The call came with a sudden urgency. Armina Husic (click here) was told that if she wanted to escape, she had to leave immediately.
Husic, a mother of two children, had just sat down to enjoy a coffee in the living room of her Sarajevo home that morning in 1995. She wasn’t thinking about leaving her life in Bosnia and Herzegovina behind when the call came.
But the Siege of Sarajevo had reached almost four years by then. It would continue into the next year before the capital city was spared from the atrocities of a civil war that targeted the majority Muslim population.
Husic gathered her children, then 9 and 4 years old, a nephew, 8, and brother, 15, and began a life-altering journey that ultimately ended in the South Bay where she still feels painful stabs of emotion over fleeing her homeland.
“We didn’t plan to leave,” Husic said. “You have to make that decision about what is best for your kids and to save lives.”...
