SARAJEVO-1995 Peace Project.

Once Upon a Time 

in Sarajevo 

The diary of the peace initiative to Sarajevo 

25th October to 3rd December 1995

M I N U T E S T O WA R : Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo 

Contents 

Introduction to Sarajevo 

Historical Background to the Seige 

of Sarajevo 1992-1996 

Synopsis of the Journey of the 

Peace Project to Sarajevo in 1995 

Cast of Characters of Once Upon 

a Time In Sarajevo 

The Diary of Dominic Ryan: The 

Journal of Sarajevo 26th October 

to 3rd December 1995


Introduction to Sarajevo 

Ideas are like children that take time and 

patience to be born, grow and develop. So with 

the idea of bringing a humanitarian painting and 

its message to Russia, it took a long time before 

that idea bore fruit. I had to be patient to see 

a whole series of stages complete themselves. 

Sometimes destiny is kind in its cruelty. Without 

these postponements in Moscow I would never 

have met Darja and I definitely would never have 

been inspired to step into the chaos, brutality and 

numbing suffering of a war zone. The very act of 

such events conspiring against me in Moscow had 

propelled me into a new and unknown career. 

Had everything gone to plan, if the exhibition had 

gone ahead as planned, I would have immediately 

returned to Australia and continued my life as an 

artist. But experiencing these postponements in 

Moscow helped me to understand that what I should 

do next was to bring with Darja a symbol into a war 

zone—an area that was similar to the landscape 

of the painting. Out of the Moscow exhibition, 

I understood clearly that what I was doing was 

smuggling an artwork and a message into a war 

zone. 

After Michelle and I were rendered homeless 

in Moscow, after I had met Darja, the next step 

was a natural one. I had a strong desire to attempt 

this time to bring the message of the mural into 

a new but hostile environment and let it speak to 

people. The direction that I had taken began to 

alter. Sometimes when we set out on a path and 

the direction of this path veers a couple of degrees; 

the more we walk upon this path, the greater that 

angle becomes. So what begins as a mere couple of 

degrees over time veers far away from our original 

point of departure. 

When I returned to Australia, life continued on 

in a muted fashion. I had rented a small pink wooden 

double-fronted house in Collingwood, an industrial 

suburb in the centre of Melbourne. Michelle, my 

Australian girlfriend from Moscow, was again 

living with me, having returned from Queensland. 

During this time over eight months I continued to 

correspond with Darja. The plan that we would go to 

Sarajevo was slowly mulled over in our minds. I went 

to see Tahir Gambis, an Australian-Bosnian actor, 

who was contemplating travelling to Bosnia before 

me, and who was hoping to make a film about the 

siege in Sarajevo. 

The mission for Darja as my guide and assistant 

and I, was to smuggle a humanitarian billboard, 

the image of the Millennium into Sarajevo, The 

message I wanted to incorporate with the billboard 

image was ‘We Have All Suffered Enough’. I went 

to a company called Colour Graphics in Australia 

and we created this forty-eight foot by fifteen-foot 

image which was printed on a plasticised tarpaulin. 

I rented a Hi-8 camera, and a couple of bolts and 

screw drivers. I contacted various embassies 

and after research and financial support I flew 

to Slovenia where I rendez-voused with Darja in 

Ljubljana. From there we travelled to her family’s 

house in Maribor before deciding to enter Sarajevo.


Historical Background To The Seige Of Sarajevo 1992-1996 

Yugoslavia began to disintegrate following the 

collapse of Communist regimes in other parts of 

Eastern Europe in 1989. In June 1991, the state of 

Slovenia declared its independence, closely followed 

by Croatia. 

Despite opposition from other member states in 

the European Union, Germany recognised Slovenia 

and Croatia in December 1991. Other EU countries 

followed. This had immense consequences: it left 

Yugoslavia as a Serbian-dominated rump state. 

This was intolerable for Muslims in Bosnia, who 

had lived amicably with Serbs and Croats in Bosnia 

for 40 years, and whose ideal was a multinational 

Yugoslavia, but who now faced being a vulnerable 

minority in a state ruled by Serb nationalists. 

A referendum on Bosnian independence was 

held in February 1992. The Bosnian Serbs boycotted 

it, because they did not want to be separated 

from their brethren in Serbia. Since the Muslims 

(44%) and Croats (17%) made up a majority of 

Bosnia’s population, the referendum produced an 

overwhelming vote for independence. 

In April 1992, the EU and US recognised the 

new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. War broke out 

immediately, but the Serb-controlled army had 

confiscated the weapons of its territorial defence 

forces. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were 

swept from their homes, especially along the Drina 

valley in the east of the country. 

During the next four years Bosnia would be torn 

by the bloodiest and most ruthless European conflict 

since the Second World War. The capital, Sarajevo, 

was the focus of an epic siege in which 12,000 

people were killed, including 1,600 children. 

The siege of Sarajevo began with Serbs raining 

shells on the city from hilltop positions. 

In August 1992, evidence emerged of Muslims 

in northern Bosnia being herded into concentration 

camps. These TV images led to the creation of a UN 

War Crimes Tribunal, now sitting in The Hague (the 

first international war crimes trial since Nuremberg). 

At the same time, the largest refugee movement 

in Europe since the Second World War began as 

Muslims fled to Croatia and other parts of Europe. 

‘That summer of 1992, only months after the 

Bosnian war erupted, was the darkest period in 

Europe since the Holocaust. In an orgy of murder, 

rape, detention, and eviction, the Serbs put 

hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Muslims to 

flight and seized their ancestral lands.’ Ian Traynor, 

The Guardian, 22 December 1994. 

By 1993 Serbs controlled almost two-thirds of 

Bosnia, while Croats had taken over nearly onethird. 

Evidence of massive human rights atrocities 

were discovered, including the raping of thousands 

of Muslim women and ‘ethnic cleansing’ actions by 

Serbs, especially in eastern Bosnia. In May 1993, the 

United Nations designated six UN-protected ‘safe 

areas’ in Bosnia. These were all areas that had been 

under siege by the Bosnian Serbs for some time and 

where Muslims were under threat: Sarajevo, Tuzla, 

Bihac, and three small enclaves in eastern Bosnia 

(Srebrenica, Gorazde, Zepa). UNPROFOR (UN 

Protection Force) soldiers provided limited military 

protection and humanitarian aid. 

In July 1995, Serb forces launched attacks on the 

UN safe areas in eastern Bosnia, forcing thousands 

of Muslims from their homes in Srebrenica and 

Zepa, and ‘ethnically cleansing’ areas that had been 

Muslim for generations. The men were driven out 

of the ‘safe havens’—as the UN forces watched—to 

mass execution sites in the countryside around. 

In August 1995 shells launched from Serb 

positions in the surrounding hills landed in a 

marketplace in Sarajevo killing 85 people. NATO 

finally launched massive air strikes against Bosnian 

Serb positions.


The Siege of Sarajevo 

26th October to 3rd December 1995 

In which the artist Dominic Ryan after returning to Australia meets again the 

Slovenian journalist, Darja Lebar. They decide to enter Sarajevo towards the end of the siege in 

october 1995 smuggling a humanitarian billboard carrying a message - we have all suffered 

enough into the city. After being temporarily arrested on the grounds of spying for the Serbians 

by inadvertently taking photos in a sensitive military area, with the help of the UNPROFOR 

French 4th battalion the two along with the French battalion erect the billboard in the destroyed 

House of Youth. Ryan is subsequently awarded the Liberty Prize for Human Rights in the EU. He 

returns to Australia. Forming a small voluntary group of friends who decide to continue to focus 

on conflict resolution in zones of war.


Cast of Characters: 

Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo 

DARJA LEBAR 

FUAD HADJHALOVIC 

DR JURASLAF KELLER 

OMER DELIC 

FATIMA DELIC 

BRANKO SERKOVIC 

ZOLKA or ZORAN 

MIRZA 

IGOR CAMO 

ALMIR VRPOIC 

ZJELKO 

NEVAN 

ENDIA 

RADGOVIC 

TAHIR GAMBIS 

ALMA SAHBAZ 

DAVID BALHAM 

DEBORAH 

SERGEANT MARCO ROYER 

CAPITAINE OLIVIER DEMENY 

Slovenian journalist and associate and guide for Dominic Ryan, Darja’s 

boyfriend, Ivo Standeker, died on June 17, 1992 in Sarajevo. Tanks and 

mortar shells from a Serbian position in Sarajevo injured Standeker, 

a journalist with the Slovenian magazine Mladina. Darja was a also 

wounded by sniper fire in Snipers’ alley 

Director of Gallery, ‘Collegium Artisticum’, Sarajevo 

Honorary Consul of Australia in Zagreb Croatia 

landlord of Dominic Ryan while sojourning in Sarajevo. 

Former Yugoslav Airline pilot 

wife of Omer Delic 

friend of Darja Lebar 

39-year-old photographer with magazine, SfeboneBosna 

ISCON Hare Krishna representative from Sarajevo 

composer of music for peace installation 

friend of Darja Lebar who subsequently became her husband 

friend of Almir 

tour guide and former paramilitary commander 

secretary at the Obala Centre for Art, Sarajevo 

musician, flautist and friend of Dominic Ryan 

cinematographer, human rights activist, who was making film Exile In 

Sarajevo at the time of ryan’s exhibition 

cinematographer and subsequently co-director on Exile In Sarajevo 

UNPROFOR radio and Public Relations Officer, Sarajevo 

Public Relations Officer at UNPROFOR 

UNPROFOR, Skenderija, French 4th battalion 

Public Information Officer, UNPROFOR, Skenderija, French 4th battalion


The Diary of Dominic Ryan: The Journal of Sarajevo 

26th October to 3rd December 1995 

The end is easy because a new 

chapter has just begun. After three years of siege 

the war in the Balkans has nearly ended. When it 

does end there will come an end to the countless 

slaughter of human beings. How I begin is perhaps 

more difficult. I did not come here to write this 

diary and I am not a journalist. I did not come here 

to make blood money, be a danger safari tourist or 

drink from the cup of destruction. But rather the 

Director of ‘Collegium Artisticum’, Fuad Hadjhalovic, 

who I had met in the Bosnian Embassy in Ljubljana 

had invited me to participate in the Winter Festival 

of Sarajevo. 

It is hard to trace the cause and origin of an 

event. We can return in our memories further 

into the past but always there is one point when a 

moment becomes destiny. That moment was the 

moment of the autumn of 1993 in Moscow, Russia. It 

was Perestroika, when Communism had fallen to be 

replaced by a rampant anarchy. 

I had moved to Moscow at the invitation of the 

Russian Federation of Peace and Conciliation with a 

large mural called Millennium. 

After my girlfriend Michelle and I had had 

our apartment guttered in a sudden blaze in the 

outskirts of industrial Moscow and our belongings 

left in charred ruins we were temporarily homeless. 

A chance meeting in a nightclub ‘Sexton Fondz’ 

brought a journalist into our life. Her name was 

Darja Labar who was recuperating in Moscow that 

spring. Darja was a Slovenian journalist who had 

been wounded by a sniper in 1993 in the besieged 

city of Sarajevo. She had subsequently spent three 

months in a coma recuperating in the five-star Mayo 

Clinic in Minnesota USA. 

We had decided together to design a billboard 

based on my art. The text would read, ‘We have all 

suffered enough’. The next phase would be to bring 

this message into a city under siege. I realised that 

this mission was not only to communicate through 

art but also to reach out and to give innocent people 

who were suffering, the innocent victims of war, a 

voice to speak through global media. 

Sometimes when I am inside an event I never 

realise quite the import or exciting nature of what 

is around me. Surrounded by events that seem to 

be ultra-normal they are actually extraordinary. 

Therefore even before they were to occur I realised 

that they needed to be recorded for others to share 

our journey. 

Thursday, 26th October, 1995, 

Ljubljana, Slovenia 

So I am sitting half on the chair half on the 

billboard in a dimly lit brasserie in Ljubljana on 

a high backed cane chair. It is called ‘Rum and 

Cola’ and I have just arrived, exhausted, waiting


It is a quietness that I can’t quite put my finger on and perhaps 

is the proverbial calm before the raging storm. Darja looks as if 

she has grown with the years since I last saw her in Moscow— 

for the onset of jet lag like an aerial flu. Darja has 

only recently picked me up from the Ljubljana 

airport. 4.23 pm downtown temperature 8 degrees 

centigrade in the shade and I’m thinking this coat 

with its faux leather is ridiculous… It is a sombre, 

smoked and choked zero day, and the bustling life in 

the streets of this provincial Slovenian town seems 

as if it has been plucked out of a 1950s postcard 

and re-animated…. There’s a meandering river that 

slithers snake-like through the city centre, and 

suddenly it occurred that this is a Second Paris, but 

only Paris when it was back in the 1950s—tranquil, 

serene and effervescent. 

Boulevards of pedigree trees along shady 

riverbanks, sidewalk cafés and chic restaurants. 

There is quietness and stillness in the air. The 

pedestrians seem to move as if they have this 

stiffness in their legs. 

It is a quietness that I can’t quite put my finger 

on and perhaps is the proverbial calm before the 

raging storm. Darja looks as if she has grown with 

the years since I last saw her in Moscow—9 months 

ago exactly. A handsome strong women in her late 

twenties, with chestnut brown bobbed hair cut at 

the shoulders, a double breasted military leather 

style jacket, dark glasses and a generous slash of 

bright vermilion lipstick. Her bobbed hair is always 

cut in such a way that the bullet scars beneath her 

left eye are hidden. 

I had first encountered Darja Lebar in Moscow 

eighteen months prior with my Australian girlfriend 

Michelle in a first floor night club ‘Noche Noi Klub’ 

deep in the heart of Moscow suburbia—a heavy 

metal nightclub, ‘Sexton Fonda’ with a rusted 

chicken wire cage to protect the band from the 

drunken audience throwing broken “Piva” bottles. 

Darja was originally a friend of Michelle’s at that time 

but after a succession of events catapulted the three 

of us into being together and, in some ways, I felt 

that a mysterious series of external circumstances 

were guiding us towards a new and ultimately better 

destiny. Every person I believe has a destiny or 

multiple destinies and my destiny with Darja is just 

one of those threads. It is not coincidence, it is not 

chance but an extraordinary fusion of fate with luck. 

Darja had been a reporter for the Slovenian 

journal Republika. Tanks and mortar shells from a 

Serbian position in Sarajevo killed Standeker, her 

boyfriend at the time, a journalist with the Slovenian 

magazine Mladina. Darja was also wounded by 

sniper fire in Snipers’ Alley three months later while 

covering the Sarajevo siege at its beginning while in 

the passenger seat of a taxi. A hollow point bullet 

had penetrated her cheekbone, narrowly missed her 

left eye and had moved down past her jaw shattering 

the jaw and the facial structure until it lodged itself 

at the base of her neck. Small fragments of shrapnel 

remained, undetected, lodged in her brain, which 

subsequently induced limited epileptic seizures. 

She had spent three months in a coma in the Mayo 

Clinic, a private clinic in Minnesota. When we met 

in Moscow she had only recently been released from 

the clinic to recuperate.


Darja is and was a remarkable woman—strong 

and almost military-like in a way that she walked 

and strode. She always wore one doubled breasted 

leather jacket covered in a patina of age. I think 

it had been bought in Moscow at one of those flea 

markets… Always burgundy trousers, never dresses 

and rarely makeup. Except today with that splash of 

lipstick… Our relationship is friend and colleague, 

but sometimes I feel it could be more, and she is 

here in Ljubljana now to assist me. 

As I look out across the square with its Parislike 

condiment, and the babbling of the River 

Ljubljana my mind keeps going back to Moscow 

… Even before this is to begin … how did I meet 

this women? where did it all begin…? I tell myself 

to trace it back 

Dominic, and 

maybe I can 

understand what 

model the future 

is going to present 

the two of us… 

In a Moscow of 

inflation, gangsters 

and a filthy metro, 

Michelle and my 

one bedroom 

apartment on the 

outskirts of the city had been burnt down. 

