Karen's Story - Episode 2 - This Is War

Amir was a child of 13 during the siege of Sarajevo when he was hit in the stomach by a sniper's bullet. The injuries he sustained were life changing. His words are shared by his widow Karen.

Transcript

Amir's Story - Episode 2 - This is War

When did you last talk to somebody you know really well, only to discover a fact about them you could never have guessed. People are fascinating, aren't they? All around us every day are ordinary people with interesting and sometimes extraordinary stories. Amir’s story is one of the lasting impact of war. It tells of tragedy and of loss, but also of the strength of family ties and tradition. Most of all, though, Amir’s story is one of the triumph of love. It was told to me by my friend, his widow, Karen Packwood. We met up on a warm September day in the Vale of Belvoir near Nottingham.

I remember just thinking, this is a story that needs to be told. And it was actually in one of the very early conversations with him. And I just said, you know, if there was one thing that you could have from all of this, what would it be? And he just looked at me and he said, I want people to know what happened to us here.

In this episode, Karen honors Amir’s wish that his people’s story be told, by reading his own words -transcribed before his death. It contains distressing sequences. This is Amir’s Story, part two: This is War. My name is Bobby Twidale and you are listening to the Everyday Extraordinary podcast. 

We've talked briefly earlier about the trauma that Amir experienced as a 13 year old, I think, yeah. Do you want to say a bit about that? I think it adds quite powerful context to your experience, doesn't it?

Yeah. So Amir, was 13. It was I think it was a couple of years into the war. And he had right at the beginning of the war, like many Bosniaks - so the Muslim Bosnians - he and his family had been ousted out of their apartment by Serb militia. And so they'd been through a situation of living in many, many different locations, sometimes with family. But at one point, he lived in a shed and field without any electricity, or without anything actually. I've seen the shed – it’s just a shed in the middle of a field and they had nothing. It was going from one place to another, refugees in their own countries.

Sarajevo October 1994 Amir

If you were to view my city from the sniper’s vantage point on the mountains where I once skied freely, you would see decimated buildings. To your left tower blocks erected during the communist reign of our beloved Tito would be in flames, with people jumping, falling, tumbling, crashing, attempting to save their innocent lives. You would see a mother's despair. You would see small children running, zigzagging with plastic containers of dirty water back to their families sheltering in damp cellars. Do you know that we had to run like that to avoid the bullets. You would see people lying dead on the streets, body parts and the clothes scattered. The air would stink of decomposing bodies. You would see our elderly men risking their skeletal lives, stumbling over fallen bricks to join breadless bread queues. Our mothers and grandmothers, sisters and aunts lining the streets to receive humanitarian aid - tinned meat stamped with the year 1973 - relics of the war in Vietnam. You would see our fathers digging up our football pitches to create graves for our innocent children.

Much has been said about the role of the UN during the Bosnian war. And daily evidence from Ukraine is once again demonstrating conflict waged in the name of political ambition inevitably spills into the everyday existence of civilian populations. The Siege of Sarajevo forced children like Amir to make unthinkable choices, leaving them feeling largely unprotected by those there to keep the peace and prevent bloodshed.

And of course, Amir was a schoolboy and school, it was very, very difficult for the school to keep going during the war. Sometimes they would meet in basements to have their classes and sometimes school just didn't happen. And so, one particular day, Amir and his friends decided that they would go to visit their maths teacher, somebody that they very, very much respected. And there was meant to be a ceasefire so they felt like it was considered safe to go and visit her because there's quite a long tram journey on the other side of the city so obviously dangerous with snipers. Sarajevo is a city that's surrounded by mountains and had been under siege for two years at this point. So very, very difficult circumstances. Anyway, they thought that it was safe. So they decided to go and see their maths teacher, which they did. And they had a very nice visit with her. On their way back, they were walking along this particular part of Sarajevo, which was one of the most dangerous parts of what was called Sniper Alley. There's a big building, a big national institution, big public building. And there was that building. And then there was quite a sizeable gap. And then another massive institutional building. And then mountains all off to the right. In that gap was a UN tank with a UN soldier when they when they got to the edge of the national building with children had a conversation: “What should we do?”

The gap in the buildings represented exposure to snipers? 

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And so they decided, well, it's a ceasefire. There's a UN soldier there. If we run, we'll be okay. So they started to run. And the snipers started shooting, and a couple of friends got across. And then another friend and Amir went. One of the friends was shot, but not seriously. And then Amir was shot as he ran and he was shot in his in his stomach, which then went on to cause terrible, terrible injuries, including paralysis. 

And so the soldiers reaction, well, would be a natural next question, wouldn't it? 

It's the natural next question. And it's a question that was incredibly painful for Amir to talk about. And there is video footage of this.

