THE VIRTUE OF A HUG IN WAR, PEACE AND PANDEMIC

*This piece was published by The Globe and Mail on March 14, 2022. Click here to read on their website.

I had not hugged a friend or a family member, save for my husband, for over two years until recently, when my sister-in-law flew in for a brief visit. For everyone’s safety we met outside, but despite the wintry weather, her hug warmed me from the inside out. It’s strange, but only now do I truly realize how much I’ve missed embracing loved ones—the lingering warmth that remains long after our arms have untwined. Unexpectedly, this pandemic milestone has also reminded me of some of my life’s most significant and vulnerable moments—indelibly shaped by a simple hug.

I spent most of my teenage years living under siege in my hometown of Sarajevo, Bosnia. Every single day of those three-and-a-half years was steeped in danger, uncertainty and privation of food, water, electricity and above all, peace. At 13, I was wounded. On that rare peaceful morning, I had begged my mom to let me go outside after spending weeks wilting indoors. She finally relented. I was outside for only 10 minutes, when an artillery shell struck a few feet away, raining tiny, searing shrapnel on both of my legs. Shot with adrenaline, I sprinted toward the front entrance of our building where I literally crashed into a neighbour. I draped my arms around her neck just as my legs collapsed underneath me. She hugged me with both arms and dragged me to the hallway in front of her apartment door. The following moments are a flurried mess of panicked faces and cries as I lay on the ground, while neighbours wrapped my legs with towels and tried to keep me conscious. A stranger showed up with his van ready to transport me to the hospital just as Dad appeared and scooped me off the bloodied tiles. I will never forget the desperate grip of his hug as he sat in the back of the speeding van, holding me in his lap, gathering me up as if I could spill out at any moment. I burrowed my face into his neck, averting my eyes from the rapidly blooming scarlet on his shirt. “Don’t let me lose my legs, Dad” I cried.

Thankfully, I made a full physical recovery, but the onslaught of danger and terror that was our daily life gave no reprieve for my mental and emotional wounds to even begin to scab. Two and a half years later, on August 28th, 1995, several explosions struck Sarajevo’s outdoor marketplace which was mere metres from our apartment. I was alone at home and Dad had just popped out to the nearby bakery. By the time he showed up at our doorstep, carrying a loaf of bread, he had missed the blasts by a whisper. I was caked in tears, covering my ears in an attempt to block out the blood-chilling chorus of civilians strewn across the pavement among torn flesh and bruised fruit. Dad nearly toppled over from the force of my hug. I clasped my hands so tightly around his back, my knuckles ached from my grip.

As fate would have it, that same night my parents managed to smuggle me out of Sarajevo through an underground tunnel that connected the besieged capital with the rest of the world. They desperately wanted to secure some small shred of normalcy for what was left of my childhood. I was 16 and I came to America on my own. A generous host family took me in and I began learning English and going to school. They had a large dog, Oscar, a sweet, good-natured mutt with floppy ears and brown spots on his paws. Over the next several months, I secretly struggled with feeling homesick, exacerbated by the constant fretting over my family’s safety. Calls to Bosnia were expensive so I could only speak to them once a week for 15 minutes. Despite this, I was managing quite well at school, with the help of my teachers and host parents, but I still had no ability to share my feelings with anyone. A couple of times a week, while my host parents ran errands, I would sit on the floor and drape my arms around Oscar. He would remain quite still, fidgeting only a little, just to nuzzle his head on my shoulder. He was big and sturdy so I could hug him tightly and let myself cry until I felt lighter.

Several years later, I moved to Canada for my first job after university. The first person I met was a 19 year old named Joe who quickly became a close friend. Joe gave everyone hugs, even upon first meeting. In fact, he loved picking a spot on a street or in a park while holding a sign that read “free hugs.” He died in a car accident two years after we met and I still feel his loss. One summer afternoon, as a way of honouring him, a dozen of his friends gathered in a park and we spent several hours giving “free hugs” to passersby. With some people, I instantly felt comfortable — our bodies fit in a perfectly moulded hug. This surprising alchemy between strangers made me think back on Sarajevo’s siege and the numerous occasions where I’d find myself on the street when thunderous explosions suddenly struck the neighbourhood. I’d quickly duck into the first shelter I could see — usually a lobby of some building — and there I would find a stranger also seeking cover. Our eyes would meet for just a second, before darting like arrows trying to find the safest corner. Without a word, we would hug and brace for impact. We would grip each other as if trying to pin ourselves to the ground as the earth beneath us quivered.

