The Permanent Scars of Mirsad Bektic

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According to Krdzic, Mirsad’s Srebrenica received a good brunt of the Bosnian War. To this day, 20 years later, they are still finding mass graves with hundreds of bodies. Mirsad bounced around from the camps in Italy and Germany before coming to the United States in 1999, when he was 8. He settled in Lincoln, Neb.

“I learned to phase a lot of things out, like I had no feeling,” said Mirsad, who was introduced to karate by a grade-school counselor. “I used to sleepwalk in the camps and wake up in bathrooms. I always had this feeling like someone was coming after me. Between the war and Freddy Krueger, I could never sleep, or I would have these bad nightmares. It got so bad my mother took me to a priest to get prayed over and stop the nightmares. I was a kid. You remember bits and pieces. If not for my mother, who is a soldier for sure, I wouldn’t be alive.

“My mother left her husband and kept moving for her children,” he added. “She was always someone we could rely on. I was 8 when I came to the U.S., but those refugee camps tested you. You’re sharing bathrooms with hundreds of people. It was so crowded you would go days without washing. The camp was pretty big, but it was fenced in. We had a lot of free time and there weren’t a lot of things to do, but I was always fighting. I can remember that. I would fight and then go hide.”

Mirsad’s violent tendencies followed him to the United States.

“I was a really small kid and growing up in an American high school and [being] really, really skinny, other kids used to think I was an easy target,” he said. “I would wear certain clothes two or three days in a row. American kids would make fun of me for what I wore and how I looked. I would fight them. My mother is a saint. She put up with me. I had no discipline or direction as a kid, because my mother was always working and my father was never around. I just fought. I just reacted to things. Other kids would try to bully me and I never backed down. I didn’t have much self-esteem as a kid. I learned by doing the wrong things.”

Since he left as a baby with his mother, Mirsad has only been to Bosnia once, when he was 18.

“They’re bitter because of the lack of opportunity that they have over there,” Mirsad said. “You might be very good in soccer and maybe make it to the pros, but otherwise, there is nothing. You might get a job working construction for very little money. I visited the house where I lived in, but there are bullet holes everywhere and you can tell there was a war there. When I went there, and it was only six years ago, there were bombed-out buildings. It’s why it’s very hard to go back. You don’t want to relive things when you’re in a good place. Why go back to the bottom of the barrel? I do know where I was, and I know where I’m from, and I know where I’m going.

“I love my people,” he added. “I love Bosnia. It’s very important for me to do well, and they support me. It’s very inspirational that they call me a hero and someone they believe in. With each fight, there will be bigger expectations and bigger responsibilities. I want to go back and I want to be a positive example to Bosnian kids. I am fighting for more than just me. I do fight for my mother and my family, but [I] also fight for Bosnia. I want to get my family all over here and take care of them. I like doing good things for people, and that takes a lot of money, which means I have to keep winning.”

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Come fight night, Mirsad brings himself back, back to Srebrenica, back to the war-torn buildings pocked by bullet holes, back to the congested camps in Italy and Germany, where he would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. He believes nothing can stop him if the horrors he has already endured could not.

“I know what’s at stake,” said Mirsad, who trains out of the American Top Team camp in Coconut Creek, Fla. “I’ve seen a thousand things. I know what’s going to happen in the fight, because I’ve played the fight over before I make that walk to the cage. It’s thoughtless in a way because I’ve already seen the worst of things. I just moved into my own place for the first time. It’s funny when people say before I’m going into a fight that I’m going into hostile territory. Hostile territory is in my blood. I was born in hostile territory. There is nothing anyone can do to me that I haven’t experienced. I appreciate America. I appreciate drinking clean water. I’m living the American dream, and it keeps getting better and better. I want to impact the world by giving.”