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Potato i Jedinstvo
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Greetings to Charlie's Food Store, Twin Falls, Idaho
(l. to r.: Alen Čoralič, Ramiz Čolić, Refik Mašić)It may feature an alternate way of spelling the name Ramiz, but this article from the Times-News gives another taste of Bosnian-American life in Twin Falls, Idaho:
Immigrant finds new life in Twin Falls
Human rights and nonviolence are not exactly everyday vocabulary for Rmiz Colic.
The 34-year-old Bosnian immigrant was shot three times and survived the Srebrenica Massacre, a 1995 slaughter of Bosnian Muslims that drew the world's attention to the three-year Balkan crisis.
"Before the war, nobody cared if you were Muslim, Christian or Jewish," Colic said.
Colic served in the Yugoslavian Army until it splintered into three armies: the Serbian Army, the Croatian Army and the Bosnian Army.
"I was almost dead," he said of the last time he was shot. "We went to a refugee center in Split, Croatia, and then we came to America."
That was seven years ago, and Colic says he loves Twin Falls.
He works at Charlie's Food Store, a small Bosnian grocery on Shoshone Street where Twin Falls' Bosnians gather for strong Bosnian coffee.
"Nobody says anything about you here," Colic said. "Nobody says, 'You're Bosnian, you're Muslim, you're black.' "
Though he's not sure of the total number of Bosnians in Twin Falls, he says there are a lot. The store, of which his wife is a co-owner, is somewhat of a meeting place for the community because the traditional spot for gathering in Bosnia would more likely be a mosque or marketplace.
The nearest mosque is in Boise.
Colic said his best friend from Bosnia is a well-known kickboxer named Esef Charlie Jasarevic, who lent his middle name to the store. It offers traditional Bosnian foods, strong coffee, Bosnian pizza pans, spices and even frozen Sarajevski Civapi, a kind of meat dish similar to the Greek gyro.
But on Monday, when other shops closed to remember Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions to human rights, it was business as usual at Charlie's.
"I know the guy who killed my entire family," Colic said. "He killed my father, my mother, my two uncles and my brother die also."
"He still walks around free in my hometown."
So human rights are not the same to many of the survivors of one of the worst ethnic cleansing campaigns since the days of Hitler.
"I know that someday someone will come up to him and say, 'Hey, I know who you are and what you did,' and they will take him to jail," Colic said. "It's the same in Iraq right now; too many people are dying for no reason."
Colic is much happier now that his wounds have healed. He is a welder by trade, sometimes working as far away as Spokane, Wash.
The snow-capped mountainous terrain and wide-open expanses remind Colic of his homeland.
"Idaho feels like Bosnia, lots of hills and mountains," he said.
Charlie's Food Store, 139 Shoshone St. N., Twin Falls; (208) 733-0827
Posted by: Skelly / 12:20 PM 
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I'm glad this man is doing ok in America, it sounds like he and his wife have done a good job of adapting. I wish them well here.
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