My home became a war zone overnight – my family were given 20 hours to flee to the UK

During a supposed ceasefire between Serbs and Bosnians in the summer of 1993, my 11-year-old brother Alen was playing with his friends when a mortar bomb fell about 20 metres away him.

It exploded and he was gravely hurt – suffering injuries to his jaw, stomach and leg.

While my brother miraculously survived, many of his friends did not – they were all just innocent children.

Two weeks later, we were evacuated – along with our mum – from Bosnia and flown to the UK so he could receive emergency medical care. Almost 30 years later, we’re still here and so grateful for all of the support we’ve received – but it was an incredibly tough journey.

My life before the Bosnian War was quite normal. I was born in Sarajevo to parents of a mixed marriage – my dad, a Bosnian Muslim and my mother, a Christian Orthodox from Macedonia brought me up as an atheist.

In school, I sat next to a Catholic girl, my best friend was Muslim, and my next door neighbour was a Serb. Together, we lived in peace and I was quite proud and happy to live in such a multicultural society.

But once the war came in 1992 when I was just 15 years old, everything changed.

The conflict came about after Bosnia and Herzegovina joined Slovenia and Croatia in declaring independence from the former Yugoslavia. This triggered a war as Serb paramilitary groups – backed by neighbouring Serbia and the Yugoslav army – laid siege to the city of Sarajevo and attacked many cities and villages across the country. The war went on for almost four years.

Overnight, I went from being a typical teenager doing school work and hanging out with friends to suddenly seeing people I know flee the city, schools close due to the barricades that divided the city and the multicultural area I loved turn into a war zone where people would be targeted and killed for their identities.

There was no way to prepare for the war and the difficulty of the siege.

Access to food became a rarity and as we became cut off from the world – there was no way in or out of the city and all communication was cut – we seemingly lost everything. No food, electricity, no water, no public transportation, and no safety either.

The simple basics many people enjoy throughout our world today, we were forced to go without.

Thankfully, we still had our home but no windows because fighter planes flew over at the start of the war and shattered them.

We ate nettles and dandelions, we chopped wood in local parks to keep warm, we fetched water at night to hide from the snipers, which targeted civilians. I went to school in a local cellar, attempting to study from the notes we took in class as we didn’t even have books.

Our life became a daily fight for survival.

And on top of all of that – like many families in Sarajevo – I had to deal with personal loss, heartache and pain like I’ve never known before.

At the beginning of the war, I had feared for my father’s life – as prior to the genocide he was a lieutenant colonel in the Yugoslav army – so when the war started he suddenly found himself trapped on the wrong side. Thankfully, he had managed to escape and find a job in the newly-formed Bosnian army but my fear persisted.

Sadly, in April 1993, he died in a car crash. It was on the main dual carriageway in Sarajevo and it was a collision caused by a car attempting to avoid the constant snipers all around.

We found out after two men came to our door and told us that there had been an accident.

Mum couldn’t stop crying but we dealt with grief differently – she needed company and I needed solitude. So as different people were milling around in the living room, I was in my bedroom with tears racing down my face, pains in my chest and a tightness in my throat causing me to gasp for air every few seconds.

I kept going back to the last time I saw him. What I would give to be able to rewind back to that morning, to give him a hug, a smile or to tell him that I loved him. I never told him that I loved him.

Rebuilding yourself after a loss of a parent is hard even in the best of times. I cannot describe the difficulty of trying to do this when you are in the midst of a war zone subjected to daily bombing, shellings, and sniper attacks.

Two weeks after the bombing incident with my brother in mid-1993, my mum was told that there was a medical evacuation of sick children and their families leaving for the UK the following day and that the doctor had recommended for Alen to be one of them.

He was losing weight rapidly and needed his strength building back up for further medical treatment on his jaw.

We were staying with my uncle at the time because it was closer to the hospital, my mum went back to our flat to pack but I didn’t. She was told we could only take one suitcase so she packed jumpers, some photo albums and very little else.

She still describes the decision of what to pack when you’re leaving your whole life behind as one of the most difficult decisions of her life. We were given less than 20 hours to pack and say our goodbyes to our entire lives.

Needless to say, we never returned home for good.

At first, we travelled on a military plane to Ancona in Italy, but I had a knot in my stomach because I was worried sick that some hooligan with a gun might try to shoot down the plane.

I looked around and noticed a young girl with meningitis, a boy whose left eye was gauged out by shrapnel and another boy with injuries to his arm and leg. I just tried to focus on helping my brother drink water.

When we landed in August 1993, we were moved on to an adapted commercial plane to the UK, which was much less scary. I was still worried and anxious about my new life but at least I wasn’t worried that we’d be shot at.

We arrived in London – where some people stayed – but we travelled to Birmingham with another family but on the same plane for a short flight and arrived at Birmingham Children’s hospital.

My first impressions of the UK were that the people were really friendly and they couldn’t do more for us. Alen received ‘get well soon’ cards and presents from strangers – people we had never met before went out of their way to help. It restored my faith in humanity.

Because of his drastic weight loss, he had to rebuild strength. The stomach wound kept getting infected and took a long time to heal and because the bone in his leg was shattered, he needed extensive physiotherapy. He wasn’t discharged until three months after first arriving.

After Alen recovered at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital, we began to rebuild our lives in Birmingham.

We started school, focused on learning English, and I became committed to ensuring I would leave a positive impact on society. Despite the consequences of hatred that we had experienced, I resolved that I would never let negativity consume me.

In the last 20 years, I have dedicated my life to supporting various charities – I have mentored refugees, fundraised for the hospital where my twins were born and on Saturdays I teach my native language to second generation Bosnian children in Birmingham.

I even did my Master’s Degree in marketing at the age of 42 with two kids at home, receiving a distinction as well as an award for the highest performance on my course.

I’ve been able to accomplish all of these things because I wanted to ensure that the painful experiences of my past did not clog my future.

I still live in Birmingham, now with my Italian partner and our twin girls, aged seven. My brother lives five minutes away with his family and my mum is local to us too – we’re all about 10 minutes away from each other.

Over the years, I have made many friends with people from all walks of life and I feel that my life is now firmly rooted in Birmingham. Even though I love Bosnia and I go there regularly now, I love England too and I see it as my family’s home.

I will always be a migrant and I will never forget my roots but I will always be grateful to the UK for giving me and my family a chance.

I’m currently writing a book featuring a collection of the letters I wrote to my best friend in Sarajevo during the war. When I came to the UK, we carried on writing to each other, even though it was very difficult to get letters in and out of my home country.

I’m hoping to publish my story as a way of preserving the memories of my life, as well as an important part of history.

I was lucky to survive the war and I remain grateful that I have been able to rebuild my life in the United Kingdom – unlike so many others who weren’t able to do so.

Coming through the other side of the conflict taught me that we are always stronger together and that we can build a better society for all – not just a society built on tolerance, but one built on inclusion, community, and love.

Refugee Week (14 to 20 June) is a UK-wide festival celebrating the contributions of refugees. For more information, visit the Refugee Week website here.

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