This is the story of Rosa Lazarević, a local teacher who loved Žepa in a way that words cannot describe.
I will never forget the day when I first came to Žepa. The memorial plaque in honour of the fallen soldiers of BiH Army was supposed to be revealed on that day and in order to get to Slap, where everyone was meeting, we had to take a ten minute long boat ride.
Everything was done properly, they used the appropriate words and there was a moment of silence, but it was hard for me to look away from the high thumps above Žepa, a dense forest that almost embraced us and pulled us into its depths even from the still water of Drinsko Lake whose emerald-gold reflections occupied the whole view.
During the return, when we were once again embarking on the boats, I was waiting for the last one, in order to gaze at the most beautiful areas I have ever seen before for as long as possible. In the car on the way to Sarajevo I kept my eyes closed, as if I didn’t want to see anything on purpose, to keep Žepa inside me as long as possible and to remember its greenness, cleanliness and brightness for eternity. Back then I didn’t know anything about Rosa Lazarević, but when I recently talked to the Head of the Office for Hajj IZBiH, Nezim Halilović Muderris and when he told me story about her, the first thing that came to my mind, while Muderris was still talking, was the image of the shore that I didn’t want to forget. Whenever someone mentions Žepa, that image comes straight to mind.
The same thing happened fifty years ago, said Halilović, when Rosa Lazarević, one of the teachers from the local school (that used to have hundreds of students and today there are only few of them) came to the very same shore, sat next to the water, and she was sitting, and sitting, and sitting, all day long, and the night came, and she was still sitting, even after the authorities wanted to send her away from Žepa. Those who crossed that road at dawn saw her sitting motionless. Suddenly, she stood up and marched to the director.
“I will not leave Žepa alive, only when I’m dead you can take me wherever you want,” said Rosa and the director picked up his phone, and the municipality official called someone in Sarajevo and no one really knows what kind of discussion they were having, but in the end they all just shrugged and said “Let her stay”!
Even if they decided differently, Rosa would for sure have stuck to what she said. This extraordinary woman never left Žepa since she came from Banja Luka. No one knew anything about her former life, there have been some rumours of a failed marriage and even two children, but the actual truth was known only by the strict teacher.
Everything was Different with Rosa
But, while Muderris was telling his story, he wasn’t an adult man sitting in front of me, but a boy in the first grade of primary school, who was taught by Rosa, even though he wasn’t very happy about that. The other children could even play in school and their homework was not hard, but with Rosa everything was different.
“As soon as the bell rang to announce break, everyone had to stand in line, going directly to the faucet to wash our hands, no one could touch the food earlier, and after the classes were done, we had to stand in line again like a little army and climb the hills towards our villages. Rosa used to stand in front of the school building, watching us until we moved out of sight and the next day she would scold the ones who were running out of the line,” remembers Halilović, emphasizing that she was the teacher who taught the most extensive and comprehensive classes, what children, of course, don’t like.
They wanted to play on Žepa glades and groves, but how could they play with the other kids when Rosa “gave them hundreds of tasks”.
On one occasion, the children got the opportunity to choose another teacher if they wanted and Nezim raised his hand, to move to the other class. But, they needed parental approval to do that. Rosa called his father to the school.
“The father, after he was being told why he was there, in front of the whole class turned to the teacher and said, “he is not going anywhere; it’s my meat, but your bone.” This, says Halilović laughing, “Meant that Rosa had his approval to beat me as much as she wants if I’m not good.” I had to stay, that long after I realized that by the virtue of my father’s reason, I had the privilege to be taught by the woman whose students were the top achievers in the high schools and universities. Wherever we went, as soon as they heard that we’re from Žepa, we were being told: well, you must be Rosa’s student, they’re special,” tells Halilović, adding that the teacher used to send him to choose the rod to lash him when he misbehaved.
“Of course, I would choose the smallest one and Rosa would send me to bring ‘the right one,’ and punish me even more,” says Halilović, again through laughter. From him we know that Rosa Lazarević was a modest, simple woman. In her small room, above the first aid station, Halilović saw that by his own eyes, were only the most necessary things for living. Rosa’s empire was an odorous classroom, where children used to bring flowers from the meadows of Žepa. She almost always wore the same skirt that she used to wash during the night, putting it under the mattress because she didn’t even have an iron.
Postcard from Cairo
“I can still see that skirt, with its characteristic pattern, in which she was entering the houses of people, never empty-handed. She didn’t want to accept any present, not even a litre of milk, but she was coming to everyone bringing coffee and something sweet. Not even one wedding, or birthday, nothing in Žepa was happening without her. She used to come to the mosque on the 27th day of Ramadan: we knew she will sit on the bench next to the door. Us children were growing up and going away for further education. I used to send her postcards from everywhere and I still remember that when I was sending her a message, I was careful about my handwriting, trying to make it as beautiful as she was. I wrote to her even when I was studying in Cairo and the teacher was running to my parents to show them what I sent to her. She was carrying that postcard to school to show to her students, ‘here, this is from Nezim’, says Halilović.
Her students were bigger and bigger, but Rosa was diminishing, she was becoming closer to the spot she looked alike watching from the hills of Žepa on that morning long ago when she spent the night on the shores of Drina, giving the vow, and receiving the vow from Drina that they will never be apart.
The war started, and Žepa was threatened by the destiny of Srebrenica, the Serbian forces entered and convoys with people were leaving the places that from that day until today became a completely new Žepa. In one of the buses was Rosa. Although old, she couldn’t leave her children and she stopped at a village called Brgule, near Vareš, just because the highest number of people from Žepa continued to live there. Days, months and years were passing by and every human being comes to its end. Rosa was buried at the local cemetery and Nezim Halilović said about her wish, to be buried in Žepa.
“I’m sure that no one wouldn’t have any objections for Rosa to be buried at some of the family cemeteries, we owed that to this great woman,” said Nezim. I remembered his words during the days when we mark the anniversary of the sad events that happened in July 1995. I don’t know if anyone ever mentioned Rosa Lazarević, who loved Žepa in a way that words cannot describe and for which there is a proverb: There is only one way from heart to heart.
(Source: aljazeera)
