Enis K., 58

Sarajevo (Baščaršija), Bosnia-Herzegovina

“It was like coming to different world when we went to my aunt. It was like molasses-- no shooting, nothing. We would go out and sit on a bench in her yard in her house and watch my part of town being bombed and shelled...just smoke everywhere. And we were just having coffee, having a cigarette, in complete calm, five miles away.”

Interview originally conducted in English.

First off, what’s your name?

My name is Enis K.

Tell me about yourself-- where did you grow up? What was it like? How did you spend a typical day?

I was born in Dubrovnik, in Croatia, and we lived there for a while, and then I moved to Bosnia to a smaller town, Livno, and that’s where I finished middle school and high school. And then I went to college, I came to Sarajevo, and that’s where I lived until I came to America. It was fine, I spent a year in the military--it was a requirement that when you finished high school you went to the military for a year, and it was mandatory for everything. So I was in the army and after that I went to college. I studied chemistry in Sarajevo at the School of Natural Sciences, and I did work with business and trade. I imported different things and sold them. That was just kind of something I did, you know--that job in private business and my studies. And then in the middle of everything, the war started. 

And the war started around us. In the beginning, the climate was… we heard about shooting in Croatia, but in Sarajevo, it was always “Oh, that’s not our war”, “Nothing is going to change in Bosnia.”

And people carried flags and pictures of President Tito around the city and everyone said we weren’t going to war. And then the war came to Sarajevo.

They started shooting from the hills. You would leave to go on a walk on the street, like… 

imagine yourself going to Starbucks and all of a sudden a big bomb drops a couple hundred yards away from you and knocks the drink out of your hand.

I mean it just--it just--it was completely like that. And people weren’t prepared, they didn’t expect that. It was a big shock all at once for everyone--that it started so brutally.  

Before the war itself, there was a magazine, Slobodna Bosna. It was the only magazine that gave exact coordinates and everything about [military activity in] Sarajevo and on top of the Sarajevo hills, where the army was basically based, where the tanks were, where the canons were and everything. And that’s why I still like [that magazine], because they were the only magazine that gave exact information.

And their maps gave positions of where everything was, but nobody believed it. And the army was saying “this is only an exercise and nothing you should really be concerned about.”

And then the bombing started and it was… it was completely indiscriminate. You would just walk down the street, minding your own day, and you may end up dead.

Because Sarajevo is like a bowl, like a soup bowl, and [the city] is in the bottom but it’s surrounded by hills. So all the snipers and arms and everything--the whole army--was on top of that, just shooting at us. 

And it was just like that. It was  just, you know, ridiculous. That was the beginning of it. 

When did the war start for you? Was there a specific moment where you felt like, “Okay, this is happening”?

It started when we heard those bombing falling. Because up until some time, some day, you were just watching TV news, and the war was still distant. It was far away. We didn’t hear anything. But when bombs started to fall, and there were detonations and explosions, that’s when it hit home. That moment when you heard those detonations and you see the smoke coming out of the buildings in the distance… that was the beginning. 

They started bombing Sarajevo on a specific day on April 6--that’s the day of the city of Sarajevo. This is historically, always been--it’s a big celebration. Every city in the world, most of them have their own date and they celebrate it whenever it is, and Sarajevo’s day is April 6. They, they started bombing on that day. It’s kind of symbolic. So, I remember that.

What, um, how was life during the war? How were days spent, how’d you eat, how’d you get through a typical day?

In the beginning, people had some food--Everybody had some food and they stocked [up], but as time went by, it started to kind of…[there was] less and less food. The real problem was when the power was cut. We didn’t have power for days and days and days. And so your food would spoil. But then, for example, my next-door neighbor, had a huge fridge. He had a business, like a restaurant business, and he had a huge fridge full of meat (he was pretty happy about it). And he had a little power generator, and he used it when they cut the power. And the guy had his generator and a lot of gas and he was running that generator. But,you know, there was no end in sight for this power outage. So in the end, he ran out of gas and he started just giving away meat to everybody on the street. 

So, I’m saying this because you couldn’t have normal food after some period of time. After all the food spoiled, perishables and everything, then you didn’t have enough food. And, people were kind of um, buying-- there was a black market. It started when the food shortage started. The Black market was really flourishing. I remember some prices were really outlandish.