It is yet another sad aspect of our pandemic lives that hugging a stranger is the last thing on our minds. For many of us, even hugging a relative or a friend comes with stress and anxiety over risks and precautions. Perhaps we have undervalued the impact of a simple hug. As I look back on my four decades, I count myself truly lucky to have been held, shielded and buoyed at some of the most pivotal moments of my life by the almost otherworldly power of a hug. I pray that in the not-so-distant future we can safely hold one another again — a friend, relative, or even a stranger.

I’LL BE YOUR KEEPER, YOU BE MINE: A YEAR OF LOSS, GROWTH AND HOMEMADE BREAD

*A shorter version of this essay was published by The Toronto Star on December 30, 2020. Click here to read on their website.

As the final days of 2020 trudge on by, I am awoken night after night to watch my bedroom ceiling put on a slideshow of wartime memories. This year has roused and roiled so much of what I had stored in some dusty basement archives of my mind, revealing disquieting parallels of a life in a pandemic and the one I lived as a child under siege in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Tonight, I relive the New Year’s Eve of ‘92, ‘93 or ‘94— which year exactly it doesn’t matter because we rung in each one with a tearful mixture of guarded hope and dread for the future. I imagine this year’s final hours, spent alone with my husband like all the other holidays this year for which we couldn’t safely be with loved ones, will feel very similar. 

At the start of the war, my parents befriended a senior couple who lived a few floors below us and we spent every New Year’s together. The menu for the evening consisted primarily of the variations upon a single theme: rice. In the midst of food deprivation, creativity was a crucial ingredient, so Mom and the older woman loaded the table with generous helpings of fried rice, rice pie, rice pudding and rice wine. However, my first taste of the new year was a giddy shock and pleasure of a small chocolate bar procured with who-knows-what sort of magic by our kind neighbors. Here, the parallels of the current pandemic and the siege abruptly halt as I catch myself making mental notes of all the wonderful goodies we will likely have this holiday: homemade bread, hummus, various spreads—all of which would have been but a gut-torturing dream in wartime.

Lying in bed, I watch the final slides of that evening in Bosnia with my parents and neighbors and see their misty eyes and the odd furtive tear they let spill as they take turns hugging me at midnight, their embrace firm and lingering as if an attempt to shelter me from what’s to come.

War memories are never too far, though thankfully some went dormant with time, but this pandemic with its lockdowns and the daily human toll of death and suffering has stirred them wide awake especially at night. During the day, like many of us, I try to find ways to constructively, and not so constructively, pass the time. Case in point, my husband and I learned how to make homemade bread. Every time the dough rises we cheer like giddy children. We top it with rosemary and coarse salt so that the whole apartment turns warm and fragrant, almost maternal. It’s a blessing having a warm home and bread baking in the oven, but it makes me miss my mom so much I could weep like a lost child. It’s been almost eight years since she passed but it takes but a smell, a bite of food, a random word in conversation to conjure up a memory so sweet and so painful all at once. 

Before the war, Mom regularly made delicious breads and pies, but in wartime, I watched her desperation as her tiny hands kneaded the dough that would never rise because the yeast we received in the humanitarian aid had long expired. I want to believe she would be proud of me now, exchanging recipes with her sister, my keka, the closest I could ever have to my mom. I want to believe that she sees that this year of tremendous loss which saw my aunt Alma succumb to COVID and many other friends and family suffer its various symptoms, has also been a year of growth and deep connection: I reached out to numerous friends and family. I started an honest conversation about my mental health including anxiety and hypervigilance with my brother. I fulfilled a longtime dream of donating all of my hair, four fourteen-inch pony tails to be exact, which will be used to make a hairpiece for a sick child. I advocated for myself for the first time in two decades and got the support of an anxiety clinic through weekly online group therapy sessions and discovered that I’m not alone in my struggles or my efforts to live life better. 

This year has dealt numerous blows and losses to each one of us, but I sincerely hope that just as the war made peace that much more precious or a bar of chocolate that much more delicious, this ruthless, challenging year will offer invaluable nuggets of gratitude and wisdom where there was only a blissful ignorance that the life we knew could disappear almost overnight.

