This is how war starts. One day you're living your ordinary life, you're planning to go to a party, you're taking your children to school, you're making a dentist appointment. The next thing, the telephones go out, the TVs go out, there's armed men on the street, there's roadblocks. Your life as you know it goes into suspended animation. It stops.
Vojna se začne tako. Danes živite svoje vsakdanje življenje, načrtujete obisk zabave, peljete svoje otroke v šolo, se naročate k zobozdravniku. Nato pa so izklopljeni telefoni, ne dela televizija, na ulicah so oboroženi ljudje, na cestah zapore. Življenje, ki ga poznate, navidezno izgine. Ustavi se.
I'm going to steal a story from a friend of mine, a Bosnian friend, about what happened to her, because I think it will illustrate for you exactly what it feels like. She was walking to work one day in April, 1992, in a miniskirt and high heels. She worked in a bank. She was a young mother. She was someone who liked to party. Great person. And suddenly she sees a tank ambling down the main road of Sarajevo knocking everything out of its path. She thinks she's dreaming, but she's not. And she runs as any of us would have done and takes cover, and she hides behind a trash bin, in her high heels and her miniskirt. And as she's hiding there, she's feeling ridiculous, but she's seeing this tank go by with soldiers and people all over the place and chaos and she thinks, "I feel like Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole, down, down, down into chaos, and my life will never be the same again."
Ukradla bom zgodbo prijateljice iz Bosne o tem, kaj se ji je zgodilo, ker se mi zdi, da vam bo prikazalo, kakšen je ta občutek. Nekega aprilskega dne leta 1992 je bila na poti v službo v minikrilu in v visokih petah. Delala je banki. BIla je mlada mamica. Rada je hodila na zabave. Krasen človek. Naenkrat pa zagleda tank, ki se plazi po glavni cesti Sarajeva in gazi vse pred seboj. Zdi se ji, da sanja, pa ne. Kot bi storil kdorkoli izmed nas, steče in se skrije za smetnjak v svojih petah in minikrilu. Med skrivanjem se počuti trapasto, ampak pred seboj vidi ta tank z vojaki, ljudi povsod naokrog in kaos in pomisli: "Počutim se kot Alica v Čudežni deželi, ki pada v zajčjo luknjo; dol, dol, dol v kaos in moje življenje nikoli več ne bo isto."
A few weeks later, my friend was in a crowd of people pushing with her infant son in her arms to give him to a stranger on a bus, which was one of the last buses leaving Sarajevo to take children out so they could be safe. And she remembers struggling with her mother to the front, crowds and crowds of people, "Take my child! Take my child!" and passing her son to someone through a window. And she didn't see him for years. The siege went on for three and a half years, and it was a siege without water, without power, without electricity, without heat, without food, in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century.
Nekaj tednov kasneje je bila moja prijateljica v množici ljudi in se je s svojim fantkom v naročju prerivala, da bi ga dala neznancu na avtobusu, ki je bil eden zadnjih, ki je zapuščal Sarajevo, da bi otroke spravili na varno. Spominja se, da se je z mamo prerivala na čelo velike množice ljudi: "Vzemite mojega otroka! Vzemite mojega otroka!" in da je svojega sina podala nekomu skozi okno. Ni ga videla več let. Mesto so oblegali tri leta in pol in med tem niso imeli vode, energije, elektrike, gretja, ali hrane sredi Evrope, sredi 20. stoletja.
I had the honor of being one of those reporters that lived through that siege, and I say I have the honor and the privilege of being there because it's taught me everything, not just about being a reporter, but about being a human being. I learned about compassion. I learned about ordinary people who could be heroes. I learned about sharing. I learned about camaraderie. Most of all, I learned about love. Even in the midst of terrible destruction and death and chaos, I learned how ordinary people could help their neighbors, share food, raise their children, drag someone who's being sniped at from the middle of the road even though you yourself were endangering your life, helping people get into taxis who were injured to try to take them to hospitals.
