College Student —
Beating the Odds

Enes Elezovic, a 19-year-old Bosnian refugee who expects to earn U.S. citizenship this summer, is a freshman at Grand View College in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. When you've seen all that Enes has seen in his young life—when you've seen horror "up close and personal" as he has—the United States of America is a very agreeable place to be.

Enes was six years old, living in Mostar, Bosnia's second largest city, when war broke out in 1991. The Elezovics had a comfortable, affluent life. Enes's father, Sedat, had been a helicopter pilot in the Bosnian army for 10 years, while living at home with the family. His mother, Ljubica, or "Lu" as most know her, was a psychiatrist. His brother, Semir, now a junior in secondary school in Des Moines, was an infant.

The Elezovics are, by religion, a mixed family; Sedat is Muslim and Lu is Catholic. But for a long time, families could live with no fear of oppression for either religious or ethnic reasons.

And then? "The war started in Croatia, but we knew the Serbs and Croats were going to come to Bosnia because they wanted land," Enes says. The bombing would start "every day at about 6 in the morning," he recalls. "A bell would ring, and we'd all have to go to the basement. Planes would be bombing all around us. There was gunfire all the time. I was very frightened, and it was all so fast-paced it was hard to understand what was happening."

"Somehow we lived a half a year with the war going on all around us, but then we were told we had to get out. We had to pack and leave in one day. We had to leave behind almost everything we had. From what I remember, we had no idea if someone was going to try to capture us, or if they'd let us out of the country, or if we could even get into another country. We just had to leave."

An uncle, who had relocated to Achen, Germany, told the Elezovics to try to make it there. "We had to leave Bosnia without my dad, and we didn't really know if we would see him again," Enes says. "I have a lot of friends who lost their dads in the war."

After three days, Lu Elezovic and her two young sons made it out of Bosnia and arrived in Achen. Six months later, Sedat joined them. Then, the family went about the business of rebuilding their lives in Germany, hoping that after being there six years, they would qualify as German citizens.

"But then Germany decided there were too many refugees coming, so they changed the rule that you had to be there eight years for citizenship," Enes says. "Those who were living there with less time than that had to leave."

Hugo Smaljovic, a Bosnian friend who had settled in Iowa, contacted the family and suggested they join him. After an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Germany, the Elezovics were told they would be welcomed to the United States as refugees. On February 16, 1999, they arrived in Des Moines to become part of the community of nearly 3,000 Bosnian people who had re-settled in Iowa's capital city.

Enes enrolled in the Des Moines schools as a seventh grader. He was fluent in the Serbo-Croatian language the people had spoken in Bosnia and in the German he had learned in Europe, and he was fairly comfortable in the English that he had studied for four years in Germany.

He also knew another form of communication, one that is understood and loved around the world: football (known as soccer in the United States). Enes had just started playing the game, as a six-year-old in Bosnia, when the war broke out, then he played for the next six years when his family was in Germany. In the Des Moines area, he quickly became a part of amateur teams, some with players his own age, others with adults. And at Roosevelt High School, he became a four-year starter on the varsity team. He grew to be 1.8 meters tall and weigh a trim 70 kilos, and he became one of those players who can seemingly run all day long without tiring. In his senior season, Enes was an all-state first-team selection. He was recruited by several colleges before choosing Grand View, where he plans to study international business.

His parents, now both 42 years old, have made the transition to American business very well. Sedat is now a supervisor in a manufacturing plant. Lu is a successful realtor. They own three houses, so they have rental income. And the whole family works together in their own company, Tip Top Cleaning, which does home and office custodial work and also cleans up construction sites.

Three summers ago, Enes's parents told him they wanted him to accept a job doing manual labor in a warehouse where many of the Bosnian adults in Des Moines have starter jobs. "My parents weren't forcing me to work as much as they were giving me a clear picture of how life is," he explains. "We worked from like 6 at night until 5 in the morning. When I saw how hard our people were working just to support their families, it gave me a whole new respect for them."

Enes says that, like many young Bosnians who came to the United States as refugees, family is the most important thing to him. "Because of what we've been through, I have total respect for my parents. With the war, they had to find new ways of life, new jobs, new friends, new countries. It's tough to try to survive in a different society. You've got to be able to adjust to different values."

Enes quotes his father telling him that freedom and now the opportunity for a college education in America "are like being given a key. My dad tells me, 'Now, you've got to insert that key, then turn it to the left to lock it up, or the right to open it up—that's a decision you have to make.' "

Enes says his concept of the American dream is a little different from what he thinks some Americans consider it to be. "In my view, it's not all about money," he says. "It's more about being happy at whatever you're doing—and never giving up." — Chuck Offenburger

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