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My name is Jasenko Pašić.
I was too young during the war to be interested.
In 2008, I got a job as an actor at the Sarajevo War Theatre
which was very exciting for me because I started discovering
completely new dimensions of life under the siege.
This is one such story.
IN BOSNIAN CULTURAL CENTRE AT 1800 - 14 DECEMBER 1994
You can't escape war.
The war is there. You can only hide in some corner.
I think I was at the Obala club when somebody picked me up,
told me there was a concert. So I took my film rolls and went.
The concert passed in a sort of haze.
That's why I probably took so many photos.
I surely wouldn't have used seven rolls of film
had it not been for the energy and the madness.
I might have used my last seven rolls.
The entire atmosphere with the audience and all that
took me back to different times, to a life I lived before
and the things I did before the war.
I come from a normal family,
from an inter-ethnic marriage,
a concept unknown to me at the time.
My mother was an Orthodox Christian
and my father was a Muslim.
It feels weird to think about it now,
some 21 or 22 years later.
To think, as a mature man, about what was in your head at 14.
My mother wanted me to be a nice boy,
but I discovered rock 'n' roll, I started to grow my hair
and wear Statement t-shirts.
Watching American films, I had two versions of my life dream:
to drive motorbikes and trucks or possibly to fix them.
My mum had a different ambition.
She never wanted her child to get his hands dirty.
So my second option was the arts.
There began my wandering between the two.
Hi, Vanja, I just arrived.
Hey!
We were kids. Feda Štukan was the popular one.
He was like... so cool. But we were always friends.
Before the war, Sarajevo lived
like it does today during the Sarajevo Film Festival.
That's how it used to live every day.
Next to Hotel Beograd, Hotel Bosnia now,
that street and the whole square were packed with people.
You couldn't walk in front of the National Theatre
because of all the cafes and people.
I got into computers and drawing early on,
as I noticed I could get a lot from both computers and pencils.
I was quiet and shy, I was staying at home a lot.
I was reading, watching SF movies, drawing,
and that was my world.
Until the war came.
When the war came, we thought it would soon be over.
We wanted to play, buy new records, albums.
But it was no longer possible.
Another life started for us, in the underground.
Hello!
It was Eid.
There was a party so I got out with a case of dark Laško beer.
I got in my Fiat and by the time I got home,
my police station had already fallen.
There had been some roadblocks
and they sorted it out in two to three days.
I thought it was another foolish incident.
Honestly, none of us expected real war to start the next day,
and people to start dying.
At first, we were excited. "School is out."
"Yay, no school. Why?"
"Some kind of a mess."
"What mess?" Our crew from Marijin Dvor went to find out.
There were some protests and petition signing.
They collected signatures for peace, for YuTel TV.
We knew some shit was going on,
but we thought it was nothing serious.
We are not giving our Bosnia away!
I have an older sister. She went out that day.
When she got back home, she said there was a lot of turmoil,
some shooting and unrest in front of the Army Hall.
Suddenly, a beautiful sunny day turned into hell.
Nobody knew there would be a war.
This is where the frontline was, some 50 metres from my house.
It was the frontline in this part of the city
and we were right on it, totally unaware. At least, I was.
Then the shelling of the city and the snipers started,
and the killing of so many children and people.
You walk around the city, see everything torn down.
Many buildings were set on fire.
I saw Sutjeska cinema burned down to the ground.
Everything is filthy and torn down.
The department store was also destroyed.
Trees were cut down.
I saw an old woman, a farmer, walking around with a cow.
In the middle of Titova Street.
It was a cultural shock for me.
In the capital city I grew up in,
I see a cow in Titova Street.
The worst for me was the winter of 1992,
November or December.
My mum was making a fire on the balcony to make us lunch.
The smoke was getting in her eyes, making her cry.
She didn't know what to do. It was a struggle just to live.
I was 14 and didn't really know how to help her.
The normal life you had was gone, nothing was normal any more.
When this evil started in 1992, we couldn't understand it.
We were too young to understand why the shit started.
We took it as the worst horror imaginable.
To me the greatest shock was
the systematic burning of buildings.
Even then, as a 14-year-old kid, I could not understand
why they were burning down Zetra sports hall, for example.
You realise it has nothing to do with...
That something else is at stake.
