it broke. For days, I lay in bed and listened to the sounds on the street, and every car that stopped caused me such pain in my flesh because of the fear that they would come and that I would say something, and that they would kill my younger son. My entrance is in front of the Police station and there were members of the HVO in the Police station and no one asked where they were going with those people when they came to get us and our neighbours. They stuffed us like cattle and took us away. I didn’t believe that I was also on the list, they needed apartments and they took away everything. At the Catholic Church, they drove us out, shot above our heads and chased us to the left bank. When I came, I felt an incredible relief”, Enisa recalled.

N1

None of the neighbours reacted, Enisa said, perhaps out of fear. “Only Slobo Pudar, a former lieutenant colonel of the JNA and my neighbour, said: ‘Niso, come to my place.’ I didn't agree to that so that they don't do him any harm”.

“My mother was killed on September 17. For days I felt the need to write another letter and I did, seven days later she was killed by the HVO soldiers in her brother's apartment. They came thinking she was sniping. She was a bold woman and brave, she warned them. They hit her, broke her arm, threw her on the bed and killed her. The brother was taken to the camp and was there for over 300 days, and the other brother went to America at the beginning of the war,” says Enisa.

On the left bank, in the family house, neighbours gathered and talked about their tragic destinies and the inability to go and bury their loved ones due to constant HVO shelling. Enisa decided to start writing down this tragedy of the citizens of Mostar, as well as her tragedy. She called on the former neighbours not to do what they were doing, urging them that love was stronger than anything else.

Enisa's corner

“One morning I took a letter to Radio Mostar where I called people to reason in my writings. I brought a letter, and at that time the host on the radio was Alija Behram. He extended his hand to me and said ‘You are our collaborator’. I was writing, I was getting it out of me,” says Enisa.

“Isn't what's happening tragic!? Don't you think, my friend, that evil could take hold and endanger your children as well?”

This is part of one of the dozens of letters she wrote to her neighbours on the other coast.

“During the war, they didn’t contact me, but after the war, when I returned to my apartment, they behaved correctly, they would say hi. We never sat down for coffee, I didn't want them to remind me of the beautiful days, and the hell that followed. Losing a mother, a husband, waiting for children to return!? When they told me on Radio Mostar that they were publishing my letters in the column ‘Enisa's Corner,’ I wasn’t even aware of it. And the people who were exiled to the left bank were looking for a radio signal to listen to me, and that was my satisfaction for my stupid belief that it would help someone to think.”

A letter to Bill Clinton and his reply

She left with her son to live with her brother in the USA in 1994. She longed for Mostar. She needed the suffering of her fellow citizens to be heard by US President Bill Clinton.

“I wrote a letter in our language. Sent to the address. He didn't respond to anyone, but he did to me. I sent the letter before the New Year, in February 1995 I received a response,” Enisa told N1.

N1/Pismo Klintonu

She asked the President to do something definitive, and he replied that he and his team were doing everything to stop the conflict in that part of the world.

N1/Pismo Klintona Enisi

“When my son finished school and got a job at the LA Times, he paid for my ticket to return to Mostar from his first salary.”

Mostar is mine

She believes in the indivisible Mostar and unity. She said that she still sticks to that, that idea. Last night's promotion of the Radio Mostar monograph by Sanel Kajan was especially pleasing.

“Zlatko Serdarevic spoke, who mentioned me as a war collaborator, I was extremely pleased,” Enisa Babovic, a woman who was a beacon of hope for the people in the hell of war in Mostar, told N1. She later published her war letters in a book titled “Chronicle of Pain and Love”.

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