Jimmi Jan Rouge @joerouge - Twitter Profile

JoeRouge retweeted

18 days ago

I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. Being a Bosnian refugee is a super niche life path. There’s less than million of us on the planet. We were the white kids in school that had super foreign parents. “In America we shower everyday.” it said on the refugee paperwork when my parents came to America. Mind you, my mom had her masters degree by then. Lol. We didn’t have grandparents. All those cool memories and stories the American kids had with their Grandmas or Grandpas? We can’t relate. Mine couldn’t make it out before the bombings started. Jebiga, šta ćeš? Growing up a refugee in America? You don’t have aunts. You don’t have cousins. You don’t have roots. It’s you and your immediate family. Mixed in with the other Bosnian families who happened to get shipped out to that same town. Mi smo Bosanci. Tight knit. Small country. With survival hardcoded in our Ottoman brains. So when thousands of us get a chance to get together and watch our young country play a World Cup game? Yeah. We are going to go crazy. And most likely overboard. Can you blame us? Yesterday at the game, I saw all the Canadians watch in awe to the passion we had singing out songs in that stadium. By that point? We might as well have won the whole World Cup already. Yesterday was one of the best days of my life. No question. Start to finish. Side by side with my fifty nine year old dad who gave us everything, my older brother who’s first two languages were German and Bosnian, my second cousins, my two child hood best friends, my country men marching to support our team at the World Cup? Legendary day. I’ve never felt more Bosnian. It’s like the foreign part of me that I suppressed for 29 years, so that I can assimilate, finally got activated like I was Thanos with an infinity stone. Patriotism. Brotherhood. A culture. An identity. People who look like you. People who talk like you. People with the same morales. Same principles. That feeling alone I’ll never forget. “Jel si ti naš (are you one of ours)?” every Bosnian has heard that question before. “Pa naravno.” With a shrug of the shoulders. Iykyk.

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