The delivery guy had an accent. I never can let a person with an accent go without finding out where they are from and at least trying to get their story. We have loads of Bosnians in St.
Louis, so I asked him where he was from (probably Bosnia) and he was. I
told him I'm going there at the end of April and asked him if he had any ideas
of where to go.
He came here in 1997
with his family. He was 17 at the time. During the war
he worked (not by choice) in a hard labor camp where they did mostly farming to
raise crops for the military. He escaped one rainy night when they were doing a
POW exchange (not military POW's, but civilian POW's). With the rain and mud, he was able to escape unnoticed.
His father was in a
concentration camp. They hardly fed them so all of the pictures of
really skinny people - that's what it was like - but even worse. His father was
assigned to work somewhere that allowed him to find an escape route, so later
he was able to escape. His mother and sister were later able to get out when
they got to the top of some sort of list.
He said he came from
one of the most infamous towns that you would have heard about on the news at the
time. The soldiers would come and round everyone up and shoot them. He said he
lived through a few of those rounds.
He said he would never
forget. I asked him if he ever had nightmares. He said he doesn't remember his
dreams. His wife sometimes wakes him up while he is yelling, so he has
nightmares, but he doesn't remember them.
He said that most of
the bombs are probably rusty now but still, he says it is no joke. Don't go for
a picnic off the beaten path in some of those places.
And that's what
happens when the delivery guy has an accent and he is from the country you are
going to...
No comments:
Post a Comment