45. ON THE RUN

IN UTICA, there are thousands of people who were once on the run from persecution and war: The Sudanese mother picking out eye makeup with her daughter at the Rite-Aid on Genesee. The Vietnamese woman working on her laptop at the back of the restaurant she owns on Bleecker.

The tall Serbian mother standing by the Salmon River as she watches her teenage son, a fly fisherman, tie intricate knots.

Sometimes, threats came out of the blue. Sometimes, they were building for decades. Within seconds, people had to make agonizing decisions.

When Ali picked up the envelope left on his mother’s doorstep, he was puzzled. But then he saw two AK-47 slim-tipped bullets inside, and the handwritten note: “You betrayed your people. We will kill you when we see you.” It was signed by al Mujahideen, a Sunni militant group.

It was 2004, and he was working as an interpreter for the allied forces. It was as if an alarm went off in his body: “I was shocked and angry,” he said, and grabbing the letter, he drove to the neighborhood mosque. Earlier he had noticed a bunch of men with long beards, passing by his mother’s house.

He parked on the curb, by the mosque’s front gate, and stormed inside. It was after prayers, but there was still a group of men there. Standing in the middle of the prayer hall, Ali shouted, “Who is the imam of the mosque?”

The men looked at him angrily. “What do you want?” somebody asked. Ali pulled out the letter. “Who put this stupid letter in front of my door? I want to talk to the imam.”

“He just left for his house,” somebody said.

Ali got the imam’s address and drove there.

When he knocked on the door, the imam’s son answered and took Ali into a guest room.

When the imam came in, he was very polite and welcoming.

Ali showed him the letter and said, “Sheikh, we have been living in this neighborhood for 25 years with no issues with anyone. We are a well-known family,” he added, his face burning, “so who is accusing me of betrayal?”

“My son, I swear to God I don’t know who did this,” the imam said. “But since the sectarian violence started, strangers from Sunni areas have been coming into the neighborhood.”

Ali left the imam’s house—and decided to forget about the letter. But a few days later, he received another.

He knew what a second warning meant: death.

He ran to his room and packed a few clothes. Nobody was home; he had already sent his mother and sisters to live in Damascus. Then he jumped into his car and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He did not stop until he got to his grandmother’s house, in a Shia neighborhood, just minutes away. It was guarded by the Al Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, as well as by Iraqi police.

“No one was allowed in unless they lived there,” Ali said. “It would have been hard for Sunni militia to get in.”

Ali told his grandmother and his uncle, who lived with her, what had happened.

“My grandmother asked me to share my uncle’s room,” Ali said. His boss gave him an army cot, which he put into the small room. A reserved, considerate man in his fifties, his uncle would go to the gym or meet friends when Ali came back after work.

Ali missed his fancy, king-size bed and his guitars. Also, “I did not see my mom and sisters for a long time.” But he was grateful to be alive.

His supervisor advised him to apply to a special immigration visa program, created for those who had worked for the US Army. It took over a year before he was approved—and then he flew to Damascus to see his mother and sisters and to pick up his visa at the American consulate. But then instead of flying to the United States, he flew to Baghdad.

“My boss freaked out to see me back at the office,” he said. “But I told her I cannot leave now. I loved my job to no end.”

A few months later, he was informed his visa was about to expire. His boss told him to leave. His mother pushed him: “Go, go!”

Ali said, “I left Iraq.”

In her senior year of high school, Mersiha noticed what she called “little incidents.” Soldiers—she did not know if they were Croats or Serbs—suddenly appeared in the road, asking for ID, when she was on her way to visit her aunt in Zenica, an hour away.

A few classmates were missing: They were Croats and Serbs, who lived in the surrounding villages. “They just stopped coming,” Mersiha said.

But she did not dwell on this. She—along with the rest of the class of 1992—was obsessed with the upcoming prom.

It was a high point of the year for the town: Every May, people lined up on the main street, some kids perched on their fathers’ shoulders. The graduates strolled past, sometimes as a threesome, arm in arm. The young men wore dark suits. The young women wore glamorous gowns—canary yellow, cobalt blue, and scarlet.