For example, for one kilogram of sugar, it would cost close to $100. One liter of benzine, of gasoline, would be about $15. So that means that a gallon would be like $60.

But, people were running out of money over time. So whatever savings they had, they would start to deplete. So [people] would start to trade different things like, um, family heirlooms or jewelry or whatever they had, you know. Your priority changes [depending] on the kind of circumstances. So for example, cars were becoming kind of useless because there was no gas and whatever gasoline there was was super expensive, so people were using bikes. I remember some people were trading bikes for cars and the guy that got a bike would feel lucky because cars… there was no use for them anymore. 

And cigarettes were currency. Everybody was smoking, probably because of stress and [it’s] something to do and for socializing. People actually had a lot of time to socialize, especially in shelters because a lot of people would share shelters, their basements, mostly different people’s basements. We didn’t have anything like [they have] in the United States like for nuclear attacks [like nuclear bunkers]. These were just kind of improvised shelters. But anyway, people were smoking, socializing, drinking a little bit, but cigarettes were really a big deal. 

We had one factory in Sarajevo, a cigarette factory, and that was the only factory that still worked, so people were getting their salary in cigarettes.

You’d get couple boxes of cigarettes as your salary. And then you’d go to market and you exchange it for something you need, you know. Whatever is available in the market. 

People were trading [a lot]. There was this um, market place, markale, that was close to my home. So every day I would go over there and see if there’s anything to buy for family, you know, like my mom (I lived with my mom and brother at the time and my grandmother). So I would walk down there and try to buy something or trade or whatever was needed. And it was always like-- like it was the same as if you went to your backyard and you just pulled out some plants and then you come and trade it. And someone would buy it, whatever you’re selling--even like, ivy, not just like a potato or tomato. People were making food of any kind of, plants or whatever comes. It was just improvisation, you know.

So that was [what] most people were doing actually. If you had your own house and you had a little backyard, you would be really happy and considered lucky. People who were in apartments, they were really...it was difficult for them, because they couldn’t get anything. They were completely dependent on [the] outside world. It was really difficult to come by any normal food.

I remember when Sarajevo started to open-- that was actually the longest siege in modern history, over 1,000 days-- small quantities of things started to come in  through a tunnel they made a tunnel that went under the airport in Butmir.

And kids, who were a year old, two years old at the beginning of the war, they never saw bananas or eggs or anything. So when that food started coming in, that was amazing to see the reaction of the kids.

And because of that tunnel, actually, things were starting to come more and more and people were trying to get out, trying to escape that situation. The tunnel was kind of, in a way, the end of the siege because we had enough food, you know. [We knew] we were not gonna die. 

And, we also had support, you know, international humanitarian charities, they had some base in Sarajevo. So they would give people, you know, pasta, beans, rice, things like that--Like dry food that you could actually store and have for a long time. So for a long time, that was the only food people had. Rice, maceroni, and beans. And they would combine it with everything. SThey would improvise. And there was also also canned meat...one of that was pretty popular and had a bad reputation was Ikar. There’s even a monument in Sarajevo [for it], some artist, made a monument to the international community by making this giant Ikar can and putting it in Sarajevo. This was actually kind of sarcastic--

Ikar was so bad that everybody would just give it to their dog if they had a dog or they would just throw it away.

That was the one though that was like the most widely available, right? Like there was the most--

Yeah exactly because nobody wanted it! [Laughs].

My grandma, actually, she survived three wars: World War I, World War II, and that one actually, the last one in ‘92. So, she remembered that in WWII, the United States would kind of drop big packages of food, and, but they were like big palettes of food but with individual packages of food. And [that food] was the same in ‘92 actually. And so my grandma was like “Oh, I remember those from WWII.”

What was a regular day like in the war? 

So I was actually working during the war. I used my own car, my personal car, to basically drive for a company. That company needed a driver to pick up people to go from place to place in the city. So I pretty much spent the entire war doing that job. So I can say for myself that I had it easy because I didn’t go up to the hills and fight because I was working on that job. 