During the siege, almost every day the sky was macheted by sniper bullets and artillery raining down death and destruction onto the innocent occupants of the capital, and yet we somehow managed to go to work or school, to live life however treacherous. On more than one occasion, I was caught in the sudden squall of explosions on my way home and had to duck into a nearby building only to find another scared, shivering stranger. Our eyes would meet in a brief, sacred communion of shared plight and without saying much, we’d brace for impact. Shielding one another with our backs, shoulders, our entwined arms, and above all, a silent promise: I’ll be your keeper, you be mine.  

I see that promise now in the eyes of a masked pharmacist or an exhausted grocery store clerk who strains to understand my request as I try to enunciate through my mask and who helps me find the item. I see it every time I run into our building’s superintendent carefully disinfecting all the high traffic areas or the delivery people who knock to let me know my package has arrived. 

When I was in my early twenties, one summer afternoon my friends and I gathered in a park with colorful signs that read FREE HUGS. It was a trend at the time, but we were doing it to honor a friend who had recently died and who gave the best hugs. We spent hours approaching strangers and only a very few said no thanks and walked on past. I keep thinking of that day lately, perhaps because for months now, and most likely for months to come, a handshake or a hug from a friend or a stranger will continue to be a thing of the past. I miss that simple touch. I miss the weight of a friend’s hand on my shoulder as we run into each other and briefly catch up. 

As I try to get back to sleep in the early morning hours, this is the dream I dream for all of us: a day when we can celebrate our common humanity, our oneness and hopefully, our promise kept to one another: I’ll be your keeper, you be mine.  


* This piece was published by the Toronto Star on Dec. 30, 2020. Click here.

25 YEARS AGO I SURVIVED THE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO: NOW THE WHOLE WORLD IS UNDER SIEGE

A WAR SURVIVOR’S INSIGHT ON COVID-19

Something dormant has stirred inside me.  Something, which I have worked hard to exile to some dusty corners of my brain, in a seemingly permanent quarantine. Ever since as a child, I survived a four-year-siege, I’ve tried to blunt my relentless hunger for safety and certainty and for items, which up until now most of us took for granted, like food and toiletries.

I was twelve years old when Sarajevo fell under siege. For nearly four years, my family and I, alongside some 500,000 unarmed civilians, lived a daily sentence of explosions and bullets, fear and death, deprivation and uncertainty. Once a modern European capital, Sarajevo was reduced to a city strangled by a noose of tanks and weapons, its citizens surviving with little food and medicine, and on most days, no running water or electricity. In the cruelest and bloodiest of ways, the war taught us about the fragility of human life, the necessity of empathy and the enduring strength of the human spirit. 

After witnessing more suffering than any human should and getting wounded by a bombshell with seven pieces of shrapnel permanently lodged inside my legs, I was fortunate to escape to America and resume my childhood in peace and plenty. However, in the two decades since, living in America and later Canada, where I now reside as a proud Canadian citizen, I’ve come to a heartbreaking realization that although I physically escaped the war, my brain could never escape it fully. I call it “the siege within”. 

For years, this manifested in small, quirky habits like stashing three or four extra tubes of toothpaste in the bathroom cabinet and having two or more six-packs of one-liter water bottles always on hand. I was still stuck in the mindset of deprivation all the while living in a country where grocery stores were under no threat of becoming empty. I don’t know why my brain fixated on water and toothpaste, but talking to other survivors I’ve learned that they had similar habits, including my brother who for years after the siege, while living in Chicago as a bachelor in his 20’s, stocked his fridge with enough cheese to feed several families. I understood this need completely—it wasn’t really about the hunger for food but for the sense of security, however false or fleeting.  

Over the years, I’ve consciously endeavoured to dull my need for stashing, gradually accepting the fact that there was no need to buy an extra tube of toothpaste and that I could simply fill a stainless steel bottle with tap water which was always plentiful. Still, it was extremely difficult to give into this sense of security that living in Canada afforded me. My brain was stubborn to relinquish its well-trained instinct to keep me safe and secure. To this day, and especially in the past few weeks, it has been a relentless battle within, warfare inside my brain, silent and invisible to everyone but me.   

Last week, I took a break from self-isolating in order to get some groceries. As I scanned the empty shelves, I felt a surge of panic. I understood the people’s instinct to stock up, their desire for food and toiletries masking their real desire for normalcy, but as I pushed my cart along the ravaged shelves, my brain spiraled with uncertainty: Am I back there again, feeling the dread I felt during the siege? Will the whole world feel this way soon? How will everyone cope? Will people turn selfish and greedy? Will some aim to profit from this calamity? Should I stock up on food and toiletries?  