“We did not go as couples,” Mersiha insisted. “But as a class. No one was left out—no one!”

The procession ended at the popular downtown restaurant Plava Voda—Blue Water—for a dinner of traditional Bosnian food and dancing. A few days later, every shop had prom photos taped to their front windows.

Mersiha knew exactly what she wanted to wear: a simple black dress like Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But she wanted a minidress, like the girls wore on Beverly Hills 90210. She argued with her mother, who insisted it cover her knees.

They hunted for this dress—but there was nothing like it in Travnik.

Then in April, a large box arrived from her mother’s brother, who lived in Austria. When Mersiha opened it—pulling back the tissue paper—there was the elegant dress.

There was also a pair of long black gloves, just like Hepburn’s in the movie. And a few hazelnut Milka bars, her favorite.

Mersiha did not have Hepburn’s swanlike neck or fragile-looking body. She was shorter and shapely—and the dress looked great.

But just two weeks before the prom, Mersiha’s teachers announced: “School is closed. There is war.”

A few days later, Mersiha’s mother heard that girls had been raped by Serbs in a village only 20 minutes away. This terrified her: She pictured her own girls being assaulted. “I can’t live like this,” she told Mersiha.

Her mother decided to send her daughters to Croatia, with her sister, for just a few weeks. She herself would stay in Travnik; she was afraid of losing her job as a salesclerk in a home-goods store. They needed the money.

This was not an easy decision: She had never been separated from her daughters—except for one time.

When Mersiha was seven, her father, who owned factories in Bosnia and Croatia, kidnapped her.

He had cheated on his wife when Mersiha was five. When Mersiha’s mother found out, she wrapped Melissa in a blanket, scooped up Mersiha, and took them to live in her mother’s house.

She refused any financial support from her husband. But she allowed an occasional visit. One afternoon, he asked if he could take Mersiha across the street to an ice cream shop.

When he did not return after 15 minutes, her mother ran into the shop. “She started screaming and pulling out her hair,” Mersiha said. Her father had put her in a car and driven to the Adriatic coast, where he had a house.

A few weeks later, the courts forced him to bring Mersiha back.

This event immediately vanished from Mersiha’s memory; years later, she heard about it from her grandmother. Her mother never spoke about it.

When Mersiha heard her mother’s plan to send her away, she was angry: “How could you leave me?”

On a beautiful May morning, Mersiha—wearing her favorite jean jacket—and her sister climbed into their aunt’s Volkswagen. It seemed everyone on the street was saying goodbye.

“I kept turning around to see my mother and grandmother crying at the window,” Mersiha said.

They joined a convoy of thousands of cars, trucks, and buses filled with women and children. Everybody was heading to Split, on the Croatian coast. The highway was closed; they took an old, narrow route. The trip, which generally took 3 hours, took 24.

Men were not allowed to leave the country. But her uncle, the director of a large hotel complex, was politically connected: He drove them, as well as his wife and two young kids.

But like everyone else, they registered at the border as refugees and were given a yellow card, enabling them to get food from Caritas, a humanitarian organization. Then they were sent to a soccer stadium in Split, the same place Hajrudin’s mom and siblings had gone.

Women and children were huddled together, lying in hallways and on the grounds, before being sent to a variety of temporary housing: tents, mobile homes, hotels, and camps.

After only a day, a friend of their uncle’s arrived—and took them to a house on Brač, an island that was a ferry ride away. They were going to stay on the second floor; Mersiha’s uncle had paid their rent. But the woman of the house resented the refugees.

The first day, she told Mersiha: “You are here. You safe. I won’t tell the police.”

This infuriated Mersiha: “To this day, I curse her for saying that. Why would she call the police? We were legal—we had refugee status.” It was Bosnian men who were at risk.

Behind her back, the girls called the woman—who had long, dark curly hair—a witch. “She wouldn’t let us use the shower,” Mersiha said. “We had to wash in the sea—it was so cold. We got itchy from the salt.”

And though her uncle had bought them all kinds of provisions—Nutella, juice, detergent—the woman kept them in a locked storage room.

