Mehmed Glavas

It was at the beginning of the Mohammed crisis, the radio was blasting and my colleagues were highly strung. They discussed whether or not to kill all Muslims. I was devastated, and started to imagine concentration camps and all sorts of things.

I was on the evening shift, and left the factory in Østbirk at 11.15 pm and sort of “woke up” three quarters of an hour later at a roundabout in Kolding. Instead of going back home to Horsens I had driven out to the motorway. In Kolding I saw a sign with a red cross and thought: I’m safe here.
At that time, I had been a Danish citizen since 2001. But I was also a Bosnian citizen in 1993, when I was 15 years old, put on a bus and driven away.

What matters a lot to me are relations. When they are broken, I immediately return to what happened then. It was not me who said: I don’t want us to be friends any longer. Others said it for me. When I was laid off from my former job in April last year it threw me into an identity crisis. It was my “baby” where I had worked 60-80 hours a week. Again, I had a relationship broken. It made me go to Bosnia for a couple of months over the summer. Mostly as self-therapy: how does it look today? Am I foreign? Or have I become Danish? I discovered I was more foreign down there than in Denmark. In everyday life I don’t feel foreign. But you don’t need statements saying all foreigners must be put on the train and deported from the country. I can only relate it to ’93.

41 / male / in a relationship / fitness instructor / Horsens / from Bosnia / came to Denmark in 1994 / residency permit 1995