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Hate, hurt and healing
By KELLY RYAN © St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- On the morning that her country went to war, 7-year-old Zibija Cavcic found out that her Bosnian family would never again have sleep overs and play with her Serbian neighbors. "He was like a second dad, our neighbor," said Zibija, now 17, who once hid her faith but now wears a necklace with a Muslim symbol, the star and crescent. "Then he told my dad, "You better leave. I can't be your friend anymore.' "You lose trust in those people. You generalize it, and I know I shouldn't. But all I have is bad experiences." Zibija brought her mistrust of Serbs with her when her family sought refuge in St. Petersburg. Now she finds herself surrounded by them again -- at Northeast High School. It is a war that has traveled some 5,400 miles from the former Yugoslavia to a 1,950-student school on Florida's west coast. In the cafeteria, hallways and classrooms, the school has seen confrontations between Muslim and Orthodox, Bosnians and Serbs. And between members of both groups and American students. Even Bosnians and Serbs who said the war was past and called themselves friends started sitting at separate lunchroom tables. Mostly, the weapons are hurtful, angry words about religion, culture and families. At its worst, the tension exploded last fall into a fight of flying fists and raw emotion before dozens of onlookers. "Over there, there is war and all that," said 15-year-old Enis Ismajli, a Bosnian. "You stay home and try to protect your family and then they come in and take you out and they burn down your house. You think all people are like that. You hate." Soon after last fall's fight, school administrators asked for help from the National Conference for Community and Justice. That group started by holding a youth summit at the school where Bosnians and Serbs tearfully told stories about burned homes, murdered friends and fathers who went to war but never came back. The program continued last Monday, when many of the same students who participated in the first summit met again to talk about ending violence at school and in the community. This summer, some of the students will attend a weeklong cultural diversity and conflict resolution camp. This fall, they will work together on a community service project, training for teachers and a cultural talent show. The students are supposed to teach their peers what they have learned. The goal is to open eyes that were closed and make friends of enemies. Roy Kaplan has faith that the goal is realistic. "We're going to prove that it's possible to live together with people you have been taught to hate," said Kaplan, NCCJ's executive director. "Just as hate is learned, so is love." On a gloomy Monday morning in Northeast's media center, 40 students stood in concentric circles, facing each other. They had brown hair dyed auburn and blond hair dyed pink. Some made nervous jokes or kept pushing hair behind ears. Most wore jeans or jeans shorts, and some had pierced ears and lips. Almost all named pizza as their favorite food. They were told to greet their partner and explain their ethnic backgrounds, which included Hispanic, Arabic, Italian, Bosnian, Orthodox Serbian, African, Greek, Burmese, Filipino, Vietnamese and Laotian. The group is a microcosm of Northeast's diversity. Of the school's 1,950 students, about 1,250 are white, 320 are African-American and the rest come from a variety of countries and speak a variety of languages. Nearly 90 students from the former Yugoslavia attend Northeast, far more than any other Pinellas high school. The group is about 5 percent of Northeast's population, but the presence feels much larger. Their lockers are grouped together on the second floor, above the administration building. Between classes, the hallway hums with students speaking Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian. They are essentially the same language, but Bosnians don't like saying they do anything using the word "Serb." Some of the American students get annoyed hearing words they don't understand. Some have picked fights with students from the Balkans, suspecting they were being talked about. Others learn Balkan slang to mock students from that part of the world in words they understand. Many have no idea why tension seems to simmer within a group that looks and speaks the same. "It's made hard feelings with the American kids," said Linda Smith, who teaches foreign students. "They thought all they wanted to do was fight." At Monday's meeting, all of those issues were put on the table. At the end of the day, after activities about stereotypes, teamwork and violence prevention, facilitator Tarra Woodard told the students to talk about anything they liked. Lejla Havic, who is Bosnian, said she had a question for Joseph Smithson, who sat on the other side of the circle. You remember me? He nodded. Lejla, 17, explained that she had her first period class with Joey. She wasn't sure she understood him -- she was just learning English -- but she sensed he was always making fun of her. "Can you answer me the question, why were you so mean?" Lejla said, her face reddening and tears filling her eyes. "That hurts a lot of people." Stunned, Joey ran across the circle, bent down on one knee and grabbed her hands. "I am terribly sorry," he said. "I don't think Joey intentionally wanted to hurt her," Woodard said. "He probably just wanted to make people laugh. It still doesn't make it right. You never know what someone is going through at home." Zibija said American students don't realize how much people from the former Yugoslavia have lost, how many times they have started over, how many people they have seen killed. "You lose your family. You lose your home. You lose everything," she said, adding that American students who can laugh at violence in movies haven't seen people shot. "There's something that gets destroyed inside yourself that no one can understand." She buried her face in her hands as tears ran down her cheeks. Andrew Harris grabbed a tissue and handed it to Zibija. "I'm sorry," he said. Before he can get the students to be friends, Kaplan has to stop them from fighting. And before he can do that, he tries to point out how similar they are. On Monday, he grabbed a marker and drew "99.98%" on an easel. DNA research, Kaplan said, shows that people are 99.98 percent the same. Kaplan's experience Monday, and holding dozens of seminars before that day, bears out that statistic. In any group of students, he said, nearly everyone seems to be grappling with loss. Most say they have been discriminated against, whether it's for race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. All want to be accepted. "People aren't born paranoid or afraid of other people," Kaplan told the students. "We want to create a school or a society where people smile at strangers." Smith and assistant principal Trish O'Neil say the atmosphere at school has improved already in the early stages of the program, which will be paid for with a $50,000 state grant. The physical fights are rare. The cutting remarks still happen, but unlike a year ago, Smith and others have learned some of the nasty words and listen for them. O'Neil and Smith have gone into the Gateway area of St. Petersburg, dubbed by some as "Little Bosnia," to meet with parents. While O'Neil is pleased that the students are communicating more openly, she acknowledges there is a long way to go. Students agree. "I want to be friends with everyone, but they don't want to be friends with me," said Zana Damjanovic, 16, who is Serbian and has been taunted for her ethnic background. The barrier is history: decades of strife, decades of learned behavior. "It was always there. It was always a hate, tension," Zibija said. "You're a Serb. You're a Muslim. I grew up that way. We lived through the same thing, but we accuse the other side. I don't think it will ever go away." Zibija said she thinks the goal of friendship might be impossible. For instance, she said she was friendly with an Orthodox classmate in Monday's session but as soon as they left the media center, they stopped talking or saying hello. "We came here for peace, not for war again," said Adisa Sinanovic, 18, who is from Bosnia. "We should be able to be friends."
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