My Hope Hit: The song that made me feel I belonged

My Hope Hit is a song that my teacher, Miss Webster, and classmates sang to me when I first arrived in the UK from Bosnia. I’ve been singing this song in my head for the last 30 years.

I was nine years old when I started school and I couldn’t speak a word of English.

We would all sit around Miss Webster on the floor as she played the guitar. She would sing the first part on her own then point to someone, then the next part would be sung with that person’s name in it.

Everyone loved this song. I hated it. I couldn’t understand what they were singing.

Smajo receiving his OBE.

One day, everyone was extra excited, and they were all staring at me. I thought it was because I’m a refugee, because I’m different, they can’t say my name.

I came close to running out, but Miss Webster started playing the guitar.

All of a sudden, I understood what they were singing.

She had taught our entire class how to sing this song in Bosnian for me, just to make me feel welcome. The song was about having a wonderful day at school and about friendship. They sang it so badly, but it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard.

They struggled pronouncing the Bosnian words, but I remember how excited they all were. It’s such a vivid moment.

I went home smiling that day. It was the first day that I felt like I belonged, that I was more than just a refugee.

My teacher reminded me a lot of my aunt who had been killed back in Bosnia. My aunt used to sing a lot. Even during the war, during the most difficult moments, she was singing and helping us get through.

I left Bosnia on the 19th of June 1994.

Life was incredibly difficult. We had lived through two years of war and were ethnically cleansed from our home.

We were bombed, shelled daily and starving. My mum and aunt were incredibly creative to keep us going. They made pies from grass and used chicken feed to make bread. I still can’t eat brown bread now, 30 years later.

My dad was taken to a concentration camp, along with my uncles and cousins, where many had been tortured and beaten. When he was released, he was told that he can’t go back to Bosnia.

My mum and dad were worried about how to get us to safety. We moved 14 times. Awful things had happened by that point of the war. My aunt, my mum’s sister that we lived with, was killed.

Each time we moved, we didn’t know where we were going. We just moved to survive.

There was a lot of sympathy for what was happening in Bosnia. We were given incredible support from the people of the Northeast, who campaigned to bring us here.

I arrived in Newcastle with my siblings and my mom as part of a resettlement programme called the Bosnia Project. We were reunited with my dad who had arrived as part of the same programme six months earlier.

We had to leave my grandparents, cousins and friends behind.

It was incredible being away from shooting and explosions, but I was having awful nightmares and would wake up screaming every single night.

What happened in Bosnia can happen anywhere.

The narrative around migration and refugees today has been led by misinformation, half-truths, lies and distortions. It is worrying seeing how people and communities are being divided and the language that’s being used now. Human beings are reduced to statistics.

We need to have difficult conversations. We need to help people understand why we have a duty to welcome others – to recognise refugees as human beings, just like everyone else, people with hopes and dreams and a past.

Despite the horrors that my grandmother experienced, she never taught me to hate. She carried my auntie, her wounded daughter, out of the house after a bomb attack and lived the rest of her life with the knowledge that those who killed her were still living freely – and yet she taught my siblings and I to reject hatred.

She constantly reminded us of our values, our beliefs, our humanity, when it was probably the most difficult thing that she could have done. Choosing compassion over hatred was so brave.

My grandmother never taught me to hate. She constantly reminded us of our values, our beliefs, our humanity, when it was probably the most difficult thing that she could have done. Choosing compassion over hatred.

My grandmother never really liked listening to music, but there were a couple of songs that she liked and would always turn up when they would come on the radio. There’s one song that I turn to when I’m having a difficult day that reminds me of her: ‘Mostarska’ by Adnan Jakupović.

It’s a song about Mostar, the city, about taking someone to visit and seeing how they fall in love with it. It’s a beautiful song, loaded with so much emotion and meaning, and it always brings me back to life somehow.

Music is a wonderful unifier.

I listen to music from all parts of the world. I’ve got absolutely everything on my phone, the most random things, the most embarrassing things, some things that I’m not willing to share.

In 2018, I met Miss Webster completely by accident. It was an incredibly emotional reunion because I’ve told her story so many times.

She said she just wanted to give me something familiar, and that’s all it was. This little thing was probably a normal day for her at school, and probably a fun afternoon for the class rehearsing when I wasn’t there. But for me, through that song, they completely changed my life. I’ll forever be grateful. She had no idea that 30 years later, I still speak about this in schools and colleges up and down the country.

That day was a recognition of my humanity. I had complete strangers accepting me for who I am. They gave me back my humanity, my dignity, and that’s the power of music.

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To learn more about Hope on Repeat and vote for your own Hope Hit, visit our website here.