Guttered and divested of our possessions we 

were homeless… It was on my birthday, May 21, 

and the apartment was at the end of the metro 

line… Pragueshka, is the Metro zone at the end of 

the line in Moscow (in all senses I can assure this 

diary). It was a miniature cat-urine-smelling one 

bedroom apartment which felt like half-life cancer 

living there; I don’t know why. After returning from 

a celebratory birthday picnic at 4 in the afternoon, 

we discovered the apartment was obliterated by 

fire. Two wooden sticks of wood hammered as a 

cross had been nailed across the front door after the 

fire brigade had left. Seriosha, my mafia friend, had 

looked across at me, paused and then grinned from 

ear to ear and declared, ‘Happy Birthday, Dominic!’ 

Destitute with nowhere to go, our first option was 

to billet at our friend’s, the Red Soviet artist, Pasha, 

studio. A cold water flat on the other side of Moscow 

at Filiovsky Park, he tolerated us for about three 

days, two hours and twelve seconds but, because he 

had to work at the studio, we were soon back in the 

spring cold, friendless and searching for new digs. 

But Darja, Michelle’s friend who was living with 

a Brazilian interior decorator at the time, soon 

befriended us, suggesting: ‘Come and stay with me.’ 

We happily agreed. 

My memories of that time are of a chaotic 

Moscow, mud in the streets, pukh, a kind of blossom 

in the air, a clear fresh spring when we always 

played Sade’s ‘No Ordinary Love’. And here we 

lazed by the windowsills. Whenever I hear that song 

replayed, like Proust’s Madeleine, I spontaneously 

return to the nostalgic era when Darja, her Brazilian 

boyfriend, Michelle and I were sprawled in that 

apartment in the spring of 1994. 

We became as close as two couples can. But 

Darja had soon had her first epileptic seizure one 

evening when we were watching a Russian RTN 

television programme and I was visiting a friend in 

the street—Michelle saved her life, telephoning the 

ambulance and taking her to the ZILL hospital in the 

black of night. I was proud of Michelle that night. 

It was a strange, even curious time of endless 

departures and arrivals. After our sojourn with 

Darja we renovated the burnt-out flat and sadly 

returned there while Darja remained in Moscow. 

We eventually lost contact like a thread stretching 

until it broke. Six months later Michelle returned 

to Australia and, alone, trudging the weary 

Moscow boulevards one day in November 1994, 

I unexpectedly bumped into Darja in that same 

leather jacket on Novi Arbhat... We began talking 

effusively… We met two days later over espresso 

coffee and discussed the possibilities of taking a 

billboard—a facsimile of the painting Millennium 

and a humanitarian message—into Sarajevo. She 

thought it a 

good idea. It was 

inspiring and 

something we 

both felt we could 

achieve together. 

As I pen these 

memories a welltrained 

waiter 

has just bumped 

into me and my 

reverie is awoken. 

Yes, Darja is the 

catalyst for this journey. Even though my mind is 

focussed on Sarajevo as a gaol, it has arisen out of 

instinct and desire. But Darja gives me the strength 

and understanding that it is possible. The only 

person who knows the terrain, she can give me an 

added understanding of the geography, hurdles and 

challenges we are to encounter on the way. She 

speaks the language, and will be my guide, translator 

and mentor. 

Sunday, 29th October, 1995, Slovenia 

We spend the today travelling to her family 

home which lies in some forested hills on the border 

with Austria, just outside Maribor. It is a small 

country house plucked irreverently out of a fairy


tale…I keeping I thinking the Brothers Grim or 

Goldie Locks is going to skip down the slate path 

towards me… The house, where she lives with her 

aged wrinkled parents, her two brothers and their 

children live, has been recently rebuilt after being 

burnt down. This abode is serene and tucked away. 

We occasionally listen to the radio and the news 

to monitor what is happening in Sarajevo. We have 

rung on a few occasions the UNPROFOR in Zagreb 

to discover if conditions on the ground are hostile or 

not. Currently there is a limited cease-fire between 

the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims, which may 

allow us to safely travel across the demilitarised 

zone (DMZ) to reach the city of Sarajevo. 

A news report has flashed across CNN today, 

which is good. It reads: 

(CNN) -- The United Nations hopes opening 

the main road into Sarajevo will help life return 

to normal in Bosnia. Sunday, civilian buses, 

escorted by peacekeepers, made the first trip out 

of Sarajevo through Serb territory in more than 

three years. Only a fearless few turned up for the 

test ride. 

“I’m nervous. A little tense,” said one young 

woman, Emina. 

There were a dozen passengers and a 

dozen U.N. escort vehicles. Security was tight. 

Everyone was searched before boarding, and 

U.N. soldiers checked their strategy one last time 

before they left along the main road, straight 

through the Serb checkpoint. 

Darja’s idea is that we should visit the Embassy 

of Bosnia-Herzegovina tomorrow, which has 

been recently established in Ljubljana and sits in 

the southern sector of the city of Ljubljana. We 

also hope to travel there to be interviewed by 

the director of a gallery in Sarajevo, ‘Collegium 

Artisticum’ to see whether the gallery might be 

interested in exhibiting the billboard. 

Monday, 30th October, 1995, 

Ljubljana, Slovenia 

Bosnia-Herzegovina is now a new but separate 

nation-state with its representatives burrowed 

officiously here in this makeshift office Embassy 

in Ljubljana with bureaucrats zig-zagging across 

corridors holding sheaves of paper. The half light 

of the twisted shadows of the gnarled oak tree 

branches cast looming figures as oblique diagonals 

across the wide ebony desk in the Embassy Bosnia- 

Herzegovina as I rolled out the small image of the 

billboard to show the director of a museum in 

Sarajevo, Fuad Hadjhalovic. The Director of the


‘Collegium Artisticum’ is a round-faced fatherly man, with big glinting eyes that are kind, and embracing. It 

is wonderful when someone can be inspired by a message that you bring. It is not something that they see in 

terms of financial gain or economic viability. It is just simply the spirit of a message and they are taken up by 

that wave and they wish to surf it. 

In this era such events are so rare and I honour the people who can balance both the economics of their 

lives with courage and the pursuit of truth, justice, and love of the good. 

He is a thickset, burly man aged around of 55, but his appearance seems closer to the late sixties after the 

effects of a three-year siege and malnourishment—still ongoing in his hometown. Our spontaneous meeting 

as the result of a chance encounter with a mutual friend of Darja in the boulevard seemed fortuitous. Our 

meeting has occurred today at 3.36pm in the Bosnian Embassy in Ljubljana. Fuad likes the project immensely 

and with his bearish grin beams across the room at me. A smile is language enough that the project has been 

accepted. I manage to spread out the rolled up laminated image that is 20 centimetres across, as well as letters 

of introduction, as I explain the idea of bringing the forty-two by eleven foot image of war and peace entitled 

Millennium to Sarajevo. The words across it say: ‘We Have All Suffered Enough’. 

Also texts are in Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian and Russian. 

The director said: ‘Yes, Dominic, I like it, it appeals to my sensibilities, but my only concern is that words in 

Croatian and Serbian have to be excluded.’ 

I am at a loss but this is one condition that I realise has to be accepted. My dilemma is whether nothing is 

to be done or something? My original concept is to bring the humanitarian message into the middle of the DMZ 

between the two sides, the Serbians and Bosnians. But what the people at the Embassy are saying now is: ‘No.’ 

I realise they don’t want it there. It must come from their side and this is their message. As Fuad says: ‘We are 

the ones who have suffered enough.’ We left the meeting and now we must decide. 

In light of what is currently happening I agree but again I keep musing to myself—‘the message is neutral 

and its purpose is served by speaking to both sides.’ It is something akin to a neutral Red Cross message— 

humanitarian and speaks for the innocent on both sides of this conflict. But when people have suffered and


I can see below me not only the old 

and new city and the dappled almost 

medieval rooftops of Old Ljubljana and 

its surroundings, but also the moody 

marsh of Barje, and closer the green 

park Tivoli but also the Kamnik Alps in 

the north. 

have suffered at the hands of others they feel that 

they are the only victims (and in a sense they are 

predominately the victims even though acts have 

been perpetrated on Serbs), and the perspective 

is from that wound inside. Often it is a question of 

degree and sometimes injustice exists predominately 

on one side more than the other. So this is the 

dilemma I must face—either I present nothing or a 

slightly lopsided message. I must decide and yet I 

am pausing undecided as to what I must do. 

After a few hours here looking as a tourist from 

the Castle at the centre of the city I cast my eyes 

across the horizon thinking. The Castle, which 

is about a thousand years old, has been under 

reconstruction for quite a few years now, I can see 

below me not only the old and new city and the 

dappled almost medieval rooftops of Old Ljubljana 

and its surroundings, but also the moody marsh of 

Barje, and closer the green park Tivoli but also the 

Kamnik Alps in the north. 

Making my decision, I choose the latter, 

otherwise I must return with zilch. I will adjust the 

translations. Is it a compromise? Or a sell-out? I am 

not certain. 

And so, we, Darja and I mindlessly return to 

Maribor, another two and a half hours on the train 

with the locomotive’s rhythmic pulse rocking us into 

a Clockwork Orange reverie, while we brood, silent 

in our own separate worlds… This evening is serene; 

the high ravines topple past us on the train as the 

treacle golden sun is setting. After our arrival in 

Maribor as it is getting dark we roll out the billboard 

across the wet snow laden bitumen of the drive of 

her parents house across the garden patio …the 

dog sniffing it…maybe odours of Australia trapped 

in its creases. Racing with the fading light, using jet 

black paint I replace the Serbo-Croatian words with 

sticky white Letra-set images that keep being blown 

by the wind and those white Letra-set images simply 

say: ‘This is an image to the futility of war and its 

inability to solve the problems of humanity’. 

1st–4th November, 1995, Maribor, 

Slovenia 

We spend a couple of days in the city of Maribor 

collecting fragments of white Letra-set, trying to 

arrange, like a jigsaw, all the letters correctly and 

laying it out in the sunshine, snatching moments 

when there is no rain or snow. Winter is encroaching 

and we have to be fast. I can feel it in my bones… 

The city of Maribor in the north of Slovenia is 

provincial and old world. The guidebook says that 

it is considered to be a cheerful, friendly city. Some 

relate this pleasant situation to its extensive winegrowing 

regions that routinely invite visits from 

Maribor residents. These vineyards are part of the 

natural beauty of the city, along with the Pohorje 

forests, the valley of the Drava river, the Kozjak 

and the Kobansko ravines, or the Slovenske Gorice 

hills and fields at the southeast of the city. But for 

me I can only feel the wind and sleet and my mind


is focussed on another city—Sarajevo where there 

are no guidebooks or tourists or souvenirs…the only 

souvenirs we will return with our memories and 

perhaps this diary. 

Each day, we religiously ring the United Nations 

and UNPROFOR in Zagreb for news and information 

on flights for incoming and outgoing personnel, but 

all the flights are booked out. There is no room for 

a grubby hippie-artist with long hair or a wounded 

Slovenian journalist. We are priority seven. Priority 

one is refugees and UN personnel. We are trying to 

get places in an airlift that will lift us into Sarajevo 

but it seems as if there are no possibilities. We are 

continuously hitting a brick wall. Bureaucratically 

they, the voices on the other end of the telephone, 

are polite and distant, but unhelpful. 

We are playing a waiting game, and the game 

is—we are waiting to go. Not knowing what to do we 

travel to a small town on the border of Austria, to kill 

time where Darja buys woollen jumpers while I am 

carrying my video camera, which I have rented. 

Sunday, 5th of November 1995 

The time is the time to rest… a meandering 

and sedate period…and leisurely visit to some 

lakes in the south of Slovenia…. Darja’s girlfriend 

who accompanies us seems like she has a feminist 

streak…even lesbian. Some of my best friends are, 

so it’s no insult but only a gentle observation. Her 

friends from the past are no exception. We drive 

with Darja with her friend to Lake Bohinj, twentyfour 

km south west of Bled. All her friends are 

strong, masculine women, not necessary lesbian, 

although Darja did recount to me a funny story 

about this woman who was absolutely infatuated 

by her. The woman was an American journalist 

stationed in Moscow in 1994. The two of them 

used to have these pretend romances and even 

orchestrated a mock wedding at her apartment, 

at which point they were going to really take the 

plunge as they say and get legally married. Darja 

towards the end of the finale of this clandestine 

pantomime backpedalled and said: ‘No!’ 

Cold feet or a lack of enthusiasm. I recollect the 

budding bride was called Janet. Janet in any case 

was beside herself. 

At this point when Darja cancelled the wedding, 

she was due to return immediately to Slovenia. 

After boarding the plane at Shevimetizvo airport 

in Moscow the plane failed to take off. It was 

not allowed off the tarmac. The passengers sat 

dumbfounded for one hour and seemingly hostage to 

some security breach… a terrorist… a flu epidemic 

or an embargo? Darja was sitting in the aft end of 

plane when two sun glassed military personnel 

We are playing a waiting game, and the game is 

— we are waiting to go. 

strode on board. They declared to Darja ‘ There 

is someone outside waiting for you. We have been 

informed that it is a matter of life or death’ 

Darja replied ‘What?’ 

They said: ‘Can you please come with us?’ 

She gets up. With all the other passengers 

staring blankly at her, there is Janet waiting at the 

steps of the plane pretending that she has an urgent 

life saving medicine that Darja had failed to take, 

and that without it, Darja would die. 

Darja looked at her: ‘What are you doing here?’ 

Janet blushes coyly: ‘I just wanted to see you 

this one last time and this is the only way I could do 

it to say goodbye.’ 

‘Great, okay, goodbye.’ 

Darja had given Janet her telephone number and 

address in Ljubljana as she had an apartment there. 

Three weeks after Darja’s arrival in Ljubljana Janet 

appears at the front door. ‘Darja, its me. I‘m here’ 

Again Darja was learning to exercise the word: 

‘Great’. 

Although she was a good host and Janet a great 

guest, a week later her uninvited guest had to leave 

unexpectedly. Janet was pregnant to an American 

she had slept with on a one night stand in Moscow. 

She decided over the toss of a coin to keep the child 

and return back to America. Darja’s obsessed fan 

disappeared overnight. 

Monday, 6th November, 1995, 

Maribor, Zagreb 

Three days after our excursion to the Austrian 

border, the next journey will be spent by train 

travelling to Zagreb from Maribor. Zagreb will be 

an entirely different city. Compared with Zagreb in


Croatia, Slovenia has a tucked-away Swiss Toblerone 

chocolate feeling—a miniature country with hard 

working industrious people in track suits. But what 

it lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in hard work. 

An uneventful day filled with scribbled shopping 

lists written in smudged biro, chores and menial 

tasks. The errand at hand is to collect everything 

which we need for the journey: spanners, nylon 

rope, small supplies of food…Toblerone… aspirin, 

torch and batteries, cold winter jackets… bright 

ultramarine blue thermal underwear… old Slovenian 

socialist toothpaste with the cap stuck a kilter… 

boring but essential necessities. Once this has been 

completed the next is to conclude repairing the 

printed billboard. Finally after three hours and 23 

minutes with Darja and her stop watch and the dog 

sniffing both of 

us, the billboard is 

wrapped up into its 

own distinctive bag, 

curiously it appears 

like a filled body 

bag. 

There is a 

euphoric moment 

like an explosion 

of the present Now 

as Darja is standing 

beside me staring down at the huge image laid out 

across this impromptu tarmac, a MIG jet has left 

a smoke trail across the heavens above us like the 

signature of a giant, the golden sun is setting like 

treacle it is a naked and invigorating feeling. 

Tuesday, 7th November, 1995, The 

journey to Zagreb, Croatia 

Even although I am the one with the intent, 

and the finances while Darja remains my loyal guide 

I know I am ultimately lost and adrift without her. 

I am troubled because I am taking her, Darja, back 

to Sarajevo, the place where she had been shot 

in the head… perhaps I muse our journey is like 

a time bomb…it will trigger memories and issues 

she cannot envisage but ultimately may help her 

too…or are we playing with fire…it is her decision... 

I look across at her yet she doesn’t know I’m gazing 

staring stealing a person’s image in my memory…. 

Her mind-eyes-heart are elsewhere. At least I know 

that much… I don’t even believe she remembers the 

tragic and urgent last departure from that sad city. 

Thus her return will ultimately be very different. 

Each of us is travelling to meet our unknown that 

is disguised as fate or destiny or bank managers or 

bullets… and in her case she is returning to the past 

that had cut off a future she had believed would be 

trouble free. 

