Check on Your Refugee Friends

I was 2 years old when I became a child of war. When I heard sirens and bombs. When schools closed and I watched my sister get her school lessons in a basement of an adjacent building. When family came to stay with us in waves for safety. When food became scarce and water was a luxury. I so distinctly recall sitting in the basement bomb shelter of our apartment building, surrounded by neighbors of all backgrounds as Serbs launched bombs all around us. I remember our family cars being some of the only ones left in the lot. My mother still going into work as Croatians wouldn’t let us go back to Sarajevo, needing her support, expertise, and practice (my mom is a family practitioner). When we worried about my father’s life. When we felt our family rip at the seams with the killing of my uncle, bombing death of my cousin, and the lives that were so important to our family no longer with us. During this time, we watched blood fill the streets of Sarajevo. Heard bombs obliterate the beautiful, historic icons of the city. We lay witness to endless loss, not a single neighbor left unimpacted by death. We saw our home destroyed inside out, forever tainted by the evil that rummaged the streets, killed our men, raped our women, slaughtered our children, and sought to inflict as much pain as they could while laying siege on the city. A level of inhumanity unseen.

I was 6.5 years old when I became a refugee. Leaving all the people we loved behind, in the throes of war, for survival - my parents forced to make seemingly impossible decisions. Thrust into a country, a life, a culture, and people with wildly different experiences than me. Carrying unimaginable grief, thousands of miles from home, with a single suitcase of belongings - forced to rebuild under the most unimaginable of circumstance. I used to watch my mother cry every single day. Unable to fathom the current reality. And yet, I watched her and my father learn English, get jobs, walk to work, save money, buy a car, and brick by brick lay a foundation for an environment in which my sister and I could thrive in. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I realized the level of their sacrifice. Paying $150.00 of their $500.00 monthly income for me to go to gymnastics. Providing a life where food was never scarce; where good health was status quo, not the exception. Where the shelves were stacked with books, puzzles, and toys, and creativity nourished. Where I truly learned to value the things that I had received - like my violin, which I had rented from the local music store for years so I could play until one day, my dad bought me my own and I couldn’t have been more humbled by their investment in my passions. A feeling that often drove me to success in my endeavors.

I don’t think it comes as a surprise that I did not have many material things growing up, but I did have everything I needed or could have longed for. I had a family that was close. Where meals were shared daily and discussion encouraged. I had parents that recognized the importance of education and understanding. Where a free flow of thought, opinion, questions, and ideas thrived. We were not strangers to politics, current events, and the issues people were facing globally. Even at a young age, my parents did not shield us from the realities, impacts, and consequences of decisions - from those that were historic to the ones in our current spaces. Our discussions and their encouragement, coupled with our travels, emboldened my love for foreign and domestic policy, as well as history. I sought, and still continue to seek, out those topics in my day to day. However, I did not have many pairs of jeans, or a closet filled with Limited Too and the newest of trends. I had hand-me-downs and some thrifted items. I had clearance rack clothes and gifted items. And while I did not have the newest of toys and clothes - I was always clean and put together, full of creativity and design - a vision and confidence in self. I say this because I cannot even count the number of times I was made fun of for my clothes, or wearing the same pair of jeans in a week’s time, or repeating a shirt I had worn the prior week, or simply for the outdated clothes I wore on my back. While I did not know the numbers at the time, I was incredibly aware that my family was different - that my parents, despite their hard work and sacrifice could only provide so much - and I was so careful to not ask for more. To never make them feel like their efforts were not good enough. That they were not good enough. Which is why those insults and taunts hurt me two-fold. They made me insecure and upset on a personal level, but they also were perceived to insult my family - the people for whom my admiration and gratefulness knows no bounds. You’d be surprised to know I lost friends because of those circumstances, which only further added to the hurt. I only hope those people are better people now.

Despite the challenges in their space, we became US citizens in the summer of 2000; bought our family home January 2001; annually visited Bosnia; and forged relationships with special people whom we now call family. In 2003, my parents sent my sister to college - University of Pittsburgh, majoring in Chemistry (like the brainiac she is). I recall watching my father cry as we left her in her dorm, partially moved that he was leaving his oldest baby to fend for herself, now an adult, and partially because he felt like he had failed in being able to do more for her, as he left her with $50.00 of pocket money, what he could provide at the time. I often think of that moment now that I have children. I think I, on a weekly basis, order significant amounts of crafts, toys, art, paint, paper, crayons, etc., valued at much more than $50, no doubt. I try to think of what it must have felt like to reach maximum giving capacity, with the desire to do infinitely more, and simply to be unable. I get choked up in that moment. We have so much to be grateful for.

