"What is safe? Where do I belong?"

This month's guest post is by Belma Islamovic, who shares about losing her arms in the Bosnian War.

Belma Islamovic graciously and bravely agreed to share her story with me via Zoom, and what you are about to read is the condensed version of our conversation. I am offering you a content warning here, because there is mention of war and violence and Belma losing her arms. Please take care and if these topics upset you, feel free not to read.

As always, I know each of you will enfold Belma in your hearts and envelop her with your heartfelt appreciation, affirmations, and encouragement.

One of the organizations Belma is involved in is called World Without Hate. You can check out more information here.

Belma and I both know Eddie Burns , who made this stunning 30-minute documentary you can watch here.

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When I was eighteen years old, my life began to change. I grew up in Bosnia, which at the time was relatively peaceful. My neighbors, who were from all different kinds of faith backgrounds—Orthodox, Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim—were close friends with me and my family. But my parents didn’t teach me about politics. They wanted me to live my life without fear and worry.

One day in 1991, I was visiting one of my neighbors, and she asked me, “Do you know who the best candidate is? Radovan Karadžić, right?” I looked at her and had no idea what she was talking about, so I said, “Who is that?” She said, “He is running for president.”

I said, “I don't know. I can’t say.” She was in favor of Karadžić and tried to persuade me to agree with her. When I returned home, I asked my father to explain who this person was. He only told me, “Don’t talk about that with anyone. You don’t need to know about that, because you’re still young.”

After that conversation with our neighbor, I noticed changes happening everywhere. One day, on the way to school, I saw Serbians walking around the city, carrying guns in their hands. This is when I began to feel scared, because I still didn’t know what was happening in my country.

In early April on a Friday, I didn’t go to school and instead stayed home to help my mom clean the house and prepare food for a holy day in Islam called Eid al-Fitr, which concludes the celebration of Ramadan. My father was also home that day. I remember him standing in the hall, while I watched from the living room. My mom was in the dining room. Suddenly, we heard an explosion not far from us, maybe across the river. We all looked at each other, and my dad said, “Give me the keys. I need to find your sisters [Selma and Hira, who were on an outing].” We were in complete shock.

Awhile later, I noticed our neighbors packing bags. My father asked one of them, “Where are you going? What’s going on?” And they told him, “We’re leaving to go somewhere safe.”

In that moment, I thought, What is safe? Where do we belong? It felt like a betrayal for our neighbors to leave my family alone, when we didn’t have anywhere to go and we didn’t really know what was going on, because it all happened so fast. It was clear that we no longer knew who to trust. I began to wonder who was a true friend and who was an enemy, when my entire life until that point, our family had built relationships with people from all backgrounds and religious beliefs.

But all of a sudden, people everywhere were saying, “We can't trust certain types of people,” and I was clumped into that category as a Muslim. They forgot who I was as a person, and that hurt me deeply.

One of our friends did help us. A man my father saved when they were both on the front lines in the military came to our house and warned us, “Don’t go outside, because the Serbian army is rounding up Bosniaks and taking them to concentration camps. It’s not safe for you to go outside at all, and try to find someone to take out the trash for you. I will do as much as I can to help, but if they find out I’m helping you, they will kill us both.”

Here was someone telling us the truth.

My father thanked him. This man was from a Catholic family and was trying to help us stay safe. That’s something you never forget.

We stayed inside our house for twenty-one days. A few people secretly brought us food and took out our trash. And then, after twenty-one days, the Serbian Army came. One soldier said to us, “You have to leave this apartment before tomorrow at noon. If you don’t, we will all throw you from this balcony.” We lived on the eighth floor of an apartment complex.

When they left, my father told us, “Let's grab something what we can hold in our hands.” We were planning to flee.

When we arrived at a site outside of town, my father found out that all Muslims would be placed on a bus to go somewhere we didn’t know. We waited for the bus, but when the Serbian soldiers saw my father, they told him he couldn’t go with us. My mom pleaded to let him come with us. One of the soldiers said, “You have two children going with you. Don’t talk anymore.”

On September 28^th, 1993, all of my dreams were shattered. I wanted to finish school and attend college for fashion design. I wanted to settle down and have a family.

I didn’t realize that in an instant, all of those possibilities might be taken away from me like they did that day.

My friend and I were supposed to get water from her house, but she told me, “Belma, I have a bad feeling. I don’t think I should go with you.” I told her I was feeling the same thing, like something bad might happen, so I agreed that I would go without her.

When I returned home, all I wanted to do was sleep. One of our neighbors was visiting and tried to convince me to stay up, but I told her, “I don’t feel like doing anything, because I’m so tired.” It was maybe 8:15 at night. She looked at me strangely and said, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve never been like this before.” I said I didn’t know but I needed to go to my room and lie down.

My sister Selma was in the house, too, and asked me what was going on. I told her, “I cannot handle any more or keep my eyes open.” She said, “Okay,” and maybe ten minutes later I saw her changing into her pajamas. I asked her why she would get pajamas on when we were in the middle of a war!

Selma said, “Remember, our dad is home. We are safe now. We can sleep.”

That’s when I fell asleep. I didn’t know what was happening when I heard a mortar shell falling, not close to our house, but not too far, and I wanted to stand up and tell my family to run to the basement.

But when I went to stand up, the second shell fell, almost too close to our bedroom window. And then I wanted to run to my family and warn them again, but something whispered in my ear and said, “Go, lie down! The shell is coming soon.”