I came home with a week’s worth of groceries, plus several cans of soup and beans. For the first time in more than a decade, I bought four extra tubes of toothpaste. I fought back tears as I stashed them in the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink. Also, there are now four reusable bottles and two large pots brimming with tap water next to my kitchen sink. I am ashamed to admit, but they’ll probably be a permanent fixture until the whole world returns to some sense of normalcy. I see it as a setback, a certain personal defeat, to have slid back into the habit I have worked so hard to quit. 

I am also incredibly sad in some moments, thinking that the whole world, and almost every person in it, now shares in some amount of the dread and anxiety I have felt for twenty-five years. Over the past decades there were numerous instances when I felt extremely alone fighting my “siege within” and I longed for the sense of solidarity, the kind that Sarajevans created while living under siege. Now that the whole world is under siege, I derive little comfort and no pleasure from knowing I have a lot of company. Instead, I have deep empathy and a growing plea that somehow, every person struggling through this pandemic, will find both grace and grit. 

In the coming weeks and months, I believe we will learn a lot more about personal and social responsibility. We will be disgusted at the acts of opportunism and shameless profiteering, but we will also witness countless gestures of selflessness and decency. Just as two decades ago, despite the loss and tragedy, the siege rendered much grace, kindness and solidarity, I believe this pandemic will strip us bare of any notions that we don’t need each other or that we’re not all inextricably linked. We will learn that solidarity is the bread that keeps our souls fed in a way that no amount of soup cans or frozen dinners ever could.

I believe that despite (or perhaps because of) the absolute necessity of self-isolating and social distancing, we will grow in gratitude for those spontaneous get togethers with friends and family at a local pub or eatery, the pleasant chitchats with our neighbor or a postwoman, and the simple pleasure of strolling down the street and window shopping.

Each morning, I slide open the glass door of my balcony to do some stretches and deep breathing. Like everyone else, I wish I could go out, but I feel a sense of peace for doing my part by staying in and going out only when necessary. My lungs feel relieved by the brisk air of a reluctant spring as I recall a war memory: I was thirteen and my brother Sonny was nineteen. We hadn’t been outside for weeks due to the incessant bombing. It was late in the evening. Mom and Dad were already asleep. We had no electricity so we stood by the open window in complete darkness watching in the distance as various artillery lit up the sky orange and yellow with specks of green. It was dangerous, so it was good that our parents were asleep, but our lungs ached to expel the stale weight of the many days spent within. We inhaled the sharp, winter air slowly…one, two, three, then exhaled together like a single entity. I now look outside my balcony to see rows of treetops just aching to bloom and many homes and buildings aglow with the warmth of electricity. I am so grateful to live in peace.

The other day, I was on the phone with a friend, exchanging stories of our lives altered by this pandemic when she said sadly: “We’re now living day by day.” Her words stuck with me. I knew what she meant; COVID-19 has robbed us of normalcy, of plans for trips and even simple daily chores and activities. Still I keep thinking of something that has been so acutely apparent to me ever since the siege: We have always lived day by day, always and long before this pandemic. In fact, each of us lives day by day, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat. 

Now we are just more aware of it. 

Cheese, Toothpaste & Fireworks

Years ago, I went for an evening walk forgetting it was a holiday weekend. Several minutes later, the neighborhood kids began lighting firecrackers at a nearby park--an ominous prelude to an evening of fireworks.  Suddenly, my mind and body were at complete odds with each another. I knew I wasn't in any danger, but my body overrode any logic and began to fall prey to the memories of my past. Loud bursts of color against the charcoal sky quickly became crackles of snipers and  explosions raining death and destruction. I started heading home, my summer stroll spiraling into an evening of tears and flinching at every cracking sound. The fireworks got so loud and intense that I couldn't walk any further and instead found myself crouching in someone's driveway with my back pressed against the garage. The cool, dusty metal of some stranger's garage door felt comforting against my clammy back. Moreover, it felt as though it was a shield offering a certain protection against the invisible perils only I could sense outside.  I had to call for a ride home that night.

