Among the names of genocide victims who will be buried in Potočari this year, Džemail Salihović is not there. He was killed in the genocide, and three decades later they are still searching for his remains. As a witness, in the genocide of a life interrupted, his daughter, born about twenty days after her father’s death, now stands.
The photograph is the only memory Dženana Salihović has of her father Džemail, who was killed in the genocide. She was born after the fall of Srebrenica. Three decades of her life were marked by the search for her father’s remains. For that long, Beguna’s mother has been waiting for the call – the one that will mean that the remains of her only son have finally been found.
“My daughter gave birth to my child 40 days before Srebrenica would fall, and my daughter-in-law was pregnant. She gave birth to my Dženana. Here she is, she came from America, from my son Dženan, now she turns 30 on August 2. She did not see her father with her own eyes. And they haven’t even found his bones yet. That’s the worst and I’m sorry. If only they could find, to know,” says Beguna Salihović, a victim of the genocide in Srebrenica.
She returned to her cousin’s village of Biljača to wait, she says, for her son, who was 21 years old in July 1995. He was last seen on Kamenički brdo, when he was trying to cross over to free territory together with other Srebrenica residents.
“Dzhemail has three brothers, who died, then his mother-in-law, then his family, but a child is a child. When the war broke out, he was only in the third grade of high school. He was smart, too smart.”
The beginning of 1992 brought her first loss – her husband Džemal was killed. After July 11, she remains alone again, in the hope that she will experience the moment when her son will also find final peace in Potočari.
