It began in Zagreb in 1937, when a group of student friends suggested that I write for the Yugoslav press a series of articles on the position of Moslem women. The students were bitter about the “enslavement” of their sisters who had been married in traditional manner. I was not very enthusiastic about attacking the women’s veil or the lattice window, but I was willing to study and report on Bosnian family life. It was the end of the spring-summer term, and we drew up a questionnaire which the students took home with them during their summer vacation. It was to be a small research effort into the domestic way of life of the Bosnian Moslem. [...]

Der Ursprung meiner Familie ist unklar. Der Familienüberlieferung nach stammte sie vom montenegrinischen Stamm der Piperi, aber topographische und ethnographische Daten legen nahe, das sie sich von Stamm der Drobnjaci herleitete.[...]

My family's history is obscure. According to legend, the family came from the Montenegrin tribe of Piperi, though the toponymic and ethnographic data suggest that it may have descended from the tribe of Drobnjaci. The legend tells how one Gajun Vucinich murdered a Turk, sometime late in the eighteenth century, and escaped to avoid Turkish reprisal.[...]