Perhaps this diary is more about Darja Lebar 

than Dominic Ryan. I was entering a zone of war 

with only a rented SONY hi 8 camera and few 

expectations. Darja was returning to the scene of the 

crime, which had left her disfigured and her future 

frozen in the past. By returning to face her demons 

Darja was attempting to heal the past. The city 

and the war had altered her destiny. Three months 

prior to the shooting she had been awarded the best 

journalist in Slovenia for her reportage from inside 

a city under siege. After being critically wounded 

by the sniper’s bullet she was returning for the first 

time to see the town, which had changed her life. 

Darja had lost her eye and still carried shrapnel in 

the neocortex of the her brain that could not be 

removed. 

There were moments of respite and calm before 

the storm. As the train travelled through the hills 

towards Zagreb I asked Darja: 

‘So how far do we have to go?’ 

‘Far.’ She laughed… 

‘Why are we going to Zagreb?’ 

She laughed with a bell chime to it… and 

squinted 

‘I think we have to talk about this. We have to 

have a very serious talk about this.’ 

Our arrival is 

five hours later 

with weather 

conditions: light 

rain 2°C; westerly 

wind, 2 mph; 

relative humidity: 

96%; pressure 

(mB): 1027, rising 

visibility, fog 

And that was 

it… 

The idleness 

was soon to change and the seriousness of the 

journey set in. The area around Zagreb station is 

actually a grim and Celine-like, or at least it was 

tense that morning…. We decided to walk around 

and see what we could find, and shortly found a line 

of police roadblocks in the course of being set up. 

From what we could decide, these separated us from 

the old town, and there was nothing we could do 

about it because the police are only letting residents 

in. 

In Zagreb there are old winding mountain streets 

and genuine colourful markets. Nearby in the 

embassy district leafy boulevards stretch lazily, and 

beautiful elegant women in black leather jackets 

and red stripes of lipstick sip petit coffees. The city 

is clean, beautiful, not too large, and has an electric 

feel throughout it. Zagreb is a completely different 

world to the Europe I know. It is the ornate baroque


flourishes of the buildings, of the facades. The large 

tree-lined streets coupled with images and signs 

referring to bomb shelters and warnings as a result 

of the blitzes they have recently experienced. 

Upon our arrival, Zagreb was festooned with 

the perfume of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 

Zagreb, when the streets are full with bustle and the 

knowledge that nearby a war is close—something 

that you can not tangibly touch. Inherent is the 

sense of pregnant anxiety, someone has swallowed a 

pill and they are waiting to feel its affects. The city 

was relatively benign and untouched by war. The 

journey had begun in cars, trains and buses, but 

the journey is more than travelling to the goal of an 

exhibition. It is also the places and the people we are 

to encounter during this journey. 

Since the United Nations proved a dead end, 

we had already discovered that there is one bus 

line that is ferrying people across to Sarajevo over 

300km away which had opened a few days ago. 

Economics prevails even in situations like this. So 

there are two things that we can do—find this small 

office in downtown Zagreb and buy a ticket. The 

office is shabby, down at heel; on the wall are faded 

photos of a gleaming by-gone Yugoslavia in National 

Geographic-green, scuffed and dog-eared. Old airline 

posters that are hanging at half-mast from the wall 

advertise the Greater and bygone Yugoslavia… 

Behind the formica desk, chain-smoking, there is 

a woman with bottle blond hair who has this long 

distance look about her as she puts the phone down, 

sucks on her cigarette and asks us whether it is a 

one-way ticket we want. We sit in a corner on the 

couches waiting and waiting. Finally they say there 

is a convoy leaving 

the day after 

tomorrow and it 

seems as if this is 

going to be the only 

option for us. We 

buy the ticket! 

The following 

evening we had 

a festive dinner 

with the honorary 

consul to Australia, 

Dr Keller and his 

Indian wife in the Hotel Dubrovnik. He spoke kindly 

to us. ‘You realise Dominic that you and your friend 

are travelling into a war zone. As a government 

representative I cannot forbid you to go; you are a 

free agent but as a representative of Australia I can 

only say that you will be essentially on your own. We 

cannot help you.’ 

We sit there, attentive like puppets at the dinner 

table adjusting our serviettes like a businessman plays 

with his tie… Darja, his wife, Dr Keller and myself. 

I keep on thinking and laughing, it is like Keller, 

killer. It is the synchronicity of what is happening 

seems to sort of match everything. We speak of my 

Australian Bosnian friend, Tahir Gambis. He says: ‘Oh, 

I remember Tony Gambis, I had to visit him in hospital 

as he had been wounded by tank shrapnel during 

the war in the early stages and was lying in a hospital 

unable to return to Australia.’ 

We were travelling into a zone where only 

accredited journalists and UN peacekeepers 

were permitted. In order to reach Sarajevo it 

was necessary to pass through six checkpoints. 

Documents or visas to enter Sarajevo or Bosnia were 

not required, yet the only civilians granted entry 

apart from the UN peacekeeping forces were the 

odd diplomat and now NATO. 

It is a journey into the centre of the darkness 

towards a distorted humanity. Each step towards 

this darkness is a step away from the light. I know 

such a journey will be difficult. 

These are strange days in the words of Jim 

Morrison of the Doors…surreal where again we walk 

through the streets surrounded by uncanny peace, 

laughing children, and surreal quietness. Anything 

except this is a future, which is unknown. 

Thursday, 9th November, 1995, 

Zagreb, Croatia – Split 

As the day of departure arrives—what is so weird 

is that there are other people waiting to ascend the 

steps of the bus. We are not the only ones. I assume 

always incorrectly. Bonded families returning in 

spite of the imminent threat of death. We step onto 

the greasy linoleum aisles of the bus, dragging the 

billboard like a filled body bag. Nobody even blinks. 

Once seated, I gaze down from the dirty windows 

and I notice with solemn surprise everybody: the 

passengers—the overweight scarf-covered mothers, 

babuskas and young pimply men in denim and torn 

T-shirts are silently crying. The waving bystanders 

outside are crying, and the ones leaving inside are 

crying. Little old ladies with worn duffle bags, torn 

plastic sacks, teenage boys with metal buttons


They don’t know if they will die or whether 

they will see each other ever again. 

The roads are straight, and in one instance six hours 

into this journey late at night we come across a 

petrol tanker that had jack knifed in the centre of the 

highway…or something that was spun right across 

the road, blocking our path— 

Slowly through the 

dirty bus windows the 

landscape changes. 

and she has her own fears about the life that she had, 

a life that stopped after that bullet went into her face. 

In a sense she has to return to confront that reality


We are each entering a new world 

together but each of us is alone. Her 

eyes staring out into the passing 

countryside and even though she 

is accompanying me, it is almost 

as if only her physical body is 

accompanying me and she is returning 

to a place and a time and a life which 

I don’t have any connection to. I must 

realise and respect this—that I cannot 

share her sorrows or her life. 

implanted in their lips and Metallica T-shirts—and 

I realise that it is because of the unknown, because 

these people know that maybe they will not see 

each other again. For me it is a first, for them it is 

usual. They don’t know if they will die or whether 

they will see each other ever again. 

Every moment I use to try and draw out events, 

which have occurred, on this voyage. Then a diesel 

engine coughs slyly and jolts awake… 

Slowly through the dirty bus windows the 

landscape changes. Unhurriedly the world around 

us alters. Winter becomes more established even 

though we are travelling south. We have to travel 

a roundabout route: the bus travels from Zagreb 

down to Split and then up again over Mt Igman, 

which is where the one road to get to Sarajevo lies, 

past the tunnel that used to be, and then into the 

old city of Sarajevo. 

Darja and I sit in different seats. Dominic on 

this side of the aisle; she on the other. It is on this 

journey that I start to realise that Darja is distant. 

What a fool I am…of course…how stupid can I 

be in failing to understand the obvious… We are 

each entering a new world together but each of 

us is alone. Her eyes staring out into the passing 

countryside and even though she is accompanying 

me, it is almost as if only her physical body is 

accompanying me and she is returning to a place 

and a time and a life which I don’t have any 

connection to. I must realise and respect this—that 

I cannot share her sorrows or her life. Yes, there 

is our association but our association; she has her 

own demons to confront and she has her own fears 

about the life that she had, a life that stopped after 

that bullet went into her face. In a sense she has to 

return to confront that reality and to understand 

the impact it had on her being and on her destiny. 

She is brave and strong and maybe she has, like


One lonely heroic bus with a bald headed bus driver who speaks a 

language I don’t understand with the cold staring Bosnian civilians not 

speaking, not moving, not looking anywhere but into the empty passing 

countryside… lifeless trees and villages that have been recently shelled 

pass us by like ghosts trees and phantom villages. 

Oedipus, no choice but to be this way 

She is a million miles away but she sits two 

metres from me and I must accept that we have 

become distant partners on this twisting voyage 

towards Sarajevo. 

My thoughts rallied. ‘I am here to bring a 42’ 

by 11’ image of war and peace to Sarajevo entitled 

Millennium but when I arrive, I know I cannot 

not bring myself to photograph these people. It 

will seem like stealing. To take and not to return. 

It is bad enough to take a people’s culture, even in 

images, when that is all they have, but to document 

suffering even when others have the need to have 

that suffering communicated is a difficult task. So I 

have chosen not to photograph the people. Out of 

awkwardness, shyness and an ethical point of view 

I instead will photograph the buildings. The way 

they had been destroyed by shells, the patterns and 

textures. 

The image is a large Christo-like poster, which 

I hope to be erected firstly in the House of Youth, 

or rather what is left of the House of Youth. The 

building has been bombed and reduced to rubble. 

As I understand it the building, Skenderija, is the 

equivalent of The World Trade Centre and Theatre 

complex. I am hoping that it Millennium will be 

shown in the streets of Sarajevo as a memorial and 

testament. The text reads: ‘this image is a mirror 

to the futility of war and its inability to solve the 

problems of humanity.’ 

Thursday, 9th November, 1995, Split, 

en route to Sarajevo 

It is 3.59 pm and we are travelling at 90 

kilometres an hour on the one lonely heroic bus with 

a bald headed bus driver who speaks a language 

I don’t understand with the cold staring Bosnian 

civilians not speaking, not moving, not looking 

anywhere but into the empty passing countryside… 

lifeless trees and villages that have been recently 

shelled pass us by like ghosts trees and phantom 

villages. While we are travelling into afternoon dusk 

and then the clumsy inky night…. eventually to our 

goal… pointing towards Sarajevo. The countryside 

passes us by in grey pastel snatches like someone 

handing out old tired postcards of Bavarian forests, 

which are taken away before you can see the full 

image. The roads are straight, and in one instance 

six hours into this journey late at night we come 

across a petrol tanker that had jack knifed in the 

centre of the highway…or something that was spun 

right across the road, blocking our path—an auto 

accident actually. 

Twenty minutes later into our trip we pass 

through villages which are just shells of rubble, 

broken with only one or two buildings that have 

any form of occupancy. Whole villages pass us by 

which are razed, with burnt, living rooms and empty 

windows. Like the eyes of the passengers so are


And the silence inside the cabin here 

is palpable… the silence amongst the 

passengers is deafening… 

the windows as we pass… It is a face that has been 

blinded. The houses are mere shells with nothing 

inside them. And the silence inside the cabin here 

is palpable… the silence amongst the passengers 

is deafening… Just as I’m getting used to this eerie 

silence the bus driver slips in a cassette…the music 

is worse… ranging from Croatian equivalents of 

Tom Jones crooning Croat hits from the past three 

decades to the euro-trash Abba. 

Each village has fifteen, twenty houses and in 

each village three quarters of the houses are left 

razed to the ground. It has emptiness, a fear and 

it was as if we have stepped into this fairyland and 

the whole land has been caged by an evil spell from 

a wicked warlock. A sickness has passed across the 

earth. None of us can avoid that sickness. And now 

the sickness is spreading to become part of us. 

My thoughts are alone and I gravitate back 

to Zagreb. Curious but our honorary consul Dr 

Keller had never been to Australia. He was the 

honorary consul but he had never visited Australia. 

It was as though he was an armchair traveller who 

geographically loved our country but had never 

visited. He is the representative of Australia out of 

his love for what it represented. He was not paid for 

his position and I honoured him for his voluntary 

nature of what he did. The buildings passed by, 

one by one—burnt-out desiccated shells like dead 

prehistoric animals with their rib cages showing. 

Split on the Adriatic coast—we arrive after 

twelve hours. A thirty-five minute stopover. We 

barely have time to urinate. Above our heads there is 

a black starless night while we are aching and tired. 

I slept sporadically backwards and forwards and 

have been reading a dog-eared book on the Turin 

shroud. Half read like an unfinished meal, it would 

remain undigested. Split is Croatia’s second largest 

city and it has a haphazard, hyper-electric ambience. 

It has a main street lined with derelict cafes facing 

the sea with a Roman palace behind it. I have heard


news that the western powers are making ideas to protect Split, in order to let the humanitarian aid coming 

in without problems. I have that feeling that nobody really knows what is going on. In Split, there is no war; in 

Split for months, only refugees. 

Here Darja takes me by the hand, almost tentatively like a child asking her father to come and see a new 

wild zoo animal… imploring me. ‘We must see this!’ To witness and view these incredible series of marble 

temples in Split. I suddenly realise as if I didn’t already know, that I am travelling. Moments of serendipity when 

suddenly we pinch ourselves and cry ‘my God!’ 

It is a moment of inexplicable awe gazing at the Roman architecture with its patina of history and time like 

a singing aura. It is still and breathless. No wind…here but for the echoes of the footsteps on the marble tiles 

while boys and couples linger, kissing and giggling against Doric columns. There is moist warmth in the air 

maybe because we are further south. There is no snow. Spotlights illuminate the architecture and then I hear 

someone shouting to us to return quickly to the buses on the final leg of the journey—the journey towards 

Sarajevo. 

We travel into the night. I wake up and all I see is muddy walls surrounding us and lines of horrific broken 

barbwire. We stop for what seems two hours at a checkpoint. There are muffled voices of people who are 

speaking in languages I don’t understand. No passports are requested. Nobody cares; we are not passing 

through countries or across borders but rather into the dangerous unknown… We are stepping into a world of 

anarchy, suffering and injustice. 

Friday, 10th November, 1995, Crossing over from Mt Igman into Sarajevo 

There are blurred mages of the charcoal night passing us, dashing spotlights blinding our eyes and then 

disappearing. More disturbing barbed wire and burst sand bags, and a half demolished tank appear. Upon 

awakening I notice that we are now in a convoy pushing slowly across Mt Igman. It is 7.00 am in the morning as 

the day dawns, I yawn myself awake. I feel greasy and unwashed like the windows. We pass a metal drop-gate 

in red and white like a barber’s pole. Here there is a rickety command post with stacked containers to create 

a wall, and camouflaged non-demarcated soldiers are squatting beside it mumbling into a walkie talkie—no 

insignias… I can’t tell if they are Serb or Muslim…just dirty stained khaki. One soldier gets in and sits with two 

oily Kalashnikovs on his knees and a thousand yard stare. Meanwhile these two personnel carriers, one at the 

front and one at the back escort the bus. An AA round will go through a hard metal chassis bus like a burning 

poker through margarine. 

Travelling at twenty-three kilometres an hour, the bus skips potholes, rolling like a ship in a force 8 gale, as 

we edge up and then down, in waving ribbons, along Mt Igman. 

As we descend the sausage-shaped mountain, the snow-sprinkled valley of Sarajevo becomes gradually 

apparent. Sarajevo is a city that sits in a fat bowl of a valley with a mountain range that completely surrounds 

it—a perfect circle of terror. It is the ideal position for an attacking force because the Serbian paramilitary have 

surrounded the besieged city which is trapped in the basin, a position most difficult to defend—and from an 

attacker’s perspective they can remain unseen indefinitely, their artillery punctuating the high ridge. A million 

shells have rained upon this one town. And for the people living here it is like being in a fishbowl and people 

killing fish for sport while a world looks on. 

Sarajevo lies at the bottom of this basin where the Bosnians lie under siege, and on the rim of the basin all 

these Serbians with tanks shelling the city. The former Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitary have stationed 

themselves on this mountainside. On the outer perimeter of the city is the dead zone, where there are just 

burnt-out houses. 