And, you know, jobs were classified. You couldn’t just work any job because eventually you would get mobilized and drawn to fight. Because as the time went by, they needed more and more soldiers because people were dying, and they needed replacements. So that pool in Sarajevo was getting smaller and smaller, you know. That pool of free people, non-military people. So every once in a while, maybe every couple of months, there was a big draft.

I remember I was, in the beginning of the war, I was sitting in a cafe with my girlfriend, and, we were just sitting there, it was just days after the war started. A bunch of young guys (would-be soldiers) came in with big guns, and I mean-- there was not really [an] organized military in the beginning because they didn’t have anything. People would just grab their own arms, and if they had some camo great. If not, they would just come in regular clothes. So they were just going from place to place and getting people. If you were sitting [in a cafe] and you were young and they thought you could fight, they would just bring you in [and draft you]. 

So they also actually came to us and they were actually taking me away and my girlfriend said, “Today is actually my birthday, can you not do that [take him], you’re gonna ruin it!” And that young guy actually skipped us (he was nice). But it wasn’t her birthday!

[Laughs]. 

What we were talking about?

We were talking about regular days, typical days. 

Yeah, so I started driving with that company. It was maybe a mile from my home, so every day in the morning, I would go get the president or the CEO of that company--it was a small company, maybe 20, 30 people--but I would go to a different part of town and get him at his office and then if there’s anything that needed to be kind of picked up or something, I would go and do that as well. So that was typically my day throughout… I mean my war days. So I would spend a lot of time in their meetings because when you drop them at these meetings you can’t really stay out and wait for that meeting to end because it’s risky-- there’s just, a lot of shells and snipers, so you would go up there [to the meeting] with them. And most of them were pretty boring. So I had to endure that [laughs]. Also i would bring water for them--

See nobody had water, running water in their houses for a very long time. So there were some places, some public wells, with faucets and everything. Everybody would go there, but you had to wait in line. And these lines were pretty long, so you had to bring canisters, and sometimes I’d have 5 or 10 of those and I would fill them up and bring them to my boss, my manager, or you know some other people as well. 

And so along the way was that I actually made family friends with all of them. Because they had families and they were super super grateful when you come with water because water was really the most precious commodity… nobody had it. So when you show up with a big canister of water, it was like you were giving them gold. So they were really grateful for that. I did a lot of that actually, I was always in good shape during the war because that was kind of my workout [laughs], bringing water, pushing water. 

But that was also risky, I still have some frostbite on my ears, because you know Sarajevo’s winters are really cold. It goes down to below 20s celsius. I don’t know how much that is in Fahrenheit, but it’s really cold. And if you’re outside waiting in line, for an hour or two, you run a risk of getting frostbite and things like that. And I still have it. So when it gets cold out here, it starts working on my ears. 

I made a lot of friends actually, that company, friends of their friends, family. People were getting tighter in conditions like that. They’re more willing to help each other, to do something for each other. I’m just thinking about it now. 

Restaurants were, they were all shut down. Cafe, restaurants, like Starbucks-type places-- nothing was working. So if you wanted to socialize, you would invite people to your place, or they would invite you. And that was the only way. So a lot of people-- you would get the “green light” from people saying  “you’re good.” And everybody is coming and everybody has some endorsement, like a social endorsement from other people. So you would meet interesting people, and it was pretty safe. And people would just smoke, and drink a little bit if there’s any [alcohol] available, and just them trying to have a good time like they used to in restaurants, but it’s just different set up. 

So people, I hear nowadays, some people actually wish that these relationships between people were like they were during the war because they were more connected--connections were better with, or they were just kind of...in different mind set, you know.

I guess because, you don’t know if you’re gonna live another day or not, you  probably act a little differently than today.

You’re not just taking it for granted, you’re not gonna blow someone off. It’s ust a different mindset. 

I don’t miss it though. But a lot of people miss it you know. Myself? No not that much because it was really miserable!

[Laughs]

And I also had some good friends you know, that got killed. So, you’d make some friends, you’d meet some people, and in a month, you'd just hear “that guy is dead.” [That’s] one of the reasons that I didn’t really like to become friends with people at that time.

Like, yes, we would socialize--but I didn’t want to become friends with people at that time for real because you never know. It’s hard.

