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10/29/2009 -
Bosnian, Serbian fight together on Lipscomb's basketball court - Nashville Scene
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Life-changing moments rarely are planned, which is why many times they go unrecognized until months or even years later.
As a 5-year-old, however, Adnan Hodzic understood immediately that his life never was going to be the same.
It happened the first time his mother gathered him in her arms and ran with him down the streets of Sarajevo as bullets whizzed past on both sides. It was clear each night he lay in his bed and listened to the bombs explode and the ammunition fire, and the point was driven home each time he was reminded to stay in the basement of his family home so as not to risk his very life.
Eventually, his family was left with no choice but to make a drastic change. His mother took him and his sister to the United States while his father stayed behind to fight for Bosnia in its war with neighboring Serbia.
More than a decade later, everything is different for Hodzic, now a junior at Lipscomb University, from the language he speaks to the game he plays. Yet nothing better illustrates how his life has been altered than his relationship with Milos Kleut, a Lipscomb freshman and a teammate on the university's basketball team — and also a native of Serbia.
"We're great friends," Hodzic says. "That doesn't bother us. It happened. We were kids. We did nothing to anybody. That was strictly politics and people in another generation than us. We look at each other like nothing. We look at each other just like I look at anybody else."
By David Boclair
Nashville Scene
