Escape from Bosnia

**Winner of the Marion Hood Boess Haworth Prize in Fiction for Children & Young Adults, April 2011 at Mills College**

Stupni Do, October 23, 1994

It is morning, and I can hear the explosions. Then I hear the shooting. Crack. Crack. Crack. The tiny shots pop like firecrackers, but they are more deadly. The sun is just now rising for the beginning of the day, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a good one. I am not really awake; the shots meld with my dreams. My majka comes into the room and wakes me up completely.

“Get up! Get up! Nina, they’ve started. Grab your brother. We need to get out of here,” she says urgently.

Her voice startles me into wakefulness more than the shots. We were waiting for this; in the backs of our minds we knew that war was coming closer. We were just hoping that we were wrong.

“Mohammed! Wake up!” I scramble out of bed and hurry to my brother. I find his shoes underneath his bed and push his feet into them. I slip on my shoes as well. Shots ring out closer now, and I can hear the glass breaking. I grab Mohammed’s hand, and we make a run for it. Down the hall we rush, my majka and my other brothers and sisters all scrambling from their rooms.

We stop at the doorway that leads into the living room. The basement door is on the other side of the living room and right next to the kitchen. This is the most dangerous part of our escape plan. The living room has so many windows. My majka loved that about this house. She didn’t even mind having to clean them every week or making us clean them, so they sparkled and shone — completely transparent. Anyone could see us even though the sun was not yet up.

I tremble, and my breathing is uneven. I grasp Mohammed’s hand so hard that he starts to cry a little. I loosen my grip. He is scared. I am too.

“Shush, Mohammed. It will be okay. Don’t let go of my hand,” I whisper to him, attempting to comfort him—and myself.

My two older sisters, Mariya and Omera, go first. They get down on the ground and crawl across the floor towards the open basement door. They make it. Ahil and Faiz go next. I see them disappearing into the dark basement. It is our turn. I smile at Mohammed, hoping he does not see how scared I really am, and push him onto the ground next to me.

“Just follow me. I won’t let anything happen to you,” I whisper. Majka is going to follow with the baby, Zafir, in her arms, so we need to hurry. We start across the floor, steadily we go, the room grows bigger, time slows, and I can only hear the sound of my ragged breathing. Mohammed grabs ahold of my ankle as we make our way across the room, and I half drag him along beside me. I pick up the pace a little, keeping my eyes focused on the dark room just on the other side. I can barely make out Mariya’s pale anxious face in the dark as she waits for me and Mohammed. One foot from the doorway, Mariya grabs me by the elbows and pulls Mohammed and me through the doorway. I stand just inside the doorway to wait for Majka and Zafir.

“Get out of the way! What are you doing?” Mariya scream-whispers at me. “Go down the stairs and wait with the others. Take Mohammed. Take care of him.”

I trip down the stairs with Mohammed, my legs not quite working right, jumping at every sound. Tears stream down my face. Mariya and Majka, who is holding baby Zafir, come slowly down the steps after me. The shots begin again. A thought hits me through my panic: where is Tata? Is he at work? Why is he not here? 

“Where is Tata?” I whisper.

“He went to the mines in Vareš two weeks ago,” Majka reminds me.

“Why?” I had forgotten why he had left us.

“He had to go to work… He did not think the Croats would actually attack us. No one did. And then when the Defense Council told us we could no longer leave Stupni Do, he was still in Vareš.  He will be alright. He is probably holed up somewhere. Don’t worry, Nina. We will get out of this.”

All of us curl up inside the dark basement, too afraid to light a candle, too afraid to speak, too afraid to do anything much but sit in the dark and pray. As a family, we did not do much praying. We were too busy with our lives, with our school, with our jobs, and with day-to-day duties that we had neglected our prayers. We had time enough now. The only sound was Zafir fussing. Majka opened her shirt to nurse him. He was quiet then. No one can tell how long it has been. Ten minutes? An hour? It feels like forever. And then we smell it: the fire. Our house is on fire. 

