The Bosnian-Herzegovinian pilgrims who performed their fifth Islamic duty this year carry with them different life stories. They were all bound by the same goal, but the paths to its realization are different.
For Muslims who are physically and financially able, the Hajj is the crowning glory of religious life. Among the conditions for its performance, a special place is occupied by halal, i.e. honestly earned income from which this trip is financed. The following story is about exactly that.
Begajeta Nukić planted a raspberry field in Skejići near Srebrenica in 2013. A few years later, the price of raspberries will fall, so many will give up cultivation, but not Begajeta.
She had a special goal – to collect money for Hajj from her work.
– From 2013 until now, I have been collecting. I planted a dunum, a dunum and a half, and left everything for Hajj – said Begajeta.
She adds that she could have collected the money from her husband’s pension, whose bones she has been searching for in Bosnian forests for three decades, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t even agree to let her children help her.
– I want my work and effort to be halal for me. My children can help, but I didn’t want to. I want to know that I earned it with my own hands and I, thank God, managed to do it – said Begajeta.
The fact that she succeeded and finally found herself in Mecca and performed the Hajj seemed incredible to her.
– Knowing what you survived, knowing what horrors you went through, knowing… Well, one of my children remained in the fourth grade, one in the sixth grade. Sometimes I get short of breath, I can’t breathe, I just survived that and it was me. And God forbid… I can’t name that beauty – said Begajeta, barely holding back her tears.
During the genocide, she was left without numerous family members, but what she was not left without was her faith and patience.
A fighter by nature and with a cheerful spirit despite the heavy tragedy, she returned to Srebrenica, renovated the house and property, because, as she says, there is nowhere more beautiful than on her native bosom, and this year she also realized her life’s dream – performing the fifth Islamic duty, she writes Factor.