My sister and I went on to graduate college. I, a fully scholarship athlete, competing on a national stage; ranked on a national level. We both went on to get professional degrees - she, a physician and business owner; me - a lawyer. We took photos of my parents when each of us crossed the stage for our MD and JD - both of them in tears. I look at those photos every so often and have to laugh at the “ugly-crying” faces, but my insides could burst with pride. My entire life I have carried this guilt that I was the reason my parents had failed to live out their own dreams. My mother - robbed of her medical license in the US, unable to practice medicine after her lifelong dedication to her patients and practice. My father - a commander turned laborer - someone who had led fleets to someone working a (difficult) blue collar job. I have spent my life immensely aware that while parents will do anything for their children, it is not any less difficult, less emotional, less hurtful and upsetting all the same. I have spent my life working to make sure that at no point they would regret their decision to bring us to the US. That the successes and achievements they would experience through my sister and myself (separate and apart from their own), would somehow make up for all of the loss and destruction endured in the process. That they, through everything we have endured and experienced since June 1995, would fulfill them - bring them joy as they look back on their lives. That they would never be left longing for something better.

As I continue to watch the horrible situation in Ukraine unfold - hearing the sirens and watching the videos of people finding shelter and food - I am once again thrown into the body of that tiny girl, sitting in her own apartment building shelter hearing the sirens and praying our family will be safe. For some reason, I thought I was exempt from a level of trauma and PTSD that has failed to surface until now - until a feeling of deja vu ran through me, feeling like I was watching myself on those screens. I did not think those demons I had made peace with would so abruptly claw their way into my life across social media and TV screens. I did not think I would, again (at any point in time much less modern day), see images of bombing of streets, people murdered, babies displaced, and masses migrating out of their homes. I did not think I would see young people stepping up to defend their land, or stories of women raped and children slaughtered. I just did not think I would be thrust back to my past as it unfolded in modern day times. I found myself unable to sleep, crying constantly, distraught in my own mind, immersed in all of the emotions that I had so neatly bottled up somewhere in my soul, no longer contained. I thought of my children and what surviving a war would look like with them in tow. I get choked up at the thought. I so vividly remember as fields, tennis courts, backyards, and open spaces transformed into cemeteries, serving as forever scars on the hills, mountain sides, and neighborhoods of Sarajevo. I remember and I weep.

The people of Ukraine are in for a long uphill battle. As war rages in their country, they will find themselves fighting one internally all the same. Stuck in a space of patriotism and national unity, but recognizing that safety is not found within its borders. They will be stuck in that weird space between citizen and diaspora - a name cruelly given to the people who have left their homeland to reside in another, often used in a dismissive manner to indicate that those individuals are not truly “real” citizens of that homeland. That they abandoned it during a time of need - amounting to less than those who stayed. They will grapple with the politics that ensues; the corruption that will take place at the hands of those responsible for this war and willing to make a profit from lives lost as they navigate a future Ukraine, whatever that may look like. Like me, they will find themselves tethered somewhere to the strings of their homeland, cooking cultural dishes, speaking their native language, getting together with people of similar backgrounds, and building a community in a foreign place. They will miss “home.” They will miss what their lives looked like before they were thrown into an unexpected and cruel turmoil. They will long for simpler times and face the harsh realities of what it truly means to start over, stripped of so many robust and engrained areas of your identity.

But, they will rebuild, and they will derive an enormous sense of strength from their ability to do so. Fostering communities in strange lands. Bonding with those like them instantaneously. Speaking native languages at home and learned languages with new friends and neighbors. Eating native dishes at home and French fries and burgers at school. It will be a surreal point where life as they knew and created it will give way to the life they will be forced to embrace. It will be their most difficult challenge and they will never be able to forget.

I urge you to recognize how such hate led to war. I hope you understand how such atrocities come to fruition. I pray you never have to experience such horror, but wish for you to reap the empathy such hate creates. Understand that people are going through unimaginable circumstances. That they may be fighting demons and battles you could not possibly comprehend. And do better - be kinder. And if your friends were refugees, maybe send them a note of encouragement and embrace. They are currently reliving their biggest nightmare.