All of us start crying and screaming. What do we do now? Omera and Azil cling to each other and sit down on the floor. Thick smoke starts to come through the door. Majka feels the wood of the door, and I can see from the expression on her face that we cannot go that way. I look around me and  see two small windows near the ceiling of the basement. I grab a chair and a hammer, and I climb up on the chair to smash the two windows, but I am too short. Majika hands me Zafir, grabs the hammer from me, and pushes me out of the way. She smashes the windows with the hammer and knocks out all the remaining glass. The smoke is coming thicker and thicker into the basement. It becomes harder to see and harder to breathe. It smells like burning wood and plastic. The smell starts to turn more acidic as the fire grew bigger. Majika quickly helps Mariya through the window. I hand Zafir to Majika, and then Zafir is passed through the window. They have to go carefully because of all the glass, but they are still trying to hurry. One by one, we get out the window. All of us. Even Marika, who was the last, and we all had to grab hold of her to pull her through the window.

“We’ll have to hide in the forest,” Omera says.

The forest is a few hundred feet from our backdoor. In pairs we run for the woods, as quietly as we can, looking around us for any sign of danger. We see the Croats who were burning our house highlighted against the backdrop of the fire. Yelling and shouting as they burned our village. We could see them shooting people as they ran from their homes. They did not see us yet. There is no cover for the seconds it takes us to cover the ground before we come to the trees. We hope they do not turn around.

Once we reach the shelter of the woods, Majka leads us more slowly deeper into the forest. When we are completely covered by the trees, she takes out a blanket from a backpack and lays it on the ground. 

“When did you have time to get the backpack?” I ask.

“I grabbed it after I woke you,” Majka says. Her voice sounds tired and strained. Her frizzy grey hair is splayed in all directions. Dirt is smudged on her cheek, and her clothes smell like smoke. All of us smell like smoke, or is the smell just stuck in my nose? I try to sneeze a few times to get the smell out.

It is so very cold outside. The sun is rising. Majka sits on the blanket with Zafir. Ahil and Faiz sit down next. Mariya and Omera sit on two separate tree trunks, and Mohammed and I lean against their knees on the ground. The ground is hard.

“We’ll have to wait until tonight when it’s dark, and then we will try to get out of town. We’ll go find your father,” Majka says.

“Why are they hurting us? What do they have against us?” I whisper, not really understanding. “We are Muslim, but we haven’t done anything to them.”

“I know, Nina…but it is not really about our religion. It is mostly about land and government and power. We are Muslim, and they do not want us to have the power,” Marjka explains. She has told us before, but I still don’t really understand. I don’t know what this means. Our entire village is Muslim, so we don’t really know what makes us different from the Croats and the Serbs. Why do they hunt us? Why must we run? Why are they destroying our homes?

Tata is not here. The Croats are coming to get us. Mohammed is crying. We weep together silently.

Mariya takes my hand and pulls me into her lap while Omera clasps Mohammed against her chest tightly. They whisper comforting words, meaningless words, indecipherable words but comforting all the same.

The shouting continues from the village. We are far back in the trees and hidden, but we could still hear them. We hear the shouting and the gunfire. The pops continue. The dead and the dying shout their last painful words, and we listen. The smoke from the fires continues to blacken the sky. Once again I pray. I cannot remember the prayers from the mosque, so I just begin a personal made-up prayer of my own. Allah, help me. Help my family. Help the people still in the village. Help Tata. And help end this war.

I look at each family member and memorize their faces. My majka, her soft skin, the lines around her eyes, her graying hair coming out from underneath the hajib. She only wears the hijab outside of our home or when we have guests, so we have been able to see the changes in the color lately. It used to be completely black and long like a dark shadow, but her smile was always bright and sunny, which was a complete contrast and made her look less like a witch. I always imagine that she was magical and could solve any problem. She cut it short recently (with seven kids she did not have the time, and the war was coming, so she had even less time). It made her seem unlike herself. 

