I live in Canada and one of my closest friends is a Bosnian woman named Samira. She is 25-years-old now and came to Canada from Bosnia in 1994, shortly after she was orphaned - we thought. The orphanage where she ended up said she was brought there following an assault on her town (Donji Vakuf) in which her parents were killed.
In Canada, she was taken in as a foster child by a family who are also Muslim and from Bosnia so she really had as easy a transition to Canadian life as she possibly could. She stood out a little bit in school because she was at least twice as tall and three times as beautiful as any of the other girls!
But she made friends easily and, I can say this because I've known her for 12 years, she was truly doing well.
Last summer, we went back to Bosnia together - Samira, myself, and two other friends - for vacation. We were having a fantastic time, Samira seemed just fine. We went swimming in the ocean at Neum, visited the Old Bridge at Mostar, and went shopping in the old bazaar in Sarajevo - so many things she'd talked to us about for years. We rented a car in Sarajevo and went to see Travnik, where Samira used to spend her vacations before the war. She couldn't remember much about it and so she wanted to go. While we were there, we saw a highway sign that said "Donji Vakuf", her hometown, so we had to go visit.
We were just walking around town, it was just a small village really, and Samira just stopped walking. She wasn't blinking, she wouldn't respond to us, she just stood there. After a few minutes she just collapsed and we had to go to the local clinic with her. None of us could speak Bosnian very well so it was just a big, confused mess.
Somehow someone in the town ended up hearing she was there, someone that knew her family, and came to see her. It was an older man and he was there when Samira woke up and he asked us all to leave. We didn't find out what he said until we were all back in Canada, and even then it took Samira a few weeks to tell us. The man was her Uncle and he told her that her mother didn't die in 1994, but in 1998. She gave Samira to the orphanage after her father was killed because the orphanage had access to food and medicine that she could never find. She told the orphanage she was a family friend because otherwise they wouldn't have taken her, but she never imagined they'd give her up for adoption overseas. Her mother spent years after the war trying to find her but never did.
Anyhow, Samira has been really weird ever since. She started wearing a veil, which she never did before. It's really very rare even in her homeland. She's lost a lot of weight and she never really does her make-up anymore, and she was crazy about make-up before. She used to get up early in the morning, before anyone woke up, do her hair and make-up, and get back in bed so we'd all think she looked like that every morning. That's how crazy about it she was. She doesn't accept any calls or any communication from the surviving family members she's discovered, which now include not only her Uncle but two Aunts and half a dozen cousins.
Then, some days, she's perfectly normal. She'll show up at my house in tight jeans with her hair curled and want to go downtown to the nightclubs. Every time, after a few hours, she says she's tired and needs to go to bed and just leaves - she doesn't even wait for us to say goodnight or anything.
I've had some communication with her Uncle and he told me staff at the clinic she went to in Bosnia said she without doubt had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is understandably very common there.
So my question is, what can we do to help? Right now we just keep our distance. We welcome her with open arms whenever she comes to us, but we don't harass her or make her come out with us, or leave the house with us. Nothing is changing, she's just stuck in this cycle. I don't know if she's seeing a doctor or a psychiatrist or anything, she never talks about anything related to this anymore. So what can we do to help? What should you do with a friend who probably has PTSD?
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