You realise they're burning down Vijećnica,
the Olympic Museum, all the things we were proud of.
From 1984 to 1992, everybody from Sarajevo,
every Bosnian and honestly, every Yugoslav was proud of
the Olympic Games that took place here.
I only knew that they came, surrounded Sarajevo
and started shooting at us.
As my mother was an Orthodox, they started calling our house.
They threatened her and told her to leave the house
and the Muslim she was living with
as well as her children, and to cross to their side.
Then you realise it is not a dream.
I remember running under sniper fire and shells.
I went all over the city on my bike.
I felt no fear at all,
until one evening I went to visit my friend Alma in Breka.
I was going up Dalmatinska Street when shelling started.
For the first time I felt fear, a panicked sort of fear.
I started running up Dalmatinska, trying to hide.
When I felt that fear of shell fire,
I realised the war and terror had begun.
My brother was shot.
Like all the other kids, he liked collecting shrapnel.
He didn't listen to our mum and ran out after the first shell.
The aggressors would fire the first shell, wait a bit,
then fire a few more when we'd start removing the wounded.
So when my kid brother, nine-and-a-half years younger,
jumped out with a friend to collect shrapnel,
a shell fell between his friend's legs.
It's unclear how the kid survived.
My brother got hit on both of his legs.
Wounded and covered in blood, he ran up the stairs,
as we lived on the 4th floor. Mum met him on the 2nd.
That was the big moment, when I saw my brother wounded.
It's different when other people get hurt,
when it's not happening to you.
But when it is somebody close to you,
like my brother was to me...
He was small, innocent, unprotected, and injured.
That's when the war started in me.
It was either surrendering to it and go nuts
or accepting things as they were, stand up straight
and do the right thing at the right moment.
I had a house, a homeland. It was my duty to defend it.
It was my honour.
We had some phones,
we would occasionally talk with someone from the other side.
Once, we talked with some buddies we knew from school,
our friends, until recently.
They called a few times, warning us
that in the next two days, the situation would worsen,
with heavier shelling,
as some volunteers were coming from Montenegro or Serbia
and they were going to unleash hell,
so we needed to be careful.
There were so many shells.
Once, I went out and saw some dead birds in the street.
There were so many shrapnel fragments and bullets in the air
that all the birds were shot dead and laying on the ground.
Not much to say. 1992 was a shock,
an adjustment to the new situation.
You simply decide,
"OK, there we are, so, let's live our lives
the best way we can."
So we were left to organise new living arrangements.
For us that meant some sort of war schools.
People were sent to the army or had wartime work duty.
When you start war school, you get a timetable.
Thunder from above and from all sides, and you attend classes,
trying to learn stuff and pass a test.
Both young and old, we said,
"It won't ruin our lives, break our spirit.
"You won't stop me from going to school,
doing a concert, even if it kills me."
But in 1993, some sort of "normal" life began.
But it was that. Anyone will say so.
Theatre plays started at the Chamber Theatre.
People threw concerts at Sloga and Obala.
Things were organised in basements,
any area that was safe.
The culture we had during the war will never happen again.
People were without money, but did things from the heart.
We wanted to show those monkeys that we were living our lives.
It was a great risk.
I remember the premiere of "Shelter" was announced.
You didn't know where or what.
It was performed in Kabare at the Youth Theatre
and they were shelling the National Theatre.
You couldn't tell what was worse,
that the National Theatre was being shelled -
luckily, they didn't burn it down -
or that we created a play.
It was a great risk.
We staged "Hair" in the Chamber Theatre under candle lights.
SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL AFTER THE WORLD ENDS
That entire period was so great,
except the horrible things.
To me, the entire war period is the best period of my life,
when God walked the Earth and people were still normal.
Everything made sense when you were that close to death.
Everybody lived life to the fullest.
Women also lived thinking...
...a bullet could hit them any time.
Everybody behaved like it was their last day.
It was great.
We lived in a parallel world.
We started going out, going to concerts,
forming bands, started playing music.
We started living a regular teenage life.
We'd always carry backpacks with clean socks, spare clothes
because you never knew where you'd end up.
Imagine, you buy a guitar and all you want to do is to play.
It's like having the best toy in the world,
but it runs on electricity...
...and there's no electricity.
During the war, I brought my guitar to the shelter with me.