The island, known for its beautiful beaches, was always insular. But once refugees started arriving, the residents became hostile. When Mersiha and her sister left the house to get milk or bread, the islanders leaned out their windows, staring at them and cursing.

Then in late June, as Mersiha, her sister, and cousin were sleeping, three policemen entered their bedroom.

“Get up—get up!” the police yelled. Terrified, the girls jumped up, wrapping themselves in sheets. It was a hot night; they were in their underwear. As one police officer came closer, Mersiha stepped in front of her sister and cousin to protect them. Using his rifle, the man lifted a corner of the sheet covering Mersiha.

“Are you hiding something?”

“No, sir, we don’t have anything,” Mersiha said, crying and shaking.

Then another police officer came into the room. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked his friend. “There’s only girls here.” Somebody had reported that there were Bosnian men.

They left, laughing.

The girls hugged each other. “God sent that man!” Mersiha said.

Her uncle then moved them to a house in Split. It was on a hilltop, above a hotel filled with refugees from Bosnia and the border towns of Croatia, which were under siege by Serbs. Nearby, on the beach, was a refugee camp.

Mersiha felt safer: They were living with a family, and since there was a man in the house, “neighbors didn’t treat us so bad,” she said. The couple had a son, Robert, also 17. “He was a little gangster, a troublemaker. But he was really nice to refugees. Like a brother I never had.”

One afternoon, Mersiha was sitting with her sister in the back of a bus, heading into town; Robert was in the front. A tiny, elderly woman started yelling at the two Bosnian girls, “You look like animals. You belong on a farm!”

Hearing the racket, Robert came running, his eyes bulging, “You ignorant old woman! If you ever, ever do anything to these girls, I will personally come knocking on your door.”

Soon, all the borders closed.

Her uncle had been running humanitarian trucks from Bosnia into Croatia to help feed and clothe the refugees. He used to bring the girls news from home.

For a year, they heard nothing.

“We didn’t know if my mother was alive or not,” Mersiha said.

But she kept her anxiety to herself: Melissa was 16; willful. “I had to take care of my sister. We didn’t have anyone but each other.”

Other refugees were now living in the house. At one point there were 13 people. At night, she and her sister liked to go out with friends they had made in town, but their aunt gave them an early curfew.

“She was just trying to protect us,” Mersiha said. “But we resented it. ‘What, are we in jail?’ ”

Sometimes she would explode, “You’re not my mother!”

She would try to find a quiet spot in the house, so she could feel her mother’s presence.

“I would ask her, ‘Why, mommy? Why is this happening?’ ”

Telling me this, she closed her eyes. “I miss her now.”

During their time apart, Mersiha missed simple things, like her mother touching her hair.

“She used to braid it. To this day”—she touched her short, thick hair—“I don’t know how to do my hair.”

As Mersiha’s 18th birthday neared, her aunt planned a party. This would have been a big event back home.

She wanted to make Mersiha happy. She said, “I know I’m not your mom, but I love you very much.”

Her aunt invited about a dozen young people. A friend brought a guitar. They sang songs by Dino Merlin, a Bosnian pop singer, and Azra, a Yugoslav new wave band.

Her aunt brought out her signature birthday cake—a hazelnut sponge cake, studded with gumdrops.

“She asked me to make a wish,” Mersiha said. “I wished for my mom. She didn’t come.”

For Halima, 30, the threats were all around her.

As she ran, she was nursing Yusuf, her 1-year-old son. Her husband was carrying their 3-year-old daughter, who was known for being outspoken, a brat, on his shoulders. Leaving their village of Makalango, in southern Somalia, they were heading to a refugee camp on the Kenyan border.

It was 1992; nearby villages were being terrorized by different factions and clans. One night, the couple awoke to the sound of their neighbors screaming; they were attacked as they slept. Along with about 15 other families, Halima, her husband, and kids started running.

For Halima, the hardships of the run—little food, predatory animals—were aggravated, or even eclipsed, by Atika, her demanding little girl.

