When Elephants Fight by Eric Walters

at the ceiling and prayed for the time to pass. Finally, after what seemed like hours but had been only minutes, the doctor complimented her on being so brave and left the nurse to bandage the wounds.
    As she lay there, she looked down at her newly bandaged legs, and little red spots began to form—blood seeping through. She knew that the worst was over, but there was a long road ahead of her.
    Nadja recovered from her wounds. It was a long slow process in which she needed to be given constant love and care, and had to “learn to crawl and walk for the second time” in her life.
    Nadja remained living with her family from the start of the siege of Sarajevo on April 6, 1992, until August 28, 1995, when she was smuggled out of the city, first going through a tunnel and then by truck, under the ever-watchful eye of snipers. She traveled to the United States, where she began living with an American family that had agreed to care for her. She left behind her family, her country, her culture and the life she had known. She had lived through one of the longest military sieges in history.
Follow-up: Nadja
    Nadja is now twenty-nine years old. She lives in Canada with her husband. She wrote a compelling book about her experiences called
My Childhood Under Fire
(Kids Can Press). Along with her writing, she is also a performer and public speaker, and she presents at schools for audiences of all ages about war—and more importantly—peace. She is a champion for the rights of children. She can be contacted to arrange visits at [email protected] .

History of Bosnia-Herzegovina
    The country of Bosnia-Herzegovina sits in close proximity to the centers of the large empires that have dominated Europe through the last twenty centuries. As such it has been under the domination of one empire or another for the course of almost its entire history.
    The Roman Empire, centered in Italy, dominated the entire Mediterranean for hundreds of years, ending in approximately 400 AD. During the time of the Roman Empire, Christianity spread throughout much of the region, including Bosnia.
    With the decline of the Roman Empire, another power emerged from the east—the Byzantine Empire— centered in Constantinople. This empire, which was dominant for close to one thousand years, also spread its religious belief system, Orthodox Christianity, which was in competition with the Catholic faith of Rome.
    The Byzantine Empire started to falter, and there were competing powers, including Serbians, Croats, Hungarians and Venetians, all of whom, at different times, had influence in, or over, Bosnia. For brief times between these influences, Bosnia had varying levels of independence.
    The periods of independence and domination by local powers ended in 1463, when the next great empire, the Ottoman Empire, expanded westward into Europe, defeated the Serbs and made Bosnia a Turkish province. With this conquest came yet another religious influence—the Muslim faith.
    Ultimately the power of the Ottoman Empire declined, particularly in Europe, and in 1878 Bosnia-Herzegovina came under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This change again allowed greater European influence, as well as Christianity, to become more dominant. The resentment felt toward this domination came to a head with the assassination, in Sarajevo, of the heir to the throne of the empire. The entire continent was thrown into conflict, which became World War I. At the conclusion of the war and the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was another realignment of power.

    A panoramic view of Sarajevo illustrating the vulnerability of the city to attack from the surrounding hills
.
    The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created and Bosnia-Herzegovina became part of that monarchy. This country, whose name was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, remained independent until it was invaded and conquered by Nazi Germany during World War