I can look at Mariya and imagine that Majka still has her hair since Mariya got her long beautiful hair and had not cut it. Not yet anyway. Mariya has long black hair, chocolate brown eyes and soft skin. She is seventeen and young, full of life. Scared now but hiding it from us. She is taller than Majka but not by much, taller than me, but I have not yet finished growing. She is the oldest. She protects me when the village boys make fun of me. It is always the boys. She takes care of me when Majka can’t. She sneaks me treats behind Majka’s back when she helps with dinner. Mariya will soon be married, and she will move away from us. Majka is always saying this, so I try to be with her as much as I can for as long as I can. I know that probably annoys her, but I do it anyway. Mariya does not say anything, though. She wants to be with me too.

Omera is the same height as Majka, sixteen, but she has blonde hair instead of black. It is also long, and she has blue eyes. Majka decided to let us grow our hair for now. No one could see it anyway once we start wearing the hijab. Only Omera and Mariya wear the hijab now. Omera does not protect me the way that Mariya does. She is not the oldest, so she does not feel like she has to. She has been too busy lately with her friends to play with me. Whenever I try to join her and her friends, she pushes me away and makes me go inside the house. She does not have time for me.

Ahil and Faiz have the blue eyes of our father and light features. Ahil is 15 and Faiz is 13. They don’t want to play with me either, so I’ve ended up playing with Mohammed or trailing after Mariya. My family is a mixture of dark and light. Some of us have brown eyes and some of us blue. I wish I had blue eyes, but I have brown ones just like Mohammad, Mariya, and Majka. I have the lightest brown color. Mariya’s eyes are the deepest brown. They are just as pretty as Omera’s blue eyes. I wish I had either Omera’s light blue eyes or Mariya’s dark chocolate ones. Instead I have light brown, uninteresting light brown. I am also short. I am only eleven, so I might still grow. Who knows how tall Zafir is going to be or the color of his eyes? He is still a baby. His eyes are blue now, but Majka says they might change.

Omera is holding nine-year-old Mohammed right now, but he is really mine. I am his protector. Mariya told me to protect him, and I will. Mohammed was the baby of the family until Zafir came, and I think he might still think of himself that way. He has short black hair and big ears that stick out from the side of his head. It is cute now, but I hope he grows into his ears. What a thing to think about right now — Mohammad’s ears.

Then we hear something new. A small sound, but it is very close. It is a rustling sound, small, soft, almost silent. It is coming from the direction of our house. It is almost to the trees. The woods around us have gone still. All of us freeze where we are, holding our breaths and silently straining our hearing. Then we see him. A Croat officer. He comes storming out of the trees. The others in his group come after him. There are ten, all in black uniforms with white bands on the left shoulders. The whole world is frozen. I stop breathing; when I start again, everything seems to go too fast. One of the officers grabs Mariya’s arm, and I tumble off her lap into the dirt. Reflexively, I jump up and grab his arm as he struggles with Mariya. He backhands me, and I hit the ground again. Then he lets go of Mariya and points the gun in her face.

“Don’t move,” he growls at her. She stands perfectly still. I lift my head from the ground and try to find all the rest of my family. Everyone is now sitting in a circle on the ground surrounded by men with guns. One of the men comes to my side, picks me up roughly and sets me down with the others. Mariya is now all alone.

“Undress,” he says.

Mariya’s eyes widened as she realized what was about to happen. She shakes  uncontrollably; she doesn’t move; she just shakes. I whimper and reach out to her from across the distance. The men who surround us tell us not to move.

“Don’t,” Marjka says. “Don’t. I will go in her place.” She says it forcefully but regretfully, as if she already knows their answer.

“Next time,” the man says.

Marjka curls into herself in defeat. I close my eyes and try to stop my ears. There is nothing we can do. Mariya is still frozen in place.

“Get undressed!” the man says angrily. I open my eyes to his angry shouting. Mariya does not move. The man hands his gun to another soldier and grabs the front of Mariya’s shirt. He rips it off her. Then Mariya wakes up and starts to scream. He clamps his hand over her mouth. He motions to two other guards. They hand their guns to the others, and they grab Mariya roughly by the arms, pulling her to the ground. The officer pulls up her skirt, and rips her underwear off as she struggles and screams. He pushes her knees apart, unbuttons his pants and presses into her. The two other men hold her down. No one has any hands for her mouth anymore, as they are so concentrated on holding her struggling limbs in place. We hear her scream, and we hear her whimper. She sobs uncontrollably. The man who is raping her hits her over and over again to make her be quiet, but she just keeps screaming. Finally, he hit her too hard, and she is still.

