My mom has been decorating the house for Christmas. We have a plethora of Christmas decorations. It’s almost embarrassing. But just today, my mother replaced the batteries in one of her favourite Christmas commodities- a miniature dancing Santa Claus that shakes its hips and sings “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Now my mother is not a romantic at all- but the way she talks about her friends Ozren and Snezjna, who gifted the little dancing man to her many years ago, always makes her eyes well up just a wee bit and make her voice get all gentle and smooth as she tells little bits and pieces of their story. Tonight, I asked my parents who they really were:
Ozren and Snezjna lived in Sarajevo in the early 90s. They were trapped in the city when it was bombed. Sarajevo was a thriving city before this happened- the 1984 Olympic Games had been held there. It would have been like New York or Chicago getting bombed and becoming a hostile, desolate world. This was a time of ethnic cleansing, mass murder, genocide. The groups hated each other- not unlike groups in Africa today. (If you’ve ever seen the movie Behind Enemy Lines, it is based on American involvement in the conflict). It became a religious war between Christians and Muslims, and my future babysitters were in the very middle of it. Ozren was a Muslim; Snezjna was Catholic, and thus were not permitted to be together. The country was collapsing in on itself and both sides wanted them dead.
Before the conflict, Snezjna had high ranking in the administration of the national telephone company and Ozren was an electrical engineer. But their positions fell through when the conflict arose and uprisings began. Their daughter, Nina, was seven years old when they sent her to Switzerland for sanctuary in a UN convoy of buses. On the way, the convoy was fired upon by Serbian rebels, and many of the children were killed. They didn’t know if Nina was alive or not for years. They knew where she had been taken, but there was no way of contacting her while they were essentially barricaded in the collapsed city of Sarajevo. But they knew that if she was alive, she would be somewhere in Switzerland. Ozren and Snezjna didn’t know where their daughter was for a long, long time and my dad is unsure of the details of how they were reunited, but thankfully they were.
In the city, they no jobs, no money, no electricity, no running water, they couldn’t wash their clothes for a year. In order to get drinking water, they had to walk to collect it in a bucket and bring it back. Sarajevo had been a modern city, but it completely disintegrated into absolute chaos with no services or government. My dad remembers Ozren telling him, “You’d sit there behind the curtain with your gun and cigarette and you’d watch for snipers. There was nothing else we could do.”
They signed up with a relief agency to be brought to the US as political refugees and because of him being Muslim, she being Catholic, and the fact that they were married to each other, they were bumped to the top of the list and brought to the US by military transport in 1994. They landed in Aberdeen, Washington of all places (Aberdeen’s only claim to fame is Kurt Cobain). My mother was their ELS teacher.
My mom befriended them fast, and they spent their first Christmas in America with us. Ozren apologized profusely for smelling of cigarettes, saying nervously in his broken English, “I smoke…I-I-I smoke.” My mom made Nina’s 16th birthday cake and they were present at Sabbath lunches, birthday parties and outings to Lake Silvia. I remember getting dropped off at their apartment and playing in the little front yard with dolls while Snezjna fixed snacks. Their house smelled like tobacco and wonder, and they were always smiling. Probably because they didn’t speak very good English and smiling would have been the easiest way to tell people they were happy.
I feel like I loved them more than I loved most people back then I guess. And I know they loved each other more than I’ve seen a lot of couples love each other. Happiness just flowed out of them. They stand out in my memory like a bright porch light in the middle of the night.
Snezjna’s sister had come over about 3 years after they did. Her husband had been shot in the head and had limited mobility. My grandfather refurbished an exercise bike for him to use to strengthen his legs, which were in bad shape. They had two kids, Ana and Danny. I remember lying in a tent with Ana at Auburn camp meeting when I was probably 8 or 9 (not long after they had relocated to Seattle) with the tent flap open and our heads hanging out pointing at different things- trees, cars, grass- and saying their names out loud. Me speaking English and her in Yugoslavian.
Snezjna got pancreatic cancer and died when I was 17. Missing her stressed Ozren so much that he developed heart problems and passed away a year later. My mother, who is not a romantic, swears he died of a broken heart. We went to see him in the hospital in Seattle when Nina called and told us he was going to die. He was hooked up to machines and didn’t know we were there, but I remember his swarthy, warm skin and his gangly feet sticking out from underneath the blanket.
I think of Ozren and Snezjna now, and of how BIG their love was for each other. I think of them when they were in Sarajevo, huddling together under the threat of gunfire and bombings, not knowing where their only child was, and probably crying out desperately to God for a miracle. I think of how terrifying and stressful going from being educated, holding degrees and status in their native country to suddenly not speaking a word of English would have been. And I think of how happy they were, living in their tiny apartment and how they held onto each other and supported and loved each other through death and tragedy, never losing their joy of being alive and together.
BIG love. Maybe I’m a romantic, but their story gives me hope for the same thing.