Everything else could burn.
When the electricity came on,
the main focus was to play as long as possible,
and tape record Headbangers Ball to check out the new music.
You had to plan and wait.
When it was announced
the electricity was coming in 10 days, we had to be in that room
and play music because nothing else mattered.
It was only then that we felt like
ordinary young people at a concert,
where some are watching and others are playing.
We felt normal during the couple of hours we played.
I started writing in English then.
The idea was to reach out to people, to say, "Hello...
What is going on? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Why aren't you doing something?"
There was Lezi Majmune, Blago Gluhima, Gnu.
There were several bands in those basements.
We then got organised. It was April or May.
A group of local musicians founded
some sort of Rock'n'Roll Association as a resistance,
to escape the madness.
Then we made the Help Bosnia Now shows in the Olympic Hall.
Luckily, we had electricity for his last show
with Iron Maiden.
MTV was covering their sound check before the last show
of Bruce Dickinson with Iron Maiden.
We were shocked. "What will happen?
Where will he go? What will happen to Iron Maiden?"
It was a pretty big shock.
Maiden was never Maiden to me.
To me, Maiden was always Bruce Dickinson
and only Bruce Dickinson.
When I saw him on stage for the first time,
the black contours of his eyebrows under the lights,
I realised he was the guy I had been drawing my whole childhood.
That was the main reason I got to like him.
The most complicated part was the very beginning.
You'd always go over lgman.
Once we'd reach Hrasnica and we'd start climbing lgman,
I would often...
For me, Iron Maiden was the best band in every way
and Dickinson the best singer.
I would often sing "Run To The Hills".
The people walking with me had no clue whose song it was
or what it meant,
but it felt good as they felt my positive energy.
We didn't have enough ammo, or anything to respond to
all the provocations and shootings.
I responded with music.
And when my guitarist friend was with me, we could play and sing.
That was great.
My band got really fucked during the war.
In 1992, Aris, our singer and guitar player,
was shot in the head by a sniper.
Luckily, they immediately took him to the hospital.
They did an operation and saved him.
At the same time, our drummer got hit by a shell.
A huge chunk of shrapnel got lodged into his thigh bone.
They managed to save his leg.
As the days went by, weekend after weekend,
we were all getting together,
but it was quite noticeable when somebody was missing.
Bad news travelled fast.
Basically, one by one, we kept falling.
At that time, we were all certain we were going to die.
NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN, NOT TO BE REPEATED - NERMIN DIVOVIĆ
It was such a coincidence, but also destiny.
One of my neighbours,
who lived exactly right across from me,
and worked during the war as a driver for UNHCR and UNICEF,
had heard that a rock star was coming.
A lot of people came to mind.
At that time many stars found it interesting to come here.
I thought maybe Elton John or Mick Jagger.
I saw him one morning before he went to work
and I asked him, "Did you ask who's coming?"
He said, "Some Dickinson guy."
I got the chills when he said that.
I said, "Dickinson who?"
He says, "I don't know, some guy from an English band.
One of those metalheads of yours."
I asked, "Bruce Dickinson?"
"That's the one."
He said he was off to some fieldwork in Sarajevo,
and I told him I was coming with him even if it cost me my head.
SARAJEVO BRIGADE DOCTOR
The war was in an advanced stage and it was clear
that it wouldn't end in seven days. My beard grew this big.
The only thing you wished was for the war to end.
But when the guy came and said
that Dickinson was coming to town to play,
at that moment the war had ended for me.
We were rehearsing the day they called us
and said Bruce Dickinson was coming that afternoon
and that we would be the supporting act.
We heard that Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden was coming
and that was so funny and weird to us.
The guy is coming in the middle of the war to play.
He's either crazy or they gave him a hundred million pounds.
The first thing I remember is the press conference.
I had a Chronic bandana on my head, with a cannabis leaf.
At the time when Dickinson came to do the concert, the scene was insane.
The number of bands, artists, the range of music
that Radio Zid was playing was really fascinating.
It was like in the best of times,
not ours, but in Europe and around the world.
I get the chills when I talk about this.
We believed there was some sort of cosmos
connecting people and telling the story of Sarajevo.
As days went by, people talked more and more about it.
"Bruce is coming." But all of it was a bit secretive.
Somebody said he was shot dead somewhere on Trebević mountain.