I still hear sobbing sounds. Who is it coming from? I look around and realize that it is coming from me. Tears stream down my face, the salt gets into my mouth, and I am choking on it. I can’t breathe. Marjka pulls me to her, and she strokes my back with one hand, the other still clutching Zafir. Zafir is blessedly silent. 

“Shush, Nina, shush. We cannot cry now. Please be quiet. Please,” Majka mumbles to me. My sobs finally soften; they no longer hurt my chest so very badly. I can breathe a little easier as I melt into a kind of in-between place; my mind is no longer there; it is on hold.

“Damn it. She is unconscious,” the man says. “Well, on to the next.” He gets off of her and moves towards our family group. Mariya is not dead. She’s not!

“No. You’ve had your turn. It’s my turn now,” another man says.

“But mine is unconscious!”

“Too bad if you’ve broken yours. Let someone else go next, and maybe she’ll be awake when we’re all done, and you can go again.”

The man shrugs, and he zips his pants up. He grabs his gun and motions the second evil man towards our group as if to say he could have his first pick. I look around at all of us. Who is it going to be? We are all going to die. They are evil. They are monsters.

He motions towards Omera. Another evil man motions towards me. I don’t move. Omera doesn’t move. I grasp onto Majka’s fingers.

“Don’t struggle,” she says. Tears streak down her cheeks, and she pats the top of my head. Her deep brown eyes squint shut, and she lets me go.

A Monster pulls me shakily to my feet. I panic and struggle automatically, forgetting my majika’s words of advice. Then another noise breaks through the madness that is now inside my head.

A small tank with FORPRONU written in blue on the side of it moves into the clearing. A steady stream of language is broadcast out to us. 

“No French,” the Monster says.

“You speak English?” the Tank says.

“Yes. A little,” the monster says in English. I know a little English, so I could understand. 

“Put guns down,” the Tank says.

“No,” the Monster says.

“If you do not put guns down, we will shoot,” says Tank. Fifteen officers in camo come out of the trees with their guns raised.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Monster says.

“We shoot anyway. Get away from girls, now,” says Tank.

The Monster lets go of my arm. The other Monster lets go of Omera’s arm. At this point, Mariya wakes up. Her Monster sees her come to.

“Put down guns,” Tank says. Everyone is frozen. Mariya comes fully awake. She starts to sob again. Her Monster walks purposefully over to her and grabs her to him, placing his gun at her temple.

“No. You leave. Or she dies,” he says.

Again, we are frozen in time. I do not want to move. One of the tank men comes out of the tank with his arms up. He is wearing a camouflage uniform with a blue helmet.

“Can’t we make a deal?” the tank man says.

“No. No deal. You leave,” Mariya’s Monster says.

“Please don’t leave us,” Mariya pleads in English.

“Shut up!” her Monster says in Bosnian. She whimpers again. Her clothes are in tatters around her, her long black hair is stringy with dirt, and she continues to beg for help. She pleads with our savior; with her eyes, she continues to plead.

We hear an explosion. It comes from our burning house. It startles all of us. But not more than the Monster with the gun pointed at Mariya. He pulls the trigger. She is gone.

The first tank man, the beautiful savior tank man, pulls his gun from his back and shoots the Monster. More tank men come out of the tank as I fall down on the ground in a heap and stay there, not moving, frozen to the earth as my heart is now frozen in my chest. I hear more shouting and more gunfire, but all I see is dirt and Mariya’s beautiful face in her last moments. Her chocolate-brown eyes pleading, her musical voice barely above a whisper, and the look of pain that crossed her face as the bullet entered her pale, soft skin. It was a brief look. But I will remember it.

The savior tank man grabs me and holds me to him as he runs with me behind the tank. The gunfire slows. The shots slow down. The tank man puts me on the ground and shouts something to the others. He turns to me and pats my back.

