The moment the battle intensifies the cameramen and photographers rush to divide the streets of Sarajevo amongst themselves, to make sure every alley and every district is covered. Then mounting their cameras to face the right direction, they keep their tapes constantly running. And on every hour they would remove the tapes and replace them with new ones. On the hope that they would capture that golden shot: a falling shell or a dead body, a collapsing home or a screaming child.
This tape shows a woman walking alongside a building. Her child walking by her side, as she pushes a stroller with her baby in it. Carefully positioned on the rooftop of that building is a cameraman. His camera is rolling. Then a Serbian sniper aims and fires. The woman falls to the ground, killed instantly. Her two children keep screaming. "The bullet, it killed the woman. Great. Excellent!" The provoking voice of the Bosnian cameraman was caught on the tape that had filmed that very tragedy. The man was certainly not pleased with what he had witnessed but he was glad he had caught that critical moment. For he had documented the crime. But for those who had watched and listened to the tape, they thought otherwise. They were appalled by the cameraman's reaction.
Throughout their professional lives, how many times have those cameramen and journalists witnessed death as it swoops down like a bird hunting its prey of souls? How many times have they heard the painful screams of victims and watched their terrified eyes as they were taking those last wheezing breaths?
Shortly before the civil war ended in Rwanda, between the vicious conflict of two tribes. One tribe allowed us to visit a detention camp where thousands from the rival tribe were being held. Journalists came from all over the world and had traveled for hours by bus through magnificent lush forests of heavenly colours. Yet once we crossed the gates of the military base, the scene dramatically transformed to a miserable black and white.
Skeletons move around a barren land and a few soldiers were armed to the teeth. There was no food and there was no water. Anything green that was found, even the grass, was quickly cooked in pot-like ware over flames that will be lit in any way possible.
Snaking along both sides of the alley leading to the centre of the camp were corpses of infants who had died of malnutrition. The Red Cross van trudged along collecting the corpses. Humans here were dying, slowly. But we journalists were given clear orders not to feed the prisoners, not even a piece of bread. Anyone, regardless of their nationality, will otherwise be killed. We saw a man laying on the ground. Nothing was moving except his eyes as he struggled for his last few breaths. We, the pitiful, were hovering around him with our cameras. We were different nationalities, different ideologies, different colours, but we were united in our helplessness. As we filmed his last breath, his eyes ran over us begging for help. We could not know all his inner (or last) thoughts before he forever shut his eyes. We left, but the pain never left us.
Women were entering an enormous imposing hall. That acidic smell will stick with me for days to come. The crowd's heartbeats accelerate. A sense of awe filled every corner of that hall. Long tables stretched endlessly, laden with tens of skeletons. Surrounding each one were personal belongings: a wedding ring, a shoe, a pen, or a pair of prescription glasses. The Bosnian women would pass by and examine the skeletons. Each woman would pick up the skeleton examining it, turning it over, left and right. Looking for something to prove that this belongs to her father, her son, or husband. She desperately looks for anything to prove that this is all that remains of her lifetime loved one. Now try to find a word that could articulate this scene justly. Nothing will do.
Suddenly one of them would explode in tears, then the other women would know that their friend had just identified that skeleton to be her relative's. Such a strange contradiction to live through, they would offer their condolences but at the same time congratulate her for finally finding her loved one. They were still at a loss, filled with pain that knew no limit/end. We record the moment and then leave this great hall but the pain takes refuge within us.
These tapes of memories never rest. A young girl from Flora, the beautiful Albanian city, tells me her story by the beach. A story of her father's adventurous escape to Italy. He promised that he would be back and bring her the toy that she longed for. She did not know that the ocean that separated them, sometimes craved for humans, and embraced them forever.
What is always most painful, is the sight of children. They often pay the price for the stupidity, the viciousness and greed of the adults. That child, from the Bosnian city of Tuzla, lays wounded on the bed in a state of total shock after he had witnessed his entire family slaughtered.
Or that little Somali girl sitting inside her small hut, on the outskirts of Mogadishu, in the scorching heat. Her face, leathered and lined, began to look like that of an old lady in her seventies.
And the young boy from the town of Shali in Chechnya. He lay down on what seemed a bed at a makeshift hospital. He lay uncovered, without anaesthesia. Putin's bombs had burned most of his skin.