I was reminded of that night this month when fireworks  in honor of Canada Day and Independence Day lit up the North American sky.  As a result, this stirred certain remnants of war I carry inside. To a survivor like me, fireworks don't evoke memories of summer BBQs and lazy evenings slumped in lawn chairs. Instead, they stir feelings of  dread and fear. To this day, my nerves twitch and pulsate at any loud, unexpected sound. They've been drilled, pulled and tattered by an unrelenting sergeant called fear.  It may sound paltry to someone unaffected by war trauma, but I've made progress since that night.  A couple of weeks ago on Canada Day, I still knew better than to take an evening stroll, but I was at least able to sit next to a tightly shut window and watch the fireworks in the distance. I've come to appreciate the party-colored choreography in the sky, but if it were up to me, I'd want the visual experience without any loud sounds or better yet, with Debussy's Claire de Lune playing in the background.

It is interesting for me to examine the various quirks and speckles of my personality which are a direct result of my experiences in Bosnia. I don't think about them often because to me they are simply the way things are. One funny 'quirk' that I've since phased out, was that upon my immediate arrival to America I had a ravenous  craving for cheese and all dairy products. The smooth, indulgent quality of various cheeses, flavored yogurt and ice-cream was a delicious antithesis to the deprivation and food monotony I had experienced in wartime. My host family swears that one particular evening I went to bed with a sizable chunk of cheese melting in my palm. I don't recall this, but I trust it is true. I figure I was  simply too delirious from creamy aged-cheddar to remember.  

During the first couple of months of my arrival to America, I had trouble stepping on grass or any unpaved surface. During the war, it was drilled into everyone not to step on grass. Many parks and nature areas became overgrown, almost jungle-like from the lack of tending which made them all the more likely hiding place for an unexploded mortar shell. In a tranquil Ohio suburbia, I was suddenly surrounded by expansive gardens and lush parks. My once imprisoned body ached to run atop soft, manicured lawns, but it took some time before my mind convinced my feet to once again trust grass. 

There are many other war remnants I could write about. My personal war menagerie still has a few pieces which are too personal, but  I hope to share them in due time. One I can share about right now is my slight obsession with having an extra tube of toothpaste stashed in the bathroom cupboard. At first glance, this may not sound like anything peculiar, but this need for a toothpaste-backup comes from the painful times when my family would squeeze out the last sticky gob of toothpaste knowing we didn't have another. Most of the stores in our once-thriving-neighborhood were destroyed or had only dusty, bare shelves on offer. A tube of toothpaste (alongside other everyday, once-taken-for-granted items) was extremely expensive on the black market. In order to be most frugal, we'd cut open the toothpaste scissoring along the seam on the bottom and the side until the tube opened up like some weird oyster revealing minty gunk inside. For days, we'd scrape our toothbrushes on the dried-up innards until all that remained was a faint smell of mint and the silver lining which began to flake and stick  to my toothbrush. To this day, I won't throw away a tube of toothpaste until it's been thoroughly used up. 

In closing, I'll confess that it feels good to be upfront and honest about the scars fate has chiseled on my life. At times I've felt embarrassed by them although I know full well they are a product of my wartime trauma. Perhaps all of us, regardless of our experiences, tend to keep our scars hidden away. Still, I believe there is something redemptive and healing in the act of revealing one's scars. Plus, and this goes back to my last post In Defiance of Cynicism, it is simply in my nature to trust that my fellow human beings will find compassion and understanding upon reading my musings and reflections.

Above all, the main reason for my posts is starting to crystallize: It is my hope that with every post I write I will help humanize today's war child. It is my hope that those readers who are fortunate enough to be safe, fed and free of war trauma, will gain a deeper understanding of the struggles that millions of children grapple with right now and the unique war legacies they'll have to learn to live with for decades to come. 

In Defiance of Cynicism

A couple of weeks ago, I had a skype conversation with the director and cast of Sarajevo's Child, a play based on my book  which was about to premiere at the PortFringe Theater Festival in Portland, Maine. Just before the call, I got the same feeling I always get before sharing my story. It is a feeling of excitement at the opportunity to impart something valuable by sharing my war experiences and lessons I've gleaned over the years. I was glad to discover that the small cast of actors seemed excited to ask questions and hear my stories in greater detail. A day later, the director wrote to thank me for taking the time to speak with the cast saying that I left them "excited, inspired and with a little dose of reality" and that meeting me "moved them in a way that they will remember forever." He also noted that what he found most striking about me was my "lack of cynicism" despite the ordeal I had suffered. 

