COMMUNITY & CULTURE
THE MELTING POT
Ajlina Karamehic-Muratovic
B y T r i s h M u y c o - To b i n
A
jlina Karamehic-Muratovic, an assistant professor at
Saint Louis University, can confidently say she knows
what it means to be Bosnian in St. Louis.
“It means having a cultural home that is both
American and Bosnian. It gives a home to both my
cultural identities,” she explained. “As much as I love each one, I also like
the opportunity to step out of each identity.”
Having what Karamehic-Muratovic calls “the best of both worlds” is
something that’s unique to St. Louis - and she has it on good authority.
Karamehic-Muratovic, who teaches sociology, works in the loca l
Bosnian community, where most were
refugees placed in St. Louis through the
United States' resettlement program in the
mid-1990s.
“When you’re placed, often you don’t
have much say in where that is,” she said.
“You come to this new host country, and
need to find a job, a place to live, furniture.
You have a limited time to repay the
government for your airline ticket. Even
though St. Louis has been great, it’s been
hard for refugees to resettle.”
St. Louis is home to the largest population
of Bosnians in the world, outside of Bosnia,
but Karamehic-Muratovic said that wasn’t initially a factor in her
decision to come here. She came by way of the University of Kentucky,
where she studied health communications (her mother is a retired
physician), pursuing her master’s degree in the same field, and finishing
in less than five years.
“I was 23,” she said. “I had a great mentor at the university, Dr. Philip
Palmgreen, who told me I should stay on and get my doctorate in health
communications, so I did.” Six months before she was due to graduate, she
was recruited by the School of Public Health at Saint Louis University to do
some outreach work with the local Bosnian community.
“One of the first projects I had was Komen-funded, and it was to
promote breast cancer education among Bosnian women,” she said.
“I also got pulled into other related projects - outreach with Hispanic
and African-American women - and while I was doing all this health
outreach, there was an elephant in the room: mental health.”
The realization helped guide her to her current field of interest.
“How do you talk to someone who survived a war about a
mammogram, when they are dealing with PTSD and depression? There
are a lot of mental health consequences with relocation, to being a
refugee - and with that, too, comes mental health baggage,” she said.
She explained that in many cases, the
struggle is different for refugees compared
to immigrants.
“Immigrants voluntarily leave their
homes. They had time to prepare; they have
some kind of a plan in place. Refugees, on
the other hand, usually only have a couple
of hours to pack up their belongings - like
my husband did - when they are forced out.
Then you live in limbo for a few months.”
Karamehic-Muratovic’s husband, Murat,
came to the U.S. with his immediate family
in 1995. The two met in St. Louis in 2005
through one of the projects she was involved
with at the time. While both hail from Bosnia, their journey to America
could not be more different. Karamehic-Muratovic was born in Visoko, a
small town about 12 miles from Sarajevo. Her family left Bosnia in 1988
to move to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
“My father was a diplomat. He was sent by the former Yugoslavia to
open the first Yugoslav Trade Center in Dubai. I was 12, and it was the
worst thing my father could do to me at that age. But little did I know
that the experience would pave the road to my future,” she said.
Her father was contracted to work in Dubai for four years, but lost
his job after three years, due to the war in Bosnia.
“Whether you’re
from Small Town,
U.S.A. or from
Bosnia, each of
us has a unique
cultural identity.”
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GAZELLE