Which I've seen, and it's harrowing.

Yeah, harrowing. So what happens is that Amir is shot and he lands on the ground. And he's in between the national building and the tank and the UN soldier and he screams out: “Help me,” holding his arm out. And the UN soldier just stands there. He looks at him and then chooses not to do anything to help him.

Sarajevo October 1994. Amir. 

I've been running towards and fallen close to a United Nations tank positioned to act as cover. Before the tank, on the safe side, stood a member of the peacekeeping force. They were there to help and protect us. But that didn't happen. “Help me”. The Peacekeeper ignored me. “Help me”. The Peacekeeper ignored him. During the war, my heart became frozen.

When you see it on the footage, you see him just laying there. And it's a member of the public who runs in and risks his life and picks Amir up and then what he does is he runs and takes Amir to his car and then takes him to the nearest hospital. But when he was in that car, he actually faints, and he tells me that as he was fainting, that was the moment when he just thought that’s it, I'm dead. 

At 13. 

A civilian man stepped forward and gave me his hand, pulling me behind the tank. Taking me in his arms, he ran to his car screaming: “Coward!” at the peacekeeper. As he placed me on the backseat of his car, I fainted. That was the moment when I thought that's it. I'm dead.

At 13. And I think it's really important to state at this point. This isn't 13 and a 13-year-old kid that's really happy and healthy and well fed. This is a kid that is skeletal. He's starving. Because of the siege, he's wearing clothes that are too big for him because of the weight loss. Actually, clothes that are too big for him because they're not his clothes. Because in all the moves, he's lost his clothes, he hasn't had clothes, he's had to just gather things wherever he can. Yeah, this is a boy whose family were trying to trap pigeons in order to have something to eat.

And I presume that this also means that the hospital wasn't operated in the way you would normally expect hospitals to be operating?

The hospital of course was two years into a war, that's under siege, where things aren't getting in or out. It's operating in such difficult circumstances you know, doesn't have the food to feed the patients.

And that’s such an important part of recovery. 

That's right, yeah. And even access to water. You know, access to clean water and fresh water was very hard to come by and in some parts of Bosnia, it was a case of poisons were put into the water system so that the water wasn't safe either. The Siege of Sarajevo was a siege, you know. People had nothing. He was three and a half stone at this point. He lost all his teeth due to malnutrition.

But he was treated in hospital?

Yes, of course. The doctors were, you know, highly trained doctors and doing the best they possibly can, but he was treated. But of course, it wasn't as best as it possibly could be.

The medication was very limited?

Very limited. 

He received blood transfusions, though.

He had many blood transfusions. He also had a very long, nine-hour operation. And within that operation he did actually having a heart attack that they managed to bring him back from. That quite a lot of really intense treatment and surgery. And the morning after his first surgery, and I think it was his first day in the hospital, he woke up or came round, and he had plastic sheeting on his stomach and he didn't know what it was. When the surgeon came round he's like: “What is this?” and that's when he was told it was his colon, and he lost a kidney. And in order to do some of the internal work that they needed to do during surgery, they had to have his colon outside of his body. And he actually lived with his colon outside of his body for over a year, which as a 13-year-old boy who's lost his teeth and is skeletal and shortly after this, he's actually also told that he's paralyzed, he can't actually walk.

In the 1990s, an instant digital flow of footage and eyewitness accounts was not yet a feature of warfare, but nevertheless, the work of journalists like Christiane Amanpour succeeded in highlighting Amir's plight on the world stage. 

He came out of hospital? I mean, what happened next?

No, he didn't come out of hospital. What happened next was that he was in hospital and a journalist from CNN news did an interview with him, which actually makes me laugh because he actually wasn't very happy about doing the interview. He didn't want to be bothered by it. But he did it. Actually, it was a brilliant thing that he did, because when that report went out on CNN news, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel was watching it in his Manhattan apartment and realized that if Amir wasn't treated properly somewhere else, and that's nothing negative towards the hospital in Sarajevo - it’s just because obviously they're working with limited provisions, very, very difficult conditions. But he realized that Amir needed to be given help somewhere else. So, he arranged with a friend of his, who was president of a charity working in Sarajevo at the time, for Amir to be evacuated by the French army and taken to a hospital in Paris, a Children's Hospital in Paris, and he was there for about a year.

January 1995, Sarajevo, Amir. 

