“Fear no son!”
Alma Hindic Kukolj

Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina. War of 1995. City of Srebrenica.

Commotion flooded the streets. The bustling roads were filled with military uniforms mixed with civilians, pushing them in different directions. Bullets whizzed through the air. The sound of grenades in the distance, as soldiers in green uniforms with rifles in their hands forcibly separated girls from boys, mothers from sons, and women from husbands. They angrily spilled their whims on the tortured people. The men were separated on a truck, while the women with children were placed on buses. Mothers with children in their arms stumbled, trying to climb the stairs of the buses. They cried convulsively, some of them clutching their babies to their chests. The children huddled next to their dresses, trying to hide in their folds. Sobs echoed through the air. The girls screamed as masked soldiers separated them and pushed them into buses. Some girls were separated next to the bus. The girls were screaming, fighting frantically. A soldier in a black uniform tied their hands with a rope, and pushed them into a small van, and smiled along the way…. 

Family of three, Mustafa, his mother and father were there too.

Little Mustafa stood next to his mother, silently watching with horror as his relatives were pushed against trucks, buses and vans. Mustafa just stood and watched, in shock. His mother was a tall woman, tiny as a leaf. She was one of the Bosnian women who always stood proudly, without fear, defending her child. Yet, now, fear took her breath away at the thought of what might happen to her child. She protectively hugged him to her chest, trying to infuse him with strength and protect him from the horrors that surrounded them. She was not afraid for herself. She was afraid for him.

Mustafa: “Mom, mommy, why are these people yelling? Why are they hitting Ada with a rifle in the face? Mommy, who are these people?” He whispered, scared and terrified with a pale face.

Mother: “Don't be afraid, son Mustafa, we will be OK! These are just some well-wishers helping us get on the buses! We are going to the sea Mustafa. It will be nice there! Uncle awaits us there, with a lot of cakes and toys, and they are waiting for you! Honey darling, don't look that way!” She averted her son's gaze as he watched in shock the happenings around them, the wild howling of the soldiers towards his friends and neighbors.

Mustafa exclaimed in a horrified voice: Mother, there is father! Where are they taking him? Mother, I want to be with my father! [He shouted desperately. The man in the black sweater, with the blue jeans was walking in a column of people, who were climbing on a truck. On his sun-scorched face, a spasm of fear. His brown eyes were terrified, and he looked down. He waved timidly to the family and passed on.]

“No daaaad, come back to us! Baboooo!” Mustafa was trying to break free from his mother's hand, to reach his father, who got into the back of the truck and disappeared from sight.

The mother held Mistafa's hand convulsively, while he tried to rip off the tiny hand, to reach his father.

Mustafa: “Daaad, I won’t give you to anyone. These are not good people! Evil shines from their eyes! They have no smiles, they have no hearts! Baboooo! Here I am for you! Please, wait for me!”

The soldier, with a rifle in his hands, flapped his hands savagely, showing impatience and hatred. His appearance was no different from the other soldiers, who were dressed in black uniforms, with black caps on their heads and the famous eagle with four heads on it. He waved his rifle, his body in a threatening position, and in an angry voice made the women walk faster.

Mother: “No Mustafa, don't do that my dear child. Mustafa!” The mother screamed fearfully as little Mustafa ran after his father, towards the truck… she choked in sobs trying to reach for the little hands that clutched the back of the truck. Mustafa climbed on the truck hoping to find his father.

Mustafa: “Father, father where are you? I don't see you! Please say something! Say you're here! Dad!” He pushed through a pile of stuffed people, lined up like muffins in a pan. “Why don't you respond, father? I'm not giving you, not to anyone!”

Father [touched gently his shoulder]: “What are you doing, my little fool! You see you have no more room on the truck, this is an adult bus only….!” His father hid his sobs as he slowly steered Mustafa toward the exit. The truck rumbled, the father shrieked in surprise.

 Father: Nooooo Mustafa, come down Mustafa, dear son, what have you been doing! Get off the truck.” His father tried to throw him off the truck onto the dirty dusty road! But, Mustafa resisted his attempts, until a strong punch in the head from someone’s fist cut off the attempt, which made his father fall helplessly to the floor of the truck.

Mustafa: “Father, father, wake up! Please father I'm thirsty!” The truck hummed, racing down the dusty road, hiding little Mustafa's sobs. He looked around, asking “Why all off you are so ignorant?” No response.

“Why is everyone looking down, staring at the floor? Why does neighbor Meho not tell jokes like he always does? Why is Ahmet looking desperately at a picture from his wallet for hours? Why is Ahmed crying? Where do all these sad and unhappy people go? Isn’t travel meant to make people happy?” He asked, but no response again. Just silence.

Mustafa: “Babo, let’s just return! I don't want to be with you! Wake up dad!” He shook the Father, who lay on the floor.

“I want my ball, my bed, my mother and her voice to tell me that everything is fine! That we will be fine!” None responded back, no one comforted him.

