Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 14, 1995 TAG: 9504140046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANN DONAHUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Fatima Kolenda and her three children spent the first few months of 1992 hiding in the forests of Bosnia.
They went without substantial food or shelter for four months in the snow and freezing rain, trying to escape from Serbian atrocities committed against their people - Bosnian Muslims. Fatima dreamed of better days when she would be reunited with her husband, Muradif.
On Thursday, that dream came true - half a world away.
Fatima and her two daughters, Alma, 14, and Amra, 13, and her 9-year-old-son, Almir, had an emotional reunion with Muradif on Thursday morning at Roanoke Regional Airport.
Thursday afternoon, with family friends Jimmy Spichek and Alma Kvakic, 14, acting as interpreters, the Kolendas told the harrowing story of their lives in war-ravaged Bosnia.
Three years ago on Orthodox Easter morning, Muradif was torn from his family by Serbian forces in Foca, Bosnia. Serbian soldiers appeared on his doorstep to "question" him about the burning of a Serb's house.
A Serbian neighbor, one whom Muradif had thought of as a friend before the war, had told the Serbian forces to take him prisoner. The soldiers took him to a concentration camp, where he nearly starved to death.
After five months, Muradif was set free and taken to Rozaj, a Muslim enclave 90 miles from Foca. There, a desperate search for his family began. He traveled to camps in Turkey and Macedonia, where his wife and children were rumored to be. They weren't.
Meanwhile, Fatima and the children found that they could no longer survive in the forest. She said she took her children to Gorazde in hope of finding shelter or food. Fatima said they would go from house to house looking for food, and many families had none to spare.
After four months of sleeping on straw in a gymnasium in Gorazde, the family was forced to flee once more. The Serbs took over the city, and the Kolendas feared for their lives. They walked 16 miles to Trnovo, where the Muslim government picked them up in a truck headed to Jablanica Refugee Camp.
Fatima and her children were four of 460 people in the camp, 30 miles from the capital, Sarajevo. They lived in one room for three years and survived on potatoes, lentils and macaroni.
By this time, Muradif had reached the United States with the help of his sister, Monira Kurtic, a member of the first Bosnian family to settle in Roanoke. He arrived with his brother and sister-in-law last November.
Muradif finally got word that his family was safe, and started the paperwork for them to join him. Bosnian Muslims are not permitted to leave the country for the United States, so Fatima and the children left the refugee camp to stay with her sister-in-law in Croatia.
Muradif filed two sets of papers for his family: one through the refugee center in Roanoke and one through the Justice Department. With unheard-of speed, the papers were processed in four months. Kathy Varney, the family's case worker from Refugee and Immigration Services, thought the speed might be a result of international attention on the war in Bosnia.
Before the war, the Kolendas led a happy life. "They had a nice house, good jobs, the kids were happy," Spichek said. In Bosnia, Muradif worked in a chemical lab. He is now a crane operator at Cycle Systems Inc.
"They like [life in the United States] now," Spichek said. "They'll like it more when they learn English."
The refugee center found the Kolendas an apartment at Valley View Village, and helped them set up housekeeping.
Donations of furniture, towels, sheets, silverware and children's clothing, as well as cash donations, are needed by the refugee center. They can be taken to Refugee and Immigration Services at 1106 Ninth St. S.E., or call 342-7561.
by CNB