8000 Names
Some time ago I was speaking to a brother who was advocating to me the merits of dikr, and his argument consisted of one particularly captivating analogy. He said to me; “does a person know what water is from models, diagrams, words, pictures, or formulas? No. A person only knows what water is when he feels it splash his face, or run down a parched throat, or trickle down his brow”. And was I was reminded of this analogy upon visiting Srebrenica today.
As ever, the day began with a symphony of light, vivifying the greenery, the mountains and the Drina. Every time we drive through this glorious land I think that we are passing through the shadow of heaven and the spirit experiences a surge of delight in anticipation of what awaits the righteous. We are arrived early at Srebrenica, myself, Qasim and Elvir to a picturesque setting, notable more than anything for its silence. When we got out of the car we witnessed a field of white tombstones, thousands of them. A pang of sadness gripped my heart though, once it occurred to me that the certain superficial beauty produced by the ranks of white graves masked untold brutality inflicted by men with hearts of darkness- and this is only one of the many juxtapositions inherent to this land, Bosnia.
It occurred to me that in front of my eyes lay the final resting places of thousands upon thousands of innocent men and boys, wiped from the face of this earth as if they constituted some dirty smudge on the pages of human history. In my head, I think, the weather changed. It became a little darker and I noticed some incongruous looking factory buildings opposite the burial site. What were this ugly little facades doing here, I thought. An explanation was soon at hand.
We were gathered together, very soon, to be given a brief lecture by our guide. She had lost most of her family members at Srebrenica, and she told us that only her uncle had survived. She told us how the city came under siege from the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995. She told us about the indiscriminate grenade and artillery attacks. She told us how the people, 20000 of them, fled in fear for their lives. She told us how the Bosnian Muslims clung to the Dutch UN “peacekeepers” for refuge but received none. And then she told us about those ugly factory buildings I had wondered about.
Thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women, and children were herded like animals into those buildings. The women and children were separated from the men, and led away each to their own callous end. To be raped, mutilated, murdered, and then dumped in mass graves. Witnesses saw the law lorries that carried away the bodies imprinting their tracks in human blood. More than 8000 people died that day. They say that one death is a tragedy but that 1000 is merely a statistic. Do you remember that analogy about the dikr and the water? When you experience the wails of the bereaved and see documentary footage of unspeakable crimes, and you hear the stories of those who lived through the genocide; it no longer holds that one death is tragedy and many are a statistic. You have, so to speak, felt the water splash your face. Rather, it is more appropriate to say that you have only felt the trickle of a single drop. Their pain in experiencing the genocide will for all time be infinitely greater than our when hearing about it.
I was walking with my friend, Dilwar, and he said to me; ‘Imagine, Tabassam, if that were your family’. And I will pose the same question to you. Think of your parents, your grandparents, your brothers and sisters, and your friends.Think of those most beloved to you packed into those factories of death, knowing that your graves were being dug outside. Think of your mothers and sisters being brutalised. Think of your father being led away to his death, as one man was, whilst being taunted by a Serb soldier with the words ‘are you afraid?’ Visit the memorial at Srebrenica and you will, sooner or later, feel the repulsion surge out in the form of tears.
To every one of more than 8000 names at Srebrenica I wanted to whisper, I love you immeasurably, and may your names stand exalted in our memories till the end of times. May justice be done and I pray that we are united in heaven, never again to be harmed, never again to be confronted by evil.
By Tabassam Hamid
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