“Stand up Balije. It is time to party!” A soldier screamed happily.

Father woke up and shouted: “Everything will be fine, son! Allah protects good people and good children! All will be fine you will see!” The truck stopped. Men were pushed one by one from the truck, and the other two soldiers waved their hands with a rope.

The men were one by one forced to stand by the edge of the huge hole. Something smelled like rotten potato from that hole.  One look to the ground was enough to see that the ground was red, red as my mom roses in the garden, Mustafa thought.

As he approached the edge of the hole, he saw piles of bodies, men, on top of each other. Some faces he recognized, some of them didn’t have faces. The bodies were torn to the pieces, or had holes in their chests. Mustafa screamed!

As he was looking at the hole, his father put his hand over his eyes and squeezed him close to him. Desperately trying to save him from the horror that was unfolding before them and from a death that was so close.

“Dad, they will kill us! Daad do something.” He yelled!

Suddenly he heard bursts fired nearby. Without thinking, he turned to see. A group of soldiers stood in front of them, rifles aimed at the men at the hole’s edge. Behind those pipes stood men in black, with eyes as dark as Satan's. There was a smile on their faces as they pressed the triggers.

"Father," Mustafa sobbed helplessly once more.

His father squeezed him hard, "Fear not, son, let's go to Allah."

Mustafa felt a sharp pain in his leg as his father pulled him behind him falling into the pit. He felt the weight and pressure on his head on his legs, on his whole body. He opened his eyes, the body of his dead father pressed into his chest.

“I can't breathe. I need air.” Mustafa screamed. He crawled out from under his dead father. And he got up.

The shots fell silent.

Someone in the distance screams, “I want my grandmother! Father, wake up! Father, wake up! Dad!" Who is shouting? He wondered, not realizing it was himself.

The boy screamed, slowly crawling over the dead bodies, making sounds like no other human makes. He slowly climbed along the edge of the pit and worked towards the soldiers. The soldiers watched him through long barrels, but no one pressed the trigger.

Commander: “ I order you to shoot this kid! Why have you stopped? Kill him!” Silence was broken by the commander's voice. “Kill the little Muslim, finish him you fools!”

But, no shots are heard. The soldiers lowered their guns one by one, staring in horror at the child rising from the dead, sprinkled with his father's blood. Pieces of human intestine hung down his body as he screamed in horror. He was covered in blood, and his eyes were shining like stars.

Mustafa: “I want my grandmother! Find me a Father!” He screamed.

Soldier: "Commander, we deny shooting at his kid, we won't do it! You can do it, and it is your responsibility to finish him! A miracle from God is not something we can fight!” He said with a horrified voice. “This is a miracle, and God protects him!”

The commander angrily grabbed his pistol: “I will kill you little bastard! I will kill you as I killed all stupid Muslims before! Young or old you are Muslim, and you should have been erased from this earth.” Commander shouted, while holding his gun towards the screaming boy. Hand was holding the gun, but his fingers couldn’t press the trigger.

The boy was screaming as he approached the Commander, cowered with human flesh and blood. 

“Why can't anyone kill him? Kill him, kill him!” The commander screamed. No hand listened, no finger pressed the trigger. The moment became long, as years…. 

The boy was approaching him, with hands wide open, asking: “Please tell me where my babo is?”

“Babo, where are you?” Babo please tell me where are you?” He cried…

As the boy was approaching the Commander, a Red Cross worker jumped into the bloody scene, grabbing the child who was still screaming, trying to silence him. He hugged him tightly as the boy struggled, trying to pull away. He put him in the Red Cross van and took him to the hospital.

“Lucky you are alive!” Said the doctor to Mustafa. The boy was quiet. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t talk for additional five years, even when he was placed in the UNPROFOR’ transporter, to be transported to his uncle in Sarajevo. The long two years he was kept in the hospital, hiding in the basement, not to be discovered by the beastly soldiers who killed his family.  They were the only survivors from his family. 

“I was lucky, I had my father to protect me with his body to not get killed, the other kids didn’t.” he testified later in the Hague, in the trial at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice.  “I was lucky, but I am dead anyway. It is hard to sleep, walk, think and even smile, because all that horror returns back to every minute of my life. It comes in day, it comes in nights…”

 “I see the bodies torn to pieces.  I see bodies without heads, bodies without hands or legs every night! The only thing that kept me alive all these years was my fathers sentence he said when he was protecting me while being killed, “Fear no son!”

“I am not afraid of those monsters.  I’ll testify and I will testify again, again and again until each monster that was holding these rifles are put in jail… Then, I will rest,” he sighed deeply.  

In 2007, the International Court of Justice punished the seven soldiers from the group that was performing this horrible massacre. They were sentenced to prison for the genocide, and murder of several hundred people. Mustafa was the crown witness as he was the only sole survivor amongst the men forced into the truck that day.