Collective Shame, Collective Pride and a need to belong

So 12 years ago, August, a family got off of the airplane. They were from Bosnia. The family was made up of father, mother, son and daughter. It was a neat a clean little family by my American standards. They did not smoke. They did not drink. There was one boy and one girl. They were educated and we could talk to them about art, philosophy, politics and world issues. (Or we could have if they spoke English) We enjoyed our time with this family. Surprising to us they were Muslim, and a much different Muslim then we expected. For three months we spent a lot of time with them, trying to communicate, getting them furniture, registering their children into school, helping them with their first adventures of shopping. I still know that the word "paradees" (spelled paradise) is the Bosnian word for tomato. We spent hours transporting them. We spent hours eating with them. We spent hours with them, so much so that we forgot they didn't speak English and they forgot we didn't speak Bosnian. We just learned to communicate.Then in November of that same year we went with our friends to meet their cousins who were getting off of the airplane. Again the family was a father, a mother, a boy and a girl. They smoked, they drank, the father was Muslim, the mother was Serbian Orthodox. This meant in Bosnian culture that the children would be raised Muslim. Again we spent many hours doing all of the same things for this family that we had done for the first. And again we became friends.In December a second cousin came. This time the family was father, mother and son. The father was Muslim, the mother Croatian. And still again we spent many hours. Robert and I were a young family then with only a five month old child. We were very mobile.February came and three more families came, all relatives of the first family, including the father's father and mother. We knew them all and spent time with them all. By this time we were so busy being with them that we spent little time anywhere else. We ate their food, sat with them for hours, watched TV with them and drank coffee. We started becoming community with them and we didn't know it.In the next three years many families came to Boise from this small town. By this time the community was in our blood. We loved them.Then after this long period of time, Bosnians from other areas of Bosnia began to come. We had had a couple families from other areas before but so few that we had not gotten to understand the politics and the pain of other areas. Then others came and we began having to look at the other side. The pain of Serbs fighting Muslims, of Muslims fighting Croats, of Croats fighting Serbs.I remember one day as I am sitting around the coffee table with a group of women, one of them began to talk to me about the day that her brother was murdered. Sead's best friend had spent time daily in their home. He had eaten lunches with the family, gone swimming, listened to music, ate dinner, spent the night, gone on double dates, the boys had been inseparable. They had both been Muslim, but their families were different kinds of Muslim. During the invasion of the town, she had watched this young man chase her brother down and kill him. She had screamed and cried, pleaded but her brother died and she saw it all. She lives with this memory along with others from that day until this.Another woman when I asked her if Bosnians wore wedding rings as part of their culture told me about the day that she lost her wedding ring. Her mother-in-law had called her from the other side of the village to warn her that the village was being invaded and that she needed to run. Her husband was gone fighting the enemy soldiers back. She didn't know where he was. She had been doing dishes when she got the call from her mother-in-law. She had put her wedding ring in the window sill while she did the dishes. The phone rang, she pulled her hands out of the water, answered the phone, ran for her two sons, put them under her arms and ran into the street, escaping the town with hundreds of other women and children. It was the last she saw of her wedding ring, her home and the life she had known.This war was a hideous war. One with absolutely no rules and humanity was lost. Now the people of this war are trying to live here and move past the terror, anger and bitterness. It is a tough thing to do, if not impossible for some.Here are some links to some "youtube" sites that may give you a taste of this whole thing. While they are not by any means fun and yes the words are disturbing it is still important that we see them. It is important that we not think we are above all of this. We are not. We need to learn from history and the sins of the past. Please be brave and look....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ESBQhNZpUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHKCH7dZDkwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id4wtBJHMdUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8MCSV7lM8kWe have experienced many people from this country. We are fortunate enough to be a part of their community and to love them. We see in some of them the capability to move on, some hide their past and their struggles, others are bitter, others haunted....