Writing about War and Survival: Nadija Mujagić

April 6, 2022 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

I am a woman. I am a writer. I am a war survivor.

A few days after I celebrated my fourteenth birthday, I watched tanks move into the Sarajevo airport across the street from my home. The year was 1992, and Yugoslavia had already fallen apart. My mother, my sister, and I stood at the window and watched a line of tanks slowly moving on the street, like metal caterpillars, and stationing themselves on the open field next to the airport.

We had no idea what the tanks were doing there or who exactly stood behind them. Soon enough, they began to shoot at our neighborhood, signaling the beginning of a war. In a matter of hours, Serbs besieged the city I was born and grew up in. They took high ground on the surrounding hills and mountains.

The naïve us didn’t suspect the war would last long, or that it would escalate to extremes (after all, why would our neighbors want to kill us or start genocide?), but the grueling war lasted nearly four years, causing irreparable damage to the country’s infrastructure and cultural artifacts and taking thousands upon thousands lives. My family and I lost our home in the beginning of the war, June 1992, to Serbian occupation. As a result, we lived as refugees in a neighborhood five minutes from our home during the war. While living in a new apartment, we were besieged and trapped, thus had no other place to go.

In the days, months, years during the war to come, we lived without running water, electricity or heat while being perilously exposed to thousands of shells and bullets launched from the nearby enemy. We witnessed many of our friends and neighbors die in front of our desperate eyes. We went to bed hungry and hopeless, whispering prayers under our cold breath. Our survival mode was on high alert and it was the only thing that kept us going.

Indeed, these horrifying events affected me for life, but it also ignited a passion in me to write and share them with the world. My two memoirs on the Bosnian War and its aftermath, Ten Thousand Shells and Counting and Immigrated, are first-person accounts of these gruesome events. I felt it was important to educate the world about the war with the hope that the genocide against my people would not repeat itself. But I didn’t end there. I feel that using fiction as a vehicle to document history is also a powerful tool to educate and inform.

My debut novel, Till a Better World, explores contemporary women’s issues about rearing children in different parts of the world. Two women are the central characters of parallel stories, one taking place in Bosnia and one in the United States. Their experiences are set against the historical background that shaped them into the characters they are. The women’s lives are strikingly distinct, and so are their sources of trauma; nonetheless, their pain is deep and both are scarred in one way or another. Their experiences are interwoven with the contemporary issues in our society: the world can be a cruel place to navigate and survive.

The novel further explores what it means for a woman to have a choice. A choice for her family, for her future, and for her body. Much like in real life, the women are faced with obstacles and challenges preventing them from achieving their goal. The two women’s goals are polar opposites, but their proclivity to succeed in reaching them is just the same. Their past trauma, albeit different, is part of their being, but the women fight and scheme their best path forward, and ultimately find a way to persevere.

It is no secret that the women in my novel are resilient and grand. What motivates me to write about them?

I wanted to portray women from the two worlds I know so well to highlight their challenges that are often just a norm or taboo in our society. For example, often underrepresented, a Bosnian woman is the emblem of strength. I recall my mother during the war starting a fire on the balcony of our new “home,” fighting with the wind that kept distinguishing the fire, and a couple hours later finally finishing preparing a meal from humanitarian aid we received on an infrequent basis.

My mother stayed resourceful even though our resources were limited. Since we had no running water during the war, she made a hole in the gutter passing our balcony where she’d collect rain we could use to wash our laundry or dishes. She’d find old scraps around the house to start the fire and keep us warm. She’d go to a nearby stream to wash laundry when the bullets and shells took a brief pause. At other times, she’d go to a nearby well to fetch water and carry it back home, risking her life under bullets and shells. A Bosnian woman is a strong-willed survivor. She is an unsung hero who doesn’t get enough credit for helping others survive.

Just the same, I feel passionate about telling a story of an American woman whose desire to progress in her family life is undeniable. But our society is still biased against women’s successes. She fights constantly for her status at work, and she is often misjudged for her strengths as well as her weaknesses. Through her struggles with others’ perceptions of her, I wanted to highlight some of the things an American woman faces on a daily basis. We see this in our day-to-day lives, but reality is sometimes difficult to manage. For these reasons, my novel Till a Better World portrays struggles for women, but it is ultimately a story of strength and triumph.

After all, women are to be celebrated and loved.

—

Nadija Mujagić is the author of the Teenage War Survival series, two memoirs on war survival, human resilience and determination. She was born and raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, what used to be the former Yugoslavia back in the late 1970s. In 1997, she moved to the United States shortly after the end of the Bosnian War and has lived in Massachusetts since. In her spare time, she enjoys playing sports and electric bass guitar.

Her debut novel “Till A Better World” is coming out late March 2022 can be pre-ordered now.

Visit her website for more information: http://nadijamujagic.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Nadija-Mujagic-110755300847156

Follow her on Twitter @NadijaSunce

TILL A BETTER WORLD

One is scarred by bloodshed. Motherhood evades the other. When two women are faced with the possibility of new life, what is the cost of conception?

Bosnia, 2008. Selma Karic can’t shake the burden she carries. With her days forever darkened by the shadows of genocide, the traumatized survivor works to pick up the pieces and redefine her sense of purpose. But trust hits an ugly low when an intimate moment of solace leaves her confused… and pregnant.

USA, 2008. Emma Harris is overwhelmed with life. Crushed by school debt and walking on professional thin ice, the newly married businesswoman feels further away from strength and independence every day. But her heart shatters when she discovers any chance of naturally conceiving a child is completely out of reach.

In despair of her fate, Selma dodges the baby’s father she unwittingly gave everything to. And when Emma goes behind her husband’s back to borrow funds for the exorbitant IVF prices, the foundation of her lies and desperation threatens to crumble.

With profound destinies playing out in parallel, can both Selma and Emma still bring beauty into the world?

Unflinching and moving, author Nadija Mujagic weaves a deeply impactful pair of journeys through parenthood and trauma. Authentic to its roots and intensely personal, this powerful narrative expertly dissects the human element driving persistence in its purest form.

Till a Better World is a heartrending women’s fiction novel. If you like no-punches-pulled realism, tear-jerking drama, and eye-opening poignancy, then you’ll love Nadija Mujagic’s story of hope.