Lemja’s story begins a long time ago, in another time and in a country that no longer exists. She is 16 years old and the world is at her feet. She grew up in Mostar, that old town in Bosnia where you can clearly see that the Ottomans ruled it for centuries. When she looks around, she sees the mountains, and when she listens carefully, she hears the water of the Neretva, the river that flows through the city. This is her home, this is where the people she loves live and this is where she does what she loves most: handball. “If I had stayed, I would have become a handball pro, for sure”, says Lemja Kovac now, on this summer evening in her garden in Rotterdam. But she didn’t stay because it was a war. She flees with her handball team to the Netherlands, an unforeseen adventure that is recorded by GerBen van ‘t Hek and Rens Lieman in the book De bus uit Mostar.
Bosnian Lemja fled to the Netherlands in 1992 with her handball team | Abroad