I thought about his comment and decided that the question "Why aren't I cynical? " warranted some reflection. As a lover of words and their etymologies I looked up "cynical" in the dictionary. The word "cynic" has a very interesting history and I invite you to look it up, but for the purpose of this post it's sufficient to say it comes from a Greek word kynikos which literally means  "currish" or "dog-like."  By definition, to be cynical is to be distrustful of the sincerity in other people's motives and to have a general "low opinion of humanity." 

Looking back, it is absolutely true that bearing witness to such blatant crimes of humanity could have resulted in a cynical or pessimistic view of humanity. In fact, I would be insincere if I didn't confess that during the war I sometimes plunged into excruciating periods of emotional quicksand where even at a ripe old age of 14, I believed that any fight or resistance was laughably futile. At times I felt that I, alongside every other citizen in Sarajevo, was a prisoner sentenced to imminent extermination and that it was only a matter of time when my number would be called up. 

I wrote in my Diary because I found relief and a sense of escape in recording my feelings. Still, there were times when even writing seemed pointless because I felt less like a diarist and more like a pathetic bookkeeper updating the daily ledger of death tolls and senseless tragedies. The truth is I was no stranger to pessimism and hopelessness, but I always found my way out. I credit this to the fact that I was surrounded by family, neighbors and citizens who struggled in the same way, but who showed incredible strength, resourcefulness and resilience in the face of adversity. In other words, I had plenty of role models after whom I fashioned my adolescent self. It was despite or perhaps because of the overwhelming darkness around us that we all looked within and dug deep in search of grit and grace. Ultimately, what we found was that the human spirit was our most powerful weapon. 

Today, as I read about the enormous human suffering of more than 60 million refugees around the world, I again find myself wrestling with immobilizing sadness and discouragement. Faced with such overwhelming statistics I question my own contributions for a more peaceful and just world. Doubt creeps in and I ask myself: "Am I doing my part?" "Is my contribution too paltry?" But just as I did some two decades ago, I somehow manage to find my way out of despair. I've learned early on that regardless of the complexity of the problems we face, nothing positive or productive can come from stewing in cynicism or hopelessness.

I remember when I first came to America I wasn't sure what kind of response I'd elicit from the people I'd meet there. Would they have compassion? Would they be friendly? One of my silent fears was that the students at my new high school would have trouble relating to me, connecting with me. I already felt isolated due to the fact that I was a child refugee still shell shocked by my recent experience. I also didn't speak English very well and I didn't have cool clothes and gadgets like my fellow students. On top of everything, there was this intangible yet somehow palpable sense of emotional heaviness that walked alongside me through the school hallways. Sometimes, I could feel the glances and hear the whispers by the lockers. What I didn't realize, and what ended up being one of the most encouraging lessons in humanity and compassion was that those glances weren't rooted in malevolence, but in genuine concern for my well-being and above all, genuine interest in my story. And those whispers weren't words of derision or disapproval but rather a slew of well-meaning, insightful questions. Buoyed by this realization, I began to share stories and offer answers to their questions in spite of my broken English and my obvious emotional rawness. Within a month, all of the students of Anderson High joined me in organizing a winter-clothing drive for families in Bosnia who were facing a long, harsh winter. 

Since my skype call with the cast and the director of Sarajevo's Child the young actors had 3 successful performances. The director sent me several touching pictures taken during the performance. I've read comments by audience members who attest to the powerful performance that "elicited fear, joy and above all..hope" and who urge that "this production should be seen by middle and high school students everywhere." It is indescribably moving and encouraging for me as an author and war survivor to know that these actors who have the good fortune of being strangers to war and conflict possess an earnest desire to portray not only my story, but in many ways the stories of millions of war children today.

This is another reason why I'm not cynical. Because for all the darkness and ugliness I've witnessed in my life, I've seen far more kindness and beauty. During the war, I saw power and resilience in my mother who risked her life every day to keep her job; I saw selflessness and courage in my father who stood in endless lines for bread and water as mortar shells rattled our neighborhood; I saw love and sacrifice in my brother's worn out hands as he returned from scrubbing the kitchen at the UN base where he worked in order to bring us food. 

In the two decades I've been living in North America, I've been fortunate to draw encouragement from readers and audiences who learn about my story and who feel compassion and often urgency to act for the betterment of their society. It is a beautiful synergy that takes place when my unique, but in many ways universal experience of human survival causes people to connect and see each other more for our striking similarities than for our differences. In these days of terrifying headlines and staggering statistics it is these connections that banish cynicism and offer hope and purpose.