Somewhere in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the early 1990s, a little girl’s life was about change.
Violence had just broken out in the capital city after Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, sparking the Bosnian War. With uncertainty and fear clouding the air, 7-year-old Helena Besovic and her family were unable to flee her hometown.
Instead, the Besovic family hunkered down, living in a basement as the city around them was bombed and besieged for 1,425 days.
“We didn’t think it was going to last that long,” Besovic, the now-36-year-old UH tennis coach, said.