“It is ok. It is done now,” he says in English. I nod in agreement, and then I stop. It is not done.

“My sister is dead,” I say woodenly. Then I break. I sob uncontrollably. The tank man scoops me up and brings me over to Marjka. The rest of my family huddles together in one big giant mass, and we weep together. Luc, our savior, is a tall, muscular man with warm green eyes and a very empathetic smile. He is safe. For us anyway.

The hours come and go. The tank men shuffle back and forth between the burning village and the woods. At some point, someone in charge comes up to us. He looks like he is in charge. Maybe it is his walk. He was not there before. Someone must have called him. Is he the boss?

“English?” He asks.

Majka nods.

“We have to go from here. We are not supposed to be here, and all of us must leave. We can take you with us.”

“What about my daughter?” Majka asks softly.

“We can bury her before we go.”

Majka nods. “Not here, not in this place.”

“We will take her to another place in the woods, bury her, and then we must leave,” the boss whispers.

“We will all go and say good-bye,” Majka says.

The tank men place a tarp over Mariya’s body and carry her deeper into the woods. All of us follow. Only the tank men have shovels, so they dig the grave. It is only five feet deep, but it is really all they have time for, and we will come back to bury her properly some day. The tank men place Mariya in her grave. No one can say anything. We are silent. Majka starts to speak.

“Mariya, we love you. This is only temporary. We will come back and bury you properly. We will not leave you here. We miss you,” Majka says in a loud, passionate voice. She is on the verge of collapse. Our savior holds her elbow. She clutches Zafir for strength because we must go on. We must get out of here.

No one else speaks. No one else can. We are not safe yet. When we are safe, then it will be time to mourn Mariya. The tank men push the dirt back over Mariya’s body. There was a bullet hole in her head, and her face has gore all over it, but the rest of her just looks extremely still.

By now, it is the middle of the day. Mariya was alive this morning. She is dead now. The sun has not died with her. I am suprised that we are still moving forward.

“We have to go,” the boss says.

Majka nods, and we follow the soldiers back to the tank. I didn’t notice before, but there are also a few trucks to carry the other men, their gear, and the supplies that they were going to give to the refugees. All seven of us — the ones who are left — climb into the trucks beside the soldiers. We do not have far to go; Vareš is only two kilometers away, but it is now controlled by the Croats. We are with the FORPRONU, so it will be okay. It has to be okay. We have to find Tata. The tank struggles with the forest floor until we find the dirt road that leads out of our village. We pass the rolling hills that circle Stupni Do. The woods are thicker in places and thinner in others. Normally, this is a beautiful place, but it is not now. I used to walk through these woods and admire the gnarled, twisted trees and the way that the sun streaked in between the branches, making the whole forest look like fairyland. I don’t think it is beautiful. Nothing is beautiful now, and I will never admire the trees or the sun in these woods again.

We creep up to Vareš, but the road is blocked. The Croats are stopping each tank and truck and making everyone talk to them. Papers and money are exchanged, and then they move on to the next group. We all stay in the trucks, and Luc talks to them, and they let us through. We are not sure what he says, but he assures us that we are safe.

Luc helps us search for Tata. We look all around the town. Vareš is a bigger place than Stupni Do, but it is not so big. If Tata is here, then we should be able to find him. We cannot go into the mines where he works, so we think we should start our search in the town. If he knows about what is happening in Stupni Do, then he will probably not be at work anyway. Where else could he be? All of the houses were short square structures built into the side of the mountain. We went down every alleyway towards the direction of the mines. He wouldn’t have gone up to the Bobovac, would he? It is a fortress, but it looks like no one is really evacuating. We are the only ones running in the streets in a panic. Everyone else is going about their day. Maybe they do not know yet? The sun grows lower and lower in the sky, and we make it to the outskirts of the town. Groups of men are walking slowly from the mines. It is the end of the day. Everyone is filthy. I am too short and cannot see past the men who were suddenly everywhere, and then someone picked me up.

“Nina? What are you doing here?” Tata asked.

“Tata! Tata!” I scream.

