Sarajevo: looking for Amel
His name is Dzemil and he was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1983. His brother died in 1995 in the last months of the Siege and here is the reason why he built up the website https://sniperalley.photo/.
Listen to what he says : “I remember how life was, a simple, worriless and carefree adventure, it was as if nothing really mattered. My brother and I would walk to school and come back home, eat, go out, play and do the things every child does. Play till you collapse, sometimes skipping meals because of a child’s hyper-euphoric adrenalin rush. We didn’t want to miss anything. Being outside was our food, days were too short, endless happiness.
But in 1992 my childhood dramatically changed – the war started. My life and that of my family was suddenly interrupted, without any warning. One moment it was peace, the next, it was war. Life would never be the same again. Not that I knew that back then, maybe it was better I had lived in a child’s parallel universe. I wasn’t clueless, just a happy optimistic kid.
I was almost nine years old when the war started and about to finish year three of primary school. I remember celebrating my ninth birthday in a made-up bomb shelter with my family and my friends, all of us hiding from the shelling.
Almost at the end of the war, in May 1995, during a truce between both sides, if something like that was possible in the minds of the beasts who tortured us for 3 years, my life changed forever. We were playing outdoors; my older brother was playing tennis and I was playing marbles with my gang. Suddenly a sniper started shooting at us. My brother was shot in his chest, he started walking towards home, holding his wound. He was the only one shot. Tallest amongst us, the oldest, in-a-couple-of-years-time-potential-soldier. Kids screaming, crying, mother’s calling out names, total chaos. While he was trying to get home, still standing, his wound bleeding, I rushed to get help and tell my mother, who was making us lunch after her night shift in hospital. As she was trying to help him I grabbed blanket to wrap him, I phoned the ambulance and went out to witness what would be the last moments of my brother. He died on my mother’s lap while she tried her best to bring him back to life.”
That’s why Dzemil is still liiking to press photographers archives, sur that one day or the other, he will find his bro, pictured for the last time.
