Episcopal Press and News
Refugees from Bosnian War Build New Life in Southern Ohio
Episcopal News Service. March 27, 1996 [96-1433]
Charlie Rice, Communications Assistant for the Diocese of Southern Ohio
(ENS) The journey that brought the Issa family from Serbia to Christ Church, Dayton, transported them over more than geographic miles.
"I am a new person here," said Adnan Issa, who with his wife and three children was resettled in southern Ohio as a refugee from the Bosnian war. "You have given me a chance to be free."
The Issas are probably the only Muslim family that regularly attends Christ Church, but thanks to their new friends at that church and at St. Paul's in Dayton and Christ Church in Xenia, they are no longer in a refugee camp.
"Look, I came here as a refugee, but now I am like you," said Adnan with wonder in his voice. "You and I have the same rights. The United States is a dream, it is my dream. Truly, a dream country. Yes."
The new Issa family home in the Dayton suburb of Huber Heights is only a few miles from Wright Patterson Air Force Base where the Dayton peace agreement was hammered out, dividing war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina into separate ethnic regions.
"I think the people who came here to Dayton for the peace talks are the people who wanted the war," Issa said. "The hatred that caused the war has existed for thousands of years. It is like an illness, an epidemic. Hate has become genetic in the Balkans. As long as it exists the war will never really stop,"
In his youth, he said, "Muslim, Serb and Croat all lived together in Yugoslavia, and it was a very good country."
But the peace was contrived, he said. The Croats and Muslims had fought with each other for years before World War II.
"Then they were forced into a federation by the communists," he said. "People didn't want it, and the hate still existed. When communism broke up, some nationalists came in and stirred up the old problems. The hatred woke up in the people and nationalists got control of the government."
Issa is a medical doctor who speaks at least four languages. English is not his favorite, but he is now in an intensive language class. The rest of the family are just beginning to learn English, so Issa spoke for the family.
"You can accept it when a stranger does something bad to you, but when your neighbor -- your last good friends -- turn on you, you can't accept it," he said. "When the war began, suddenly my neighbors all hated me without any reason. I didn't do anything wrong. I was not guilty of anything. I didn't hurt anybody. But suddenly, people hated me because I was not like them, because I had another religion."
He spoke wistfully of Banjaluka, their former home. "We had a very nice home, a good house, not so big, but for us it was everything. For us it was paradise," he said. But last August, "three soldiers came to our home. They were very big men and they had guns. They gave us only one day to get out."
Taking only what they could carry, Adnan, his wife, Suada, their son, Elvin, and newborn twin girls, Rima and Rula, left their home for the camp where they were assigned.
"Because of the war, it took three days to travel only 50 kilometers," he said, wincing at the memory. "We were lucky. It took some people three months. The first day we traveled on a bus for 10 minutes and then we had to wait a day."
At the camp, they were housed "like animals," he said. "We could not even look a guard in the eye. He would beat you. It was Nazism. We had three families, 12 people, in one very small room. No toilets. But we were luckier than some. We were in a building. Many people were in tents or outside in the snow."
Their luck held. Adnan was able to use his language skills to get a camp work permit translating documents from Bosnian to Arabic for a Saudi relief agency. He was paid one German mark for each hand-written page he translated.
Then one day the good news came that they had been "adopted" by an Episcopal church in the United States. By February 15, they had arrived in Ohio, facing a surprisingly new life.
"This whole thing has been a miracle," said the Rev. David Bane, pastor of Christ Church, Dayton. "We thought we had two months to get ready. We were going to set up a committee. All of a sudden we got two days notice. We hadn't even met them yet. The Holy Spirit went to work on this place."
Despite the short notice, the parishes have pitched in with vigor, said Bane. "Their house was a gift. They have a car, furniture and food," he said. "We're getting Adnan hooked up so he can get back into the medical profession. It's been absolutely unbelievable -- no organization but God's."
The parish was matched with the Issas through the Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Office, said Barbara Barrett of Christ Church. Once a parish agrees to take a refugee from this organization, she said, passports, visas and green cards are automatically arranged by the State Department. "It's all done under the auspices of the United Nations High Command for Refugees," she said.
In contrast to his brutal expulsion from his home, "here I have only friends," Issa said. "People come to us and give us things with no reason. Expensive things, valuable things. People love us with sincerity. Here I'm meeting only good people."
Would he like to return? "Never" he said. "I don't want to go home because I have no home but here. I have nothing there. It is very difficult to build your life twice. I don't do it the third time. Enough. The only thing I want to do is to forget the past, to forget everything. Enough."
Issa spoke of the future with excitement and determination. "I am a doctor. I am a man who will never give up. I want to be a doctor here, and I'll do it. By my job, and by my hard work I will give my children and my wife a good life. I like this country, I like these people. Yes. Now I can do anything."
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