He looks exhausted with worry. The lines on his face have deepened in the two weeks since we’ve seen him last. His step is slow, and his face focuses solely on my face. His eyebrows are pinched together in concentration.

The rest of the family catch up and rush towards him. He looks up at us, his entire family, except one, one he doesn’t know about yet. But at first he does not notice. His light blue eyes light up with pleasure, and tears stream down his face, something I have never seen before. He knows something has happened, and he is very glad to see us. He tries to hug us all at once, but he can’t get his arms around his wife and six children. We kiss him over and over again, shouting and cheering and crying.

Luc leaves us to our reunion. He stands there waiting for us to finish weeping and hugging each other. We tell Tata what happened, and his tears of joy turn to sorrow. I walk over to Luc after I finish hugging Tata.

“Thank you,” I sniffle. I have no more tears.

Luc bends down so that his face is level with mine. and he wipes the tears from my face gently with his fingers.

“You are welcome,” he says. He takes my hand and gives it a quick squeeze. He motions to two of his friends. and they bring a few dufflebags of supplies to us. Luc hands one to me and one to Tata. One by one, my family says good-bye. He has helped us as much as he can. He must go back to helping others.

Tata takes us to the house he was staying in. It is the outer edge of the town. He is renting a small room from a friend. The house is short and squat with a red tile roof. It is precariously set on the hillside.

“We don’t know what is coming next. We need to get some rest,” Omera says. She is starting to take over the oldest sister job. Ahil and Faiz pass out on a small bed. Omera picks up Mohammed and cuddles him against her while she sits in a rickety rocking chair in the corner. I get the two pillows from the bed and make myself a nest on the floor. I feel like it might be impossible for me to drift off, but my body is too tired, and soon I am asleep. Hours pass. Tata and Majka wake us up for the family meeting. Well, it is never really a meeting; it is more when they gather us together to tell us the decision they have just made.

“You are leaving Bosnia,” Tata said. His voice wavers a bit as he starts to speak. His face looks sick. No one is really that surprised. What else would we do? Our home has probably been burnt to the ground. Mariya is gone, and no one wants to go back there to the place … the place where it happened.

“You?” Omera asks.

“Yes. I am going to join the Bosnian army. I am going to protect our home. I am going to avenge Mariya,” Tata says. “I am going to go back to Stupni Do, and I am going to give her a proper burial. I am not going to leave her alone in the woods. I am going to place her next to her family. But she will be buried as a martyr because she was.” Tata’s voice trembles as he says the words. She is alive with Allah now.

“Why can’t we stay with you?” Mohammed asks, his voice quivering and cracking, his eyes tearing up.

“I can’t protect you here, and I won’t be able to fight knowing you are not safe. You have to go to America, to the house of your tetka and tetak.”

“How are we going to get there?” I ask.

“We are going to walk to Sarajevo and find some other way to get to Zagreb from there and then take a plane to San Diego, to my sister’s house,” Majka says.

“All the way to Croatia?” I mumble. All the way! I shout in my head. How are we ever going to make it?

“We can’t trust the roads, and I don’t trust the buses or the trains. There are armed men everywhere. We don’t know where they are or what their orders are, so the safest way is to walk at night and hide during the day. We will make it inshallah.”

This is an order from Majka and from Tata, and through our tears, we start to prepare. We gather all the food we have. There are too many guards around the stockpile in town, so we only really have what we can scrounge together from Luc and what Tata had in his room. Tata gives Majka all the money he has. The next morning we sleep, exhausted, in piles on the floor of the run-down room. Tata’s friend comes home while we are preparing and helps as much as he can, supplying us with as much food as he can spare. They still have to stay here, so we cannot take everything.

I am scared — terrified — but this is what we have to do, and I try to be brave. I was always the brave one, scrambling up trees and over mountains, never coming home until dark, making my mother crazy with worry, but now I don’t feel so brave. I don’t want to leave Tata here in the middle of this war, but I do. We do. We hug and kiss him good-bye. Majka and Tata walk alone outside for a little while before we leave, saying good-bye. I can tell that Majka doesn’t want to leave Tata either, but his mind is made up, and Majka has to come with us to keep us safe. He is leaving Vareš at the same time we are. He will also have to sneak out so that he can go bury Mariya and join the Bosnian army. After we finish our preparations, we wait for the dark.