As I laid back down, I heard another explosion. There was this fog in my room, probably from the smoke of the bomb, and I heard Selma screaming, “Help us! Help us!” At the time, my mom and dad and younger sister were asleep in the other room.

They began yelling, “Come and help! Help us and take us downstairs.” One neighbor picked me up and another one put Selma and me in his car, driving us to the hospital.

I remember saying, “I'm going to die,” and our neighbors told me, “No, just talk with us talk with us. Keep that thought out of your mind, and don't say those words.” And then they brought me to the hospital and put me on the table.

A doctor appeared and asked what was going on and what blood type I was. I told him, “O Negative,” and the doctor looked at me, then at my neighbors who brought me to the hospital and said, “In a couple of hours, she will not be alive. Just cover her up. She’s going to die, anyway, and we can’t help her.” He turned to walk away.

My sister and I called after the doctor to come back and I said, “If you can’t save me, at least save my sister. I don’t want my parents to lose two children in the same day.”

The doctor said, “Don’t worry, we will do whatever we can.”

I learned that my best friend and stepbrother told the medical staff they would find the exact match for my blood type and to please try to save my life if they could. The doctor went upstairs to the hospital laboratory and found a match for my blood type, so he asked that I be transferred to the emergency room while he performed the transfusion.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed, surrounded by so many people asking what was going on. There was so much confusion, and it all happened so fast that no one could really grasp it all as it unfolded.

That night, I saw one of my neighbors who was working third shift make her rounds, and she stopped by my room. She told me, “Belma, dear, don’t get up, just lie back down. I’m going to call your parents.”

I said, “Okay, call them.”

And soon as she left the room, it seemed like a few minutes later I saw my parents walking toward me, crying.

I still had no idea what had happened to me.

They said through sobs, “We have to tell you something, but we don't know how.”

Finally, I said, “Please tell me.” And then immediately I thought of my sister Selma, and I asked, “Did happen anything to her?”

They said, “No, she's fine, she's upstairs, but something happened to you.”

My mom finally told me, “Belma, dear, you lost you both arms.”

As soon as she told me that, I screamed. I said, “I want to die! Kill me! Don't save me!” I didn’t want to be in this world anymore.

Mom said, “Don't say that. You have us. We're going to be there for you.”

But I said, “Mom, what kind of life is this going to be if I don’t have arms?”

The next thing I learned was that if I didn’t get another blood transfusion right away, I would die.

My father decided to search the city to find someone with my blood type who was willing to donate it in order to save my life. I still thought I might die, but my parents kept telling me everything would be fine.

They found a woman who donated blood for me, but the doctor told us my body didn’t accept the transfusion, so they gave me an injection of some type. I was told that if my body accepted this injection, I would be fine, but if not, I would die. I didn't remember anything after that, because they gave me a shot so painful I felt like I was in combat.

When I regained consciousness, I heard someone screaming, “Her body is accepting the blood. She’s going to be fine!”

Next, I was transferred to a different hospital. So many things changed rapidly. The medical staff told my family that we had to leave Bosnia immediately, but my father said he couldn’t leave because he was in the military. He decided that the rest of my family would need to find a safe place to go, but he would stay behind. He told us, “I will come for you one day.”

It was really hard that day. When I saw my father leaving, I didn’t know if I would see him again.

Eventually, my sisters, my mom, and I ended up in Abilene, Texas.

I didn't want to live, because inside me was a lot of hate. I was always screaming, yelling, and in a bad mood. My family tried to find a psychologist, but I would tell them, “I'm not crazy. I'm not stupid.” That's how we in Bosnia think about counseling, that only people with severe mental conditions seek that kind of help. But it's not true, I realize now. Counselors take care of those with mental diagnoses, but they can help many other people, too.

I began to withdraw from everyone and sulk in my room alone most of the time. Then, my sister Selma had a talk with me. She said, “Belma, this is not who you are. You are not a hate-filled person. What if one day you can share your story with other people to help them?”

I said, “You’re right.”

Selma reminded me that I wanted to find my soulmate, and she encouraged me to believe that one day I would. I realized the world was getting crazier. I found videos of hate toward Muslims, and I started thinking, “Why do people hurt and kill each other? We’re all going to die one day, and the world doesn’t define who we are. Everything depends on God. We can’t take any of this with us when we die.”

The way my life began to change for the better was when I returned to Allah and my Muslim faith. I began reading my Quran, which changed my mind and opened my heart. I realized Allah knows I will one day return to him, and I didn’t want my life to be filled with the darkness of my past.

I knew that every one of us can only take the good or bad we have done on the earth to the afterlife. It’s up to us what we want to choose, and I didn’t want to choose to have hate in my heart anymore. For me, loving and supporting all people, no matter who they are or where they’re from or what they believed was what I wanted to do with my life.

Eventually, I did meet and marry my soulmate. We met on Facebook, actually, and then we met in person in 2017. He is also Bosnian. I was afraid he wouldn’t love me once he saw that I had no arms, but he said, “Don’t worry, I will be your hands.” After we were together for a few days, he proposed to me, and in 2018, he got his visa and moved to the United States, where we were married.

My husband changed my life. Love changed my life. I know I will never be the same, and I also know how lucky I am to have a chance to show the world what it can look like when we care for each other instead of hate.