Fresh lives for pair after tragic conflict

Children grew up quickly during the conflict. Photo / Supplied

Growing up, sisters Atka Reid and Hana Schofield spent a year apart, fleeing from bullets and surviving on rations during the Bosnian war. Twenty years later they consider themselves Kiwis - and two of the lucky ones.

The pair were reunited by a Kiwi family who were dealing with their own tragedy but still found the strength to open their arms to the sisters.

Today, 40-year-old graphic designer Atka Reid is married to one of the sons of that family. Hana Schofield, 30, her little sister, is a lawyer and life coach and also has a Kiwi husband.

Both are confident, self-assured Kiwis. They live in Auckland. They have learned to love the wide open spaces that are so different from their native country. They support the All Blacks and drink flat whites in cafes. But their Bosnian accents hint at different pasts.

Their childhood experiences will always stay with them - for Atka, a fear of stepping outdoors after having family members shot by snipers; for Hana, the worry about being a burden to others - the same burden she carried as a young refugee staying with her parents' friends.

In May 1992, 12-year-old Hana and her sister Nadia, 14, take the last two spots on a United Nations evacuation bus out of the besieged city of Sarajevo. During the break-up of Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia had declared independence from Yugoslavia. In an attempt at ethnic cleansing, Serbs living in Bosnia surrounded Sarajevo and attacked Muslims and Croats living there.

The attacks stopped food and other supplies getting through. Millions of Bosnians and Croatians were forced from their homes.

The girls' mother is travelling as a volunteer for Mothers for Peace. Their dad is not able to look after 10 children on his own. The family choose to send Hana and Nadia because they are considered old enough to make the trip to Croatia alone.

"Everyone was panicking," says Hana. "But we were all hoping it wouldn't turn into a full-blown war."

They all believe they will be separated for only a few weeks. It is not to be. When the two girls board that bus, it is the last time they will see their other siblings for a year.

Zagreb, the city to which the two sisters were evacuated, is only a little safer than Sarajevo. The Serbs and Croats are beginning a long, bloody conflict.

At first Hana and Nadia are taken in by family friends and squeeze into the apartment with the couple and their two children. But, as refugees, they feel confused, homesick and alone.

Despite the fact that they are only children, they get their own flat.

Determined to plan for her future after the war, 13-year-old Hana enrols at school and - not wanting to stand out - adopts a Croatian accent.

She bargains with God to take care of her family. "I used to pray - 'if I do well at school then they'll survive another day'.

"I developed these tricks to cope."

Atka, the eldest of the 10 children, is left behind in Sarajevo to care for her five brothers and sisters.

"I always had brothers and sisters to look after so it's second nature," she says.

With the support of her grandmother, she quickly adapts to the role and the challenges brought by war. "I said to the kids, 'we can't afford nappies', so they had to be potty-trained very quickly."

Food shortages also force them to get creative. "We had war recipes, like how to make cheese with two teaspoons of milk powder and some water and pie with stinging nettle and we'd recycle coffee beans about 20 times."

With no running water most of the time, Atka's younger twin brothers forget what taps are used for. When the family is given oranges, the young children don't know what they are. "But they never once complained," says Atka.

The family are restricted to the downstairs level of the house because of the risk of sniper bullets through the windows upstairs.

At times they are confined to an underground shelter for days. Atka passes the time telling fairy tales to keep her younger siblings entertained. They emerge "desperate for the sun".

Their father, a writer and mathematician, spends hours trying to fight the war by writing letters to officials. "He became obsessed with it. So much so that we couldn't count on dad a lot of the time," says Atka.

The 22-year-old finds an escape from the toil of trying to feed her younger siblings - and earn much-needed money for food - by translating for foreign journalists.

One is Kiwi photojournalist Andrew Reid, who works for the Paris-based Gamma photo agency. Working together in intense and often dangerous situations, they quickly realise they have a special connection.

"I liked him from the moment I met him," says Atka. "He was cool, knowledgeable, straightforward and practical. It was like meeting an old friend."

One day, the pair are travelling home through Snipers' Alley, the main boulevard in Sarajevo which during the war is lined with snipers' posts.
Usually Andrew keeps his foot to the floor of the dusty old Range Rover and Atka ducks beneath the dashboard for fear of being shot.