“Alright, djeca. Be brave. Be safe. Be smart. Listen to your mother, and you will make it out of here. Inshallah.” We kiss and hug Tata one last time, and then we part. Tata heads north to Stupni Do. He moves in the dark without a light and avoids the guards who are patrolling the perimeter. The town is built into the side of the mountain, and the forest creeps up to the buildings, so there are plenty of places to sneak through. We leave going in the opposite direction towards Sarajevo. We pause beside every building and listen for the sound of soldiers marching or talking or making any noise at all. We hide in the shadows and wait until all we can hear is the call of birds in the forest. We travel as far as we can before finding an empty barn to sleep in. We hear gunfire at times while we are walking in the dark. Majka has a flash light, but we do not use it because we are too afraid of being seen. The mountains around Vareš block out any light that we might have been able to see from other cities and towns. We stay clear of populated areas, so it takes us longer to circle around. The road map Majka brought with us gets crumbled and dirty the more and more we examine it to check our progress. It takes us two nights to walk to Sarajevo. We had to walk slowly and cautiously in the woods only at night with younger children, so it took us longer than it might have. We find old abandoned buildings to hide in during the day and sleep in shifts. My feet hurt, my back hurts, and my stomach rumbles. Majka stops to breastfeed the baby every couple of hours. We are so tired, but no one is complaining. We are too tired to complain. We try to conserve our food as much as possible because we don’t want to have to go into town or a village and not know what is going on. They might kill us. By the time we reach Sarajevo, Mohammed has been puking for three days from eating uncooked rice, and my stomach is not in much better shape. One foot in front of the other in an endless march. I am so tired.

Once we get to Sarajevo, we notice the siege equipment and the Army of Republika Srpska. It looks like they have Sarajevo surrounded. We can’t try to go in there. We remain hidden in the woods, far enough away from the soldiers that they will not notice us.

“What do we do now?” Mohammad asks with a tiny whine in his voice. He is so tired. We all are.

“We keep going. We have to get across the border into Croatia and hope we can get on a plane from there,” Majka says. “First we have to find somewhere to wait until dark.” We pull back deeper into the forest and set up camp on the hard ground beneath a beech tree. The tree’s leaves are golden in color like all the other trees in this forest. We buried ourselves underneath the fallen leaves as much as we could, and we took turns sleeping. After a few days, we make it to the border with Croatia, but now we are not sure what to do. Military are everywhere. Men with guns. We keep back from the contested zone, but we cannot be sure where it is safe to cross, and we are running out of food. Eventually, we will have to make a decision. 

We hesitate for two more days to work up our nerve to attempt a crossing, but before we do, we see a familiar tank. It had FORPRONU painted on the side. There are a few trucks with them. We could not see their faces, so we do not know if they were our saviors or not. They drive down the road toward the border, but we are still deep in the woods, so the military at the border couldn’t see us. Before anyone made a decision, Mohammad made it for us. He bolts down the hill to the tank, and he runs in front of it. The rest of us scramble after him and try not to scream at him. I can barely keep my screams inside. The tank rumbles to a stop, and Luc gets out. Oh, thank Allah.

Luc helps us cross the border, and then he helps us get out of Croatia. He really does save us. We eventually make it to San Diego.

We walk out of the gate, all of us tired and hungry and still dirty since we did not have the money to stay in an inn. But our family doesn’t care. They meet us as soon as we step off the plane, and they hug us and kiss us and touch us, as if they thought they were never going to see us again, which might’ve happened and did for one of us.

Six months later Tata’s letter has not yet come. I wait for it. I pray for it. I kneel on the floor in my cousin’s house and pray to Mecca five times a day. And then it comes. A letter. My majka rushes into the room with it, and all of us gather around her. She can hardly open it because her fingers are trembling.

“It is dated only one week ago… He’s alive,” Majka says. That is all I hear.