By Lidija Pisker
Summary: Older women play an important role in peacebuilding and conflict resolution as bearers of pre-conflict narratives and shared life experiences. Their voices, however, are often not heard.
My research and activist project, “Urban Herstories – Female Face of Zenica,” documented the stories of six older women from Zenica and explored their relationship with social, political, and urban changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the last fifty years. The project serves as a repository of personal and collective memories that can help suppress extremist nationalist tendencies and prevent radicalization.
This case study delves into the often-overlooked topic of resilience in older women in relation to ongoing peacebuilding challenges. “Urban Herstories” was a project I undertook in my hometown, but it can be recreated in any local community.
“My name is Sabiha. I was born in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War. That year, the expansion of the Zenica Steel Mill began.” This is how Sabiha Bajramović, now a 74-year-old pensioner from my hometown of Zenica—located in central Bosnia and Herzegovina—began her story during an interview I conducted three years ago. The interview was part of my research for the “Urban Herstories” project, an international cultural initiative that explored women’s perspectives on social, political, and urbanist changes in post-communist Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Slovakia.
The Zenica Steel Mill was one of the places that Sabiha highlighted in her interview, as it became the engine of development of the socialist Yugoslavia. But in Sabiha’s memory, it is also a symbol of a peaceful past, which she recalls with nostalgia. “I wish for my grandchildren to have a childhood as happy and carefree as mine was,” she told me, though she was notably skeptical that growing up in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina could be close to that experience.
Older women such as Sabiha play an important role in peacebuilding and conflict resolution as bearers of pre-war narratives and life experiences during “other times.” As researcher Bela Kapur recently wrote, “Older women are often seen as the carriers of oral histories of positive pre-conflict narratives, such as fond memories of shared living, neighborly relations, and being members of “the other” side who married across the conflict divide.” Their voices, however, are often not heard. Older people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in general, often live on the margins of society and their experiences and opinions are not valued as much as they should be. Moreover, intergenerational encounters between older and younger generations begin and end in the family environment, and rarely occur at the community level.
That’s why I collected the stories of Sabiha and five other older women from Zenica. I also dug through their photo archives and discovered their personal relationships with social, political, and urbanist shifts in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1950s. Their stories became part of the city’s audio guide called “Female Face of Zenica,” and the photo materials I selected were included in the photo project of the Ukrainian artist Elena Subach.
This initiative shed light on older women’s relationships with their city and their role in public spaces. Urban Herstories pointed out the number of Zenica’s streets named after women (only two), and the connections between Zenica’s notable women to some of the mapped locations in the city. For example, Belma Alić was the first Bosnian woman to obtain a PhD degree in cello studies and win numerous music awards, so she is highlighted on the map as having attended the Elementary Music School in Zenica.
The project also serves as a repository of personal and collective memories, which is an important ingredient of peacebuilding through storytelling, as it helps us to understand who we are, where we come from, what our elders’ (and our own) past was, and how it shaped their (and our) lives. Urban Herstories aids in understanding other perspectives and other points of view, and especially how they shape our future. Furthermore, it creates connections between younger generations—who can hear first-hand accounts of the recent past—and older people, whose stories can be further valued and appreciated by their local communities.
But most importantly, this project encourages conversation. Fostering dialogue is critical because every person and every community has its own stories to tell. This type of storytelling format is not only therapeutic for the storyteller; it also creates empathy in the listener, which in turn bridges differences between individuals and communities.
Now 67-years-old, Meliha Bičo Družić is another woman who shared her story with me. Her childhood, her primary education, and most of her life revolved around a centrally situated primary school called Vladimir Nazor and its surroundings. During and after the Bosnian war, the names of public places, such as streets, squares, schools, and even towns, underwent a process of “national assessment.” In many cases, they were subsequently re-named. Meliha’s primary school is the only school in the urban part of the city that didn’t change its name.
“But that is one of the very few things that haven’t changed since then. When I was a young girl, I didn’t expect my city and my country to look so different now. I grew up in Yugoslavia, a country that doesn’t exist anymore. At school, we learned Serbo-Croatian as our mother tongue, the language that is now dead too,” Meliha recently reflected during our interview.
It was cathartic for Meliha to tell this story and especially to be heard by a wider audience of people who listened to her while following the audio map, “Female Face of Zenica.” The audio map can be found online, and anyone interested can take a physical or virtual walk through the city. Most of the walkers have so far been young people (born during or after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina), among whom some have said that the audio map inspired them to talk to their own grandparents about their memories of life before the war, which is something they had not thought to do before. After the launch of the audio map, a young professor from the University of Zenica invited his students to take a group walk around the city and explore the “Female Face of Zenica” as part of their classes. A local TV station even dedicated a show to the audio map and stories of our six women narrators.
And so, these women’s stories entered the lives of the people of Zenica, sometimes saddening them, sometimes making them laugh, sometimes surprising them. But whatever reactions it caused, the “Female Face of Zenica” contributed to fostering a culture of listening, understanding, and peace. The same can happen in your local communities if you gather a group of older women, show interest in their lives and memories, and turn on the audio recorder to document their stories.
About the Author
Lidija Pisker is a freelance journalist and researcher whose work has been published by The Guardian, BBC, Open Democracy, Euronews, and numerous other international media. She often reports on human rights and the social inclusion of vulnerable groups, including women, the LGBTI community, people with disabilities, and older persons. She won several journalism awards for her work, including UN and UNICEF journalism prizes, and the “Srđan Aleksić” plaque for professional reporting on marginalized groups and the development of socially responsible journalism. She is also a volunteer at the Naš Most Zenica association, which works on the social inclusion of older people through culture and art.
References
The photos included in the text are works of art by the Ukrainian artist Elena Subach. They are an imaginary journey through Zenica and its “herstories” made during her online artist residency program in 2020 within the “Urban Herstories” project. Using the visual language typical of her art, Elena delved into the photo archives of the interviewed women, read their stories, and took virtual walks using old city maps of Zenica to create her photo collages.