This time, Andrew speeds and weaves to make it harder for the snipers to hit them - "my palms were sweating and I felt my heart thumping" - when suddenly, he stops.

Terrified, Atka thinks he has been shot. Instead, he turns to her and asks her to marry him. Yes, she promises - if he gets them "the hell out of here".

The peaceful, green city the family grew up in has become a city divided - divided by Snipers' Alley, divided by ethnicity, divided by history.

For 12 months, as the war escalates, the sisters rarely contact each other. Their uncle is killed while queuing for bread; a young cousin loses his leg. Their sister Lela struggles to cope - she attempts suicide after discovering her boyfriend has been killed by a sniper.

"When you start losing family members it becomes very personal," says Hana.

In May 1993, Andrew Reid manages to get Atka on a United Nations flight with him that takes them to Split.

From there, they drive through Croat-held territory, through Mostar and on to Zagreb. There, unexpectedly, they turn up at Hana's school.

The four sisters Atka and Lela, Nadia and Hana, spend the night swapping stories.

Hana says it is a shock to see the older sister she has always looked up to as a role model. Atka's eyes sparkled but there are dark shadows under them that were never there before. Her face is pinched. She is frustrated at the way the people of Sarajevo are being treated - and has no idea when the war will end.

Hana learns, for the first time, that her family in Sarajevo are malnourished, surviving like "caged animals" trapped in their homes.

Atka notices changes in her younger sibling, also. "She looked very, very skinny and gaunt. She was taller and she spoke like a Croatian."

Two days later, Atka leaves Bosnia for the US with her husband-to-be, and from there travels to New Zealand to visit his family in Christchurch, Bill and Rosie Reid.

After living so long within the four walls of a Sarajevo apartment the South Island's wide open spaces are daunting. "That was quite scary at the start but you get used to it," Atka says.

They plan to only visit for a few days, but are forced to stay when Atka realises she is pregnant with their first child - and the baby is seriously unwell.

Desperate to help her family on the other side of the world, Atka sends money from New Zealand in the hope that she may be able to bring them to safety.

The Reid family keep up a flow of letters to the Immigration Service. New Zealand has a quota for 50 refugees from Bosnia - they ensure that Atka's siblings, parents and grandmother fill 12 of those places.

Tragically, after doing so much to help them, Bill Reid never meets Atka's family. He dies from cancer in May 1994, just before they arrive from Bosnia.

At school, their Kiwi classmates are a little confused about the faraway, war-torn country the pair come from.

"People asked if the cars in Bosnia were like the cars in the Flintstones," says Hana.

The Bosnian war continued until 1995 and it is estimated that more than 10,000 Sarajevans were killed during the siege. More than 100,000 Bosnians died in the war and 1.8 million were forced from their homes.

And when the sisters travel back to Sarajevo in 1997 for the first time since fleeing, they see the scars left behind by war.

"It was a real shock to see half the buildings gone. It was obvious that the city had gone through something awful," says Atka.

Atka works as a journalist in Christchurch and later gains a diploma in graphic design. She and Andrew have two sons, William and Sam.

Hana meets her husband James at the University of Canterbury, where she studies law and Russian. She has since worked as a lawyer in New Zealand and London. Both women are now based in Auckland. They have rebuilt their lives and in many ways, tried to forget much of their past.

But while on holiday in Croatia in 2008 the women, who have always shared a close bond, discuss writing a book about their lives during what was the bloodiest European conflict since World War II.

It is a way of sharing their experiences and connecting with their family history, says Atka.

At the end of 2009, they resign from their jobs to start writing. Hana returns from London, where she and James have been working. She moves in with Atka and Andrew and they spend the next nine months living together while working on the book.

Through the project, they learn about their own and each other's fight for survival during the year they were apart.

"It's all the details that we didn't know about each other," says Hana.

Atka finishes Hana's sentence: "We're kind of like twins. We've always been close."

The war taught them who to trust; how to make the most of each day.

The title Goodbye Sarajevo refers to those, like themselves, who were forced to leave their homes.

Atka says: "This is the goodbye we would have made at the time if we had known we were leaving for good."

* Atka Reid and Hana Schofield will speak at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival on May 14-15, and around the North Island. Goodbye Sarajevo is published by Bloomsbury, RRP $35.