I forced the breath into my lungs, hopelessly trying to stay calm while my heart is beating in every fiber of my body feeling it loudest in my throat and ears. Pressed against the wall the smell of gunpowder thick in the air, and the sporadic reverberations of gunfire...

In my time of growing up, my city of Sarajevo was made famous for two momentous events. We captured world headlines with the 1984 winter olympics and one of the most bloody wars in modern history. Ironically, these events occurred less than a decade apart. I was born...