by Hala Youssef
Amira Halilovic is from Sarajevo, Bosnia. Milica Katitc is from Serbia. They have so much in common that they do not seem to give any importance to the bloody factions that divided their two countries just a few years ago.
Both women are 23 years old and fell in love with learning languages when they were children. Currently, they are focusing on their graduate studies and are working as translators for refugees passing through the Balkans. Amira’s love for Oriental languages started when she was a young girl. Her father worked in several Middle Eastern countries and she was fascinated by his stories about the region. She went to university in Sarajevo to study Farsi, and was doing her masters when she received a call from the Balkan Center for Migration, one of CARE’s partners, in December 2015. “They asked me if I wanted to work as a translator in Serbia for the Afghani refugees,” Amira recalls. She jumped at the chance, despite her parents’ hesitation, and her own concern about working with Afghans in a dialect that is different than the Iranian one she had studied.
On her first day in Belgrade, Amira saw a woman who was crying because her baby had drowned in the sea. “I didn’t know what to tell her,” Amira said. “I can say I am sorry, but that doesn’t help because the pain is still there.” She encouraged her to stay strong for the sake of her other two daughters. At 10:00 pm on the same night, Amira received a call asking her to translate to make funeral arrangements for an Afghani woman who had passed away.
Luckily, not all encounters are sad for Amira. She recalls an incident where she was asked to translate at a make-shift hospital at the border. A woman had fainted and her husband was very concerned. When Amira informed him that his wife was pregnant, he denied it embarrassingly because they were using protection. Amira relayed the doctor’s insistence and the husband became elated. He was running around the camp screaming, “It is a miracle. I am going to become a father. I am going to become a father.”
One thing Amira learned and appreciates, through living and working with Afghani refugees: “Afghani men really love and respect their wives,” she says. “I see men pampering and loving their wives, even though they have been married for over 20 years.”
Amira Halilovic from Bosnia (left) and Milica Katitc from Serbia, forgetting their countries’ differences and uniting to aid refugees in the Balkans. They both work as translators. (Photo: Hala Youssef/CARE)
Soap opera and Arabic
In neighboring Serbia, Milica was in seventh grade when she became an avid viewer of a Brazilian soap opera about a native boy who fell in love with a Syrian girl. She followed their forbidden love and, in the process, fell in love herself with Arabic and everything related to the Arabic culture. She started taking private lessons to learn Arabic at 18, and went on to study the language at the university in Belgrade.
“I had my plans all set up to do a masters in security studies when I heard about the refugee situation”, Milica said. In January 2016, she decided to help Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing through her country. Thus, she started working as a translator for the Balkan Center for Migration in Belgrade.
Like Amira, Milica lived through many situations with the refugees. “There was a 13-year old Syrian girl in a wheel chair that her mother brought into the hospital,” Milica recalls. The girl was paralyzed and Milica was baffled as to why the mother did not place her daughter’s feet on the footrest of the wheelchair. All she wanted was for the doctors to change the shash (bandages). That was when Milica noticed the unhealed wound on the girl’s back. “It was like a big hole and still fresh,” she said commenting on the girl’s paralyzing injury, that was caused by a bomb in Syria.
The mother and her smiling daughter were waiting for papers to show their medical emergency. After the sudden closure of the Macedonian border, many refugees were trying to get medical papers thinking it would facilitate their crossing of the borders. In most cases, this hope was not fulfilled. “Refugees have a window of only 72 hours to get registered, and leave,” Milica comments on how Serbia does not have much to offer to the 300 arriving refugees who still arrive here on a daily basis, hoping for a better life in the EU.
When asked about which of the refugees she would remember the most, Amira says, “I will remember them all. You know you are a part of history that will be taught in schools 100 years from now,” she says. “I hope that the story will end well and that these people will find peace and safety.”
CARE and its partner organizations in Croatia and Serbia have assisted refugees and migrants on the Western Balkan route since the summer of 2015. Despite the border closures, there are still about 300 people daily who still cross the border into Serbia, hoping to continue to Northern Europe. CARE and its partners provide food packages, warm clothes, shoes and hygiene packages. Refugee centres were supported with water and sanitation facilities as well as furniture such as beds and heaters. Child-friendly spaces are being supported with heated tents. In addition, CARE partner organizations offer translation services and information for families passing through or staying in Croatia and Serbia. For those staying in the Balkans, CARE and its partners now also offer recreational activities and psychosocial support. To this date, CARE has reached almost 125,000 people.