When I found out that a Bosnian family had moved into our neighborhood, just across from my place, I was thrilled. I had left Bosnia seven years before, and I hardly ever saw anybody from there, at first deliberately, because the circumstances under which I left were not pleasant.

To me it didn’t matter now whether the neighbors were Muslims, Croats, or Serbs; the main thing was that they were Bosnian, that they spoke the language I loved and hadn’t heard in a long time. But when I learned that a Croatian family from Bugojno, my hometown, had moved in next door, I was especially delighted.

Maybe it was the timing. Perhaps I could have already gone back home, but I was wary because Bugojno was in the part of Bosnia controlled by Serbs. NATO supervision had made it possible to go back, and probably nothing bad would happen to me if I did, but I couldn’t imagine sleeping there at night, without streetlights; I would think of masked thugs coming in, and begin to replay in my mind …

When…