Mt Igman had a thin covering of snow-like icing sugar. The bus drove down into the basin slowly, almost 

lazily with the convoy, as we went through the snow. It was the first snow since Split that I had seen. There is 

television up front on the bus, which is playing the most curious karate-style movies with Bosnian sub titles. 

Darja is asleep nodding with the roll of the bus into her scumbled leather jacket on the seat opposite 

me. So we drive through the suburb of Butmir, which has been all but destroyed by the fighting there. The 

first buildings as we enter the cities outskirts look haggard and run down. We pass the outskirts of the new 

embattled city where there are large brutalised housing commission buildings—a cheese grater has gone 

through them, slicing them up indiscriminately. 

Sarajevo is not a simple city. It has been documented and yet not observed enough. Battalions of journalists 

have descended upon Sarajevo like vultures to a dying animal to document its suffering, its massacres, and 

then, taking their spoils of war, they leave. I wonder if I am any better? Did they give anything of themselves to 

these people? To live off the sufferings of others I cannot do. I am not so sure now how I can help the suffering


of others with this image and project, but at the very least I am not seeking to exploit or profit from it. 

We soon leave the Muslim suburb of Dobrina which has been destroyed - with only the shells of houses 

remaining. Only 50 meters away, the Serb forces are poised in their positions, with their AA guns, which fall 

under the limit set by the heavy weapons exclusion zone. 

We pass across the airport tarmac and into Doboj, but we must wait 35 minutes before we are waved 

through. There is safe passage. Doboj has already been destroyed by the Serbs. These were apartment blocks 

built for the Olympics. We passed a large wall of destroyed automobiles, vans and buses which had been formed 

like bricks as sniper shields. 

We finally turned onto Snipers’ Alley which runs from Sarajevo’s suburbs into the centre of town. In 1992 a 

car could drive this road at 120 kilometres an hour but today we were slower and there was limited pedestrian 

traffic. 

After our arrival my first feelings are of numbness across the knuckles. I am hauling the billboard in the bag 

on the rollers through the snow-covered ice, slipping and sliding. Swearing castrated oaths under my breath, 

Darja striding ahead going from hotel to hotel. Darja marching with this military step and me in pursuit. We go 

to the Hotel Bosnia but its achingly too expensive or simply overpriced… Hotel Grands, then Europa Garni are 

closed… everything is closed up except the Holiday Inn… INFAMOUS DURING THE SEIGE… but we don’t 

have the finances… We are not CNN… 

As I walk into the disused foyer of the Holiday Inn I notice that none of the lights are on even in the early 

morning.The hotel was built for the Olympics in 1984 but right now it looks like the victims as paraplegics are 

having their own conference and nobody is winning… Half the side of the building is completely shattered 

while there remain a few dispossessed people, a lost concierge and a lone businessman at the back. The Inn is 

in the area of Snipers’ Alley, which has been the most vulnerable area in the city on a large square. I can see 

around me shrapnel-scarred housing commission blocks where people have turned nature strips into vegetable 

gardens, but all the vegetable gardens are now dead and the odd turnip or cabbage sticking through the thick 

black rich soil speckled by the snow. 

The sound is a listless stillness; it encroaches on us. After the Holiday Inn where it looks like there is no 

possibility of staying we move onto another hotel closer to the old part of the city. Here there are yet again no 

further possibilities either. It seems to be too expensive. 

Darja finds someone outside of the hotel who indicates with some sophisticated sign language that there is a 

couple, an old airline pilot and his wife, who can offer us full accommodation. We trudge again in order to find a 

taxi. Everything around us is dirty and run down. I’m still swearing under my breath. I need sleep and food and I 

know I won’t be served with either immediately… The dirt, the grease, the greyness; it is not even grey; it is like 

the difference between a clean tooth and a tooth that is dirty and a tooth that is rotting and it is like everything 

here looks like it is rotting. The siege has been going on and it is right at the end of the war but there is quietness 

as a result of the cease-fire. We believe there is an accord which is going to happen in the next two or three weeks 

to resolve the conflict but we are waiting on all parties to resolve the demarcation of the borders. 

The couple’s names are Fatima and Omer Delic. He is a retired airline pilot. The address is, so I don’t forget: 

440115 Autuno Brauna, Fourth Floor, Sarajevo. The 440115 is actually their telephone number. I must write it 

down and slip it into my shoe so if I get lost I’ll be OK. 

Fifth-floor apartment, three levels as we climb in nauseating spirals on the baroque Austro-Hungarian 

staircase with blown out windows on the east side and an acute smell of cat urine in the stairwell which 

after Moscow feels like home… There is no hot water and we have to boil the water. I can hear Rasta music 

somewhere. How curious! There is no electricity and no windows, just plastic UNHCR sheeting. It is ice cold 

and the water and foodhas to be carried up four stinking flights of stairs like a masochist gym in New York. And 

the food, if you could call it food, are basic necessities like potatoes. 

Saturday, 11th November, 1995, Sarajevo 

At the height of the war a packet of Marlboro cost twenty-five dollars. Darja tells me that the Serbs still hold 

all the high ground around the city and have replaced their heavy weapons with AA guns. Firing 75mm rounds, 

which lie under the limit, these weapons can do as much damage as a mortar can. There are now specific zones 

of the city, out of the line of sight, which are safe. The Serbs have not surrendered all their heavy artillery to 

the UN, since they are still using some of them, to fire upon the eastern part of the city. Therefore this is a 

memo that no person is ever really safe here. The local cigarettes, Drina, which are manufactured in the city, 

are still being sold. It seems that everybody here smokes. The one initial thing that I have noticed, even though 

I don’t smoke or drink alcohol, is that here the people’s past time, or their way of dealing with this situation is to 

smoke. Every single person chain-smokes the local Drina.


disaffected artist coming in to appease his 

own western guilt; a do-gooder or whether 

something is literally going... 

They just sit there and 

stare back at me, smiling 

through their gums 

always wearing their 

double pyjamas and 

dressing gowns as if the 

Sarajevo siege is some 

kind of pyjama party out 

of Monty Python but its 

just that …this is the best 

clothes to keep warm. 

If Picasso painted Guernica and brought this image into an 

environment where there was a war happening, the image 

of Guernica in this huge bombed out environment would be 

a potent image. 

What the fuck am I doing here? I really don’t know. I am following the scent or the actual points of bringing 

a message to people about suffering, and I just question whether I actually am doing something legitimate—for 

myself or for them. It is a weird environment to be in. I question whether this is just some weak and limp, 

disaffected artist coming in to appease his own western guilt; a do-gooder or whether something is literally 

going to come out of this. I know when the intent is right then good things occur of their own volition even if we 

see difficult events surrounding them.


This is a symbolic act, and the act is to take the billboard into 

an area where the context is meaningful—that we are putting a 

message about war and the futility of war and we are taking it 

into an area where there really is war. 

Sunday, 12th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Inside the socialist-style apartment Omer proudly 

shows me a framed photo of him arm in arm with 

Tito standing at a school reunion in a sepia tone. An 

image of him meeting God almost. Omer with Tito! 

Omer and Fatima have a set of cheap Yugoslavianera 

spoons on the mantle piece proclaiming the 

winter Olympics… old communists that have been 

hoisted up by the war and are about to be propelled 

into a new period but because they are almost 

unwilling they are still frozen in the old era. 

The only way I can speak or communicate with 

them is with my broken Russian, which does not 

seem to help much but at least it is a kind of a 

buffer. We sit down for breakfast. They just sit there 

and stare back at me, smiling through their gums 

always wearing their double pyjamas and dressing 

gowns as if the Sarajevo siege is some kind of pyjama 

party out of Monty Python but its just that… this is 

the best clothes to keep warm. 

I am still questioning my motives for coming. I 

am questioning why I am here, but in the process 

there is human contact and this is nothing about 

questioning, it is just human beings bridging the 

gap between their isolation, their loneliness, their 

insecurity. It is goodwill that is the better angel 

within us and whatever the case, it is a step where 

we find out what good can come out of a difficult 

situation. 

This is a symbolic act, and the act is to take 

the billboard into an area where the context is 

meaningful—that we are putting a message about 

war and the futility of war and we are taking it into 

an area where there really is war. 

If Picasso painted Guernica and brought this 

image into an environment where there was a war 

happening, the image of Guernica in this huge 

bombed out environment would be a potent image. 

So it can be argued Millennium takes art into a new 

area. It is an attempt to extend the boundaries of art 

to create a form of diplomacy. It is crossing areas: 

diplomacy, art, politics, humanism, but also none of 

the above but all of the above simultaneously. 

Looking around their kitchen I muse: it is 

interesting how the war created all these new 

industries. All of a sudden there was no electricity 

and the situation was one where they had to create 

new grass roots economies. One such economy was 

creating these small wooden stoves. The stoves, 

which were metal, could burn a couple of small 

pieces of wood and they would heat up the water 

and cook eggs with limited wood fuel. All the major 

amenities are free: the trams, although taxis are 

not. Taxis like in Russia are just individuals without 

accreditation driving around. There are a few small 

shops, which have generators working, but the 

streets are effectively empty. There are one or two 

trams running and I can see children riding on the 

back of them holding on to them like in Rio. 

Today we visited some of Darja’s friends and 

inspected a few possible sites for the installation. 

We went to ‘Collegian Artisticum’, which was in 

Skenderija building; it is Faud’s gallery. We took the 

billboard and stored it there. We actually laid it out 

onto the floor and I got onto my knees and with a


little black pen and scribbled out little holes that 

had formed where the folds had stripped the paint 

off. 

We go to visit Darja’s friend Zoran and he told 

me about how he had to burn all of his drawings, 

all of his artwork in order to stay alive during the 

cold winter. I guess that is the dilemma; it is survival 

over civilisation. It is the structure of what you do, 

where do you draw the line? If you are under siege 

and you are in a library, do you burn the books or 

don’t you? It is up to every individual to come to 

their own decision and draw their own line. 

Zoran’s experience is one of meaning. He takes 

photographs and sells them to the paper, chains 

smokes, and from what I can see is kind man with 

a slightly addictive personality but that is just my 

perception; maybe that is not the case. 

I don’t seem scared here. I don’t feel as if my life 

is in danger. There is some sense of caution. You 

can hear the odd machine gun fire in the distance 

and it is sporadic but it only seems to occur in the 

evening and only upwards the perimeter of the city. 


Sarajevo 

Darja and Zoran 

The Olympic stadium where we have gone today 

has been turned into a cemetery and it is the only 

place they said that people could be buried. This 

is Alifakovac Cemetery, the stadium used for the 

Olympic games… As I walked past the stadium, 

which is full of graves, fresh and not so fresh 

graves from this insane unnatural siege because 

the original cemeteries have been filled like a cup 

which has overflowed… I trudged dishevelled 

past buildings, which had not been repaired since 

the beginning of the siege for obvious reasons. I 

walked to a diminutive cemetery and saw it was full 

of graves, with all the headstones inscribed with 

1993 or 1994. And as I walk I muse about a typical 

day ten moths ago… a Chronology of the War… A 

typical day eight months before went like this: 

ORDER PUNITIVE AIR STRIKES. THE


COMMANDER DENIED MAKING ANY 

SUCH REQUEST. *4170 

9. 9/1/94 (Sunday) 

(A) MILITARY ACTIVITY: 

Combat and Shelling Activity: 

In its daily report, UNPROFOR described shelling 

at a «relatively low level». Sixty per cent of 

the rounds were reportedly directed at the 

confrontation line, the rest impacted in populated 

areas. The situation in the Mt. Igman area was 

described as getting tense. The Bosnian Serb 

army was reportedly moving supplies to support 

their efforts in the western part of the city. 

*4171 

Source(s): UNPROFOR. 

Targets Hit: Airport runway; the Catholic 

cemetery; the Holiday Inn. 

Source(s): Associated Press; United Press 

International. 

Description of Damage: 

Shelling of the airport runway shut down the 

airport in the morning. 

Source(s): Associated Press; United Press 

International. 

Sniping Activity: 

Not specified 

Casualties: 

Four persons were wounded in the shelling of 

the Catholic cemetery. 

Source(s): United Press International. 

Narrative of Events: 

Shelling of the runway shut down the airport 

in the morning, but repair work completed at 

about noon later allowed the first aid flight in 

five days to land. The runway shelling forced a 

UN aeroplane carrying Japan’s Yasushi Akashi, 

civilian head of UN peace-keeping in the former 

Yugoslavia, to turn back to Zagreb. *4172 

UNPROFOR blamed the day’s airport shelling on 

Bosnian Serb forces. According to UNPROFOR 

spokesman Bill Aikman: «The results of the 

crater analysis have just been completed. Two 

mortar rounds were fired from Serb-controlled 

areas this morning onto the airport runway». 

*4173 

Four persons were wounded in the morning 

when a shell hit the city’s Catholic cemetery. 

*4174 

Several shells reportedly hit near the Holiday 

Inn. *4175 

(B) LOCAL REPORTED EVENTS 

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said 

that his side was unwilling to concede any more 

territory and warned that if BiH wanted to 

carry on fighting they could expect a massive 

response. “We’ve fulfilled everything that was 

expected of us and there can be no question at 

all of any more territorial concessions by the 

Serbs», Karadzic was quoted as saying by the 

Bosnian Serb news agency. If BiH continued 

fighting, «we will activate wartime production, 

mobilize wartime production, mobilize the entire 

population”, he 

said. *4176 

The first two days 

Darja has been 

supportive and 

responsive to our 

mission and has 

helped extensively. 

Upon entering 

Sarajevo I felt I 

might understandably lose her. The distance inside 

her is drawing us apart. But I feel that she must 

simultaneously revisit her past. On the third day she 

went out and walked up Snipers’ Alley to return to 

the scene of the crime. 

Upon her return there was a vacant and 

pregnant feeling about her—a borsch of wisdom 

and confusion. It is important for her to return to 

confront that attack where her whole destiny was 

changed. In so doing she will experience the pain 

but that pain will be annulled. So it is a healing 

journey, which she needs to undertake to recognise 

her own personal destiny irrespective of mine. 

In sharing someone else’s journey, even though that 

journey is something that we walk along together 

we must always acknowledge that the time that 

we share with another is only there to assist that 

person. They have other experiences, which may 

not be experiences that we can partake of. At this 

point our paths diverge. In this instance Darja and 

my paths have joined. I cannot foresee when they 

will part but I feel it is soon. 

Tuesday, 14th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Today the first port of call is the house of a 

friend, an Australian Bosnian, Tahir Gambis. He is 

making a film about the siege with his co-director 

Alma. Although difficult to find him, eventually 

we are in the same room. Tahir has promised to 

document our journey and he and Alma are going to 

accompany us around the streets as we attempt to


erect the billboard. 

He was just 

getting up from 

his bed and looked 

across at us 

rubbing the sleep 

from his eyes. 

‘You caught 

me on a really bad 

day’, said Tahir. 

‘Why don’t we 

go out for dinner in 

the next couple of nights?’ I replied. 

‘I feel something coming on.’ He didn’t seem so 

enthusiastic. 

‘Coming on as in flu?’ 

‘Something, I am not sure what it is but it is 

getting worse. I had a bad headache this morning 

but I am starting to get a bit dizzy now.’ 

‘Is this something that you often have?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘As a result of what?’ 

‘Exhaustion, too much coffee.’ 

‘So it is just your general lifestyle and it is not as 

a result of being wounded?’ 

‘Sometimes I am all right. You are never well after 

a major wound and spend a year in hospital.’ 

‘What happened with the situation? You went up 

into the hills and you were like boom.’ 

‘I was making my way to Sarajevo and I was 

travelling with HVO as a camera man and was 

wounded by a tank shell; shrapnel of a tank shell.’ 

‘Did you lose consciousness when it happened?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Was your leg severed?’ 

‘It was shattered; my bone shattered and so my 

leg was like a floppy jelly.’ 

Alma had seen too much. I was shocked by the 

stories that I would hear from everyone. Looking 

at the gaunt faces, staring at you in the crowds. 

Alma had given up those years of her early years 

simply carrying water… Her years were stolen from 

her youth. All she did was stay under ground and 

carry water. Because their lives were frozen for that 

period of time of the siege, war steals youth. And 

from this springs resentment and that bitterness 

that your time is taken from you. 

