Hata called me and asked: Mosque, are they closing the Military Hospital?

A friend introduced me to her husband the other day, forgetting that we were in the same place last year and had met.

He looked at both of us strangely and said to me:

- Once in the hospital, I felt like hitting you with all my might. I brought a friend who was dying, and you were persistent, wouldn't let me go, and were extracting information from me about where he was wounded, but you had our favour because we saw you around the front lines.

I remembered that young man, a Vikić special forces member. With this distance in time, it couldn't have been any other way. I would have been very unhappy if I had returned with an empty tape. I felt sorry for the world not to see the killing of Sarajevo.

And I was indeed annoying, and rude, and sometimes perhaps a support. Foreign journalists hadn't yet found their rhythm, and a handful of us Sarajevo journalists, like my friends from Oslobođenje and the then Večernje novine, were frantically running around all day and night, recording every projectile that fell on the city. There is almost not a single documentary that doesn't have at least one scene I witnessed.

Epilogue, I just close my eyes, and sometimes my stomach turns because of authorial theft. But oh well. We are used to it, none of us got anything, and I am overjoyed because of it. However, tonight, for the first time, I cried over one of my stories. It was broadcast on the show Pošteno. It was made in 1992 at the Military Hospital. I remember that day. With Dr. Abdulah Nakaš, I climbed to the top and recorded the horrific truth. At the same time, cars were arriving, bringing wounded and dead citizens.

We often picked up bodies in our van, which Ivan and Hata drove. Hata, for some reason I don't know, called me Mosque instead of Arijana. It's the same today. From distant Australia, he asks: "Mosque, are they closing the Military Hospital?"

After that day, my little reports followed one after another. In the meantime, I became friends with many who worked there, and importantly, those friendships remained sincere and strong. They performed miracles, brought back lives, even made innovations like wound sealing. They were devastated and shelled almost every day, yet so dignified and humane. These are my memories, and no one can take them away. In everything else, I am fragile and helpless.

By: Arijana Saračević Helać