Imela sem čast, da sem bila eden izmed novinarjev, ki so bili priča temu obleganju. Pravim, da je bila čast in priložnost, da sem lahko bila tam, ker sem se naučila vsega, ne le o poročanju, temveč tudi o tem, kako biti človek. Naučila sem se sočutja. Spoznala sem navadne ljudi, ki so bili heroji. Naučila sem se deliti. Naučila sem se kolegialnosti. A predvsem sem se naučila ljubezni. Celo sredi groznega uničenja, smrti in kaosa sem spoznala, kako lahko običajni ljudje pomagajo sosedom, si delijo hrano, vzgajajo otroke, zvlečejo nekoga s ceste, ker streljajo nanj, čeprav tako ogrožajo svoje življenje, pomagajo poškodovancem v taksije, da bi jih lahko odpeljali v bolnišnico.
I learned so much about myself. Martha Gellhorn, who's one of my heroes, once said, "You can only love one war. The rest is responsibility." I went on to cover many, many, many wars after that, so many that I lost count, but there was nothing like Sarajevo.
Toliko sem se naučila o sebi. Martha Gellhorn, ena izmed mojih vzornikov, je nekoč dejala: "Ljubiš lahko le eno vojno. Ostale so odgovornost." Kasneje sem poročala o zelo zelo veliko vojnah, toliko, da jih ne znam niti prešteti, a nobena ni bila taka kot v Sarajevu.
Last April, I went back to a very strange -- what I called a deranged high school reunion. What it was, was the 20th anniversary of the siege, the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo, and I don't like the word "anniversary," because it sounds like a party, and this was not a party. It was a very somber gathering of the reporters that worked there during the war, humanitarian aid workers, and of course the brave and courageous people of Sarajevo themselves. And the thing that struck me the most, that broke my heart, was walking down the main street of Sarajevo, where my friend Aida saw the tank coming 20 years ago, and in that road were more than 12,000 red chairs, empty, and every single one of them symbolized a person who had died during the siege, just in Sarajevo, not in all of Bosnia, and it stretched from one end of the city to a large part of it, and the saddest for me were the tiny little chairs for the children.
Lanski april sem šla na zelo čudno, čemur bi rekla prismuknjeno obletnico mature. To je bila 20. obletnica obleganja, pričetka obleganja Sarajeva, a ne maram besede "obletnica", ker se sliši kot zabava, to pa ni bila nobena zabava. To je bilo temačen shod novinarjev, ki so tam delali med vojno, humanitarnih delavcev in seveda pogumnih in hrabrih prebivalcev Sarajeva. Kar me je še najbolj presenetilo in mi strlo srce, je bil sprehod po glavni ulici Sarajeva, kjer je moja prijateljica Aida pred 20 leti videla tank. Na tej ulici je bilo več kot 12.000 rdečih stolov, ki so bili prazni, in vsak izmed njih je predstavljal nekoga, ki je umrl med obleganjem in to samo v Sarajevu, niti ne v celi Bosni. Raztezalo se je skozi večino mesta in najbolj žalostna stvar so bili majhni rdeči stolčki za otroke.
I now cover Syria, and I started reporting it because I believed that it needs to be done. I believe a story there has to be told. I see, again, a template of the war in Bosnia. And when I first arrived in Damascus, I saw this strange moment where people didn't seem to believe that war was going to descend, and it was exactly the same in Bosnia and nearly every other country I've seen where war comes. People don't want to believe it's coming, so they don't leave, they don't leave before they can. They don't get their money out. They stay because you want to stay in your home. And then war and chaos descend.
Zdaj poročam iz Sirije, s čimer sem začela, ker sem verjela, da se to mora storiti. Verjamem, da se mora njihovo zgodbo povedati. Zopet vidim šablono vojne v Bosni. Ko sem prispela v Damask, sem doživela nenavaden trenutek, ker ljudje niso verjeli, da se bo vojna zares zgodila. Bilo je natanko tako kot v Bosni in v vsaki drugi državi, kjer sem videla prihod vojne. Ljudje nočejo verjeti, da prihaja, in ne odidejo, ko bi lahko odšli. Ne dvignejo denarja. Ostanejo, ker hočejo ostati doma. Potem prideta vojna in kaos.