The time of my departure was drawing closer and with that, a level of panic was rising. No matter how hard I was trying to stay positive, it just didn't work. Many people were coming to see me to say goodbye. But one person filled my heart with joy. When the doors opened, and I saw my grandfather, I couldn't hide my happiness from him. Before the war, we lived together in his apartment. And when we were ousted, he refused to move. Due to telecommunications difficulties, we had no idea if he was alive. He came into my bed crying, asking how am I feeling. I'm okay, grandpa. Don't worry. You have to be okay. Listen to the doctors do what you're told, force yourself to eat. You've lost so much weight. I know grandpa, but I still can't eat properly. My body isn't strong enough to have proper food. That's why they feed me through the nose. I'm sorry for not being able to come see you earlier. The shooting has been constant. I haven't been outside the apartment without a specific need. But today, I've decided to come no matter what. It doesn't matter, grandpa. You didn't have to come at all. I know how dangerous it is outside when you need to travel through the whole city. The next thing my grandpa did is something I will remember for the rest of my life. He put his hand into his shirt pocket and pulled out a German 10 Mark note. Look, I know it's not much. But please take this and when you get to France, buy yourself some chocolate. I wish I could give you more. But this is all I have. My dear Grandpa, you should keep that for yourself. I don't need it at all. Of course, there was no point in further discussion. I took the money and said thank you. It was hard to say goodbye. I was holding myself not to cry. He hugged me, told me to look after myself and reassured me that we will see each other soon.

He was initially told that his mum would be able to go with him. And then at the very last minute he was told that his mum wasn't going to be able to go with him and he would have to do the journey on his own. He was very close to his mum anyway, but obviously as a result of the war, they were a very close family. His dad was already in the army so he would be off and they didn't know where he was or know when he would be back and so on. So, they were all already living with that terror of separation in wartime. And then to actually then go to another culture was terrifying for all of them. But of course, he didn't know while he was in Paris if his family would survive or not. They did have some kind of phone contact periodically with him and his mom, but it wasn't regular course. He'd be listening to the news and he knew the terrible state that Sarajevo was in. He got to Paris. He was taken there by the French army. He tells the story of being on the stretcher and being in the military plane and how he was given coke and something to eat, and that he cried the whole time he was eating it because all he could think of was his sister who was starving in Sarajevo and the guilt of like being given this food. 

Survivor's guilt? 

Yes.

January 1995. Paris, Amir. 

When Amir left Sarajevo, he possessed only basic items. One set of hospital pajamas, one toothbrush, some underwear. We flew on a military plane like a cargo plane. I was on a stretcher. When our plane landed. It was already night. And since everything had been arranged in advance, the ambulance was waiting for me. As soon as I arrived at the hospital, I was given a meal, chicken with mashed potatoes, green peas, salad, fruit yogurt, fruit. While I was eating all those nice things, my soul was crying. I thought of my starving sister in Sarajevo, wanted to share that food with her.

I think it might be worth mentioning that he was also a little bit upset that he was going to Paris and not America. The 13-year-old boy was kind hoping that he might actually be taken to America. So, he was a little bit disappointed when he was taken to Paris. The boy - the man was obviously was happy about it. But the boy at the time was a bit like: “Oh, I'm not going to America”. 

He was there for, I think, it was just over a year. And during that time, he was he was obviously in the intensive care unit and undergoing all the treatment that he needed to undergo there to look after all of the abdominal issues. And then once that was sorted, they transferred him to a rehab unit where they then worked with him on his paralysis and helping him to learn to walk again. 

So, he could walk again?

So there's a very moving story of his mum. They arranged for his mom to come visit him once when he was in Paris. And he didn't tell her that he had managed to be able to start walking again, just a little, just a little bit. And so, when she pulled up outside the hospital, he was in his wheelchair. And then he got up and started to walk towards her. Certainly by the time I met him, he was walking. He had constant pain in his legs constantly having to sort of use various creams on his legs and so on. But he couldn't run while he was in England. He did attempt to learn to ice skate, which I thought was an incredibly like brave thing to do. Couldn't do it! And we didn't get beyond like one or two lessons. But he wanted to you know. I think it's important to mention that prior to the war in Sarajevo, surrounded by mountains, you know, you spend as a boy, you spend your summers playing football with your friends and you spend your winter skiing, and his aunt had a big house in the mountains. And they would just spend their winter skiing. And he lost so much as a result of the war, you know, as a result of the injuries to his legs,

The treatment Amir received from Paris was life changing. But the sniper's bullet nevertheless impacted his adult life in agonizing ways.

Of course, one of the things that we discovered was that as a result of his injuries, we discovered that he was unable to have children. That's a devastating thing to discover anyway. But when you discover that you've lost the ability to have a child, as a result of being shot by a sniper, and the reason the sniper’s shooting you is because they deliberately want to eliminate young male Bosniaks from a culture. And you think, well, I survived so I've won. And then you discover that you cannot actually perpetuate the next generation for your family, in some way the enemy have won in a completely unbearable, and unfixable manner, and that was a very, very devastating time for Amir to be given that information. Yeah, for both of us, actually, at that point, but for him and for his family, it was devastating.

