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.
Ovako počinje rat. Jedan dan živite vaš svakodnevni život, planirate da idete na zabavu, vodite svoju decu u školu, zakazujete termin kod zubara. Sledećeg momenta, telefon ne radi, TV ne radi, na ulici su naoružani muškarci, putevi su blokirani. Život kakav ste poznavali prestaje. Zaustavlja 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."
Ukrašću priču od jedne moje prijateljice, prijateljice iz Bosne, o tome šta joj se desilo, jer mislim da će vam tačno dočarati kako to izgleda. Bila je na putu ka poslu jednog aprilskog dana 1992. godine, u kratkoj suknji i visokim štiklama. Radila je u banci. Bila je mlada majka. Bila je neko ko voli da se zabavlja. Izvanredna osoba. I odjednom ugleda tenk koji se lagano kreće glavnim putem kroz Sarajevo rušeći sve pred sobom. Mislila je da sanja, ali nije. I trči kao što bi to bilo ko od nas uradio i nalazi sklonište, sakriva se iza kante za smeće, u svojim štiklama i kratkoj suknji. I skrivajući se tamo, oseća se glupo, ali gleda taj tenk kako prolazi sa vojnicima i ljude na sve strane i haos i misli: "Osećam se kao Alisa u zemlji čuda koja silazi niz zečju rupu, dole, dole, dole u haos i moj život više nikad neće biti isti."
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.
Nekoliko nedelja kasnije, moja prijateljica je bila u masi ljudi koji su je gurali sa detetom u naručju da bi ga dala neznancu u autobusu, jednom od zadnjih autobusa koji napuštaju Sarajevo da bi odveli decu na sigurno. I seća se kako se gurala sa svojom majkom kroz masu i masu ljudi: "Uzmite moje dete! Uzmite moje dete!" predajući svoje dete nekome kroz prozor. Nije ga videla godinama. Opsada je trajala tri i po godine i bila je to opsada bez vode, bez struje, bez grejanja, bez hrane, u središtu Evrope, krajem 20. veka.
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.
Imala sam čast da budem jedna od onih reportera koji su preživeli tu opsadu i kažem da imala sam čast i privilegiju da budem tamo jer me je to iskustvo naučilo svemu, ne samo o poslu reportera, nego i kakav čovek treba biti. Naučila sam o samilosti. Naučila sam o običnim ljudima koji mogu biti heroji. Naučila sam o deljenju. Naučila sam šta je drugarstvo. Pre svega, učila sam o snazi ljubavi. Čak i usred strašnog razaranja i smrti i haosa, učila sam o tome kako obični ljudi pomažu svojim komšijama, dele hranu, odgajaju svoju decu, kako odvlače nekog pogođenog snajperom sa sredine puta iako znaju da time ugrožavaju sopstveni život, pomažu povređenim ljudima da uđu u taksi pokušavajući da ih odvezu u bolnice.
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.
Naučila sam toliko toga o sebi. Marta Gelhorn, jedna od mojih heroina, jednom je rekla: "Možeš voleti samo jedan rat. Ostalo je odgovornost." Izveštavala sam u mnogim, mnogim, ratovima posle toga, toliko da sam prestala da brojim, ali nijedan nije bio kao Sarajevo.
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.
Prošlog Aprila, vratila sam se na čudan, kako sam ga nazvala, poremećeni srednjoškolski sastanak. Bila je to 20. godišnjica opsade, početka opsade Sarajeva, i ne volim reč "godišnjica", jer zvuči kao neka zabava, a ovo nije bila zabava. Bilo je to jako tužno okupljanje reportera koji su radili tamo za vreme rata, humanitarnih radnika i naravno samih hrabrih i odvažnih ljudi Sarajeva. Ono što me je najviše pogodilo, što mi je slomilo srce, šetajući glavnom ulicom Sarajeva, gde je moja prijateljica Aida videla nadolazeći tenk pre 20godina, na putu sam ugledala više od 12.000 crvenih stolica, praznih, i svaka od njih je predstavljala osobu koja je poginula tokom opsade, samo u Sarajevu, ne u celoj Bosni i širile su se sa jednog kraja grada na veći deo istog i najtužnije su mi bile male stolice za decu.
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.
Sad pokrivam Siriju i počela sam da izveštavam jer verujem da to mora biti urađeno. Verujem u tamošnju priču koja mora biti ispričana. Vidim, opet, primer rata u Bosni. I kad sam prvi put stigla u Damask, zapazila sam jedan čudan momenat u kome ljudi nisu verovali da će rat iznenada izbiti i bilo je isto kao u Bosni i u skoro svim drugim državama u kojima sam videla da rat stiže. Ljudi ne žele da veruju u to da stiže i zato ne odlaze, ne odlaze ranije kad još mogu. Ne spašavaju svoj novac. Oni ostaju jer svi žele da ostanu u svojim domovima. I tada rat i haos iznenada nastupaju.
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.