It was only afterwards, after this meeting 

that I returned again to speak to Zolka or Zoran 

as he was known to his friends. The 39-year-old 

photojournalist worked for the magazine DAIAS. He 

had sold his apartment and had drunk the proceeds 

away and yet still remained intact. 

He showed me a photograph of his wife and their 

two children. She was estranged and separated 

from him in Serbian-controlled Sarajevo and had 

then moved further away. They had not seen each 

other since the beginning of the war. I looked at a 

faded photograph of her, which he proudly produced 

from a worn and torn wallet and I looked again at 

him. The pale almost parchment like quality of his 

skin about his face was stretched taught. He was 

handsome although old beyond his years. He was 

worn, tired and haggard. This is normal here. He 

chain-smoked and drank too much but I could see 

his loyalty to his wife did not waiver nor could it be 

rushed. I stared again at the picture of her. I looked 

and saw a dark-haired and beautiful woman. He was 

waiting for the time when they would be together, 

when the war would cease to separate them. He had 

dreams of fleeing, of escaping to the tranquil West, a 

Europe immersed in denial… Here it is the frontier 

of Europe but it is also another planet. He spoke 

of residing in Prague, of an exhibition there and of 

sending her money, and their reunion. And then 

it dawned upon me that this love so bruised and 

fucked up was stronger and more real than the film 

Paris Texas, that his wife was more beautiful than 

Natassja Kinski and he more haggard than Harry 

Dean Stanton. Real people lost and yet sustained by 

the thread of the past. He was a lovely man. 

Tuesday, 14th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Here are a few simple descriptions about the 

town. Everything is expensive except life, cigarettes 

and coffee. The theatre is free. The trams are 

free and, like the Moscow metro, people sardine 

themselves in to commute to the new quarter, which 

looks more like an embattled Dresden than anything 

approaching the adjective ‘new’. The children run 

after the rusted trams and surf them using the 

protruding metal hooks. Everybody smokes the 

cheap home brand Drina for one Deutschmark. The 

currency used here is the Deutschmark. There are 

Muslims, Serbs and a myriad of coffee shops side 

by side. Now there is popcorn, but before there 

was only bread. The women here are beautiful. 

At the height of the war one packet of Marlboro 

cost 35 Marks and a kilo of meat costs 145 Marks. 

People would say to me: ‘When there is no food 

then everybody 

turns to cigarettes, 

because everything 

in Sarajevo turns to 

ash.’ 

At every 

moment, from 

all the places in 

the mountains 

surrounding the 

city, the Serbian 

snipers could hit


Source(s): UNPROFOR. 

Targets Hit: Airport runway; 

the Catholic cemetery; the 

Holiday Inn. 

Source(s): Associated Press; 

United Press International. 

Description of Damage: 

Shelling of the airport runway 

shut down the airport in the 

morning. 

Source(s): Associated Press; 

United Press International. 

Sniping Activity: 

Not specified 

Casualties: 

Four persons were wounded 

in the shelling of the Catholic 

cemetery. 

“Here it is the frontier of Europe But it is also another planet.”


The signs, ‘Opazne Zona’, ‘Dangerous Zone’, or 

‘Watch Out’, ‘Sniper’, as well as the signs showing 

the direction of traffic are written in oil-based paint on 

pieces of UNHCR plastic sheets... 

“When there is no food then everybody turns to cigarettes, 

because everything in Sarajevo turns to ash.” 

“Now everything is available, although you cannot buy 

your Gucci bags or your Ralph Lauren head scarves. 

In a climate of death, Ralph Lauren is not the sunscreen 

you are looking for.” 

every target in the city. Therefore, the most dangerous zones are bridges, crossroads, and streets that are 

exposed to the mountains. Those are the places where the possibility of getting shot was somewhat increased 

even if one is a fast runner. One is never sure whether one should walk fast or slow. 

Would the shell land where you are, or in front of you? 

The signs, ‘Opazne Zona’, ‘Dangerous Zone’, or ‘Watch Out’, ‘Sniper’, as well as the signs showing the 

direction of traffic are written in oil-based paint on pieces of UNHCR plastic sheets, or on pieces of cardboard, 

wooden board, or simply written in chalk on the wall. 

My friend Alma explains: 

‘Now everything is available, although you cannot buy your Gucci bags or your Ralph Lauren head scarves. 

In a climate of death, Ralph Lauren is not the sunscreen you are looking for.’ 

The electricity has been turned on, but it is sporadic. Some nights there is burst of brief electricity, some 

nights everything is submerged in darkness. One evening the lights went out in the city and the house Darja 

and I were staying in was again in dark. The family took out one candle. This was all which they possessed. So I


“During the war everything ceased. I 

simply carried water and collected 

firewood. My studies stopped and I 

remained close to my family. I was 

lucky. No one who was family was 

killed.” 

descended the broken staircase to the unlit streets 

with a torch and found a candlelit shop to buy a 

packet of candles. One Mark per candle. 

There is still no water in the pipes so the water 

must be carried up five flights of stairs. Stubbornly 

Omer and Fatima refuse to allow either of us to help 

carry water. There is a hole in their kitchen from a 

grenade attack. The neighbour was killed last month 

while Omer and Fatima were out. 

They are both retired and have a pension of 

seven Marks per month. They have no children. It 

seems because of this we became their surrogate 

children. The supply of gas comes like the sea, in 

and out. Hence the thriving business in wood stoves. 

Three quarters of all windows are gone and have 

been replaced with imprinted UNHCR plastic opaque 

sheets, almost like a fashion accessory, which are 

stapled over three quarters of the windows in the 

city. All these things are common knowledge. But 

common knowledge does not make life easier. My 

friend Alma remembers: 

‘During the war everything ceased. I simply 

carried water and collected firewood. My studies 

stopped and I remained close to my family. I was 

lucky. No one who was family was killed.’ 

The universal feeling here around us is naturally 

grim but I was actually surprised at the buoyancy 

and optimism of the people. Every second family 

has lost at least one member. And I am sure that the 

suffering on the Bosnian Serb side is equal. Every 

mortared and wooden building is punctuated with 

holes from machine gun fire or grenades. 

Every living person has a graphic and grim story 

to recount. Every story is unique and different. 

Every perspective is dissimilar. Every perspective 

is no less than any other. Some people have been 

broken by the war while others have somehow 

grown in ways people cannot over in the West. This 

is the active principle which suffering provides. 

It seems that there is a paradox at work here. All 

war is stupid and futile in that war’s road is paved 

by such suffering. Its origins are meaningless and 

yet within the totality of its destruction when 

everything is lost, amongst some people a flame of 

goodness arises which I believe cannot be found in 

relationships in the West or in post-industrialised 

society. In every conversation I would engage 

in with people in Sarajevo it was always they 

who understood more than I. Because of this I 

believe they must be given the means and voice to 

communicate the volume of suffering which they 

have experienced. To communicate to others as well 

as to release it from within themselves. And when I 

say they, I speak of the innocent of both sides. 

A friend of Darja’s, Branko Serkovic said about 

this war: ‘It was an examination to test the limits 

of endurance. My message from a country of last 

things would be: I would like you to have been 

here.’ For a brief moment I was there. Towards the 

end of the war. 

Sarajevo is a ghetto where people slowly rot, if 

they do not die. The old soldiers look older than 

the old in many ways. And their eyes are far away. 

On the day of the Dayton cease-fire, we could hear


“It was an examination to test 

the limits of endurance. My 

message from a country of 

last things would be: I would 

like you to have been here.” 

For a brief moment I was there. Towards 

the end of the war. 

sniper fire and grenades from tanks punctuating 

Clinton’s speech. Nobody thinks much about this 

continuation of hostilities because it is an everyday 

affair. 

Each person has a different story and each has 

the content which could become a film. But each 

does not need the vainglory because each story is 

still unfolding. 

He tells me that he would sell his 

books while the shells were falling 

and say: “Buy or die.” 

Wednesday, 15th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Today while walking up Markala Tita one of the 

main drags in the old city I bumped into this tall 

graceful man dressed in curious saffron robes… I 

had met the President of the Hare Krishna’s ISKON 

with his Sony Walkman playing a techno version of 

Hare Krishna’s mantra There are eight permanent 

members in the ashram, he told me. He also had not 

left the city for the period of the siege. His name 

was Mirza. He tells me that he would sell his books 

while the shells were falling and say: ‘Buy or die.’ 

Not a particularly charitable notion. ‘After awhile it 

became apparent those who didn’t buy or help us 

did suffer so I stopped asking people for donations 

for that very reason.’ Instant karma! 

About a possible cessation of hostilities he said: 

‘If after a man and a wife have been divorced after 

much personal suffering and domestic violence, a 

decree is made that these two people who have been 

separated must live together under the same room, 

will it not be difficult? There are times when they 

must share the bathroom. It will not be easy.’ 

Thursday, 16th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

The Gallery who has sponsored our journey, 

‘Collegian Artisticum’ lies in the run down basement 

of the Skenderija, Sarajevo’s World Trade Center 

but it is guttered. There is a muted suggestion that 

we are going to have the exhibition in the destroyed 

House of Youth, which is directly above it or in the 

old National Library, which has also been shelled. 

Tahir and Alma have decided to accompany Darja 

and I with their cameras to ‘Collegian Artisticum’ today 

as we heroically roll out the folded billboard. There 

are sand bags up the back of the gallery to absorb any 

shelling, which might occur. There are broken sand 

bags mounted like bricks in the basement where the 

gallery is situated... Little hills like ant mounds indicate 

where a particular bag has burst. We have brought with 

us an assemblage of wires and hooks from Australia to 

help hang it. We are still inspecting various locations 

where we can exhibit the painting, trying to work 

out what we shall do. The idea is just to have a press 

conference in the city to announce the exhibition.


It is happy marriage of good 

will and aesthetics that Fuad, 

the director, is supporting this 

billboard and he is suggesting 

that we go to the International 

Centre for Peace in Sarajevo. 

There are sand bags up 

the back of the gallery 

to absorb any shelling, 

which might occur. 

The Gallery who has sponsored our journey, “Collegian 

Artisticum” lies in the run down basement of the Skenderija, 

Sarajevo’s World Trade Center but it is guttered.


It is happy marriage of good will and aesthetics 

that Fuad, the director, is supporting this billboard 

and he is suggesting that we go to the International 

Centre for Peace in Sarajevo. They are organising 

a winter festival and we might use the billboard as 

some kind of symbol for the people in Sarajevo. 

As we descend, we pass on the stairs a group 

of military soldiers and young boys who have been 

recently conscripted. As we go down they are 

going up with parents—it’s like a school graduation 

ceremony. Outside all the shops are denuded and 

empty. There is no sort of economy as such and 

the only economy right now is war and conflict. We 

have to go and see the Director of the International 

Centre for Peace, Ibrahim Spahic. On the schedule is 

that tomorrow we have a meeting with Danca who is 

the secretary for the Centre. 

Slowly Darja seems to be becoming increasingly 

distant. It is difficult to explain. It is not an 

articulation of hostility; it is just the way I think that 

she has become in order to deal with her situation. 

Even though I have helped her to come here, this is 

her world. I am an interloper and I must remember 

this, and be aware that my relationship to her is 

not important. Perhaps because I am dependent 

upon her as a guide, as translator our relationship 

becomes co-dependent. But she needs to break free. 

The pilot and his wife fuss over me like their 

long lost son. If I am late or if I don’t come home at a 

particular time that I am supposed to they treat me 

like I have been a naughty boy. 

Meanwhile in the real world over the last few 

years it a nightmare… 

I had a conversation with some of the people 

downstairs about the finding of mass graves. One, 

a woman resident of Sarajevo informed a German 

journalist of a possible mass grave in the city. 

The grave she said is alleged to sit in the Muslim 

controlled centre of town, between the burned 

library building and the Miljacka River. One UN 

personnel recounts to us that a captured Serb 

soldier related details regarding the site of a mass 

grave in Rajlovac. According to the soldier and UN 

investigations Seselj’s troops were in the village 

of Ahatovici generally burning houses and killing 

its people. The soldier’s mission in the village was 

to ‘kill and destroy’. It was alleged that Seselj’s 

troops captured 150 men, women, and children and 

ushered them into a pre-dug pit. They then with 

machine-guns and automatic rifles executed all of 

the persons. Later, two Yugoslav People’s Army 

trucks arrived on the scene, and two other prisoners 

who had had their lives spared had to load the dead 

bodies onto the trucks. 

Friday, 17th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

I am now outside waiting in the morning 

bleakness and numbing cold stamping my feet 

waiting for Darja, near a Benetton store surrounded 

by stacked sandbags, actually quite intact, opposite 

a coffee shop with its windows full of moisture 

which I sometimes frequent to write my notes. A 

...and after traipsing down moth-eaten 

burgundy carpets in urine odoured 

corridors and sandbagged windows 

I see a man chain-smoking two 

cigarettes


few pedestrians hurriedly pass me by with their hands in their pockets and necks hunched into their shoulders 

trying to shrug off the cold… I go to the coffee shop to work on the journal and witness the day go by. The days 

seem to crawl by in quick succession like the machine fire in the hills. A white tank slowly grumbles by with a 

blue-capped soldier UNPROFOR. As the Survival guide book says: 

‘The United Nations Protection Forces were awaited as saviours when they first arrived in Bosnia and 

Herzegovina with their white vehicles and blue berets. As time went on they proved to be powerless. They 

help in repairs of the infrastructure, in cleaning the city. They are also establishing bureaucratic rules of their 

own. In some instances they have proven to be good merchants, they are driving around in trucks, jeeps, 

transporters...They transport wounded, bring humanitarian aid, drive from and to the airport. In short, nothing 

is done without them. UNPROFOR Headquarters is in the building of Communications Engineering at Alipasino 

polje. Soldiers are in the barracks, which were formerly inhabited by the soldiers of the Yugoslav Peoples Army. 

The main headquarters of the UNPROFOR’s commander is in a private villa.’ 

Darja arrives ten minutes late but I am in a good mood… We have a meeting with the people from the 

International Centre for Peace situated on Titova 9 (and/or Gabelina 16)—a woman called Danca Illic, and 

after traipsing down moth-eaten burgundy carpets in urine odoured corridors and sandbagged windows I see 

a man chain-smoking two cigarettes—it is the director; a tall man, slightly gaunt and brooding. Everyone here 

is gaunt, emaciated undernourished and chain smoking, so from this perspective he is no different… but he 

appears to be more so. 

He walks up to us with a brisk saunter, a smile and deftly flicks his ash into a broken Bakelite tray. There 

is an air of political ambition about this gentleman. His name is Ibrahim Spahic, and I later am told he is the 

Political leader of the Civil Democratic Party, his own small political party that is something both legitimate and 

important. 

I next have another meeting with Tahir Gambis and Alma. They seem to fight like an old married couple 

around their bare kitchen table. Tahir limps from a war wound and Alma looks like she should be in front of 

the camera with her beauty, dry humour and style instead of holding the microphone... The irony is that two 

days later they come to me and they said: ‘Dominic when you mentioned to us that we were an old couple we 

realised that we actually are fond of each other.’ I had been the catalyst for kindling their relationship from 

professional reticence to passion. Tahir always thought that whenever Alma desisted from walking into his 

room it was because it smelt of his body odour, but on the contrary she refrained because of her politeness: 

mixed signals meet passion in a war zone. When we think one thing is the case it is often completely different. 

We as human beings are not psychic in the way that we believe people perceive us. 

Tahir has been here for a couple of months and is making a film. He and Alma are wandering the streets 

in the centre of the city at the present working on the film. We discuss the possibility that they should follow 

Dominic around for three days while Darja and I work on the project of the peace initiative. 

The following day we rendezvous again at the offices of Danca at the International Centre for Peace. Up 

three flights of stairs, staring out at sandbagged windows that are completely shattered. Chain-smoking again 

Danca on the telephones, ‘Yes, yes, I perfectly understand…’ She indicates for us to come in and sit down. We 

begin the negotiations of where to put the billboard and where to have a press conference. 

