It is the middle of November and the time when Nura and Refija finished all the autumn works. For 22 years, the two of them were more than neighbors to each other.
Their houses are about 300 meters away in the village of Bajramovici near Srebrenica.
Since 2001, when they returned to this village after the end of the war, they have remained its only inhabitants.
Until 1992, about 200 inhabitants lived in the village of Bajramovici in about forty houses. Half were killed in the genocide in 1995, and the rest live abroad.
The remaining two residents also left the village these days – Nura Mustafic and Refija Hadzibulic.
From their family homes, they moved seven kilometers away, to the “Hatidza Mehmedovic” Center for the Elderly in Potocari near Srebrenica. The nursing home was named after the woman whose two sons and husband were killed in the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995.
‘I didn’t turn around’
“When I went to the Center in Potocari the other day, I locked the house, I put the key to the house in a handkerchief (scarf). In that handkerchief, I left my soul, my heart and everything… I wiped my teary eyes with that handkerchief and I didn’t turn around,” says Nura, who is 77 years old, adding that it was difficult for her to leave the village, the house and the family property.
‘I went through a lot’
And Refija, like Nura, talks about the sadness she felt when she left the family home in Bajramovici.
“It was difficult when I had to leave my house, but I will always return to my village,” says this 72-year-old woman.
Refija buried sons Senad and Dzevad in the Potocari Memorial Center cemetery in 2005.
The Center for the Elderly “Hatidza Mehmedovic“ was built bythe “Emmaus” International Solidarity Forum.
“We are really good here. Everyone takes care of us. A few days ago I had an eye operation in Zvornik. The staff from this Emmaus Center took me to Zvornik, took care of me, and soon I will have to operate on the other eye. That’s why now I offer these protective glasses. They say that my vision has weakened due to diabetes. And how could I not get sick from that disease when I think about all the trouble I’ve gone through… It is good that I am still alive,” said Refija Hadzibulic, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
Photo: Sadik Selimovic/RFE/RL