“She talked a lot, insulting them,” said Sofia, who has heard this story from her mother many times. “ ‘You’re letting me starve! You need to stop and feed me!’ ”

“They’d stop for a few seconds, then she’d hear hyenas. She would cry, ‘Pick me up! Get me out of here!’ ”

To soothe the little girl, her father said, “When we get there, you’ll have pasta and rice.” These were considered luxury foods, hard to get. “I can’t wait to get my pasta and rice!” she said. Another time, he snapped, “We’ll send you back to Somalia!” “You’d better not!”

Sophia said appreciatively about Atika, “She was so smart and blunt for her age.”

She was heavy to carry: “She peed on my dad’s shoulders,” Sofia said. Halima could not stop to pee. She had five other children to keep track of.

Families fanned out ahead and behind her, staggering forward. Few had shoes. Sofia said, “People had cuts and burns all over their feet.”

All that mattered was to keep moving. “You lose your shoe, you are left behind,” said Mohamed Ganiso, Halima’s nephew, who was then 12 years old.

“Even your mom can’t stop for you—she can’t wait for you,” he added, referring to Halima, who was raising him and his younger brother; their mother had died of malnutrition. Carrying water for the family, Mohamed tried to stay in the front of the group, or in the middle.

In the chaos, some families got separated: “We lost each other,” Ahmed Mukonje of Utica said about his young wife, four months pregnant, when they started running toward Kenya in 1993. “I went one way. She went a different way.”

“It was really the worst time,” he added. There was so much confusion: “If you missed somebody, you thought they got killed.” It was only after he got to the United States that he learned his wife was alive, and back in Somalia.

Falling behind because of exhaustion or injury meant death. “That’s how the animals get you,” Mohamed said.

One of Halima’s sisters was so spent, she could no longer walk. She collapsed under a tree.

“Relatives watched as a lion devoured her,” Sofia said. “She was just so exhausted she couldn’t do it anymore.”

There was another tragic event: A young aunt, pregnant, and carrying newborn twin boys—with two other kids trailing after her—felt she was about to collapse. “She didn’t have a husband to help her,” Sofia said.

Unable to carry the twins anymore, “she left them in the forest.”

All the mothers were at the end of their rope: Halima passed out nursing Yusuf. “Some people had to throw water on her,” Sofia said. For a moment, Halima thought about leaving her difficult 3-year-old behind. “Everybody had other children, babies to take care of.”

Yet Atika was not Halima’s most difficult child.

Zahara, 14, was running with her parents.

She had left her husband—her first cousin—behind in the village. “He refused to go,” Sofia said about the 16-year-old boy.

Halima had married Zahara off so young, hoping it would protect her from being raped by marauders.

Exhausted—two months pregnant—Zahara could not keep up. Also, she was absorbing every blow: She saw several people attacked by lions. She cried when she saw her aunt leave the twins.

Her parents kept encouraging her, their firstborn child: “We’re not leaving you. You’re doing a good job. Walk.”

At the Utanga refugee camp, outside Mombasa, they all moved into a one-room hut. “At first, the family was dependent on Zahara,” Sofia said.

Zahara quickly picked up bits of Swahili, English, Arabic, and Turkana. In the dense, multilingual environment, she was savvy about getting her family what they needed: food, ID cards. She gave birth to Mana; her mother cared for the baby along with her own kids.

Zahara made friends everywhere; she wanted to learn new things. And she was pushy, not afraid to ask for help.

A Kenyan camp official showed her how to plant green and red peppers, okra, and spinach. She and her mother made sambusas—and sold huge buckets of them.

But she was rebellious, much like Sadia. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Sofia said, smiling.

Zahara had always fought with her parents—and started running away from home at an early age.

Halima would be wild with worry: Years later, she would tell relatives, “It was a genocide out there. And she’s acting up!”

In the camp, Zahara would often leave the crowded hut and go off on her own. A feeling would come over her—that she needed to get some air.

“My parents couldn’t rely on her,” Sofia said. They hired two Sudanese men to teach the children English and Swahili.

Then Zahara started disappearing for months: Each time, she returned with a beautiful baby girl: Ralya, then Sadia . . .