Zlata Filipovic - Zlatas Diary: A Childs Life in Wartime Sarajevo, Revised Edition

Table of Contents

Praise for Zlatas Diary

Heartrending

[This book is] written in pure innocence and desperation, and one longs to protect it, much as one would a child.... Touching.

Ebullient and accomplished.... With a precision and vision beyond her years ... Zlata brings Sarajevo home as no news report can.

The harsh realities of the Bosnian conflict are brought to life in this chronicle.... Recommended.

Moving

[Filipovics] story is a jarring one of hunger, fear, and cold.... Striking.

[Zlata is] a gifted young writer.

[Zlatas Diary] is a warm-hearted and wide-eyed view of gathering horror written by a precociously mature teenager.

PENGUIN BOOKS

ZLATAS DIARY

Zlata Filipovic wrote her diary over a two-year period, from September 1991 to October 1993. Originally published in Croat, Zlatas Diary has appeared throughout the world. She and her parents were allowed to leave Sarajevo just before Christmas, 1993. They are now living in Ireland.

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First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd. 1994
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994
Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1995

This edition with a new preface published in Penguin Books 2006

Preface copyright Zlata Filipovi, 2006

Translation copyright Fixot et editions Robert Laffont, 1994 Introduction copyright Janine di Giovanni, 1994

All rights reserved

Originally published in France as Le Journal de Zlata by Fixot et editions Robert Laffont.

Copyright Fixot et editions Robert Laffont, 1993.

eISBN : 978-1-101-00697-9

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Dublin, June 2005

First of all, let me thank you for picking up this book. In some ways it seems like a long time ago that it was written, being a record of a conflict that many people have forgotten about and that has been replaced in our collective memory by numerous other conflicts. I still find it baffling that this diarythese scribblings of mine that I originally started writing for myselfeven became a book, let alone that people are still reading it today.

I also want to thank all those who wrote to me, the large number of young people and adults who read my diary and were somehow touched by the story, who reacted to it and wrote me many e-mails and letters. I tried to answer as many as I could, but I did not manage to respond to all of them, and I dedicate this new preface to you all.

When the war began in my native Sarajevo, I always said that my life was cut into twothe period before the war and the period since the war began which I, like so many people from my country, still feel has not ended. The year 2005 marks the tenth anniversary since the war ended in Bosnia, and somehow we all still commemorate these anniversaries , remember these datesthe day the war began, the day we had our first real day of shooting, the day my mom barely escaped death, the day various friends and family members were killed, the day we got our first aid package, the day my parents and I left Bosnia, the day the peace treaty was signed. All these dates are so ingrained in me that each time such a day comes in the year, the first thought of that day is dedicated to the significance of it. Maybe that is just the destiny of a diary writer, someone obsessed by dates, but maybe it is also because the war and everything surrounding it is the biggest thing I have ever experienced, and will always remain one of the most important experiences of my life.

It is strange looking back it on it all now, with the perspective of time, with me that much older. I have not changed much. I feel happy that I am no longer sporting the haircut that still graces the cover of this book (lets face it, no one likes seeing a picture of themselves when they were twelve or thirteenlet alone on the cover of a book!). The story continues after my departure from Sarajevo and includes several cities and many new experiences. I went to high school in Paris until my family and I moved to Dublin, Ireland, in October 1995 (this year is another anniversarymy ten-year anniversary of living in Dublin). I went to school there, picked up the pieces of my childhood which turned into quite fun teenage years, and ended up going to college in Oxford, England, when I was seventeen. Getting back to school and being a schoolgirl again, something I wanted so badly in the middle of the war, happened without much difficultyin fact, most young people who left the war and had had their educations interrupted ended up compensating really quickly and wellmaybe we were all very hungry for learning. Three glorious years went by in Oxford, whereupon I came back to Dublin, earned a postgraduate degree in International Peace Studies (unsurprisingly!) and I am slowly starting my grown-up career.

I often wonder why it was my diary that was published, when there must have been thousands of others written in Sarajevo, diaries that were probably more fluent and packed with events more grave and devastating than those that my family and I, in our luck, escaped. Somehow, it ended up being mine, so when I managed to leave Sarajevo after two years of war, I felt a responsibility to talk, to tell the story, the truth, to let the people know. Somewhat accidentally, at the age of thirteen, I became a spokesperson for what was going on in my country. I believed that those who would hear me would do something to stop it. So many children stayed behind, continued suffering, and they did not have a chance to escape and speak out. Cold and hungry, they were being killed every day and a great injustice was happeningthe total toll of dead in the Bosnian war is thought to be 250,000. My own friends and many members of my family stayed behind, and even though it was rather strange to be a spokesperson at the age of thirteen, I did it because I thought of them and all the people who were not lucky enough to have a chance to leave the war.