City of Refugees by Susan Hartman

Author:Susan Hartman [Hartman, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807024676
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

A few days later, a neighborhood leader spread the word: Women and children were going to be bussed to a stadium in Split—a large city on the eastern shore of Croatia—for their safety. Hajrudin’s mother immediately gathered her two daughters—the eldest was pregnant—and her youngest son. They each packed a small bag. Her other son—a year younger than Hajrudin—would stay with him.

“My mother was mom and dad, and everything,” Hajrudin said.

Every month, she got a small check from her husband’s pension, and with great care she managed to feed their family. “She’d buy flour first, then oil, then sugar,” Hajrudin said. She put everything in a huge wooden pantry—a spaiz—that she kept locked.

Her children had never glimpsed what was inside.

Before she left, she handed Hajrudin a key.

“Take whatever you need,” she said.

He was stunned. He knew what she was saying: You’re an adult now. Take care of things.

They embraced. “We thought it would be for two weeks,” he said about the separation.

That night, Hajrudin and his brother fell into a deep sleep. But then Hajrudin found himself awake. “I was so curious to see,” he said. And going into the kitchen, he opened the spaiz.

It was a wonderland: There were ten 75-pound bags of flour. Scores of glass jars of plum butter, rose hip jam, roasted peppers and eggplants, and stuffed pickled peppers. There was dried mint and chamomile tea. Long strands of garlic. Sacks of potatoes and onions. And dried beef sausage—sudzuk.

There was enough to live on for six months.

“It’s still haunting me,” Hajrudin said, shaking his head, “how my mom managed.”

Like many struggling Bosnian mothers—including Mersiha’s—she would go to Italy, Turkey, Austria, and Hungary to buy goods cheaply. She would purchase Lacoste T-shirts, Levi’s jeans, and sneakers, which she would then resell in Bosnia. The bus trip to Istanbul took two days; she would spend one day shopping, then return.

Bribes often had to be given at the borders. To fund a trip, his mother would borrow 500 deutsche marks—about $400—from her sister, then pay her back. Levi’s, bought for 60 deutsche marks, could be sold for 100 at home.

She would return, exhausted, carrying two huge bags. “Me and my brother couldn’t carry even one,” Hajrudin recalled. Putting down the bags, she would say, “I need to sleep.”

But after only two hours, she would get up and shower. “We’d make coffee for her,” Hajrudin said. “She’d tell her stories: ‘This driver was so nice, so smart, he negotiated . . .’ ”

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