For Bosnia refugee, life in America is a 24-hour race

“I wish there were 48 hours in a day,” says Maida Kapetanovic, as she scurries about her spotless home. “Sometimes I feel like I am Charlie Chaplin running about …  my work, cooking, cleaning … being a mother to two boys,” Maida says.

She puts on a pot of coffee. In her small kitchen, beside the breakfast table for two, is an easel with a painting in progress — a brown stallion rearing in the air and looking behind.

“I wish I had more time in my daily life to paint,” she says.

But time is so short.

She keeps her box of paints on the kitchen table. She picks up a brush and gives her work a few well-placed strokes between tending to the food in the oven and stirring a pot on the stove.

 The 54-year-old Lincoln woman — who along with her husband and their two sons fled their native Bosnia and Herzegovina during the civil war  — feels as if her life in America is a never-ending race.

What’s at the finish line?

Maida is uncertain.

She dreams of returning home to her beloved Mostar, to their vacation home along the beautiful shores of the Adriatic Sea. Of sitting on the beach writing books and painting while her husband, Nerman, reads. Of remembering the good things about their lives.  Of living as they once did in a community of many languages, religions and ethnicities — the community that existed before war divided their country, destroyed the 500-year-old, white stone bridge that linked Mostar to the rest of Yugoslavia, and declared her family and their language an enemy of the state.

But life there will never be the same, she says.

For almost 900 years, Maida’s and Nerman’s families had lived in Mostar.

Then on Jan. 13, 1994, the couple along with their sons, Nino and Darko,  came to Lincoln.

“It was like yesterday,” Maida says quietly as her eyes lose their focus on her guest and seem to float across the ocean to Mostar and the bridge that spanned the icy Neretva River.

… The bridge was a symbol of integrity between multicultural people with different religions in the area.

She’s writing down her memories. Maybe she’ll write a book. Maybe she will just keep the memories for herself and her sons, who were 10 and 6 when they left Bosnia.

“I try to remember only positive things,” she says. “I write about the terrible situation, but always you can find good friends.”

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It was May 1989 when the Serbs and Croatians declared war.

Fighting and killing people was part of everyday life in our Mostar. Life was cheap. We did not know when someone might come to our door and kill us for no reason.

On April 3, 1992, Maida, Nino, Darko and Maida’s mother fled to Hvar, a small Croatian island- turned-refugee camp.

Six months later Nerman was taken prisoner, along with Maida’s two brothers.

Through persistent inquiries, Maida eventually discovered that her husband was in one concentration camp, her brothers in another.

“We believed someone would see what was happening and do something. But they did not know what was going on,” Maida says, referring to the rest of the world.

With the help of the Denmark Red Cross, Maida secured Nerman’s release if he promised to leave the country and never return.

The Kapetanovics came to Lincoln as refugees.

“We did not know where we were going. We didn’t know what to expect,” Maida said.

Nino and Darko thought they would live on a farm.

Nerman, who was a mechanical engineer in Mostar, found work at  Kawasaki. He later became an interpreter.

Maida went to Southeast Community College to learn English. Her teachers encouraged her to write her story. She painted and sculpted in clay.

On Sept. 17, 2004, Nerman suffered a massive stroke at home. Nino found his father on the floor, clutching the back of his head.

“I was in the emergency room 15 minutes when the doctor showed up and told us he couldn’t do anything,” Maida recalls.

Her first thought: Nerman was paralyzed.

 “Then the doctor asked us for organ donations,” she says.

Nerman was expected to live 24 hours — two days at most.

Maida could not accept his words.

“I believed he would survive,” she says. All day, every day, she sat by Nerman’s side talking to him.

“I think the nurses think I am crazy, I am talking to a dead body,” Maida says.

“After three weeks he opened his eyes for the first time,” she says. She believed he was talking to her through his eyes. She prayed: Please God show me a sign.

Maida retells the story: “‘Nerman, if you can hear me move your right leg.’ And he moved it!

“The nurse said, maybe it’s a reflex,” Maida says.

So Maida told Nerman to move his leg again. The nurse remained skeptical. Maida told Nerman to move his hand. He wiggled his fingers.

“I never accepted the idea that he was dead, that we would lose him,” she says.

Without Nerman her family is like a tree without branches, Maida says. Nino and Darko now try to be the branches.

“I am so proud of them,” she says. They visit Nerman daily, and bring him home each Saturday and Sunday for five-hour visits. They play chess and joke with their father.

Maida comes to the hospital every night at 6 p.m., after leaving her job at Lincoln Action Program.

“If I am late … ,” Maida says. She imitates her husband and taps  a finger on an imaginary wristwatch.

“The children believe like I do that someday he will be good enough to be with us at home,” Maida says. “I feel we have a full home if he is here.”

Maida glances at the clock. She’s been talking close to three hours.

 “My memories are like a river. I think about them ,and they keep coming,” Maida says.

“My friend told me I was an amazing woman,” Maida says with a shake of her head.

“I do it because I must do it.”

Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.