Amir returned to his war-ravaged homeland and his family, leaving behind the safety and plenty of life in Paris. 

When did he finally return home to his homeland?

Yep, so that was about a year after his treatment in Paris, and I think it was once they got him able to walk again. They did offer him the opportunity to stay in Paris. You know, he could have just carried on living there. 

But from what you've said, I'm already going to guess that that was a definite no for him? 

So, he made a very, very good friend in the hospital. She chose to stay. And so, she stayed in Paris. But he said that he wants to go back to Sarajevo. And he said to me: “What would I do in Paris without my family?” He was 13/14 years old. What was he going to do there? He did get some nice support. It was somebody like a UN ambassador in Paris. And the wife used to come visit him every Thursday, and she would take him out. He was really cared for by very high-level people. Which if you knew Amir, you wouldn't be surprised by because he’d got a certain charisma about him. He was a very compelling character. Yes, he was. I think it was because he was very intelligent. He can be very intense and really liked to talk about very political things. But he was somebody that could speak about emotions quite easily as well. He could tell the story of his people so eloquently. So of course, that makes it very compelling and him very compelling as well. But actually, he’d also just got a very good sense of humor. And he was actually kind and caring, as well. 

So he’d just got it all going on really? 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was good looking as well. I should add that as well. 

I’ve seen the photo. (both laugh)

I wasn't gonna mention that. But I always remember that one of the things when I I first sort of thought, I found him quite attractive was he used to do this thing with his sunglasses where he he'd walk in and he had his sunglasses around the back of his neck. And he kind of just like had this little walk. That was kind of cool. But yeah, so he came back to Sarajevo.

Forgive lack of my ignorance, really, of the geopolitical situation at that time. Was the siege still happening when he returned?

He went back to a war situation. A very brave decision. Yeah. Yes, he did. And that was because of his allegiance to his country and his family. He needed to go back. And he talks about the journey of him being taken back. And of course, he was he was taken back by all these, like, top officials in the army. And he was like really well looked after by the military and the politicians. He would talk to me about touching down in Sarajevo and you know, being away for a year where the country is in a war situation, and just driving through Sarajevo, and Sarajevo is such a beautiful city, but of course it was decimated. And he talked about just driving through and thinking: “What have they done to my country?”

This must be resonating very strongly for people now. I hear so many parallels to stories coming out

of Ukraine. 

Watching the situation in Ukraine is kind of like watching a repetition. 

It must be really hard to see that?

It is. And what's hard, is that Ukraine, quite rightly, is getting so much exposure and so much international support. Bosnia didn't get that.

Is that a sign of the times? Do you think it's so difficult to hide things now, isn't it you know, people are there with their mobile phones, on the ground as the events are happening?

Yeah. Gosh, I don't know. 

Do you feel it was a political will to not actually acknowledge it? 

It's really hard for me to know how to answer that question. Because I don't know the truth behind that lack of help. I know what some people in Bosnia feel and think about it.

But there must be a huge weight of sadness, I think to realize that we've, we've experienced this set of circumstances in Bosnia. And now we're experiencing exactly the same set of circumstances in Ukraine. And we appear to have learned nothing.

We appear to have learned nothing. But I think it's really timely to mention the fact that things are very, very fragile in Bosnia again now. They got to the point in Bosnia, where the UN forces were taken out, but they're back there now. They're back on the streets. And I'm not a political expert in this matter. But there is an awful lot of quite worrying political activity that's going on in Bosnia at the moment. The fear is that you know, conflict could flare up again. Yes, it is very hard to see what's going on in Ukraine. For me what's hard about it, it's that knowledge of what happens when everything's supposedly ended when peace is supposedly declared and to actually know that what goes on for the culture in the country. The post traumatic state of the culture goes on for such a long time and to see people attempting to rebuild their lives, to see people living on a daily basis with the trauma, to see people trying to rebuild their lives and they've lost 20 30 40 members of their family, trying to rebuild their lives where they do not know where their husband is, what happened to him. Where is he? What happened to her son, what happened to the nephews, where were the men? And to rebuild a life where you do not know where your loved ones are? How do you do that? Obviously, I had a very big insight with Amir for what it was like for him for what it was like with his family, but I could never really know what they really lived through.

Between 1992 and 1995, more than 100,000 people were killed in the former Yugoslavia. The peace deal that ended the war led to an uneasy truce with ethnic groups unreconciled. Amid allegations of election fraud, Putin ally Milorad Dodik, was elected president of Bosnia in October 2022, leading to protests in the streets and fueling fears that Moscow is aiming to create further instability in an already volatile situation. Renewed conflict seems an increasingly likely possibility