Rwanda is a place that haunts me a lot. In 1994, I briefly left Sarajevo to go report the genocide in Rwanda. Between April and August, 1994, one million people were slaughtered. Now if those 12,000 chairs freaked me out with the sheer number, I want you just for a second to think of a million people. And to give you some example, I remember standing and looking down a road as far as I could see, at least a mile, and there were bodies piled twice my height of the dead. And that was just a small percentage of the dead. And there were mothers holding their children who had been caught in their last death throes.
Pogosto me preganja Ruanda. Leta 1994 sem za kratek čas zapustila Sarajevo, da bi lahko poročala o genocidu v Ruandi. Med aprilom in avgustom 1994 so pomorili milijon ljudi. Če me je prestrašilo 12.000 stolov že zaradi številke same, bi rada, da si za trenutek predstavljate milijon ljudi. Naj vam podam primer: spomnim se, da sem stala na ulici in gledala v daljavo, kjer sem vsaj kak kilometer videla par metrov visoke kupe trupel. To je bil le majhen delček mrtvih. Na njih so bili otroci v objemih mater, ki so jih objele v zadnjih izdihljajih.
So we learn a lot from war, and I mention Rwanda because it is one place, like South Africa, where nearly 20 years on, there is healing. Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians are women, which is fantastic, and there's also within the national constitution now, you're actually not allowed to say Hutu or Tutsi. You're not allowed to identify anyone by ethnicity, which is, of course, what started the slaughter in the first place. And an aid worker friend of mine told me the most beautiful story, or I find it beautiful. There was a group of children, mixed Hutus and Tutsis, and a group of women who were adopting them, and they lined up and one was just given to the next. There was no kind of compensation for, you're a Tutsi, you're a Hutu, you might have killed my mother, you might have killed my father. They were just brought together in this kind of reconciliation, and I find this remarkable. So when people ask me how I continue to cover war, and why I continue to do it, this is why.
Veliko se naučimo iz vojne in Ruando sem omenila, ker je to kraj, kot je Južna Afrika, kjer se 20 let kasneje celijo rane. 56 odstotkov poslancev so ženske, kar je neverjetno, in celo v državni ustavi je, da se ne sme uporabljati besed Hutu in Tutsi. Nikogar se ne sme identificirati glede na etnično pripadnost, saj je to začelo pomor. Prijateljica, ki je humanitarna delavka, mi je povedala prekrasno zgodbo, vsaj meni se zdi prelepa. Obstajala je mešana skupina otrok, ki so bil Hutu in Tutsi, in žensk, ki so jih posvajale. Postavili so jih v vrsti in vsak je šel k naslednji v vrsti. Nobenega oklevanja ni bilo, če je bil nekdo Tutsi ali Hulu, kar bi lahko pomenilo, da je bil odgovoren za umor matere ali očeta. Skupaj so jih privedli, da bi se pobotali, in to se mi zdi neverjetno. Ko me ljudje sprašujejo, kako to, da še vedno poročam o vojni in zakaj nadaljujem, je to razlog.
When I go back to Syria, next week in fact, what I see is incredibly heroic people, some of them fighting for democracy, for things we take for granted every single day. And that's pretty much why I do it.
Ko bom šla nazaj v Sirijo, to bo naslednji teden, bom videla neverjetno pogumne ljudi, od katerih se bodo nekateri borili za demokracijo, za reči, ki se nam zdijo samoumevne. Zato to počnem.
In 2004, I had a little baby boy, and I call him my miracle child, because after seeing so much death and destruction and chaos and darkness in my life, this ray of hope was born. And I called him Luca, which means "The bringer of light," because he does bring light to my life. But I'm talking about him because when he was four months old, my foreign editor forced me to go back to Baghdad where I had been reporting all throughout the Saddam regime and during the fall of Baghdad and afterwards, and I remember getting on the plane in tears, crying to be separated from my son, and while I was there, a quite famous Iraqi politician who was a friend of mine said to me, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you home with Luca?" And I said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004 which was the beginning of the incredibly bloody time in Iraq, "I have to see, I have to see what is happening here. I have to report it." And he said, "Go home, because if you miss his first tooth, if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself. But there will always be another war."
