Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 22:17:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 7 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7253    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
07/11/1992

Dobar Dan,

I had to wake early this morning, a friend from Berlin came by, 
Rainer, the first person who ever came via E-mail to Zagreb 
some months ago was another day in here and of course the 
trains in Europe don't count with Saturdays and Friday 
evenings. But it was nice that he came and I am glad that I 
could do something to pay him a little thing back for all what 
he has given us. Rainer brought me some new computer 
programmes, but it took till late, very late in the evening 
before I could take a look at them.

Just before Rainer left Astrid came down from her room, telling 
that she was really sick and should stay in bed the rest of the 
day. She looked at me and asked me if I would like to go in her 
place to the Nova Dzamija (New Mosque) in order to help the 
Finish to give their container full of help to Merhamet, an 
Croatian and BiH Muslim relief organisation, which is doing 
great work. "You only have to drink a coffee there and put a 
stamp on some official paper" she said and went back to bed 
with a face if she haven't slept for weeks. 

So some minutes later I was sitting with Tuljia, Suija and 
Rainer in a taxi to the warehouse in the New Mosque, the 
Islamic Center in Zagreb. When we arrived there I realised how 
long ago it was that I visit them, early in the beginning of 
the war in BiH. Then it was quiet around the Mosque, only a 
handful people were inside working on spreading the news about 
the war in BiH around the world. Now it looked like an ant 
nest, hundred of people were standing and walking around the 
building and on the huge parkplace a big number of trucks where 
park. Some with obvious bullet whole in it showing of that they 
were in BiH before.

Among all those truck there was a large convoy of trucks from 
Turkey, later inside I heard that it was the first convoy from 
Turkey, 25 trucks full of food, just enough for a few days. 
When we enter the mosque building it was even fuller then 
outside. Remarkable was that only a few women were wearing a 
scarve around their hear, most of them were just like all the 
other western women. Searching for the office of Merhamet we 
ended in the first basement, in there where at least 500 
people, each of them with less than 2 M2 to sleep and live, 
among than a few hundred children. The air in this part of the 
building you could cut, as we say in Dutch, the place never was 
designed to host so many people.

Worst was the smell near to the 2 toilet blocks in the 
basements, the smell of old urine hit you in the face and makes 
breathing hard. If you have seen this you know immediately why 
we keep on working, not only the violence but this way of just 
surviving is driving the hell out of you, you simply can't 
ignore what you have seen.

Like always we had to wait long before the person we wanted to 
talk to had time, Faruk was busy somewhere they told us, we 
should go upstairs and wait in the restaurant until he came 
back. After sitting their for some about an hour, drinking 
heavy Turkish coffee we decided to go back to the office of 
Merhamet downstairs and see if Faruk showed up. He just 
arrived, a nearly 50 years old guy in blue jeans and full of 
energy.


I wonder how he did find the time to talk to us, since every 
minute the telephone rang or people came in the ask him 
something. He was extremely happy with the aid he said (while 
serving us a coffee) and especially when he heard it were 
really warm clothes, "we are coming from Finland, you know". 
And ask if the Finish agreed that the aid would be send to a 
small town in the north of BiH, were there are more refugee 
than inhabitants and pointed at a man in uniform, he is the the 
commander of that town and will show it to you on the map.

The Finnish went with the guy to get more information about the 
situation of the hometown from the guy in uniform and I went 
upstairs with a person who said he was Austrian but more looked 
like an African Arab, yes they guy explained I am a refugee 
from Egypt, but I am living for so long in Austria that I feel 
more Austrian than Egypt. He was interested to talk with me 
when he heard that we could help the people with more materials 
and that we even maybe could help him to find large amounts of 
blankets.

Upstairs back in the restaurant, drinking another Turkish 
coffee, a guy came up to us in a black leather coat. He wanted 
to talk with my new friend and sat down on the table, ordering 
another coffee. "The merchandise is here in Zagreb" he said in 
German, with a Croatian accent, "I like to get ride of it soon, 
my people have threaten me badly and now I want it to sell it 
to your people". My new friend pointed at another Negro who 
came in and told him that that was his man, he would only act 
as a contact person, but the other man had told with his people 
and thought 45 Dem per piece was to much if they buy all 7000. 
After a while of discussing between my new friend and the 
German guy they reached a principal agreement over 43 Dem and 
the guy didn't looked happy, but at least sold his pieces.

You may figure out about what merchandise they were talking I 
am sure it were no blankets. After we finished out talk and 
coffee we went down in the Merhamet office to see Faruk and the 
Finish, who were taken by Faruk into the warehouse in the 
deeper basement of the Islamic centre, here on the app. 500 m2 
tons and tons of food and clothes were stored for shipment to 
BiH and to be spread around the refugee in Zagreb. "Just enough 
food for a month in Zagreb" Faruk said, and most of it came 
thanks to him and he pointed on my new friend, he is a very 
important man for BiH.

After walking through to warehouse and been introduced by every 
body who worked there as "an very important person for BiH" as 
well by Faruk (after he found out who I was) he invited us for 
a real BiH dinner, with afterwards some nice Turkies coffee. To 
our big surprise a Finnish journalist showed up during the 
dinner, who absolutely didn't knew anything about us being 
there. So after the dinner we did a long interview in the hope 
that the action in Finland would be promoted by him in his 
paper.

Then the driver from the Finnish truck arrived and we went up 
again to have some real BiH cake and of course another cup of 
Turkies coffee. Trembling from all the coffee and impression we 
returned back to Mlinovi late in the evening and drink a bottle 
of wine to neutralise the coffee. Just before I left Faruk 
whispered in my ear "please send more help from western Europe 
to neutralise the help from the Arab states, they are making 
fundamentalist from our people".


With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

                            Wam :-)
--------------------------------------------------------
Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer 
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do. It has no 
copyright and may be used in all forms of further distribution 
among all types of media. But please if you use something drop 
me a line. You can reach me via wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de. I 
dedicate Zagreb Diary to Tyche, Pjort and Rik in order that 
they will know what their father was doing all that time in 
Zagreb.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia