THEY have only travelled about 70 miles, but as far as Fadila Plakalo and Ismet Herenda are concerned the biggest step in their journey from Bosnia to Ireland is over.
Last Saturday the women, each bringing two children, caught the first bus in more than two years from Gorazde to Sarajevo. In a pink envelope they carried the two letters from the Department of Foreign, Affairs, dated last July granting them Irish visas. They will spend the next days in Sarajevo outing out the rest of their papers.
Fadila said she got 0 minutes notice that the bus would take her out. She says she thought of it as the bus to Dublin.
"First I swallowed a few pills to calm down," she says. "Then I ran around every room opening and closing doors, and finally I just grabbed my kids' hands and ran.
She always kept a couple of bags packed, just in case, but some people in the besieged town had told her he would new get out, she said. When she was feeling pessimistic she would unpack the bags again.
She took only a few clothes with her and cloned the door on the house and all her possessions probably for the last time. It was the house where she had nursed her husband, Behudin, for a year. She fed him through a straw after a sniper's exploding bullet shattered his jaw.
Fadila did not have time to say goodbye to her parents, who lived a 15 minute drive away. She left behind a stack of letters and pictures of Ireland sent by Behudin. She said she did not want to carry them through Serb territory in case the bus wad searched.
When Behudin was evacuated by helicopter in April 1994, Fadila was left with their two children in the town that the UNHCR has described as one of the worst affected by the war.
She survived partly thanks to hi old job as a shop saleswoman. The UNHCR employed her to give out aid packages.
Last New Year an Irishman, Eddie O'Dwyer who works for the UN in Gorazde, organised some plum brandy for her, a present from Behudin. "We were often Eddie's guests" she said.
Ismet was talking to her parents when a neighbour called to tell her that her name was on the list pinned up in the centre of the town. She showed me the flimsy white paper, stamped by the Bosnian authorities her passport out.
Brother Tom O Grady based in Sarajevo with the Irish aid agency Refugee Trust, came to Gorazde about, six months after her husband left, she said. He put the wheels in motion for their visas.
The three children sat, bored, as we talked. "They don't like cramped spaces," Ismet said after years of hiding in basements and cellars. "When we come to Ireland we will have to chain them, down to stop them from running around."
Fadila said that Behudin has bought a wedding dress, for the one she married him in 15 years ago was left behind in Gorazde. Both couples, will new have two wedding anniversaries, they said. The second will be the day they arrive in Dublin.
It was difficult to leave Gorazde, Ismet said, "but there was, something much stronger pulling us to Dublin.
