MY FIRST VISIT HOME AFTER FIVE YEARS

I had been living in the United States for five years before I was finally able to visit my family. Back then, there was no Messenger, no Skype, no video calls. Communication meant one phone call a week, five minutes at most—if we could afford it.

My mother never told me what was really happening back home. Not during those calls, and not even after my first visit. She carried everything quietly, believing it was better to protect me than to worry me. I did not know the truth. Not yet.

When I went to Bosnia for the first time after those five years, I could not recognize the condition in which I found everyone.

I told them I was coming, but not when. Only Alisa knew. She picked me up from the airport with Zerin. When I saw her, it was a moment I cannot describe, relief, love, and something breaking all at once.

By the time we arrived home, it was already dark. It was winter, and the days were short.

Outside the house, my brother and my father were cutting wood for the stove. When I saw my brother, it hit me all at once that I had been gone. I missed his childhood. The boy who was thirteen when I left was now a man almost two meters tall, standing in front of me.

The air was different. The sun, the moon, the sky, everything felt different. I had missed it more than I knew how to say.

During the month I stayed, my father drank. Not as much as before, they told me, but he was not the same man anymore.

My mother later told me it was worse than what I saw. He brought drunk men into the house. They drank and smoked through the night while my mother and brother were there.

One evening, my brother came home from high school and had had enough. He threw everyone out. He screamed at my father and told him never to bring anyone into the house again.

From that moment on, my mother was protected by her son.