There was a friend of mine, actually-- this really hit me, after this I kind of stopped making friends-- his name was Sejo, Sejad. He had sister, Rubina, she was a beautiful girl. And they were both young, they were a year apart in their early 20s. And, uh... she got killed. 

She went outside, in her backyard, and, someone threw a grenade from the hills (because they had binoculars and they could see [people]). She got killed in her own backyard. And, she was a student, college student. And he was also studying, and helping their father [clears throat]. After that, Sejo got so angry that he decided to go and fight. He wanted to go and avenge her, you know. Because he just couldn’t bear it. And...he died, actually. On the first night of that. He got killed too. And his parents didn’t have any other kids. He just… there’s a lot of stories like that...

How did you know him?

Uh, I met him at that company. He was a manager of a little cafe. That company had a food business and also a couple of restaurants and a couple of stores. So he was a manager at one of those stores, cafe, restaurants. He was really nice guy, but uh… yeah just kind of nice normal guy, you know. You’d never picture him dead in a trench. 

Was there someone who really helped you during the war? 

When I think about it, I had my aunt. She was actually, all my life, every time I would visit, she always lived in her same house. She never moved from there, the entire time, it was the same. I just know that place well. But during that war, that part of Sarajevo, it’s called Vraca, got occupied. So she had to...um, she had to go. She just..she got kicked out. She had to go to stay alive. And she also had a son. And so for that reason as well, they had to leave Vraca. And she moved to a different place, a different part of town that was not occupied.

That part of town where she moved to was always kind of calm. It was never really heavily shelled or under sniper fired. And I was kind of amazed by that. Later on, I found out that a lot of the people who were actually doing the shooting had relatives or they had property in that area, so they would spare it. So, I remember, when the war started, I lived in the in the historic part of Sarajevo, in Baščaršija, and so my mom started to freak out when the shells started falling in our neighborhood,

because when old houses (like a couple hundred years old) are shelled, it basically explodes and disintegrates.

There were those big mushrooms of smoke coming out of it. 

She [my mom] really didn’t handle it well. She was kind of panicky. So what I did, I just put her in the car, and we would just go straight to my aunt, who was in that calm area on top of a hill. That drive was like a lunatic drive. It was fast-- nobody was on the street, there were no cars, you would just see some car alarms, sirens, and glass from the store window scattered all down on the street. And you’re just rushing, driving crazy. 

It was like coming to different world when we went to my aunt. It was like molasses-- no shooting, nothing.

We would go out and sit on a bench in her yard in her house and watch my part of town being bombed and shelled...just smoke everywhere. And we were just having coffee, having a cigarette, in complete calm, five miles away.

I mean you could still see everything. 

So. I was always really grateful for my aunt. And she was always an excellent host, she would always be happy when we come. And my mom would be there for days until everything everything calmed down on our side. But every once in a while, we had to do this life [Laughs]-- life saving drive [Laughs]. 

That was that was a god-send, you know, that we were able to [go to my Aunt’s]. A lot of people just [couldn’t] really move or go  anywhere. But we would just take that risk and drive. 

I wanted to ask you about Yasmina [wife] and your relationship--I know you two met around the war and left together. 

Oh yeah. Actually, we met at one of the places that I had to drive my manager to. She worked there. So her managers and my managers would chat, have a coffee or some sort of informal meeting or something. And that place had a faucet that was tapped directly into a well. So they always had water. And people would come (people who lived there) a lot of tiny canisters--these canisters were given to us as humanitarian aid. We would get oil, cooking oil, in those, but people would just re-use them for water--

And Yasmina had, a little, [Laughs], like a little herd of sheep of these tiny canisters. Like 20 of them.

When when we [Yasmina and I] met, she was in line for water. And I came in, and we were really the only people in line, so we started chatting. So that’s where we met. 

I didn’t think much of that, and she didn’t either. Then one of our friends actually kept telling me “I have a really nice girl, I want you to meet her, she’s my friend, I think you’d be a really good match,” you know. [I said] “Okay, sure whatever.” And so one day, that friend and I were talking on a street corner. It was a nice day, no shooting (there were a couple of days like that). And Yasmina happened to pass by, and he asked me ‘do you like that girl?’ and I recognized her. And I knew we met before, and I said “yes I do, she’s really nice.” And Yasmina picked it up--I didn’t know that she heard that. So then he told her later that he wanted her to meet me. And then we all met up somewhere together, and basically introduced us to each other and that’s where it started. 

