Her meeting with Al-Maqdisi Muhammed Abu Al-Rub made her change her university specialization from vehicle engineering to optics, as well as changing her place of residence from Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, that is the Bosnian Azira Khalilovich (57 years) who has lived in Jerusalem for 37 years with her Palestinian husband and daughters And her grandchildren.
We received a warm welcome to talk about her story, a clear, round face in which wrinkles were scarce, and a smile that did not depart throughout her speech with a Jerusalem accent, and disturbed her outlets of her weak letters, which her Bosnian mother tongue overcame.
Azira was born in 1963 in the Khorasno region of the capital, Sarajevo (southeastern Europe), to a well-to-do family in the confines of her father “Zener” and her mother “Chevalha”, and her brother “Frasil”, and she tells Al-Jazeera Net that the families in her city were satisfied with a few children, so she sees looks Surprising when she visits Sarajevo with her six daughters.
Fearful of the Arab bridegroom
she finished a two-year career in Vehicle Engineering at the University of Sarajevo, but decided to transfer her major to optometry where her Jerusalem fiance, Muhammad Abu Al-Rab, is studying in the same city. The specialty was transferred successfully, but the task of convincing its people to the Arab groom was never easy.
Although Muhammad was a Muslim like Azira and her family, the family was afraid of marrying her daughter to Mashreqi, and Azira explained that the media at that time drew a distorted stereotype of the Arabs, as it coincided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and its impact on the Palestinians, in addition to the negative experiences of Bosnians who married Arabs And they returned divorced after a short period.
“My family used to tell me that people in Jerusalem do not have a state or passport, and even one of my relatives asked me after my marriage worried:“ Do you have electricity? ”Azira says that and is proud that she was finally able to persuade her family until her marriage was concluded in 1982, and she got married a year later Two weddings in Sarajevo and Jerusalem.
The family of Muhammad in Jerusalem initially had concerns about his marriage to Azera, as the stereotype of European wives was that they ended their marriage quickly and returned to their country. And she recalls her early days in Jerusalem, saying, "Girls gathered, wondering about the foreign bride, and they wished around me and I do not understand anything from their Arab words."
The difference in language and customs
was a means for the spouses to communicate initially in the Bosnian language, and during family gatherings in Jerusalem, Azera continued to ask her husband: (Sheta Prcayo?) That is, "What do they speak?" After that, she resolved to learn Arabic and succeeded in that within a few months, using the Jordanian Bedouin series, and Abdel-Halim Hafez's favorite songs for her husband.
Azera initially lived in her husband's family home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, and made a great effort to adapt, given the difference in customs and lifestyle between her original home and the new place, and she added, "Contrary to what I used to, I had to ask permission when I leave the house, and I used to warm in the door After I got used to central heating, but the similarities between the two citizens were in generosity and family bonding. "
Today, Azira combines the Bosnian and Palestinian kitchens, where she masteres boric cooking (pies stuffed with meat and potatoes), Ziliantsa (stuffed with spinach) and Sernica (stuffed with white cheese), and proudly boasts that she mastered cooking Palestinian food, with its "inverted" head.
During our conversation with Azira, her daughter, Siham, who said that she and her sisters were speaking in poor Arabic as their mother, first sat us, but they mastered it later, adding, "When we were young, my mother asked us for the spoon without saying the eye and standing well, so we would bring her fried, so she would explain to us hard. What I meant. "
Azera laughs at those memories, saying, "My daughters imitating my accents today are joking, but I try in public places to find a synonym for any word that I cannot pronounce well, so that they don't know I am strange."
Memories of war
Azira wanted to visit Sarajevo at the beginning of 1992, but her father advised her not to come because the conditions were no longer safe, and the war really broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the same year, and lasted 3 years, during which Azira lost contact with her family, and she was watching scant news on TV, And her heart is burning pain and anxiety.
Serbs committed the Muslims in Bosnia with horrific massacres, which claimed the lives of about 100,000 Bosnians, and Azera recalls this as she senses her arms, saying, "I am chilling my body. The Serbs and Muslims were neighbors, friends and families in Sarajevo, I was traumatized by what happened."
At that time, the body of Azera was in Jerusalem and her heart was in Sarajevo, when she later learned that her mother had been displaced to Germany, while her father refused to leave his house, and one of his Serbian friends killed him, when he entered his house one day and ate with him and drank, then lured him to the entrance of the house and executed him by firing him Shot in cooperation with others.
"Until today I search for my father's grave. They buried him in mass graves, as happened with tens of thousands, and even today my cousin" Memso "is dismantling the mines left over from the war." Azira says this while recalling how her maternal uncle Muhammad, who joined the Green Beret (Zlene Brettiquet) battalion in the Bosnian army, was killed by a sniper targeting him with bullets while evacuating a little girl from one of the bombed buildings; So she lived and died.
Her brother Fresel was not safe from the scourge of war, as he was seriously injured after being attacked with his Bosnian army battalion by a missile attack. All the members of the battalion were martyred and he survived with a paralyzed body, but he recently recovered.
Jerusalem has a large share
Azira returned to Sarajevo after the end of the war with her daughters, and found her empty on her thrones, in contrast to what she left, and found memories of childhood and boyhood that were leveled to the ground, but she later witnessed her recovery, where she visits her annually except this year due to the Corona pandemic.
When we asked her about Sarajevo, her eyes brightened and looked at the emptiness, saying, "They are all picturesque green mountains, in which the Malyatska River, which I love, is my first country." She answered a question: "And where is Jerusalem in your heart?" She said, "Jerusalem has a special place in my heart. I love the Al-Aqsa Mosque most, and I have Palestinian and other female friends like me: Mariana, Yasmina and Katrina."