Ruanda je mesto koje me stalno proganja. 1994. godine, na kratko sam napustila Sarajevo da bih izveštavala o genocidu u Ruandi. Između aprila i avgusta, 1994., milion ljudi je pobijeno. Ako me je tih 12.000 stolica toliko pogodilo samim brojem, želela bih da samo na trenutak razmislite o milion ljudi. Daću vam neki primer, sećam se kako sam stajala i gledala niz put daleko koliko sam mogla, najmanje 1,6 km i tamo je bila gomila tela u visini duplo višoj od mene mrtvih. I to je bio samo mali procenat mrtvih. Bilo je majki koje su držale svoju decu uhvaćenu u zadnjim smrtnim mukama.
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.
Naučili smo mnogo od rata i spomenula sam Ruandu jer je to mesto, kao i Južna Afrika, u kome već blizu 20 godina traje isceljenje. Pedeset šest procenata parlamentaraca su žene, što je fantastično i sad je već u okviru ustava, da vam nije dozvoljeno da izgovarate Hutu ili Tutsi. Nije vam dozvoljeno da bilo koga identifikujete po etničkoj pripadnosti, što je, naravno, prvenstveno i započelo pokolj. Jedan moj prijatelj, humanitarni radnik, mi je ispričao prelepu priču ili ja mislim da je prelepa. Bila je jedna grupa dece, mešana Hutu i Tutsi i grupa žena koje su ih usvajale napravila je red i deca su samo davana sledećoj ženi po redu. Nije bilo nikakve kompenzacije za, ti si Tutsi, ti si Hutu, možda si ubio moju majku, možda si ubio mog oca. Bili su spojeni u nekoj vrsti pomirenja i smatram to izvanrednim. Kad me ljudi pitaju kako nastavljam da izveštavam o ratu i zašto to i dalje radim, evo zašto.
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.
Kad se vratim u Siriju, zapravo već sledeće nedelje, ono što vidim su neverovatni heroji, neki od njih se bore za demokratiju, za stvari koje mi uzimamo zdravo za gotovo svaki dan. I to je razlog zašto to radim.
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."
2004. godine, dobila sam sina i zovem ga moje čudo od deteta, jer nakon što sam videla toliko smrti i razora i haosa i tame u svom životu, ovaj zrak nade se rodio. Nazvala sam ga Luka, što znači "Onaj koji donosi svetlost", jer donosi svetlost u moj život. Pričam o njemu jer kad je imao samo četiri meseca moj strani urednik prislio me je da se vratim u Bagdad odakle sam izveštavala tokom svog vremena Sadamovog režima i za vreme pada Bagdada i posle toga i sećam se ulaska u avion u suzama, plačući jer sam odvojena od svog sina i dok sam bila tamo, jedan poznati političar iz Iraka koji mi je bio prijatelj pitao me je: "Šta radiš tu? Zašto nisi kod kuće sa Lukom?" Rekla sam: "Pa, moram da vidim." Bila je to 2004. godina početak neverovatno krvavog perioda u Iraku. "Moram da vidim šta se dešava ovde. Moram da izveštavam o tome." Na to mi je on rekao: "Idi kući, jer ako propustiš njegov prvi zub, ako propustiš njegov prvi korak, nikad nećeš sebi oprostiti. Ali uvek će biti drugog rata."
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.
I nažalost, uvek će biti ratova. I zavaravam sebe ako mislim, da kao novinar, kao reporter, kao pisac, to što radim može da ih zaustavi. Ne može. Nisam Kofi Anan. On ne može zaustaviti rat. Pokušao je da pregovara u vezi sa Sirijom i nije uspeo. Nisam osoba za rešavanje konflikata UN-a. Nisam čak ni doktor-humanitarac i ne mogu vam opisati koliko puta sam se osećala bespomoćnom gledajući ljude oko mene kako ginu, a ja ih ne mogu spasiti. Ja sam samo svedok. Moja uloga je da budem glas ljudima čiji se glas ne čuje. Jedan moj kolega je to opisao kao donošenje svetlosti u najtamnije kutke sveta. I to je ono što pokušavam da uradim. Nisam uvek uspešna i ponekad je neverovatno frustrirajuće, jer se osećate kao da pišete u prazno ili da to nikog ne zanima. Koga zanima Sirija? Koga zanima Bosna? Koga zanima Kongo, Obala Slonovače, Liberija, Sijera Leone, sva ova mesta koja ću pamtiti do kraja svog života? Ali moj zadatak je da budem svedok i to je srž, suština stvari, za nas reportere koji ovo radimo. I sve što zaista mogu da uradim je da se nadam, ne u stvaraoce politike ili političare jer koliko god bi želela da verujem da čitaju moje reči i rade nešto povodom toga, ne zavaravam se.
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.
Ali ono čemu se nadam da ako se setite ičega što sam rekla ili bilo koje od mojih priča sutra ujutru za vreme doručka, ako se setite priče o Sarajevu ili priče o Ruandi, ja sam odradila svoj posao.
Thank you very much.
Hvala vam puno.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)