We should have come out of the holiday season in Sweden happy, rested and ready to welcome the New Year. But we didn’t. We should finish the previous year with a spirit of love and togetherness. But we didn’t. Everything evil has reached a new level and may go even further.
We’ve made it to 2025, a year filled with racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, right-wing Sweden Democrats still dominating the political discourse, Greta Thunberg being vilified for her political activism, and the government being cut. 10 billion kroner ($1.09bn) development aid.
During the holiday, a Koran with bullet holes was hung on the fence of the Central Mosque in Stockholm, while an Iranian couple – a nurse’s aide who had worked at a Swedish hospital for a decade – and their children were deported to Tehran.
In the new year, we face an election where toxic political rhetoric about weeding out criminals and others who “behave” and “don’t fit in” will likely determine the outcome.
I am very worried about what happens next in Sweden.
As a Bosnian Swede, I want both my countries to be the best of them. I want them to be great again, to use the charged phrase, because I don’t think they’re that great anymore. Yes, I look at both with some nostalgia as I remember what they were like at different times in my life.
I want Bosnia to get rid of the poison of nationalists and become a proper democratic state like Sweden. I want Sweden to restore the sense of compassion that once accepted thousands of Bosnians during its worst economic crisis. Sweden did very well and we Bosnians are said to be the best-integrated and most successful minority.
Today, we don’t have people like the Swedish priest who jumped on a plane and delivered aid to Sarajevo airport during the violent siege of the Bosnian capital.
Land, land, escape. Instantly in and out between firings. I can’t imagine anyone taking that risk today.
Worse, we have developed a resistance to empathy and see anyone who tries to make a difference as a strange outsider.
Back then, countries refused to defend Bosnia and let us defend ourselves. Nowadays they help criminals.
I remembered a different Sweden.
In the first two years of the war, I met a comic book collector from Banja Luka whose daughter had fled to Sweden. He showed me the letter she had sent through the Red Cross. It was winter, and she was describing this place called Vargarda as an ancient Nordic landscape, so beautiful and innocent.
It would be my fate to end up in the same refugee camp in 1993. I was excited – I was going to a place where I knew there would be a lot of comic books.
Shortly after our arrival, we were transferred to the military building at Uddawalla, where I felt a constant wind blowing through my mind. We were closed but had some contact with Swedish high school students. I tried to learn Swedish, but since we didn’t know if we would stay, we didn’t have Swedish classes yet.
I didn’t experience much Swedishness at camp. It was just us Bosnians with PTSD, a mix of people from all parts of Bosnia, and it felt like we were from completely different cultures. Same people, complete strangers.
I had cousins - also refugees – who were stationed in Trollhattan. One winter day, before going to Mulsjo, I decided to visit them. It snowed a lot, and the only shoes I had were fake Converse sneakers with soles. Address in hand, I reached this cozy little town. It turned out to be a PO Box. Boy, I felt like a silly little refugee lost on the beautiful streets of Trollhattan.
I was cold, so I went to the record store. The place smelled wonderful. The most seductive smell I’ve ever smelled. I didn’t expect that in Sweden. In Bosnia, we are not famous for exotic spices. We like things plain and simple. It was in Sweden I want to learn about the world.
The man working in the shop saw I had a cold and gave me mulled wine with Christmas spices, which I later learned was called glog. It was hot and strong, and it blew my mind. It’s a Proustian moment I’ll probably remember until the day I die. I couldn’t speak any Swedish, but somehow I managed to find a refugee camp. The man showed me where to go.
I found buildings and saw some Bosnians who told me how to find my cousins. They had already begun to mingle, probably less and living closer to the Swedes.
During my stay, my cousin made mini cinnamon buns, which she froze. Married on Swedish TV…while watching with the kids, her daughter and I would sneak it. Within days, I fell in love with glögg and cinnamon buns.
In the refugee camp at Mulsjö in the Swedish Bible Belt, I trained in judo at a local club, with Nordmann’s music playing in the background. Small place, nice people, with few standard prejudices against Muslims, but still inspired by a sense of civility. I was always taken care of.
There was a Swedish man working in the camp who was always looking for bad things about us. Once, when I complained that the electricity bill was too high, the man said that we immigrants are just using the system and should learn to respect the law. Go figure.
People like him were few at that time. Now there are many. In those days there were also very few companies that didn’t want to give us jobs because we didn’t speak Swedish well. Now there are many.
In my twenties, I moved to Stockholm, got married and started working as a carer for an elderly Swedish man in a wheelchair. I was by his side for 11 years. He taught me how to be compassionate and empathetic and how to worship sweet buns called “Semlore”.
It is because of them that I respect National Semla Day. I developed a good relationship with his sister, who we usually met at IKEA for breakfast on weekends.
Eventually, breakfast at IKEA every Saturday became a tradition for my family as well. It was the kind of place where you’d find all kinds of people waiting impatiently outside for it to open so they could run in and grab a cheap breakfast: two buns, a few slices of cucumber, chicken breast and cheese, and of course unlimited coffee. It was the best coffee in town.
After a few months, we got to know the faces of a lot of regular people, like an old Greek couple who were always in the first row and weren’t happy if they weren’t. Or the old Arab who always sat alone by the window facing the motorway. Or all the young Swedish couples who explain things very loudly to their young children.
Over time, breakfast at IKEA began to change. It gradually turned into brunch – a big feast – but then it became more subdued and the offerings dwindled. As our children grew, so did the prices.
At some point, I lost track of what breakfast at IKEA was supposed to be. He lost his identity in trying to be professional; He was no longer about the variety of families he was attracted to. And yet, we lost that tradition.
I like change. And I don’t like it. Like everyone else, I guess. I love the fact that Sweden has so much rich culture to offer and I hate that it’s becoming more and more cold towards the “other”. People like Greta now stand out and surprise.
I long for the glögg I tasted as a young refugee as much as I long for the hard heart and mind of the priest who delivered the goods to the Muslims under fire.
Maybe things will change when I have grandchildren. I’ll go back to our family IKEA breakfast tradition, richer and still the same old, same old.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.