But you know it was difficult, when you have a relationship. A lot of people didn’t want to have a romantic relationship, because, uh... you never know what’s gonna happen. And then you can’t really go out like [you would] typically--you can’t go watch a movie or go to a restaurant. Nothing works. The only way was to meet at each other’s place from time to time, or something during the day, but it was, it was just...kind of an unusual experience to have. You feel like you have to sneak somewhere all the time. But, you know, it ended up well [Laughs].

So that was my social life actually. When I would come home from work, I would rest for an hour or two, and I would go to Yasmina’s place and hang out there. Friends would come, some other friends would come. And [Yasmina’s family] had a big, big apartment actually. 

They were kicked out [of their home], and they had to flee from their part of town, Grbavica, because it was occupied. So they were given a big apartment from someone who fled Sarajevo earlier and that was really super big and in best part of town. And there were a lot of soldiers and military around there so it was pretty safe for us to hang around. 

The only thing is that, you know, when you go at night, there were no lights, there were no like public lights or anything or lamps or anything, it was total darkness, especially when it was clouded, when it’s cloudy days or nights couldn’t see anything, so you know what people did?

They took lighters, and they were all empty, all gas was all gone from them, but they still had that little flint and you could still make some little sparkles. So if you went out at night, would just do this [gestures sparking a lighter] every once and a while so you kind of announce yourself and say ‘hey it’s me’--

--Like a signal

Yeah, exactly. So, we lived like that. Yasmina was working for a charitable organization for Merhamet. They would give away food to people, especially later on when food started coming in through UNPROFOR, it was distributed through Merhamet, and they would give it to people who needed it. But it was really tough for them to choose people. There were always lots of needy people and, you know… 

So they would just distribute that food further. They would get the food from the trucks and store it and prepare for shipping. So Yasmina was doing a lot of that. And that company also had a pharmacy, so Yasmina was helping with that pharmacy. They were getting lot of medications from charity companies UNPROFOR and they would also package them and give it to people that needed it. 

And you two came to the US together, right? 

Yes, yeah, we came together. It wasn’t really that straightforward [of a] process where you hop on the plane [and come].First we went to Croatia. 

You know, if we had a crystal ball, I don’t know if we would have left. Because we left in December of 1994 and the war ended just a couple of months later [Laughs]. But we didn’t see that--we didn’t see the peace coming, because it was still just the same for us. 

So we went to Zagreb in Croatia first. It was very difficult to get permission to leave town. Because the government needed you--they needed people. They didn’t want people just to pick up and leave because they just needed soldiers, they needed people for infrastructure and to run everything. So I told my manager actually that I wanted to leave, that I’d had enough. Because if you work for some important company (mine was important at the time), they could send you on a business trip anywhere--they could give you written permission to go somewhere, saying “this guy is going on a business trip somewhere for us.” So they did that to me. They gave me that permission in writing and Yasmina got something similar from her company. So that was the only way for us to get out. 

And then we went--

--And that’s how you got from Sarajevo to Zagreb?

That’s actually, that’s how we [could leave Sarajevo] --the hardest part was to get out of Sarajevo. So, we went to this tunnel-- that famous tunnel that goes underground-- and we waited. It was middle of the night, and we waited--there were a lot of people waiting to get in and it’s a tiny tunnel and traffic goes in both directions, but it could only kind of handle one person at a time, so you can’t have people going in different directions. 

So you would wait. I guess it was more important to the government that people came in [to Sarajevo] because they would always bring whatever [was needed]--ammunition, food, whatever, they would bring [it] in--so [those people] were always kind first priority. When there was no one  coming in [and]  bringing that kind of stuff, they would let people out. 

It was difficult because they would try everything possible to keep people from getting out. If your papers were missing or stamped or something, they would turn you back because they don’t want you [to leave]. And so Yasmina and I-- we wouldn’t have actually even got in, but she spotted a guy who was kind of a friend of hers and that guy was a soldier and he was letting people in the tunnel. So she went up to him and said “Hey I remember you, we met somewhere, some party or something, we know this guy or that guy,” and they started chatting and he let us in. 