Leta 2004 sem rodila fantka, ki mu pravim čudežni otrok, saj se je po toliko smrti, uničenju, kaosu in temi, ki sem jih videla v življenju, rodil ta žarek upanja. Poimenovala sem ga Luca, kar pomeni "prinašalec luči", ker mi v življenje prinaša luč. Govorim o njem, ker me je, ko je bil star 4 mesece, moj urednik za zunanje zadeve prisilil, da sem šla v Bagdad, od koder sem poročala vseskozi Sadamov režim, med padcem Bagdada in po njem. Spomnim se, da sem se vkrcala na letalo v solzah. Jokala sem, ker sem bila ločena sina. Ko sem bila tam, me je slaven iraški politik, ki je bil moj prijatelj, vprašal: "Kaj delaš tu? Zakaj nisi doma pri Luci?" Rekla sem: "Moram videti." Bilo je leto 2004, ko se je v Iraku začelo zelo krvavo obdobje: "Moram videti, kaj se dogaja tu. O tem moram poročati." Rekel je: "Pojdi domov, ker, če boš zamudila njegov prvi zob, njegov prvi korak, si ne boš nikoli odpustila. A vedno bo nekje še kaka vojne."
And there, sadly, will always be wars. And I am deluding myself if I think, as a journalist, as a reporter, as a writer, what I do can stop them. I can't. I'm not Kofi Annan. He can't stop a war. He tried to negotiate Syria and couldn't do it. I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person. I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor, and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've felt to have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them. All I am is a witness. My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless. A colleague of mine described it as to shine a light in the darkest corners of the world. And that's what I try to do. I'm not always successful, and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, because you feel like you're writing into a void, or you feel like no one cares. Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia? Who cares about the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, all of these strings of places that I will remember for the rest of my life? But my métier is to bear witness and that is the crux, the heart of the matter, for us reporters who do this. And all I can really do is hope, not to policymakers or politicians, because as much as I'd like to have faith that they read my words and do something, I don't delude myself.
Na žalost bodo vedno vojne. Sama sebe slepim, ko razmišljam o tem, kaj lahko kot novinarka, kot poročevalka, kot pisateljica storim, da jih zaustavim. Ne morem. Nisem Kofi Annan. On ne more ustaviti vojne. Poskušal se je pogajati s Sirijo, a mu ni uspelo. Nisem odgovorna oseba OZN za reševanje konfliktov. Nisem niti humanitarna zdravnica in ne morem vam povedati, kolikokrat sem se počutila nebogljeno, ker se pred menoj umirali ljudje, ki jih nisem mogla rešiti. Sem samo priča. Moja naloga je, da ljudem brez glasu dam glas. Moj kolega je to opisal kot "posvetiti z lučjo v najbolj temne kotičke sveta." To poskušam storiti. Nisem vedno uspešna in včasih me to zelo razjezi, ker se počutim, kot da gre moje pisanje v nič, da nikomur ni mar. Koga briga Sirija? Koga briga Bosna? Koga briga Kongo, Slonokoščena obala, Liberija, Sierra Leone, vsi te kraji, ki se jih bom jaz spominjala do konca življenja? Moje poslanstvo je biti priča in to je jedro, to je srce zadeve, razlog, zakaj to novinarji počnemo. Lahko le verjamemo, ne v politike ali v tiste, ki sprejemajo odločitve, saj, čeprav bi rada verjela, da berejo moje besede in glede tega kaj storijo, se ne zavajam.
But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I said or any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast, if you can remember the story of Sarajevo, or the story of Rwanda, then I've done my job.
Upam pa, da, če si boste do jutri zapomnili karkoli, od mojih zgodb, si boste zapomnili zgodbo o Sarajevu ali o Ruandi, to pomeni, da sem opravila svoje delo.
Thank you very much.
Najlepša hvala.
(Applause)
(aplavz)