Zlata was born in Sarajevo in 1980. When Zlata was ten she began a diary that she kept throughout the war in Bosnia. International interest in her diary enabled Zlata’s evacuation from Bosnia in 1993. She now lives in Ireland but Bosnia remains an essential part of her identity.
Zlata was born in Sarajevo in December1980. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was a chemical engineer. Sarajevo was a multi-ethnic city and Zlata remembers ‘…the sound of church bells and muezin coming from the mosques and intermingling…’
In September 1991 Zlata began a diary recording her happy childhood in Sarajevo. She continued writing her diary when the war in Bosnia broke out. Zlata felt it was the only aspect of her life that she could control.
At first, her parents decided to stay in Sarajevo thinking that the fighting would be over in a couple of weeks. But Sarajevo was soon under siege. Hundreds of shells were falling on the city every day. Zlata lived through almost two years of war.
It was her diary which provided the means for Zlata to leave Sarajevo. A French publisher who wanted to print her diary, and the French government, made arrangements for Zlata and her parents to be evacuated. They had to leave Sarajevo in a cargo plane that had been used to send aid to Bosnia.
Zlata lived in Paris for the next two years. Her life was very different to what it had been in war-torn Sarajevo.
‘It was…incredible to be suddenly in a city of lights when we had spent almost two years in complete darkness and cold, without [enough] water, food, electricity.’
After Paris, Zlata relocated to Ireland. She found moving again difficult.
‘I thought I would just move out of Bosnia once, so relocating again…was very hard.’
Zlata studied at Oxford and in Ireland, and her experiences of living in several countries have shaped her. But the first thirteen years of her life in Sarajevo will always remain the basis of her identity.
‘I imagine the layers settling on top of a Bosnian base.’
And although Zlata has lived in Ireland for many years, she feels that her roots will never run as deep as they were in Bosnia.
‘I have recently found peace and come to terms that I am me; the layered person with a Bosnian base.’
‘I have no past [in Ireland]; my family has only been here for 13 years, while in Sarajevo, there are people who know me because they went to school with my grandmother – that sense of belonging in a place, in a deeper scale of time.’
Zlata does not feel that she fully belongs to either Dublin or Sarajevo but she has recently come to terms with who she is.
‘I have recently found peace and come to terms that I am me; the layered person with a Bosnian base…As such – I belong everywhere and nowhere.’
Zlata’s diary became an international bestseller and she has travelled all over the world. But she would gladly exchange it all for a normal life in Sarajevo before the war.
‘I would trade it all if the war and none of what came happened. Life would have been much simpler and probably happier!’
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