So, we were running through the tunnel,

it was really long, you had to be kind of bend a little bit, and that’s difficult when you have big bags full of stuff or whatever. And we go down the tunnel, and when we get to the end of the tunnel, they tell us “Oh you’re not getting out you’re going to that room.” 

And that room was probably like living room size, it’s like an American living room. And there were probably like 50 or 60 people standing next to each other. It was like sardines. And it was really hot, I remember. And Yasmina...Yasmina fainted actually. She couldn’t stand that [heat], you know, she was gasping for air, there was no air or AC or anything, just too many people in a tiny room. And she couldn’t handle it.

And she fainted--

--Oh wow

Yeah. And I called the guy, saying “Hey let us go out, she gonna die here--she can’t take it.”

And they let us out, but they took our documentation--our passport, papers, everything. But they let us out of the tunnel for her. So we left, we didn’t want to go back [to Sarajevo], you know. So we said “at least we’re on this side,” you know. So we went to a friend of a friend. He lived on [the other side] of the tunnel, maybe a mile away, so we went to his place, and we stayed there maybe three days because we are trying to get our documentation back. We couldn’t cross any border without our documentation. 

And my brother actually was soldier at the time. He was friends with Jovan Bivjak, he just died couple of years ago actually, he was famous general, and so he personally went there asking to help us get our documents back. That guy--Jovan Bivjak-- did. 

We got our passports back after three days of waiting. 

And then we were ready to go on next. It was...it was just that you know, you go from place to place. And the next place we went was Tarčin. It was just a little town, maybe 50 miles from Sarajevo, but there was a big mountain between us and that tiny town, and we had to cross it. But nobody wanted to go over that mountain because it was heavily under fire all the time, you know.

You could see the road going up from the side of that mountain and [there were] a lot of burnt trucks or cars because you were completely exposed on that road. Everybody can shoot you down. 

So you could just see a lot of these burnt cars. 

So we paid a cab driver, we paid him like $100 or something, just to get us to the other side of the mountain. Maybe 20, 30 kilometer drive. And he did it. We left in in the middle of the night on that drive. And again, we had a friend of a friend, we never met him before in our lives, but you know, when we were making preparations for that trip, we just picked up kind of (just in case we needed it) a couple of these friends of friends places where we could stay.  So we stayed with friends of friends in that tiny place Tarčin over night. There was really deep snow, it was cold, I remember. And then we went on a bus and went to Croatia. And along the way our bus got stopped couple of times, actually pulled over, by the military or police or whatever. 

They were really trying to filter people and ask you for your permissions paper and if you don’t have it, they put you in their uniform and you don’t know where you’re gonna go. So we had couple of these close calls where they were debating whether to take me or not, you know. But eventually, [it] ended up well. We were able to cross the border and we went to Split. And in Split, we stayed for a day and then we got on another bus and went to Zagreb. 

Zagreb is Capitol of Croatia and we had a friend there. That was, uh--my brother’s friend, actually. We stayed with them for three months. But then we had to leave that place [my brother’s friend’s house] and stay in Zagreb for another three months.  It was not easy-- 

So when you go to Zagreb, you get there and you start applying [for asylum in other countries]. And we said “We would like to go to Canada or, Sweden… Scandanavian countries, right, they’re good.” But the thing is, they wouldn’t accept your paperwork, they all have some kind of refugee quotas and when they hit those numbers they say “we’re not accepting anymore for the year.” 

So, then we are just walking one day, and we pass the United States embassy. And we said “lets try here.” We never really considered United States, but we were kind of running out of options at that time. So we walk in, applied, and there was some organization that worked with them [the embassy] that put you on that [asylum] track. So you just work with them, go through a series of interviews--they need to validate your story and go through just some interviews. And that process took three months. 

So finally after six or seven months in Zagreb, we got all the papers done and basically we were ready to go to United States. They allowed us [to come]. 

