Some stories, even if told thousand times, leave behind them difficult shadows to disperse. That’s Srebrenica, where the most cruel crime in Europe has been committed after the Second World War. A lot of people told Srebrenica but is never enough. Everything has been told and written but everything seems to be told yet. Among books, documentaries and other things, Elvira Mujcic, a young Bosnian woman writer, deserves a certain prominence for reconstructing the Srebrenica’s horrors. With her book “Al di là del caos” ("Beyond chaos") she gave evidence without commonplaces and rhetoric to a deep concept: war leaves lasting marks even on survivors. Not always visible to the naked eye.

The nightmare becomes reality. The 11th July 1995, after a few days of wild fighting, the Serb-Bosnian army finally entered in Srebrenica city. It was a sheltered place, mainly populated by Muslims in the Serb tumult. At the end nobody sheltered Srebrenica. According to official sources, the victims of the carnage were about 7,800, but some associations claim that were over 10,000. Some of them come out alive and among them Elvira. But it’s hard to say if someone can really save himself from what happened in Srebrenica. Elvira had to write in order to cauterize her wounds “as my psychiatrist advised me”, she says with her intelligent irony which permeate the whole book. A book useful for her in order to put some things in its proper place and tell the war without rhetorical tinsels. She chose to write down and judging by the music mentions all over the story, it’s strange that Elvira didn’t choose music to tell her story.

“I’m the woman of quotations. For each moment of my life, for everything I have been told, I have a quotation. Mainly literary considering that I started reading at four- says Mujcic - in the book at the end, I’m carried away by music, I quote words even if sometimes sometimes I would like to evoke the music itself, but in a book it’s not possible! My choice is brought about by the fact that a book is made of feelings and maybe music is more useful to transfer them. I do the same with what I’m writing now: while I’m writing, I make a note on top of the pages on the music I’m listening to. At the beginning there were more mentions, then I read it again and found it a bit heavy. So I told myself: take a bit away. That’s why I wanted to recover my feelings of those days and do not write now a book on war. I tried to recover the music I listened to in order to recover also my feelings”.

There is no peace without justice. It’s not a glance turned back but a journey in a young girl’s heart, a fourteen-year-old girl in the middle of a storm.

“Everybody looking back at war can’t say but the war is a very bad thing. It’s normal” says Elvira, “but I didn’t want to write starting from today but I wanted to recover the dimension of those days when, for a young girl of fourteen year old, to pick up a grenade or live in a refugee camp seems amusing. In every single thing at that age, you can find fun. And it’s worth saying it. At that time I wanted to come back at any cost in Srebrenica or in the refugee camp because I was in my ease there instead of in a little town in Italy”.

From Srebrenica, with her mother, brothers and sisters, Elvira fled away a little before folly prevailed. She left behind her father, her uncle and a lot of other persons. Until now they were part of her life, her day by day. Her father was never found out and apart from some witnesses’ evidences, his memory is the only thing she and her family have. The same memory which is the grief of thousand Srebrenica’s families who would have a body to bury and a grave to cry over. Or at least, they would like to see the responsible for the slaughter in prison.

Between memory and justice. With a risk: if you do not come to terms with the past, you can’t build up your future. “That’s true but difficult”, Mujcic answers, “you can say ok, everything is past and I know who did it. But starting from the big executioners up to little torturers, a lot, too many people are free. It’s a matter of justice and not memory. The punishment of the responsible won’t help the working-through of your bereavement, but you can at least go shopping without meeting certain people, free to go for a walk. I could live together with Serbs only if I were sure that the most part of the guilty people were punished. In Italy for example, I can meet people coming from Serb, but not in my Srebrenica. There, they are themselves and they are all guilty just because the real responsible haven’t been punished and I can’t distinguish them from innocent people. It’s hard to have confidence. We did it once and even if everybody told that war wouldn’t come, at the end it came. I know we won’t come back to the beautiful Tito’s Yugoslavia but at least it could be a starting point. The punishment of the guilty would be good both for victims and torturers”.

Tito or not Tito? But how can you say the beautiful Tito’s Yugoslavia? In Italy it’s a sort of nonsense. “I know it and I have decided to leave it out from my book presentation” answers with a smile Elvira. “As soon as I mention the matter everybody rush upon me and say I’m not a free woman because I regret dictatorship. It’s difficult to explain even because I have to split myself today, aware of certain things from myself as a child, brought up by an extreme communist mother. It’s hard to explain that, apart from criticizing Tito, everything could be done in the ex-Yugoslavia. The strangest aspect is that on Tito matter, I always find some hostility apart when I speak with ex-Yugoslavian people and they invariably agree with me. In Italy there is just one idea on the subject: we were poor men, subdued by Tito who kept us together by prodding us. Nobody asks the reason why there were the 45% of mixed marriages in the ex-Yugoslavia. I can’t deny the “foibe”, or the Goli Otok prison. But in Italy you just think of this without inquiring how Yugoslavia was. And so, at the end, I get bored of being the communist champion and I forget it”. In Italy it’s difficult to speak of Tito but not only. The Balkans for example, so far so near. But here we often have no idea of this country tormented by the war but rich in culture and traditions.

“In Italy, apart from Paolo Rumiz, who later detached from it, very few understood the Balkans” explains Elvira. “His 'Maschere per un massacro' hit me. After having read a few lines I exclaimed “here's someone who understands something”. A few others, such as Luca Rastello and Roberta Bigiarelli, understood. Usually there is a lot of shallowness”.

A passageway. Italy, precisely. First a shelter, a hose later, in Rome. “Usually in my life I do not make any choice. I’m tossed about. I didn’t choose, I came here at fourteen years old– Elvira says- Srebrenica has been assigned to the Srpska Republic and, after the war, we couldn’t come back. I stayed here and, at the end I spoke better Italian than Bosnian. I’m thinking about going back to Bosnia, I think in Sarajevo, for one year at least, but it’s a difficult decision”. Difficult but sincere because one of the story characters is Vanessa, Elvira’s cousin. Like her she has lost her father but remained in Bosnia. And, when she narrates in the book she nearly blames herself.

“The will to come back is more emotional than logical” says Elvira, “I would like to live again the four seasons in Bosnia for example. Now I feel far more Italian than Bosnian and I’m annoyed by it. It’s a very bad thing. When I go to Bosnia and I speak Bosnian with an Italian accent, everybody say “well done, where did you learn to speak Bosnian?”. I would like to see how I can live in Bosnia as adults, because I keep this homesick image of my country, linked to my childhood. Also the past relationships now are the alter-ego of what they were. With the help of the book I took them out, but in order to put them in a box I have to remain for a while in Bosnia”. I have also to put away my guilty feeling towards war. “Yes, usually they are linked to the idea I was not there, suffering with them. This is the survivors’ problem: you feel guilty because you could eat and because we didn’t have cold. Mainly because you are 27 years old and the others not”. War makes the survivors feel guilty but leaves them the duty to tell, as Elvira Mujcic did.