“It took us a couple of months to get out of the first camp we were in” – “Things change when you’re moving. In a camp you begin to realise that you’re gonna spend a year here, or another year in that centre, which is no better than the other, you realise that that’s what some refugees think they’ll do forever!” “They start killing themselves or getting depressed”. Did you ever think that way? I ask: “No, I didn’t think that way”. So, once you realised this, did it lead you to take the next step (towards rising above it): “Most of what im telling you now” explains Alen “I didn’t take any steps. Im only realising all of this now”. – “I couldn’t do much – you’re a refugee in a centre, you have certain privileges and that’s it. You have no opportunity to become something or someone, the only steps to take, the only ones you have are don’t get killed, don’t die and hope for (a) better tomorrow”…

In any case, Al didn’t accept this viewpoint. “Because I was young” he says “I had to accept everything that was, and whatever was in front of me”. “I had no power to change much about my life or my family’s life, but I never accepted that refugee’s “fate”. I knew I would grow up (whether I came to Australia or not) and take control, change, take things into my own hands.” I ask: When you initially left, did you set out with intentions of coming back? “We did because we had to. And we made plans to go back… and we did” his mood becomes sullen once more and his tone pleads with me to understand and empathise”. “I don’t know if you can understand what its like to be expelled from your own city, and then go back?” – I cant – “You have to go back, it’s the only thing that’s yours. It’s the only thing you have – even if you don’t have anything, you always have your home – that’s how I felt.

We were uncomfortable.

We were rejected.

I hated everything.

I hated everyone.

I knew I would get the f**k out of there”…

So with this strength and attitude, and the understanding and education from these experiences, the Jovic’s would eventually be freed from this life and Alen himself would carry these attitudes with him to Australia where peace and opportunity and (in comparison) freedom, would allow him the opportunity to thrive. To a stranger, he might seem cold, for rarely does he show compassion to the downtrodden, or the ill fated, or those we see in society who are clearly lesser off. Al’s time in Bosnia and everything that he went through showed him in a brutal, unforgiving, stark and honest manner, that only the strong will survive. That your own will will carry you through. That if you want to be somewhere, you can. If you want to do something, you should. Even when there isn’t necessarily a will, there is a way. You will find the will.

I suppose when you are consciously and constantly faced with death, you make these choices.

So many thousands more would not be lucky enough to share the same fate or envision the same future as the Jovic’s, and the strength of Alen’s spirit is certainly one of his most notable characteristics. To this day Alen says he knows “that some of them (the others) simply would have died.”

Alen’s and his family’s attitudes towards being refugees and life itself, evolved from not one, but many refugee camps, each of them with everlasting and dark memories and their unique, destroying and character building experiences. The following chapters paint the grim picture that the Jovic’s and tens of thousands of others saw.