We got on a plane and we came to Houston directly. We didn’t have anyone in United States. When we came here, there was a group of people from episcopal church, at the Houston Hobby airport, and they were our sponsors. They decided to help us settle down here and rent first apartment for us and buy some food for us and stuff. They were really nice people, we still see some of them. We visited them in Colorado a couple years ago. 

So that’s how it worked for us. And then there was kind of this process of getting used to everything and finding jobs and learning english, and that was…

But it was really good from then on. I got my first job after three months. So it was, it was an easy ride once we came here.

You said you weren’t sure if you would have left if you had a crystal ball and knew what was gonna happen. How did you decide to leave?

Uh, because, we didn’t... it was just too long. We were there for three years. It started in April ‘92 and now it was December ‘94, so I guess two years for us. But it’s still long. 

We just got to the end of our rope. And I ran out of all our money and savings and everything and I said “I don’t know what to do.” There was no future for us there.  

Everybody was planning to leave. So just like some… some sort of atmosphere in the air of people just thinking of going out of that hell. 

Our mindset was “Lets just go anywhere in the world out of this place.” It was so bad. You know. We just had kind of psychologically enough of that war. And also, I was getting really close to being drafted in[the] military and I knew I couldn’t really avoid it [that] time...they got closer and closer every time. 

Actually I got drafted once. I was in the police and stayed there for 15 days [laughs]. Yasmina was laughing when she saw me. And then friends at this company where I worked at were able to bring me back.

So our main motivation was that we had enough of that war. And financially, we were completely spent. We wanted to go somewhere else and build new lives. 

When did the war end for you? Was there a specific moment where you felt like it was over? 

Uh, you know, Dayton Peace Agreement was signed in ‘95, but we left Bosnia in December ‘94, months before that. So that was end of the war for us. So we were lucky. But we also had the support of friends-- I had a friend in Germany (I was doing business with him before the war with him) and when we got out from Sarajevo, we didn’t have any money, so he was sending us money because we couldn’t survive in Zagreb. 

But Zagreb is a different story because Bosnia was in war with Croatia for some time, so when you go to Zagreb, as a Bosnian, you are not a friend there. You are not really greeted with open arms. And they would do these kind of...just pull you out if you walk down the street and they say that you’re not from there [Zagreb], you could end up on a front line somewhere. They would put you on a truck. 

You felt illegal. You can’t speak your own accent because that would give you away. You had to be extra careful not to get caught. 

So that was an extra stress. You were away from war but still had to be sort of underground, you know. You can’t really be free, feel free. And after three months, our visa has expired, so we had to double down on our precautions and making sure we don’t look suspicious, we have to act how they act and blend in. We didn’t want to be stopped by the police or documented for any reason. 

And when we were there, Zagreb got shelled. Bombed, actually. And they never really had that experience before. Zagreb was not in the middle of the war. Zagreb was just there, like Belgrade, or other cities, they had never really experienced war, in that period. So when we were in Zagreb, we were sitting and bombs started falling. But they were actually much smaller bombs than what we were really experienced with.

So we could guess the caliber it was, like it’s not that bad, you know [Laughs]. Our friends, or the people we were actually renting the house with, they were freaking out. They’d never heard that. They were just running to the basement, you know, and we were just laughing at them because we had so much experience that [shelling], and we knew that it wasn’t gonna kill us. 

Anyway, we spent 6 or 7 months in Zagreb and then we came here. It was really interesting long trip. And you never really know if you gonna pass or not.

But once the United States stamped [our paperwork]--Then you feel like you’re on top of the world. You know you’re going.

Yeah it’s like an end

Yeah that’s finally the end of it. We knew we [were] finally out of it when we got approval from United States… we know we are out of the war.  Everything until that day was kind of iffy. You never know if you [were] gonna have to go back. I mean, there was peace at that time in Bosnia, but everything was kind of...Bosnia had already signed that peace agreement, but it was fresh out of war and economy [was] ruined and not good.

And you don’t know if the peace agreement is gonna stick

Yeah exactly, you don’t know if it’s gonna hold or not. 

What kind of changes in Balkan culture have you noticed? Before, during, and after the war. 

This war actually was...I would blame a lot of it on the media. Because they spread all the misinformation and lies and hatred. Before the war, people were just normal, act normal, didn’t care who you are or what you are, what nationality--you are all just one pool of friends. No questions [asked].