I am attempting to approach the United Nations, the 4th Battalion UNPROFOR, and the French Battalion 

in the compound south of the centre to assist us with erecting the billboard. We also visit that day the press 

centre at the United Nations compound which is in the old post office in the city. I need to visit some people to 

assist with the music, sound system, PA, and we go to a couple of possible sites where we feel we might be able


We also visit that day the press centre at the United 

Nations compound which is in the old post office in 

the city. 

The cool Balkan sun 

is shining, peeping 

surreptitiously through 

the winter clouds. 

to exhibit the billboard. The bombed out library in 

the east is a possibility. 

The cool Balkan sun is shining, peeping 

surreptitiously through the winter clouds. It is the 

first day where the sun has come through and a 

few lazy dogs are basking, gnawing on plastic bags 

with some kind of refuse or offal in them. I can see 

sporadic activity and people just getting on with 

their lives as usual. 

The Holiday Inn is the biggest most kitsch 

grandest and most infamous hotel in town. It is 

situated just off Snipers’ Alley. A ten-storey semiguttered 

yellow-filled deconstructionist monolith, 

which had been built for the ’84 Olympics. It now 

stands in an elephant graveyard of littered glass, 

shrapnel scars and overgrown and sad cabbages. 

Although the snipers have rarely shot since the 

cease-fire the people still walk with a hurried and 

pregnant pace. This is where we first met Nevan. 

The foyer was dark brooding and empty of any 

clients except the odd journalist.


I remember Nevan’s third axiom as: ‘there are no 

good deaths; only quick ones.’ 

I couldn’t help but notice the half burnt map on 

the glass counter: 

“I said that if the one on the left wins I will kill them both. If 

the one on the right wins I will let both live.” The one the 

left lost and he killed them both. 

WELCOME - The hotel is located in the 

city centre opposite to the Land Museum 

(Zemaljski muzej). From the airport 

Dubrovnik and Zagreb via Motorway E, 

at Stupska petlja (loop) exit to the left. 

Continue down Zmaja od Bosne street. 

The hotel is approximately 100m on your 

right. Sarajevo International Airport 8 Km, 

Railway Station 0,3 Km. City centre 0,5 

Km. Business district 0,7 Km.Features: 

206 rooms. 10 floors. 3 Restaurants, 2 

bars. Meeting rooms to 450. 24 hours room 

service. Gift shop. Art Gallery. Local: Land 

museum 0,1 Km, Zetra sports hall 0,8 Km. 

Bascarsija (old town) 1,2 Km. Bay’s mosque 

1,3 Km, Vijecnica (city hall)1,4 Km. 

Cathedral 1,5 Km.Vrelo Bosne, Stojcevac 

I chuckled to myself as I read it, it all sounded so 

optimistic… 

Then Nevan walks up to us. 

‘Looking for another commission guide?’ he 

enquires. 

‘No thank you, we’re fine.’ 

Nevan was thick set, square shoulders and built 

like a cross between an Olympic athlete and a sumo 

wrestler with bi-focal glasses and a black and red 

gimme cap. 31 years of age. Single. His lover, he 

tells me, is on the other side of the city on Serb 

controlled [territory]... They are both Serbian. 

He showed me some battered journalists’ 

cards from Americans who had written on the back 

of them in red biro. He was searching for a room 

in town with some Japanese journalists but at 269 

Marks this hotel was prohibitively expensive. He 

is now an itinerant guide and translator for the 

numerous journalists who enter and exit weekly. 

Mostly Japanese, he tells me. The Japanese 

apparently love to do stories here. 

‘I am a poker player. Everything, which I do, is


according to chance. I flipped a coin. If it went heads 

I was to go across to her on the Serbian side. It was 

tails and I remained here.’ 

He spoke to me how he heroically defended the 

bridge, how as a battalion commandment every time 

he went out he had to return with the same number 

of men and that even if dead they could not be left 

behind. He spoke about how he killed two Serbians 

in one of the abandoned houses in the No Man’s 

Land between the two areas. He had waited in an 

adjacent room when the two soldiers entered. They 

neither saw nor heard him. He waited. They began a 

game of cards. 

‘I said that if the one on the left wins I will kill 

them both. If the one on the right wins I will let both 

live.’ The one the left lost and he killed them both. 

Nevan spoke of how 

the sense of power 

over the destinies of 

others made him feel 

like God. ‘I am God 

and I will not die’, he 

said to me…. It was 

an addiction. 

Nevan did not 

believe in freewill and 

‘when a war such as 

this imposes itself 

and turns your life upside down I cannot accept the 

rhetoric of soft western and bourgeois sentiment.’ I 

can understand his point of view. I believe otherwise 

but I respect his position because I have not 

experienced this war the way he had. He did not 

believe in God. He did not believe in an afterlife. ‘I 

will die...maybe’, he said to me. I remember Nevan’s 

third axiom as: ‘there are no good deaths; only quick 

ones.’ 

He didn’t want to listen to my arguments. Later 

he just wanted to play pool. I gave him an invitation 

to the exhibition. He never came. I never saw him 

again. I liked him. It’s not for me to judge Nevan. 

Judgement comes with complete information and 

wisdom. I don’t believe I possessed either. 

Saturday, 18th November, Sarajevo 

The first tentative steps towards creating a 

humanitarian statement seem to be proceeding as 

planned. There seems to be unified response to what 

I am doing and people are inspired and positively 

assisting with open arms. This is something which I 

really did not anticipate but which I appreciate. I am 

beginning to feel more and more exhausted by this 

process. Each day my bones seem to ache more and 

more. What constitute this fatigue are simply the 

tensions of this area. 

Alma, Tahir’s assistant takes me one day for 

coffee to a small coffee shop around the corner here 

without alcohol—everything is a coffee shop. Tahir 

and Alma have been following us these past few of 

days, filming our every fart, move, and jostle. It is 

important that we are able to document this time so 

that perhaps in the future I can create a memory of 

this event. 

There is a curfew at 10.00pm. I spend the 

tonight with this friend of mine, Radgovic Sinisi, an 

artist and toothless flautist, who has lost his front 

tooth as a result of the war or maybe because he 

was a little drunk one night… I’m not so sure… 

Radgovic’s house is full of the strangest idiosyncratic 

paraphernalia… What the diary did not say was 

that I visited him the first night with Zoltan; Darja 

is out seeing friends and it is in the centre of the 

city, crumbling with half the room blown apart. I 

return again. There one of the UNHCR plastic sheets 

like a death shroud that covers the window and he 

manages to play this song with the flute. At the same 

time, because there is no electricity on tonight and 

therefore he must show me with his candle. All these 

portraits his girlfriend has painted have shrapnel 

embedded in them from a mortar shell which went 

through the house two months ago. It symbolises 

to me the collision between culture, civilization and 

war. How easy it is to effectively destroy creation 

without thought. 

At Radgovic’s we collapse into floral patterned 

moth-eaten armchairs. He plays the flute as an 

impromptu concert for the camera. He gets up and 

makes coffee… all the while talking at amphetamine 

break neck speed as if there is no tomorrow... he


“Dominic, the clever people left here 

long ago. But clever people are 

not brave. Only the stupid and the 

loyal remained here and refugees 

have filled the rest of the people in 

Sarajevo.” 

then skips around the house, Dominic following him 

me with the video Hi-8 camera as he shows photo 

portrait of his girlfriend beside the river Milajacka 

canal in black leathers holding an Uzi with her 

Doberman... On the broken mantelpiece rests a 

sepia photo of his girlfriend with the two Dobermans 

holding an Uzi. With the machine gun she poses as 

the formidable heroine; or something out of some 

sort of ridiculous home movie. Radgovic keeps 

repeating: ‘Agh such beautiful snake eyes.’ 

The two Doberman dogs are leaving presents 

of their faeces everywhere for Radgovic to pick 

up…. ‘But I love them…such a beautiful design’, he 

says stroking the dog’s hind legs….And we talk and 

discuss his position and his life long into the night. 

In a way Radgovic without a front tooth distils and 

symbolises the whole of the paradox of Sarajevo, 

the confusion, the idiocy of this environment—the 

flautist without a front tooth like an artist who is 

blind or a Beethoven who is deaf… 

When I went with Radgovic a couple of 

interesting things have happened. I am writing 

this that evening… I took my coat off (the big faux 

rubber one which I had brought from Moscow) and 

I went to look for my wallet but there was nothing 

there. Radgovic was playing host to me and for one 

nanosecond a thought flashed that he had stolen it. 

So often all my money, my documents, everything 

was in there and I had this moment of doubt. The 

moment of doubt seared into me—I had to ask 

myself do I approach him and accuse him? Do I wait 

till I return home, wait till I go home and double 

check because there is the slim possibility that I had 

left the documents at home? Sometimes by trusting 

my forgetfulness I gain a friendship. So it was a risk 

and I decided to go with this even though it was a 

new friendship. You could say that in doing this we 

trusted that not all people are likely to take from us. 

Because of my paranoia of what I went through 

in Russia and all the things, which had happened in 

Russia, I was confounded by this dilemma. I chose to 

return. I returned that night after curfew. Through 

the darkened streets his place was a little bit further 

south in the old quarter of the town and there was 

not a car or a street lamp. Occasionally hiding form 

the military police. I can remember being by myself 

walking, hiding, I could see a car coming and I would 

then leap into the shadows, again waiting, crouching 

and then go further on. It took me maybe an hour to 

get back at about 1.15am. At home the wallet was 

waiting. 

After that event with Radgovic it was in a way a 

distillation of trust. There are elements of goodness 

in a world which is rotting and being torn. 

Sunday, 19th November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

The Baseasija is Sarajevo’s main market square, 

and the hub of the inner city. Over forty cramped 

streets radiate off it where you can buy cut price 

cigarettes, the odd stale coffee grounds, handmade 

tin coffee pots and cups, and AC Milan football 

shirts. The Benetton shop seems to be the only


store in town that has a marketing policy and has 

been opened since May 26 of this year…. I believe 

Darja was actually responsible for Benetton’s finding 

a blood splattered t-shirt to use for one of their ad 

campaigns. Is it sick to exploit a form of attention to 

human rights abuses? It is a necessary and legitimate 

statement about life and problems. 

Inspite of a ceasefire, the shelling is only at 

night in the distance that you can hear the sound 

pounding—like a distant rumble of a giant digesting 

a bad meal 

After this I walked to the National Library which 

had been targeted by the Serbs, and they had used 

incendiary shells to torch the entire library. It has 

been suggested that we use this as the area for the 

exhibition by Spahic. The walls are still standing 

and the interior had 

been torched, with all 

the beautiful tomes 

and books destroyed 

including the 

historical documents 

from the Ottoman 

Empire. 

I then sauntered 

today off to see the 

Commander of the 

4th Battalion in 

the compound of the UNPROFOR in Skenderija. 

Past the drop gate through the security clearance 

mustering my French. There is the United Nations 

peacekeeping brigade stationed at the centre of 

Sarajevo. Because of my French (schoolboy at best, 

but at least it disarms them and they are prepared to 

help us) I take the pamphlets and the booklets and 

introduce my suggestions. 

After a period waiting I am shown into a severe 

office with a UN flag and a series of maps strewn 

over a desk. I throw the documents onto the 

formica table for the French Battalion commander 

Capitaine Demeny. He inspects them like he might 

an hors d’oeuvre, picks the image of the billboard 

up and turns it around with his index and thumb… 

squinting… He pauses and then indicates rather 

matter-of-factly that he will gladly allocate some 

soldiers for the event. 

Darja is often really elsewhere… I can never 

track her down. It is frustrating but she has her own 

life. Often I end up alone, walking the streets. There 

is much to be done and little time to do it. The clock 

is ticking for a message to others. 

In the downtime between meetings I spend 

with it my Pentax 35mm camera walking around 

being the indulgent Western disaster tourist taking 

photographs of shattered buildings of bunkers of 

sandbags of people walking the streets. 

In some ways I am surprised, the shelling is 

only at night - in the distance that you can hear the 

sound pounding—like a distant rumble of a giant 

digesting a bad meal. 

Igor Camo, the composer of the music I used, 

said to me: 

‘Dominic, the clever people left here long ago. 

But clever people are not brave. Only the stupid 

and the loyal remained here and refugees have filled 

the rest of the people in Sarajevo. I myself with 

my girlfriend tried to escape across to the Serbian 

sector twice. You would have to be crazy to remain 

here. And now to avoid military service I also must 

pretend to be crazy. But I am already crazy being 

here... so I don’t need to pretend. I simulate epileptic 

fits and speak to the military psychologist about how 

I identify with Estragon in Waiting for Godot.’ 

As I wander now through the streets all I can see 

amidst the people trudging through the snow with 

their bad teeth and shopping bags are the burnt-out 

cars, the broken, empty windows, the buses parked 

head to toe, cars, and the cabbages growing in the 

parking lots, among the odd UN peacekeeping vehicle. 

The good guys in white—well NATO has come. 

Walking I came across a friend of Darja’s at a 

street corner, Gazi Hurssrev Begova. Dark, good 

looking in an 

intellectual way he 

had a humour about 

him I could not put 

into words… Almir 

Vrpoic sat hunched 

over with me and 

spoke quietly, as he 

did not want others 

to hear. Nudging 

me, we wander off 

to get a drink going 

towards the River Milijacka, which runs straight 

through the centre of town like a canal. 

He had been a bodyguard for one of the generals. 

He had been brought up in a suburb, which is now 

under Serbian control, called Dobrinja. His best 

friend was a boy named Zjelko. They had shared 

everything in life together. They had grown up 

together and so when the war began, the borders 

had been redrawn and they had lost contact with 

each other. He spent four years of the war as a 

soldier but often on the front-line as a bodyguard. 

Whilst on the front-line between Stup and Ilijda 

he called across to the Serbs and asked if his friend 

was one of the soldiers stationed amongst them. 

After some time a shout came back: ‘Yes, he is there.’ 

The weapons were put aside and both walked into 

the centre of the DMZ and stood in the cold for four 

hours and talked.


“It is not me. It’s the others. It’s the politicians. We just follow 

orders, he said. There is no freewill. No choice. He blamed the 

authorities above me on my side. It was our battle but we do not 

decide who is to right, who”.... 

And then he laughed. A slow embarrassed laugh. 

Almir said: 

‘My friend asked me: “do you need food, 

because I can get it for you. Do you need anything? 

Cigarettes?” 

‘I had nothing. We had no food. But I said no. I 

declined. I was not proud. It just wasn’t right. 

‘I said to him: “Why has this happened that we 

are fighting each other. We were... maybe still are 

best friends, but the war has done this...” 

‘His reply was: 

“It is not me. It’s the others. It’s the politicians. 

We just follow orders, he said. There is no freewill. 

No choice. He blamed the authorities above me on 

my side. It was our battle but we do not decide who 

is to right, who”.... And then he laughed. A slow 

embarrassed laugh. 

‘We stood in that stupid cold for four hours on 

the line with both our soldiers twenty metres behind 

us, quietly smoking. We reminisced and asked after 

our mutual friends. I have never seen him since.’ At 

this we shuffled off. 

Almir and I met up later that day... We 

were watching the film produced by The Who, 

Quadrophenia. I remember that I have seen it only 

in snippets, perhaps a few years before. Now I had 

time to sit and see the whole. I explain to him the 

tribal nature of English society, of the Mods and 

Rockers. There is a pause and then with a kind of 

innocence and candour he replied: 

‘So it is like the Serbs and Muslims.’ 

I gave him a stainless steel pencil and holder. He 

gave me a set of old Slobodna Bosnia magazines— 

the Rolling Stone of Bosnia, if you like. I liked him. 

(Later Almir married Darja, or at least they 

remained together. Two good people who found 

each other.)


It is the first musical event, which had happened during the war, and this band had come across in the convoy 

after us and Laibach is a Slovenian band satirising fascism with a heavy metal pulse. 

“Life is Life” will be sung to the beat of 

their little drum in the Opera House. 

...at the National Theatre in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in conjunction with the Obala Art 

Centre and Radio Zid and the Open Society Institutes of Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the 

NSK groups (Laibach, Irwin, Noordung, New Collectivism, Department of Pure and Applied 

Philosophy, Retrovision), proclaimed the NSK State Sarajevo (following a similar event in Berlin 

in 1993: NSK Staat Berlin). 

