While living under siege during the Bosnian War, Azra Hromadzic fell in love and spent her summers swimming in the Una waterfalls.

Hromadzic said these experiences do not reflect the general beliefs people have about life under siege.

“You have this idea of people just sitting in basements with their heads in their laps, and just kind of screaming,” Hromadzic said. “We also fell in love, and went out and tried to get the newest music albums.”

Hromadzic, now a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University, added that her first date “took place under those bullets.” Eventually, the war, which took place between April 1992 and December 1995, became so overwhelming that Hromadzic and her friends escaped to the Una River.

“It had so many waterfalls, (so) being close to that river created a shield to the fighting behind us,” Hromadzic said.

She since named her daughter Una in remembrance of the river.

As the war drew to a close, Hromadzic was given the opportunity to study in the U.S. through a scholarship. Two years after her arrival, Hromadzic transferred from a smaller college to the University of Pennsylvania, where she sought to better understand the war.

“I didn’t want to forget what the war smells like, what it feels like,” Hromadzic said. “I felt I had to understand what happened.”

Hromadzic said a degree in anthropology familiarized her with the stories of people affected by the war and that her experiences have also allowed her to teach more effectively.

Hromadzic is also exploring the effects of war and democratization in her book “Citizens of an Empty Nation,” set to be released this coming spring. In her book, Hromadzic returns to Bosnia and spends time in a high school bathroom to see how students express their understandings of ethnicity.

Hromadzic’s research comes after watching Bosnia transform into an ethnically divided territory after the war. But throughout these changes during and after the war, she still remembers the little things that make her who she is.

“You still want those 501 jeans that you wanted before the war,” Hromadzic said. “It’s not like you stop being that person, but at the same time, everything is transformed.”

Published on October 8, 2014 at 12:01 am

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