On November 18th, 1994, a Serbian sniper killed a boy from Sarajevo Nermin Divovic. On November 18th, Nermin was only seven years old, having turned seven just the day before. His mother, Dzenana Sokolovic, who was pregnant at the time, was hit first, and the same bullet then struck Nermin in the temple. In an interview, she recalled the most difficult day of her life, one that forever changed her and took two children from her in an instant.
“There was a ceasefire. I was at my mother-in-law’s house; my husband was on the frontlines at Treskavica. The school was being held in basements in Bistrik. I bathed them (Nermin and his sister Dzenita) that evening. He had just turned seven. I thought, let him stay down there with grandma, and tomorrow, God willing, we’d go slowly. Everything was fine. I dressed the children and headed out. I brought firewood to start a fire and cook something to eat. Everything was fine until we reached the Museum, and suddenly, shooting started,” Dzenana recounted.
People dropped to the ground, and her daughter managed to run across the street. Dzenana stayed behind. Nermin held on to her jacket.
“The bullet passed through me and went directly into his head. I didn’t see it happen. Then UNPROFOR soldiers, God bless them, came over. At one moment, I saw my little one lying there, but it still crossed my mind – his father always told him, ‘Nermin, when there’s shooting, lie down.’ In my fear, I thought that’s what he was doing. I was bleeding. The ambulance came. Who put me in it, how – I didn’t even know,” she said.
“Nermin was killed”
At the hospital, her eight-year-old daughter Dzenita was with her, later taken home by a neighbor. Neither Dzenana nor Dzenita knew that Nermin had died. Her husband was pulled back from the frontlines at Treskavica, but he also couldn’t muster the strength to tell her that Nermin was gone. Dzenana left the hospital on her own responsibility.
“My husband came at midnight and told me that Nermin was slightly injured in the arm and that he was there with me. But my little one was in the morgue. (…) When I got home, I saw people staring at me, but no one said anything. A neighbor, a kind woman who didn’t have children, tried to console me, but I couldn’t grasp it. I said, well, tomorrow we’ll go see the child. She said we would, but the funeral was the next day. I was sitting there, and he wasn’t coming. Then he came in, muddy, and I asked him where he had been. He said he went to a friend’s funeral. But then the neighbor gathered her courage and told me. He couldn‘t tell me, and my little girl didn’t know her brother died either. We were drinking coffee when she finally said to me, ‘Dzenana, let me tell you something. You know I don’t have children – your Nermin is gone.’ That’s when I fainted,” Dzenana recalled.
Years after the war, Nermin’s mother struggled with severe living conditions and the trauma she carried. Numerous humanitarian organizations tried to ease her life and the sorrow she had borne for thirty years.
Nermin’s innocent eyes, caught through the scope of a Serbian sniper, meant nothing more than another corpse on the streets of Sarajevo. The images captured by Spanish photographer Enric Marti traveled the world. The sight of a boy shot through the head beside a United Nations (UN) transporter, with blue-helmeted soldiers trying to help, remains one of the most harrowing records of the siege of Sarajevo.
Photographer Enric Marti tried to describe that day and give some details related to the creation of the iconic photo.
“When you live in Sarajevo, you can’t remain neutral. In Sarajevo, you see what’s happening to the people there. And then, like us… you’d drive to Pale to buy gasoline or something else. And then you’d see the Serbian positions on the hills, watching, seeing the streets, seeing the people, seeing everything. How can you remain neutral? You see, there are people up there killing the people down below. Down here are the good guys, and the bad guys are on the hills. Full stop. Are you objective? Are you neutral? No, you’re not. Just by being here, you take a side. But it’s worth asking why things are happening,” Mart said in the interview, adding:
“People who lived in Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 experienced far more trauma than I did. After all, I came here and chose to be here, for whatever reasons. But I chose this. A child born here, who had to endure shelling and everything else, didn’t choose this and carries far more trauma than I ever could.”