When you travel often you begin to feel that this land, no matter how far it stretches, is your home. That the local inhabitants, no matter how different they are, are actually your family. You feel happy when they are and you feel sad when they are. Can you then bear all this suffering?
Dr. Youssef Idris traded his medical career/profession to one of literature. When he realised that his heart no longer felt the suffering and pain of others. Exactly like what Mohammad al-Minsi Quandeel did. Has the written word shielded them from the pain? Can a human being stop feeling pain?
One day while I was covering the war in Bosnia, I came across a journalist from a leading international media station inquiring on a particular story. The interpreter responded and said it is a case of rape. The journalist said forget it, I need a more severe/dreadful case. The interpreter then points to a woman, they have slaughtered her husband. No, no, no the journalist shakes her head angrily and says I need something more grim. She continues this way dealing with all the 'cases' in a stone cold blooded manner.
I ask myself, do I have to be like this so that I can be seen as professional? Must I suppress/silence my feelings, is it enough (will it suffice/ should I be satisfied) to document these moments and deal with these "cases" coldly? Or should I remain human, to hurt for this and cry for that? Can you both be professional and human at the same time? Is there enough space in this heart, for all this suffering?
Often helplessness, doubt and depression afflicts the messengers. Doubt casts long shadows, how effective is our work? Does the written word, audio or even the visual image have an influence? Are we needed like the thirsty who crave a drop of water, or like a severe bleeding wound in need of a bandage. So, can the world move without the influence of the written word?
I got bored one day from the daily rhythm of war during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina so I decided to go to Chechnya during the first war, between 1994 and 1996. My first trip there I stayed three weeks in Chehnya, it was harshest days I had ever lived through. To the extent that when I returned to Bosnia, I felt safer even happier. Despite all of Bosnia's ongoing tragedies. What was happening in Chechnya was far more violent and intense than what was happening in Bosnia.
Yet the public had not idea simply because international media decided for some reason to suddenly stop its coverage of Chechnya while the war continued to rage on. As if the war had ended, as if people were not dying every day. As I was leaving I felt that my trip will in some way contribute to increase awareness of the war happening in Chechnya to the public.
Many times while in Chechnya, I felt the constant creeping of overwhelming fear. There was no infrastructure that could hide in to protect me. The skies rippled with Russian airplanes dropping tens of bombs. Tons of metals were falling over your heard. There was no where to hide except in a few wooden shacks that would dance to the sounds of exploding bombs. "If you get wounded you cannot do anything except head to the nearest makeshift clinic or wait for your death". And so the words of this Chechen fighter did not help ease my fears. Will my kids not even be able to see my dead body, to hug me one last time while they recite al "Fatiha".
The fighter believes that his gun may protect him from harm but what protects a journalist? The journalist fears war and also fears being a prisoner of war. Even if the kidnappers believe that the prisoner is indeed a journalist, a mere messenger, not their enemy the journalist does not know how he or she will be dealt with or for how long will they remain captured.
And so with every trip back home I decide not to return to a war zone again. But it takes little to dissuade. After a hot bath, a hot cup of coffee, and as I sit there surrounded by my wife and my children. I think twice and decide to go back to war.
Days pass by, years fly and I begin to believe that I have done it. That I have managed to defeat fear and conquer pain. Only to discover, although survive you did your soul is utterly covered with scars.
They say that it is the depression after the shock. Dr. Hamza Al Sharji says that "life will not return to normality the moment after you are first shot at by a bullet, or after you have witnessed a crime against humanity and after you have been subjected to torture. Obvious as this may seem to some, but what we forget is that after being exposed to news and working on the field for a long time, you will show similar symptoms."
Symptoms that can be described by overwhelming psychological and physical anxiety which leads to insomnia, irritation, lack of concentration, and dread. Yet for me the most dangerous symptom of all is losing faith in what used to motivate me in the past. That feeling of isolation thats lead to a vicious cycle of guilt and feeling powerless.
I carefully retrieve the tapes of memories in my mind, for consolation. I would go everything with a fine tooth comb. I sigh with content. I feel I have done something, anything, or even to contribute in doing something. Even if it is merely laying a signal, pointing to the perpetrators of crime. Or even yet as a testimony to the lord or for history.
You feel euphoric that you have overcome fear, that you have defeated pain and exposed it to the eyes of the world. You are victorious. Then you discover after a lifetime that in fact although you think you have defeated it, it still clings on to you.