But because of the media, people started actually to pay attention to that [ethnic and religious affiliations] and suddenly started to hate each other because of that. So I would say we lost some sort of innocence during that war.

I remember a friend of mine actually, he lived near Sarajevo, in small city Pale. He was [a] different nationality [from me], but he would come to Sarajevo and he would stay with me at my home. And he would stay--we’d have party or whatever, and it was late for him to get on the bus and go back [to Pale] 30 miles from Sarajevo. So he would just stay in my room, you know.

And just before the war, he said to me, “I don’t know if I can stay at your home anymore, I don’t know if you’re gonna kill me in my sleep.” Basically that’s what he says [to me]. And I never saw him after that.

Wow

So these are things you know… he read it somewhere, he was instructed, brainwashed, A lot of people got brainwashed and started acting differently to their friends and became paranoid and just… not believing anyone. Yeah. Our world has shrunk because of that. You lost a lot of your friends because there was this invisible wall between you now. There was no trust anymore-- because you don’t know, is that person still your friend? Or are they brainwashed? So that, that is the biggest change. I think that’s still the case today. 

And I’m sorry that all that happened to a lot of people. And I mean people are good, even now--when some big catastrophe hits, like flood, or...they go and help each other regardless of nationality. But, politicians keep us apart. Because that’s their business. Especially in Bosnia. Unfortunately we have, nowadays, three groups of people controlled by politicians and they’re acting like shepherds. They have their own interest of financial lobbies and everything. They are just robbers, thieves... that’s how I see them.

They’re making a lot of money by keeping people apart in fear of each other. And that’s why Bosnia is unstable today.

Because people...people are okay. But politicians are bad because they molding people in their own way. Instead of promoting unity they are promoting separation and hatred and fear. That is sad to see. 

Is there something that you want Americans or non-Balkan people to know about the war?

I think a lot of people know about the Bosnian war even though it’s been a long time now. But when I speak to people about that war, they know what happened, roughly, you know.

But um, what I would in general tell anybody is think with your own head.

Don’t be a member of a group and start thinking with the group mind. People behave differently when they are members of the group, they feel responsibility differently, they think differently, they start thinking with their leader’s head. 

It’s still funny to me when you see you know someone that whatever their leader says, whatever group or color or religious group, when leader says something on TV, the next day, people will say the same thing. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Just because he said it. That’s what made me individualist. I never went to any group. Nor do I want to be in any group in my life because group makes you think with someone else’s brain. People don’t use their own brain when they’re members of a group… fully dedicated [members of a group]. [That’s] just how it works.

So, seeing these American elections and the hatred and everything just reminded me of that-- of that manipulation.

You know,

when someone gets on the stage and says “Look at this, look at those people,” they just...incite hatred because of the way people look or because of what people believe in. That is fascism.

And [it] makes me want to stay away from any group. That’s my experience in all this. I don’t want to be brainwashed. If you’re not a member of a group, you’re not gonna be brainwashed. Just think with your own head.

Is there something you want people who are still in the Balkans to know? 

They need to make changes, little changes. And nothing gonna come in one big sweeping change. Lot of people are hoping that the United States is gonna come get involved  and somehow make it rosy and you know it’s not gonna happen.

And you know, I notice one change in people--that they rely on others to solve their problems, and you know, they used to-- people in Bosnia are now used to receiving help and donations. That help can be political help or donations, material donations, and I think that changed people’s minds. I mean when I went to Bosnia--I went to Bosnia for first time after 18 years since coming here. When I went to visit them, I gave all of them some money. But no one said to me “Why are you giving this to me, why are you doing this, I’m my own person, I have my own money, why are you giving me that, I am not a beggar.” People used to be proud that they would never take someone’s change or some money. That pride is gone now because they are used to getting help.
So what I would say to people is that they need to rely on themselves, not on other nations or other leaders, they need to build their own world that they want. It’s difficult, I know because there’s these forces, at play in Bosnia in three directions, which is hard. But I think young people could probably get results. So we need new politicians and new people who think for everybody and not for their own tiny group of people. So.

Unity is the key, I think.