Interview Paper

I recently wrote a paper about my brother-in-law and thought I would post portions (not all of it for various reasons) of it here...not my best work, definitely didn't do him justice, but here goes:

D. T. was born June 8, 19XX in Sarajevo, Bosnia to two doting parents, M. and M. T. D. had what he considers to be a “normal” childhood and adolescence. His family spent several months of every year vacationing on the beautiful shores of the Adriatic Sea. He spent hours eating delicious Domacica cookies as he hungrily poured through any book he could get his hands on. He enjoyed learning, attending school, and tinkering with computers. He loved to spend time with his beloved grandparents and other, often quirky, extended relatives, and D. loved his country.

D. voice booms with pride as he recounts all of the great things that made Sarajevo such a wonderful place to grow up: tree-lined streets, beautiful architecture, untouched nature trails, and several ski resorts minutes away, just to name a few. “I’ve been many places,” D. says with some intensity, “but I am yet to find a place like this one used to be.”

At the age of 20, however, the peaceful, happy world that he knew changed. Religious and political issues broke his country apart and war erupted. The area where D. and his family were living had a large mix of various religions, “Just on our floor alone we had Muslims, Croats, Serbs, and Jews. The only way to separate them was genocide.”

Like every other adult male, D. spent his share of time on the front lines defending his city. Much of that time was spent sleeping in the trenches and pretending that he and his fellow soldiers could actually defend themselves. D. tells of how under-prepared their meager army was: “For the first few months, I had as little as three bullets in my Kalashnikov (army-distributed weapon). If they (Serbian Army) ever attacked, they would have killed us all in the first three minutes. Luckily,” he says with a smile, “they never tried.” \

D. laughs as he remembers the fun he had with his fellow soldiers. He recounts one rule he implemented: “I warned others in my unit to never approach my trench during my shift as I would be sleeping. He didn’t, after all, want to waste one of his three bullet on them. His comrades were instructed to call him on one of the military phones to wake him up if they wanted to come up before his shift was over.

During the war, Sarajevo was a “sad place full of sad people.” The city was surrounded by Serbian forces for the duration of the war, so food and electricity were scarce. During the most intensive fighting (which lasted for three years) the electricity was only on for a total of 30 hours – “usually in one hour blocks separated by weeks or months of no electricity.” There were “bone-skinny people walking like ghosts collecting twigs and garbage to burn for heat and cooking or picking dandelions for food.” Getting water meant spending hours in lines with occasional sniper bullets whizzing past. On an average day 20 to 40 people would be killed “which meant 20 to 40 quick, flowerless burials on the soccer fields or in the city parks.”

Through all of the turmoil, D. persevered and found the good in all situations he was placed in. He laughs as he talks about his neighbor who was sitting on his toilet when an anti-aircraft cannon shell punctured three walls, went through his toilet, and went through two more walls before exiting the building. The neighbor came out of it with only a scratch.

When he wasn’t serving in the army, D. was working at a local publishing business. “Even the publishing business was sad,” he recounts. “One of the jobs we had to do every day was to scan bloody drivers’ licenses and other documents for the people that got killed that day so they could be printed in the obituaries.” Not lingering on the bad, D. quickly moves on to tell about one of the positives of working in the publishing business, “We had a satellite TV and generator in the store, so I tried to catch some English by watching David Letterman every night.”

His two younger brothers, N. and B., had fled to Serbia in 1991 and were living there as refugees. His parents fled two years later. In 1995, as the war was finally starting to abate, D. and his family had an opportunity to leave the area and settle in a new country. To leave would mean safety and some sort of normalcy once again. It would mean having hope that his children might grow up in a place where war and killing weren’t prevalent. But to leave would also mean leaving their homeland, their extended family, and their friends. They would be giving up their property, money, and the ability to understand the language and customs around them. D. explains why the decision wasn’t as hard as it might have been for others: “I asked myself ‘what is the worst that can happen?’ I knew that I would probably never see my grandparents again, and that would be the worst thing, but even if I were to survive the war, I knew there would be decades of sadness and rebuilding and that my children would probably have to live through the hell of war yet again.”

And so, it was with the thoughts of his future children and the safety of his aging parents that D. and his family moved to Windsor, Ontario, Canada in 1996. Settling into life in a new country was not always easy for D. and his family, but his positive outlook and sense of humor helped.

D. is now a successful businessman and living what he considers to be the good life. He lives with his wife, R., whom he met shortly after immigrating to Canada. His parents and brothers live nearby. He no longer worries about living conditions, crime, or the constant fear of war, and he hopes that his dream of raising children in a safe, happy environment will soon be realized. Looking back on his life so far, he says he has no regrets. “It would have been nice not to have to live through the war, but I don’t think I would change anything. I am very comfortable in my own skin. I feel I am right where I am supposed to be. If I am lucky, I will have my three kids – that is the only goal I have not yet achieved, and then my life really will be complete in every way.”