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| Ina Musafija poses after her French Club meeting at the Corvallis First Congregational Church |
According to her daughter Tamara Musafija, Ina Musafija never wants family members to put anything off: if there’s a medical issue, go see a doctor. If there’s something else that needs attention, pay attention to it; don’t be in denial.
Tamara and her mother Ina sat down to talk on a wintry afternoon in February.
Ina, who turns 80 this month, takes the city bus regularly. One evening a few weeks ago she sat waiting patiently at the downtown bus station, a big bag on her lap.
Musafija had purchased a 2019 wall calendar of the Northern Lights and a metal mixing bowl to make a birthday cake for her grandson. It was evening and Musafija had just watched a movie at Corvallis’ Darkside Theater.
She sees movies at the Darkside regularly, including “The Wife” which she saw with Tamara. “I liked this movie,” says Musafija. “I liked this relationship [between the husband and wife]. They are so sincere with each other.” Musafija uses the word sincere regularly, and her daughter Tamara said that telling the truth is very important in their family.
In a family story that demonstrates the importance of telling the truth, when Tamara was a little girl, her teacher asked her who had done her homework. Tamara said, “I don’t know. I fell asleep. It was either my father or my mother.” The teacher was impressed that she told the truth, and so was Ina, who likes this story. Tamara said that her mother encouraged her to be a good student by promising her a bicycle. At this time she was eight or nine and she earned the bicycle in 6 months and has been a good student ever since, going on to earn her Masters.
Another family story tells of Ina's long friendship and then romance with her husband, Albert, who passed away in 2012. They had known each other forever when as a young college student Albert had a party to celebrate getting his degree. Ina brought red roses, thinking to show Albert she was in love with him, but he just put them aside, saying he would give them to his sister.
Ina remembers being in tears. Later on, Albert realized he too was in love and the pair ended up eloping, since Albert's over-controlling mother would not approve. A photo in Ina's album shows a young Albert and Ina, accompanied to the courthouse by their two best friends.
In another photo, Ina proudly shows her own party celebrating her degree, and in it she hugs her three children as party goers and siblings enjoy the party. In yet another memento in her apartment, Ina shows a painting done by her mother, who was an artist.
The arts played an important part in Musafija’s life in her native Sarajevo, Yugoslavia as well as her life here in Corvallis, Oregon. A week after watching “The Good Wife” with Tamara, she saw the famous guitarist Carlos Santana play for the “very professional” flamenco dancers at OSU’s LaSells Stewart Center with her youngest daughter Miriam and her children.
In 1992 Ina and her husband Albert Musafija left their native Sarajevo, Yugoslavia with Miriam. Their oldest daughter, Tamara, was studying in the United States and their son Mayo was grown up and encouraged the move. He was a journalist in Sarajevo at the time and now lives in Canada. Before making the difficult decision to leave, Musafija joined fellow citizens of all ethnicities who protested the sudden civil war that was tearing apart their country.
Rock stars and actors performed their repertoire in basements for free to keep up the spirits of the people. On a recent visit to Sarajevo, Musafija’s friend recalled the tremendous call to action, solidarity, and human kindness that arose among Yugoslavians at that time in the face of their great hardships.
Musafija, who worked in Sarajevo as a philosophy professor, keeps up with philosophy. In the magazine “Philosophy Now,” she points out an article about the french existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who was the subject of her doctoral thesis. According to google, “Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.” According to wikipedia, “While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity.”
Musafija remembers hearing on the radio in Sarajevo, which was at that time in Yugoslavia and now is in Bosnia, a grandmother, pleading for peace for her grandchildren. The grandmother, says Musafija, was Muslim. Musafija herself is Jewish. She remembers attending synagogue on Yom Kippur with her grandmother. When Musafija heard her fellow citizen, the Muslim grandmother, pleading for unity on the radio, Musafija told her husband and daughter she had to go out to join the protests for unity, and she did.
A friend of Musafija’s son is an experienced marksman and he was recruited to join in the fighting but decided to leave the country instead, a decision Musafija is proud of him for. But leaving her country was hard for Musafija.
For decades, Musafija has attended a French conversation club in Corvallis. Longtime fellow member Marcia Shapiro says, “Ina is very much tied to her family. Family is everything I think to Ina. Ina is an interesting person, did her dissertation on Sartre, but I think family is everything to her, more than your average American anyway. She’s pretty amazing.”
In Musafija’s home, the calendar of Northern Lights hangs on the wall. Across from it are pictures from a previous year’s calendar. They are trees. One tree is absolutely gigantic, its branches spreading out into infinity, its trunk tied with bright ribbons. The trunk looks small compared to its incredibly huge candelabra of branches.
At a Glance:
Who: Ina Musafija, 80 years old
Where: Born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, has lived for decades in Corvallis
Profession: Retired Philosophy Professor and Grandmother
Languages: French, Russian, Bosnian, English
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