November 1992, Sarajevo. A mother in her arms holds her crying daughter in a bus heading to the Czech Republic. The photo was posted on social media a few days ago by Greek photographer Dimitris Messinis, unaware that an unusual and touching unfolding of the situation would follow. A day or two later, a comment appeared below the photo: “This is my mom and me.”
The crying three-year-old girl in the photo, almost three decades later, recognized herself. A Greek photojournalist revealed that he immediately got in touch with now 31-year-old Masa from Sarajevo, whose look in the photo was directed towards herfather, not knowing that she was actually looking at him for the last time.
At that time, she headed to the Czech Republic with her mother with the help of the Red Cross, while her father stayed in Sarajevo. He died a year later.
For the Macedonian News Agency (MIA), Messinis recalled a moment that happened 29 years ago when he took this photo.
“I remember the moment. Her father was with me then, but I didn’t know the whole story. Now, when I got in touch with Masa, she said that she was speechless, that she realized that this was the moment when she saw her father for the last time, ” told the photographer.
The very next day after talking to Masa, Messinis contacted his friend, a photojournalist from Sarajevo with whom he collaborated in 1992, asked him to print a photo, to meet this mother and daughter, and give a photo to them.
That is how the photo from November 1992, in printed form, reached the hands of Masa and her mother. The moment was taken by photographer Ademir Demiri, and the photo was published by journalist Costas Kukoumakas from the Greek edition of ”Weiss”.
Masa told “Weiss” that the existence of photography brought her a kind of feeling of liberation.
She also told that to photojournalist Messinis during the conversation.
“She told me that all this is very emotional, that the existence of a photo, now that she has it in her hands, eases her suffering,” Messinis stated for MIA.
The whole story, but also the photo of the Greek photojournalist, quickly spread on social networks in Greece, and Messinis does not rule out the possibility of meeting Masa, maybe next year.
