The words Nermina Lakota has spent years writing to her father and brother, who disappeared during the Srebrenica genocide, are haunting.
“I know nothing about you, yet I write to you. I don’t know where you are, how you are, or what became of you. I only know one thing -- I miss you terribly.”
Her father, Suljo Delic, and her brother, Velid Delic, were among the thousands of Bosniak men who disappeared after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995.
More than three decades later, their remains have still not been found.
For Lakota, writing became the only way to keep speaking to them.
“When everyone goes to sleep and I don’t know what to do with myself, I sit down and write,” she told Anadolu.
“I write to my father. I write to my brother. I write about Srebrenica, about mothers and about everyone we lost.”
She says time has brought no relief.
“For me, every day is July 11. For 31 years, every day has been July 11. I go to bed with it and wake up with it. People say time heals. It doesn’t. You simply learn to live with it.”
According to witness accounts, Lakota’s father, Suljo Delic, who was 72, refused to leave without his son Velid after the fall of Srebrenica.
Neither of them was ever seen again.
Velid Delic was 35 years old. A police officer and basketball referee, he was killed while trying to reach Bosnian government-held territory through the forests after the fall of Srebrenica.
Although the remains of other men killed alongside him were recovered as early as 1997, Velid’s remains have never been found.
Lakota says she has spent years speaking with investigators and searching for any information that might explain what happened to her father and brother.
“I still have hope,” she said.
“But somewhere deep inside, I’m afraid they may never be found.”
What pains her most is that her mother never lived to bury her husband and son.
She died in 2016.
Lakota dedicated a poem, Waiting, to her mother:
A mother waited for her son,
until waiting became her whole life…
One day she fell asleep,
and never woke again.
Today, Lakota continues to write.
Nearly every letter ends with the same words:
“Come back to me, if only in my dreams, so this endless longing may finally rest.”
She says her greatest wish is to one day publish a collection of poems she has written over the past three decades for her father, her brother and the thousands of victims of the Srebrenica genocide.
The UN General Assembly in 2024 designated July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica.
Each year on July 11, newly identified victims are laid to rest at the Potocari Memorial Center during a collective funeral attended by thousands from Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad.
More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces captured the UN-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 that the killings constituted genocide.
More than 6,700 victims have been buried at the Potocari Memorial Center, while more than 1,000 people remain missing.
Victims’ remains have been recovered from more than 570 locations, including numerous primary and secondary mass graves across Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of them reburied in an effort to conceal the killings.