The formal opening is on 20th of November, at 12.00 p.m. local time, in the main auditorium of the National 

Theatre. An NSK representative unveiled a commemorative plaque and, in the presence of a delegation from 

cultural and political circles in Sarajevo, gave a welcoming address. 

The Slovenian band Laibach is playing tonight.


I keep on wondering whether I am trying 

to fulfil my destiny here or escape my destiny or 

maybe this is some just fucked up heroic adventure 

that I am not even suppose to be making. Is it ego 

driven, adventure driven, indulgence or simply 

a sacrifice? I am risking my life; I am risking my 

finances to do something like this, but at the same 

time even this ridiculous document is a form of 

questioning and trying to understand why we do 

things. Intuitively, we feel deep within us that there 

is something that we have fulfil in order to achieve a 

state not of happiness, but if we have a conscience 

and intuition which asks us to do things then in 

fulfilling that, even though there is difficulty, even 

sacrifice, it allows us to live with ourselves and to 

live with ease. This is an important ingredient to 

human happiness and the human conscience. 

The Press release reads: 

20th and 21st of November 1995, 

at the National Theatre in Sarajevo, 

Bosnia-Herzegovina, in conjunction 

with the Obala Art Centre and Radio 

Zid and the Open Society Institutes 

of Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 

the NSK groups (Laibach, Irwin, 

Noordung, New Collectivism, 

Department of Pure and Applied 

Philosophy, Retrovision), proclaimed 

the NSK State Sarajevo (following a 

similar event in Berlin in 1993: NSK 

Staat Berlin). 

The formal opening is on 20th of 

November, at 12.00 p.m. local time, in 

the main auditorium of the National 

Theatre. An NSK representative 

unveiled a commemorative plaque 

and, in the presence of a delegation 

from cultural and political circles in 


National Theatre, Sarajevo 

The Slovenian band Laibach is playing tonight. 

Their style is a satire on the fascist dogma of the 

neo-Nazis, the New World Order, and the fall of 

totalitarianism. ‘Life is Life’ will be sung to the 

beat of their little drum in the Opera House. The 

National Theatre is still intact and the lights are on. 

It is free. The doormen here have machine guns. 

The foreigner does not need a ticket. He becomes 

part-prince; part untouchable. 

It is the first musical event, that has happened 

during the war, and this band had come across in 

the convoy after us and Laibach is a Slovenian band 

satirising fascism with a heavy metal pulse. 

The guards tell us we can film but only for 

like three minutes. Darja has some journalist 

accreditation but I am the inept foreigner without 

credentials. 

People look at me quizzically as if I am some sort 

of beached whale. As if I am really out of place here,


and I notice the humour is a form of black humour, 

and so at times this humour is pointed towards me. 

I have to realize it is actually not something to take 

personally that it should not be part of my paranoia 

or seen as a direct attack on me, but rather their 

way of getting by. This is their way of dealing with 

the situations, which are often life and death—and 

black humour is there so that to people here can 

laugh in the face of death. A throbbing earache and 

the concert is over and my tinnitus has begun! 

After the band finishes we go off to the café 

in the basement next door to the Obala Centre 

of Art. It seems as though it is a city, which is 

so multicultural and is able to absorb all sort of 

cultures. It is one of 

those post-grunge 

regulation clubs 

without a juke-box, 

or pool table, but 

cheap beer and tables 

that look like they’re 

collected from street 

corners. 

The other thing I 

have noticed in the 

city is that because 

alcohol is forbidden 

as a result of the war (or maybe because of 

predominance of Muslim criterion or philosophies) 

there seems to be a humongous amount of coffee 

shops where they serve very bad milk less coffee. 

At the Cafe Obala I met again Darja’s friend 

Zolka. Darja had known him before she was 

wounded. The unexpected explosion of violence 

had punctuated the evening. I’m sitting down, 

feeling momentarily alone. Everyone is speaking 

in a language I cannot understand when this fight 

zeroes in on our table. I have been asked to babysit 

the cameras of Darja, Zolka and I. Two men 

begin fighting over the usual misunderstanding and 

differences of opinions, which they cannot verbally 

reconcile. Beer pours over the floor. The table is 

upturned. I pick up the cameras as the beer pours 

over the men land and me on the table breaking it. 

We then leave the room, the press of people, 

the sandbags and the smoke and step into the cold 

night air—the ten o’clock curfew and the gracefully 

descending snow. 

Tuesday, 21st November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Today we have sprinted around searching for 

the PA, seeing Igor the sound guy, attempting to get 

the UNPROFOR soldiers to tie the awnings up… 

the usual mall touch-ups prior to the event… It is 

evening…Darja is somewhere in the new city with 

friends…I am alone staring at the television in a 

language I cannot understand. Her life is here and 

mine is somewhere else…. I get up and go over to 

my garret room. I begin to write the speech, my 

hand scrawls the words, which come quickly and 

with ease: 

‘I know there are many who see war as an 

inevitability but because something exists or may 

seem inevitable does not make it right under the law 

of man or God. If peace is to come it is not only up 

to NATO or Clinton, it is not only up to the three 

governments; it is up to all the people who have 

fought and suffered out of bravery, in confusion, in 

doubt and even in hate. It is the responsibility of every 

person to understand the divisions, which they have 

been taught are only just that; divisions, which have 

been taught that, if not brotherhood then at least 

coexistence can only occur when the heart wills it. This 

war maybe over but the peace will only last when it is 

first made in all of our hearts.’ 

I paused and then reread what I had written. I then 

continued: 

‘This image is for all countries who wage war against 

each other. How do we speak of peace, it cannot be 

spoken it can only be lived. It cannot be cultivated, it 

cannot be imported. This peace exists only within the 

human heart and only exists in this moment. In the 

invisible heart it lives as a seed within every person 

on this planet. There are those who water it and there 

are those who cannot feel it. 

‘To those who wage war out of greed or in hate 

and all I can say for them is that the price of peace 

can never be paid by war. In planting the seed of war 

only further war will grow and can grow from it. 

‘Peace is the sanctity of the heart filled with love 

for another. It is understanding that what happens to 

you is without fear. What happens to you happens to 

another. The origin of war is based on the structure 

of greed, of fear, of violence and of power and in


if not brotherhood then at least coexistence can 

only occur when the heart wills it. This war may 

soon be over but the peace will only last when it is 

first made in all of our hearts.


that greed cannot understand the stillness of peace. 

It seeks only to make peace into an image of itself. 

Greed cannot understand the modesty of enough. 

For those whose thirst for power inflicts suffering on 

others all I can say is that the desire for power never 

ends. It arises because the individuals feel totally 

inadequate, because their foundation is based and 

built on fear. If they cannot live in the heart now than 

they must live in fear. This fear exists because the self 

feels inadequate as it is. This power fuels the greatest 

desire but this thirst for power can never make a 

person happy therefore they seek more power. It is 

built on a foundation, which does not exist. It cannot 

touch the truth. 

‘So all people who walk this road to power and its 

desire to expand accordingly through force is built 

on their 

fear and 

therefore 

it can not 

be built on 

truth.’ 

I put the 

pen down. 

This is what 

people 

needed to 

hear! 

Tuesday, 21st November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

The third official meeting with Danca Illic the 

secretary of the Winter Festival occurred today. We 

plan to erect the billboard in a disused musical hall, 

Skenderija, which had been bombed six months 

previously. There will be a press conference and 

a few speeches. There are no guarantees it will 

succeed and no one knows what is in store or who 

will help. 

The next port of call is on the city’s parameter. 

Darja and I take a taxi to see the press centre of the 

United Nations command post. The United Nations 

command post looms in the distance; it is a fortress 

in a sea of destruction. The PTT, Post and Tele 

Communications Bureau is the headquarters of the 

UN in Sarajevo. All the windows had been destroyed, 

replaced by sandbags. The balcony is embroidered in 

razor wire. Guards poke their rifles from bunkers. 

Soon we are sitting in the UNPROFOR offices in 

the old sandbagged PTT building in the press room 

with the New Zealanders David Balham and Deborah 

during a blackout, writing a press release in ball 

point pen, while Deborah says: ‘Not only have we 

seen worse press releases, we’ve written worse.’ 

Darja and I had first met Debra the press officer 

two days before. Debra and I had sat together in the 

darkness without a light fumbling for candles and 

matches for three hours. Today the electricity is 

back on. 

The ghosts of the living continue to haunt this 

landscape. The next meeting is with the director of 

the gallery, Faud Hadjhalovic, who is our sponsor 

and organiser. The billboard also has to be repaired. 

There is not a glimmer of light in this darkness. It 

was neither the war nor the bombings, which are 

unnerving but rather the silences. These are the 

causalities, not only the dead but also the living 

whose ghosts inhabit this landscape. 

Today the electricity has been turned on but it 

is sporadic. Some nights there is electricity, some 

nights everything is submerged in darkness. One 

evening the lights went out in the city and the house 

where we were staying in was again in darkness. 

Wednesday, 22nd November, 1995, 

Sarajevo 

Today Tahir, Alma, Darja and I are walking along 

Marsala Tita to visit the market which suffered 37 

dead casualties from Serbian shelling of civilians on 

the 28th of August 1995 in the Market on Markale. 

As Tahir limps along the street he points with a 

wavering finger at the craters, explaining since he 

was an eyewitness: 

‘After the explosion I raced here and this wind 

rose and seemed to blow everything right across the 

street…Fingers, hands, limbs, plastic bags…’ 

My mind flashes 

to the news reports... 

Flash across 

television screens… 

some faceless voice 

reads: 

MARKET 

MASSACRE IN 

SARAJEVO 

A mortar bomb has exploded in the 

main market square in Sarajevo killing 

37 and wounding 200 people. It is the 

worst single atrocity in the 22-month 

old conflict between Bosnia’s Serbs, 

Muslims and Croats. UN inspectors are 

examining the crater left by the bomb 

to determine where it came from, but 

it is widely believed the Serbian forces 

besieging the city launched it. Some 

people were literally torn apart. The 

single 120mm shell landed on a stall in


A mortar bomb has exploded in the main market square in Sarajevo 

killing 37 and wounding 200 people. The worst single atrocity in the 22- 

month old confl ict between Bosnia’s Serbs, Muslims and Croats. 

The single 120mm shell landed on a 

stall in the packed open-air market just 

before noon leaving Muslims and Serbs 

dead and injured. “Some people were 

literally torn apart.” 

A mortar bomb 

has exploded in 

the main market 

square in Sarajevo 

killing 37 and 

wounding 200 

people. 

“After, the explosion I raced here and this wind rose and 

seemed to blow everything right across the street… Fingers, 

hands, limbs, plastic bags...’


...walking through the area thinking of the injustices and insoluble genocide… Here 

is Snipers’ Alley, the site of the Bread Queue Massacre, the burned-out library, the 

bombarded hospital and the overfl owing cemetery. 

the packed open-air market just before 

noon leaving Muslims and Serbs dead 

and injured. “Some people were literally 

torn apart. Heads and limbs were ripped 

off bodies,” said one eyewitness. 

Tahir explained how he raced to the scene and 

with his cameraperson Roman to film the Markale 

massacre—with ray ban sunglasses on and chewing 

gum. When they came to edit the piece they just 

could not use it because it looked too sacrilegious. 

Sometimes we cannot see how we are. Even though 

he was severely upset by such an event—the way he 

appeared rendered the footage useless. We cannot 

see what another person observes; despite the fact 

that Tahir was shocked and horrified by the event, 

it just so happened he was chewing gum and he had 

sunglasses on and on film it just looked insensitive. 

We walk on to one of the Galleries. Obala Centre, 

which brought Laibach to Sarajevo. There, is a 

mongrel marmalade coloured dog at the Obala 

Centre for Art. It lies like all dogs, on a mat beside 

the desk of the woman who works here but this one 

has a twitch. Endia from the centre explains: ‘it is 

because of too many grenades going off. Its a nice 

dog... don’t be frightened of her. She maybe a little 

old...’, her voice trails off. There is a bit of mange 

on her fur coat. The colour of the hair is mustard. A 

cross between a terrier and a Labrador at a guess. 

I went to pat it and it snarled. As Endia explains 

to me: ‘it’s kind of a metaphor for those here who 

have been traumatised by the war. If you attempt 

to reach out to such people, to give them some 

form of affection they can be hostile through their 

conditioned fear and suspicion. It becomes a reflex.’ 

This is my premise—always innocent people 

must suffer, as a result of what others consider was 

right and wrong; just and unjust. The military define 

the death of a civilian as collateral damage; as an 

unfortunate and regrettable price we must pay for 

conquering injustice. If we conquer evil with good 

but we sacrifice this with the deaths of innocent 

people are we any better than those who perpetrate 

the evil? Can we fight injustice with the death of any 

human being? The horror of war is that a state of 

belief or an ideology gives justifications through God 

or country. God or country cannot justify the killing 

of any innocent person. 

Thursday, November 23rd, Arrest in 

Snipers’ Alley Sarajevo, No Man’s 

Land 5.56pm… 

4.20am of the next day… 

I’m writing this a few hours after getting back 

from a strange evening and night. Yesterday the 

unexpected became expected… the unknown caller 

knocked at the door… it was creepy… eerie empty 

feeling which stole into my mind and heart… but 

I as usually was deaf to the voice inside my head


This is my premise—always innocent people must suffer, as a result of 

what others consider was right and wrong; just and unjust. The military 

define the death of a civilian as collateral damage; as an unfortunate and 

regrettable price we must pay for conquering injustice. If we conquer evil 

with good but we sacrifice this with the deaths of innocent people are 

we any better than those who perpetrate the evil? Can we fight injustice 

with the death of any human being? The horror of war is that a state of 

belief or an ideology gives justifications through God or country. God or 

country cannot justify the killing of any innocent person.


...are not heroic, they are not adventures, they have an 

unearthly deadness and ordinariness about them because we 

are not certain of what will happen in the future... 

which ordered: ‘be careful…’ But since the final 

expectation is realising nothing else will surprise 

me… this is what stole like a burglar into my 

consciousness—tonight the gonzo diplomat…. and 

crusading artist Dominic Ryan was detained for 

photographing military installations close to Snipers’ 

Alley. Arrested might be a better term. 

I had neither authorisation nor an accredited 

journalistic ID as I trudged through a militarily 

sensitive area… I had been outside the Holiday Inn, 

very close to the frontline and Serbian-held zone 

videoing dilapidated building. I was told or rather 

instructed later that they were military targets. The 

fact that it was one hundred metres from the hotel 

and buildings we were staying in seemed of little 

consequence. In any case I spoke little Bosnian. 

I tried to convince the military personnel that I 

am an artist with a peace message for both sides… 

by drawing little drawings in my address book 

and they replied: ‘and I am Milosevic…!’ So from 

their observation post where I was apprehended at 

mother of pearl twilight around 6 in the evening, I 

was forcibly escorted by two armed and sullen khaki 

militia, no insignias, walkie talkies, Kalashnikovs… 

the usual…. to the station and then to the Central 

Bureau for Security and Police, where I sat for 

eleven hours in what looked like an empty mustard 

brown schoolroom, dinted and scuffed with white 

sheets covering the windows and I was expecting 

a bare bulb sinning… but there was no electricity! 

I was initially interrogated for speaking broken 

Russian and possessing among other things a 

Russian stamp in my passport... the obvious reason 

being that I was a KGB or Serbian spy. 

It began like this – 

The BBC offices are situated in Snipers’ Alley: 

an area where the Serbs attack and send mortared 

shells. At this stage there was technically a ceasefire 

and even though that small single armed gunfire 

was close. I decided to walk out with my tiny little 

camera like a fucking fool and film the destruction of 

broken masonry. 

First I wander into benign areas where there 

are grey cabbages in uncultivated and neglected 

gardens, and some lawns have also been cultivated 

for food. It is very, very vacant and there is this 

deathly stillness about it. I wander five hundred 

metres away from the two main buildings, which 

have been torched; there is no traffic on the roads. 

Because I do not have a tripod I place the Sony 

camera on the floor so there are no shudders in the 

filming. 

I am walking through the area thinking of the 

injustices and insoluble genocide… Here is Snipers’ 

Alley, the site of the Bread Queue Massacre, the 

burned-out library, the bombarded hospital and 

the overflowing cemetery. I decide that I am going 

to film these buildings. It is unearthly quiet and 

there is nobody around but I have inadvertently and 

unknowingly stumbled into an area, which is the no 

man’s land between the Serbs and Bosnians. 

