Sometimes I write too. This story was printed in the Kaimin today (link).
Anja Memovic is an on-and-off student at the University of Montana originally from Zenica, Bosnia. She lived the first four years of her life in refugee camps during the Yugoslavian Wars.
War makes people crazy. It gives too much power to imagination.
Anja Memovic was born into a world of war, years before attending the University of Montana. Her childhood was defined by the ethnic clashes of the former Yugoslavia, and she was only two years old when she became one of the conflict’s four million refugees. Her father was in the Bosnian army, and her mother was a Serb. Zlatko and Olivera married before the states became enemies, and it would be the Serbians who would arrest Zlatko for war crimes he didn’t commit.
While Zlatko was locked in a Serbian prison, Olivera took Anja and her brother, Arif — a year older — to a Serbian refugee camp. The camp would be their home for the next three years.
There was the ex-soldier with crazy eyes who wore a bearskin hat to hide his disfigured scalp. He wandered the barracks, selling knives in his long, black coat. There was the old lady who bludgeoned Arif with a 2-by-4 because he was Bosnian and she had become upset when he cheered for his grandmother during a poker game.
The woman who lived alone next door had lost a daughter who would have been the same age as Anja. She had a slender face and spoke sweetly yet was unable to mask the hysteria that comes from losing a child. Anja adored the woman’s long, dark hair, and they became friends. The woman would go on hikes with the children of the barracks, taking them out of the camp to a nearby farm to see old equipment resting in fields of golden corn. Anja would imagine she was a wizard floating between the tall stalks.
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Olivera, however, was wary of the woman, routinely checking on her children when they were in the room next door. But she’d only find the woman asking Anja simple questions and telling stories. Olivera may have stumbled on the woman working her way through a basket of colorful yarn, tying knots this way and that until her fingers produced little figures for the children.
Anja looked forward to the colorful yarn. There weren’t many beautiful things to look at in the camp: their room was painted drab colors, and the clothes people wore were old and used. The war was everywhere and difficult to forget.
For the woman, Anja was a constant reminder of the daughter she lost. One night, as Anja lie in the top bed of a bunk she shared with Arif, she heard a cacophony build outside their door. The woman was shouting in a way Anja had never heard before. The soft, melancholy voice had become vile and scary. She began pounding on the door, yelling for Anja and her mother.
“Olivera!”
Anja’s mother got up to reason with the woman.
“Anja!”
Arif, pretending to be the man of the house, woke and followed his mother to the throbbing door.
“Olivera!”
Anja remained in bed, terrified and confused.
“Anja!”
The woman accused Olivera of stealing Anja.
“Thief!”
She yelled a third name Anja didn’t recognize, a girl’s name. Arif threw a tantrum in Anja’s defense, and Olivera finally coaxed the woman back to her room, back to sleep.
The next day, Olivera forbade Anja and Arif from ever visiting the woman again. The woman was alone in her room with only knotted yarn.
In 1995, Anja, Arif and Olivera fled, this time to North Dakota. Zlatko joined them four years later by. When they were old enough, Anja and Arif moved to Missoula to work and attend the University of Montana.
Before they left the camp in Serbia, the woman approached Anja as she played outside. She offered a Hershey’s chocolate.
“I know you aren’t supposed to talk to me,” she said. “But I’m sorry.”