Excerpts from 'The Embattled Innocence' - 2
1. It was the spring of 1993 and the Balkan war was sending waves upon waves of refugees to the coastal villages where tourist traffic had died down. The Croatian Government had put up these refugees in tourist resorts whose owners were being compensated by international relief agencies. Bashka Voda was 25 miles from Krilo, a village where Abbas and I had our warehouse from where we took supplies to the Bosnian besieged town of Mostar. The war had opened the eyes of the refugees to their Islamic identity, sadly repressed through decades of Communism in Yugoslavia. They were eager to learn about Islam and relief workers like ourselves were struggling to do whatever we could. Bosnian refugees who lived around our warehouse often came to us for assistance. On one such visit a little girl approached me with a magazine picture showing a person making Salat1. “Can you teach me this?” she said in broken English pointing to the picture, “I love Allah, I love Islam but my father Communist, n...