Muharema Jerkic

Muharema Jerkic, a 47-year-old Muslim refugee from Bosnia, has suffered from severe depression.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN and WAVENEY ANN MOORE
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 2, 2002

Click here to enter gallery Click a name to read each survivor's story: • Germaine Pitchon • Huynh Hai • Ramon Liceas Frias • Muharema Jerkic • Daniel Agau • Anh Nguyen

PINELLAS PARK -- Outside a neat house hangs a teddy bear wreath bearing a small American flag.

Inside is a 47-year-old grandmother who mourns the loss of a life shattered by the atrocities so often committed in the name of religion and ethnic pride.

"The worst thing that can happen in your life is when you lose your country, when you lose your job, your family, everything that is part of your life," said Muharema Jerkic, sitting tensely on a plump, black-patterned couch.

Before she could tell her story one recent morning, she unashamedly bolstered her courage with a dose of prescription drugs. Bosnians, she would explain later, are more private than Americans, and some aspects of one's life are just too personal to discuss. But talking about her agony has become a route to healing.

Long buried feuds had erupted after Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. She routinely saw people obliterated in front of her apartment and neighbors' homes demolished. During the war, Muslim women were systematically raped by enemies intent on carrying out a ruthless policy of "ethnic cleansing."

Mrs. Jerkic's marriage to a Serb put her family at great risk.

"Mixed marriages were crucified. We changed the last name on the front door so many times, Serbian, Muslim, Croatian," she told a Chicago-based Bosnian magazine.

"The crash of my life came when they took my husband to prison and tortured me, physically and mentally, ruining my dignity."

Fleeing her looted apartment without identification and with only the clothes on her back, she and her children moved into her parents' home. From there Mrs. Jerkic escaped to a Croatian refugee camp, traveled to Germany and eventually to the United States in 1997, where she was resettled by Catholic Charities. Only weeks earlier, her mother had died. In spring last year, she moved to Florida.

"I am still on medication and continuing with mental health counseling," said the former office worker, whose ordeal brought on bouts of weeping, nightmares and severe depression.

All the treasures of home, except for two black and white photographs, are lost forever. Her marriage, too, once suffused with love and hope, is irretrievably broken, a casualty of her country's war.

"Before the war, I was a very happy woman, who likes to sing, likes music," she said. But now "the sadness is always present, because you've lost what you've lost."

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