I have walked maybe two hundred metres south 

and for thirty-five minutes I am blissfully ignorant 

of the consequences of my act. I am filming away 

and then all of a sudden a Bosnian soldier comes up 

and I smile sheepishly at him and of course because


of the language issues I say ‘hi’ and I don’t have any documents. I have a British passport and I try to talk with 

them but the only way I can talk is by speaking my Russian, which fucks me up even more because all the Serbs 

speak Russian or at least understand it. 

I am immediately assumed to be a Serb spy filming military installations. I am not mistreated in any way. 

They are the military police and they take me directly with quiet urgency to the police station. I am kept alone 

in this large empty room for eleven hours. It is a schoolroom with benches, but I cannot leave... My thoughts are 

Zen at that time. 

I realise that next time I need journalist accreditation. This dawned late in the evening… if there is a next 

time… the kind of mistake that we learn … 

They are actually polite but nobody speaks English except for very basic questions. They start off with 

the usual barrage of questions—where do you come from, where are you going, why do you not have papers 

as a journalist with you… etc., etc., etc. The presumption is that I am lying; they patiently wait for the chief 

police, mumbling amongst themselves. The chief does speak a smattering of classical English as he after ten 

hours saunters through the door to begin his new morning… I see him and after so many hours I get taken into 

another school room and there are ten or twelve school desks and my thoughts keep on reverting back to Dr 

Keller and his words: 

‘Hey man you are on your own!’ 

The Police Chief is bald but very polite, has manners and courteous while he looks intently at the footage 

replaying inside the Hi- 8 camera watching it in the viewfinder. I don’t even know his name but he speaks a 

broken doggerel English. 

They ring up Omer and Fatima who are like grieving parents— Omer saying: ‘He is such a kind sweet nice 

boy; he has not done anything.’ Not that the military police really care, there is a distorted proof to the contrary 

of what I have done. And with my camera they could have acted a lot more suspiciously. After eleven hours I 

am released. There are no charges placed, and it is a serious wake up call. Again it is the little kid who does not 

know better and yet it perseveres by playing with fire. I got burnt but did not die…I need to sleep… now.

M I N U T E S T O WA R : Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo


Three things to remember: When one moves 

too far, and one does not know the terrain—one 

should never presume. But I guess it makes for a 

great diary entry. These things when they occur are 

not heroic, they are not adventures, they have an 

unearthly deadness and ordinariness about them 

because we are not certain of what will happen in 

the future and it is the uncertainty which holds us 

tight and bound like prisoners. The sense of being 

trapped in the present, which we cannot escape 

from. 

I suppose the only thing I can laugh about is 

the bread with the lard, which they generously 

offered… Under these circumstances I ate it and I 

was hungry, and there you have it. 

Eventfully my warders seemed to relax... a glint 

came into their eyes…and so I could see that our 

little misunderstanding was clear…Mustapha and 

Nabusha were their names who then offered me 

a ritual reconciling cigarette to the non-smoker 

whose both parents had died of lung cancer and 

emphysema …a healthy little nail… As they say 

to bang into my coffin… the ritual cigarette and a 

half loaf of bread filled with lard or bacon fat. At 

first glance it seemed to be cheese but after eating 

three quarters of it I realised it was dry oily lard. 

They treated me well and were friendly and under 

circumstances of war—it was I who was in error and 

they who showed a degree of latitude. Reprieve! But 

it was a long time and a little adventure.



Sarajevo 

Finally, with the help of the 4th Battalion we have 

finally erected the billboard in the House of Youth in 

Skenderija (or rather what was left of the House of 

Youth). It is truly a skeleton of its former glory that 

has remained. 

The PA has been set up. 

The text read–‘This is an image to the futility 

of war and its inability to solve the problems of 

humanity’. 

We congregated in the destroyed House of Youth 

to erect the billboard today. There were seven 4th 

Battalion UN soldiers while the snow gently fell. 

We unfolded the billboard and erected it in the 

hall. There is no ceiling only sky and falling flakes 

of snow…The whole roof had been blown off and it 

took maybe four or five hours to erect. Tahir filmed 

it. Omer was there and Darja appeared. Zoltan took 

some photos. It was cool and I enjoyed it. 

Talking French to the battalion soldiers has been 

fun…trying out my French… with Sargeant Marco 

Royer laughing. In the distance you can hear the odd 

pop. 

Branci Festovic said about the war: ‘it was an 

examination to test the limits of endurance. My 

message from a country of last things would be 

I would like you to have been here.’ For a brief 

moment I was there. 

That evening a small congregation of people 

gathered with the press. Reuters were there a few 

papers CNN…The usual…I read the speech—the 

ambassador to the UK was present as was Fuad who 

spoke and Ibraham Spahic. This is a brief excerpt 

from my speech I wanted to include this evening…: 

‘This is addressed to the rest of the world and to 

those who cannot see and cannot understand. This 

image is for all wars that are waged. It is a memorial 

for what cannot be allowed to occur but does 

continuously occur. 

It is an image of the futility of war and its inability 

to solve the problems of humanity. This war maybe 

over but the peace will only last when it is made in 

all of our hearts – thank you. 

‘Firstly I would like to take the opportunity 

to thank the many people who took part in this. 

Hadjhalovic, Ibrahim Spahic and Danc Illic, from 

the Sarajevo Winter Festival, and the International 

Centre for Peace, the Millennium trust, Capt. 

Berthemey who was with the French Battalion and 

Sergeant Marco Royer. The French 4th Battalion for 

the UNPROFOR. The music is by Igor Camo and if 

you don’t make him famous I will. Lastly I want to 

honour Darja Lebar.’ 

Outside in the snow a reporter asked me 

about the meaning of the painting—all I could say 

was: ‘What that say is that colour is a dimension 

above and beyond black and white, just as hope 

is a dimension above destruction. We had chosen 

to exhibit the painting in areas where there was 

problems.’ 

Then a journalist turned to me and posed a few 

questions: ‘what were your thoughts on Sarajevo 

before you came here? Are there some changes 

since you arrived?’ 

I said: ‘I think the television image is localised 

to one small area—people live here as if there is no 

war—human dignity 

is what we should 

see not dead bodies. 

If peace exists 

than let this be a 

memorial to what 

should not have been 

but was and if war 

continues than let 

this be a plea for that 

war.’ 

And as I walked 

back through the snow all I could think of was what 

had happened in such a brief time. The next day 

Darja brought a little piece of paper for me. I had 

been awarded the Liberty Prize for human rights in 

the European Union and Bosnia Herzegovina. 

I believe suffering is unnecessary but nevertheless 

it can teach us valuable tools for learning. The first 

is that suffering is unnecessary. The second is that it 

strips us of the inessential aspects of life. One deals 

existentially. When you are hungry you seek food. 

When you are cold you seek warmth. 

People like Fatima and Omer amaze me. Simple 

dignified people who can live through this siege 

without undue hate or intolerance. There is 

perplexity and confusion within them because of 

what they continue to experience, but not hate. 

They are 70 years of age and yet they live with 

great grace. Without complaint they watch The 

Pink Panther at night on Television BiH with long 

underwear and three dressing gowns and a beanie 

because of the cold. I sat and watched Easy Rider


We unfolded the billboard and 

erected it in the hall. There is no 

ceiling only sky and falling flakes 

of snow…The whole roof had been 

blown off and it took maybe four or 

five hours to erect. 

The text read–‘This is an image to the 

futility of war and its inability to solve the 

problems of humanity’. We congregated 

in the destroyed House of Youth to erect 

the billboard today. There were seven 

4th Battalion UN soldiers while the snow 

gently fell.


That evening a small congregation 

of people gathered with the press. 

Reuters were there a few papers 

CNN…The usual…I read the speech—the 

ambassador to the UK was present as 

was Fuad who spoke and Ibriham Spahic. 

This is a brief excerpt from my speech I 

wanted to include this evening…: 

Danca said about the war: ‘it was an examination to test the 

limits of endurance. My message from a country of last things 

would be I would like you to have been here.’ For a brief 

moment I was there.


It was a compliment to be awarded the Prix Liberte for services to Humanity in Europe in Bosnia 

with them one evening. Tahir, my Bosnian filmmaker friend, told me that it was shown many times in the 

cinemas during the siege. They must have been a well-worn copy that was available during the siege, which 

then became a symbol for the freedom, which had been denied them. 

It was a compliment to be awarded the Prix Liberte for services to Humanity in Europe in Bosnia by The 

International Centre For Peace. 

The tears of Zagreb, the endlessness of the buildings, the bridges which had been blown up, the refugees, 

the dogs of war, and the burnt out leaves of the books. 

My questions are many and myriad…like the name of a woman, which keeps popping into my head… is this 

going to last forever? Will the next generation carry the scars of the past as this one carries the scars of the 

previous generation? The solution is for all to forgive. 

If we build our hostilities towards those who have tried to liquidate us, we will become defensive and 

immobilised by our fears. Then we will be the defenders of our own fears. By defending we risk the fate of 

becoming like our enemies… People create wars out of fear. But it is not the fear of domination but of being


‘I know you want to help me. I have been here, 

I am a prisoner. Are we not all prisoners in our own 

minds, in our own thoughts and so who can set me 

free but myself?’


It was peculiar sitting there with Omer and Fatima trying to describe in my broken Russo-Bosnian what a 

seminal film it had been in the 60s, that Peter Fonda had made more money from that one film than his father 

had for all his films put together. Looking at the acid trip sequence and judging by their quizzical observation, it 

went right over their head. 

Sunday, 3rd December, 1995, Sarajevo 

It is the last day here before we leave. The billboard will remain. Dirty unwashed children are playing 

without any other option and in front of me there is an old man who is walking with a great limp. Nothing is 

unusual here. Everyone here walks with a limp. He is pushing a small broken trolley with seven broken leather 

suitcases attached to it. Tied with torn cords. I happen to be following him. Eventually he comes to a small 

underground basement, which he unlocks. A very scraggy terrier or mongrel dog, I’m not certain, welcomes 

him, jumping up and down. He turns to me and beckons me to come and he turns towards me pointing with his 

little gnarled finger like the branches of the tree at the Embassy in Ljubljana and he seems to say, or am I just 

imagining this: ‘There are no accidents, every meeting is meant to be. Every meeting spans another one.’ In the 

centre of the room there is something I don’t understand what I am looking at. I look down into it and there is a 

hole. There is something sort of flowing from it. 

He says to me: ‘I know you want to help me. I have been here, I am a prisoner. Are we not all prisoners in 

our own minds, in our own thoughts and so who can set me free but myself?’ And he laughs. I turn my back and 

I race out the door and all I can hear is that laughter. 

The magazine that Darja and Alma worked on was Slobodan Bosna which means free. 

I just wanted to say Radovic Sinisa lived in Tetovosk 4 Sarajevo Bosnia. Phone number 546322. 

We get in the bus to leave, it is early morning, and the bus starts to accelerate while cement shrapnelscarred 

buildings begin to fade past me faster and faster. Winter is coming. My thoughts return to Sarajevo as I 

leave her. 

I agree with Radgovic I want to come back and see the hurt gone. I want to see business and life reinstated. I 

want to see little children laughing and bright vivid colours. I want to see art and flowers again and I want to see 

people in love. The scars will remain and so will some of the hate but as long as people do not kill themselves 

over it, it will be OK. If war does not happen in a year it is going to be OK. The people are scared here. They do 

not believe. Four years of war has left him or her with a deep hurt and suspicion, it’s a kind of shock, yet each 

person deals with their shock in a different way. 

People who have been incarcerated know what freedom is more than those who have never been in prison. 

I recall my journalist evening with David, Tahir, Darja, Phil and Whitney, two diplomats from Turkey, the 

Ambassador from the UK who spoke at the opening, the synchronicity of the mural, the speech, and the 

differences in time. 

The night with Laibach. Dr Keller and his stories, his money, the French Battalion and how there are only 

UN or journalists here. The man with the trolley. The dog. The pressman from Reuters. 

The burial of the dead in the stadium. A drawing for Darja. Cabbages in the nature strips. The UNHCR 

plastic on all the windows. 10.00pm curfew. The age of the young men, some of the young men would walk 

the streets and you would see them shuffling or hobbling or crippled and in this war what happens is that it 

just makes the young so old and it is as if they have been washed by this strange fairy dust which ages them 

overnight.


attacked…The Serbs indicate that they were victims of the Turks. ‘They the Turks murdered us 500 years ago 

and the Croats murdered us 50 years ago.’ But this cannot justify murder in this generation. 

It is not the evil in our lives but that we deny this evil… Every country turns into the monster it is seeking to 

defend itself from by using the same tools… 

How and when are we going cure 

ourselves of such in built fears? 

The answer is only love…


Postscript 

Darja Lebar remained in Sarajevo resuming her 

career in journalism and human rights. She married a 

good man Almir and bore him a child. 

Dominic Ryan returned to Australia and set up 

a small NGO; the Peace Project. He later visited 

Kosovo, the Gaza Strip, Cyprus and the West Bank 

of Palestine and Israel in the Middle East. He was 

awarded the Liberty Prize for Human Rights in the EU 

after the Sarajevo initiative. 

Alma Sahbaz co-directed the film Exile in 

Sarajevo, which was released in 1998 and received 

an Emmy Award. She lived in Australia for a year 

and then returned and now works in Sarajevo in an 

NGO. 

Tahir Gambis directed Exile in Sarajevo and 

continues to crusade for human rights in Kosovo, 

Afghanistan, and the refugee crisis in Australia. 

The 4th Battalion of the French UNPROFOR 

returned to France eight weeks later. 

Postscript on the city of Sarajevo 

On February 26, 1996, by opening the northwest 

passage, i.e. by liberating the Vogos(h)c(h)a and 

Ilijas(h) districts, Sarajevo was proclaimed an open 

city. The Serbs had destroyed the post office and 

the city was left without telephones. Its water, gas 

and electricity supply was cut. The food supply was 

fast disappearing. The cemeteries were expanding. 

After the Dayton Agreement and the coming of the 

IFOR, the Serbs started to leave the occupied territory 

around the city. On March 19, 1996, the Bosnian 

Serbs left the occupied district of the city—Grbavica— 

which was the last part of the city to be returned to 

the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina under 

the Dayton Agreement. 10,615 persons, of whom 

1,601 were children, were killed in Sarajevo. More 

than 50,000 persons were wounded, a great number 

of whom remain invalids. The siege of the city lasted 

from May 2, 1992 to February 26, 1996, or 1,295 

days, which is the longest siege in the modern history 

of mankind. The 1295-day siege left the downtown 

area and certain suburbs in utter ruins. 

(NOTE: Maybe one day someone will dramatise this 

event, avoid the boredom and mediocrity by turning 

it into a love story with a series of thrilling and deadly 

escapades. Darja Labar decided to stay. I returned 

to Australia and have never seen Darja nor Sarajevo 

again.)


To Dominic, whom I love. A friend of mine, Branci Festovic said: “It was an examination to test the limits 

of endurance. My mesage from a country of last things was that I would like you to have been you 

here.” Dominic was there too. P.S To your son - Dominic smoked (he actually does not do that) a few 

drina cigarettes. That happened in the winter of ‘95 in a Bosnian capitol, Sarajevo. The town had been 

severely damaged in hate, intolerance and stupidity. Darja - Sarajevo 95


Minutes to War 

The Diary of a Gonzo Diplomat 

1. Moscow 1994 

2. Sarajevo 1995 

3. Israel-Palestine 1997 

4. Kosovo-Albania 1999 

5. Cyprus 2000 

6. Qaliya 2001 - Jerusalem 2002 

7. The Peace Project 

Seven Diaries by Dominic Ryan 

Edited by Christopher Race 

Graphic Design by Walter Ochoa - 

Leigh Woodburgess - Pat 

Photographs by Dominic Ryan - Daniel Rosenthal - 

Tycho Sierra - Deaudeaux - Firouz Malekzadeh 

-UN forces Cyprus & Madeline Garlick–Tahir Gambis 

© Dominic Ryan 2005 

This is an inhouse publication for private purposes only. 

The Peace Project

SARAJEVO-1995 Peace Project.

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