Nobody had any info about any concert.
A friend called me at 5pm
and asked if I'd heard about Dickinson's concert that night.
I said, "Somebody's playing a joke on you."
He says, "I'm serious." I ask, "Who else is playing?"
He says he doesn't know but he's going there now.
Tickets are available somewhere, but they are free of charge.
ROCK SARAJEVO WITH BRUCE DICKINSON
"Does anybody know? Has anybody heard anything?"
Nobody knows a thing. "Let's go to BKC."
The concert will start early because of the curfew.
Mickinson... Something...
When I heard these syllables, I said, "What?"
I was inviting friends to a concert,
but it was still a secret.
We announced it just a few hours before the start.
It was a high-risk event.
Could it possibly be Bruce Dickinson?
"Yeah, that's the guy. He's coming."
No way, man.
Nobody knew anything about the concert.
We went to get tickets and along the way
we invited everybody we met to come to the concert.
When I told my commander, he said
there was no way I could leave my position, it was crazy.
"What concert? Are you crazy? There's a war, blah, blah."
I told him, "I've informed you,
I'll do my guard duty all morning,
but an hour before the concert I'm out of here."
People kept on coming.
I remember us sitting in that small park opposite BKC.
We were checking who else was coming
and sharing a bottle of Napoleon.
As we got closer to the entrance, we were still in disbelief.
Everything seemed so endlessly far away.
Halfway towards Sarajevo we were stopped
and we were told it was impossible to go further.
A man said they wouldn't let us through, even at our own risk,
because fighting was taking place.
I said nothing, but I was very sad.
On the trip back to Mostar,
I didn't even care about arriving.
That man has been in my life since I was 10.
And there he was, in the hardest moments of my life,
coming to my city, under such circumstances.
Utterly impossible.
But if the war was possible and it materialised,
why wouldn't that be possible?
God is almighty.
After the first couple of beats, Dickinson comes on stage.
I was astonished.
I couldn't believe it was really happening. He was really here.
I think that was one of the most beautiful things
that happened during this evil war.
When they announced him, people started rushing forward,
climbing the seating area.
We were crowded in that space, which wasn't big enough.
We were on the chairs and on top of each other's shoulders.
An explosion of pure energy, which the band also felt.
For me the highlight was shaking his hand.
He asked me what it was like to be on the frontline.
I fell completely silent.
I just shook his hand and said thank you.
It was spectacular when Bruce came out to the stage.
The lights were top class.
When Alex, the drummer, came on stage shirtless,
the girls started screaming.
Long hair, proper stage, a true rock concert.
When Bruce started playing, it was like...
Another planet.
Like a spaceship descending.
If someone outside could have been there to film it,
I think we'd have seen a yellow light shining out from BKC
directly into space.
There was an instant connection with the positive energy,
the only bright spot in Sarajevo at that moment of war.
The people inside were completely oblivious
to the situation outside.
There was no war.
For those few hours, there was no war for me.
The great thing was
that everyone knew each other and trusted each other.
We were in a great situation.
"Fuck! We are at Bruce's concert!"
The main story was, "Fuck it,
if we all die tomorrow, Bruce is here, man."
It was spectacular.
The U2 concert in Sarajevo was nothing compared to this.
All that money, the big stage, and all the lights are in vain.
You just had to be there.
We stepped out after the concert was over
and felt extremely sad because it was over.
You wished it had lasted longer.
You go back to the cruel reality in which you live in.
I looked at the clear, starry sky and thought
that perhaps somewhere out there normal life exists.
SALVATION TUNNEL HOUSE KOLARA
The way they got to Sarajevo, how the concert happened
and how we all got there is absolutely crazy...
I guess it's life, and together we have conquered death.
For me and my friends
the only true ambassador in the war was Dickinson
and the most important event that happened was the concert.
I thank him for that. He conveyed a message.
"Hold on, this won't last much longer."
After that, we all got inspired to pursue music even more.
My band started to be more involved.
We started doing gigs all the time.
Amer also founded his own band. They named it The Rain,
in reference to the rain of shells we endured every day.
It was the summer of 1995 when he was called up.
When they all got into a truck, he was the last one to go.
He was reluctant to go. And he never came back.
Every time I come here I leave a guitar pick.
Good evening, Sarajevo.